The sheikh's chosen wife(6)

But this was not the time to play the demanding husband. She would  reject him as she had rejected him many times a year ago. What hurt him  the most about remembering those bleak interludes was not his own angry  frustration but the grim knowledge that it had been herself she had been  denying.

'Was the Petronades yacht party an elaborate set-up?' she asked suddenly.

A brief smile stretched his mouth, and it was a very self-mocking smile  because he had truly believed she was as concentrated on his close  physical presence as he was on hers. But, no. As always, Leona's mind  worked in ways that continually managed to surprise him.

'The party was genuine.' He answered the question. 'Your father's sudden inability to get here in time to attend it was not.'

At least his honesty almost earned him a direct glance of frowning  puzzlement before she managed to divert it to his right ear. 'But you've  just finished telling me that I was snatched because my father was-'                       
       
           



       

'I know,' he cut in, not needing to hear her explain what he already  knew-which was that this whole thing had been very carefuDy set up and  co-ordinated with her father's assistance. 'There are many reasons why  you are standing here with me right now, my darling,' he murmured  gently. 'Most of which can wait for another time to go into.'

The my darling sent her back a defensive step. The realisation that her  own father had plotted against her darkened her lovely eyes. 'Tell me  now,' she insisted.

But Hassan just shook his head. 'Now is for me,' he informed her softly.  'Now is my moment to bask in the fact that you are back where you  belong.'

It was really a bit of bad timing that her feet should use that  particular moment to tread on the discarded abaya, he supposed, watching  as she looked down, saw, then grew angry all over again.

'By abduction?' Her chin came up, contempt shimmering along her finely  shaped bones. 'By plots and counter-plots and by removing a woman's  right to decide for herself?'

He grimaced at her very accurate description. 'We are by nature a  romantic people,' he defended. 'We love drama and poetry and tragic  tales of star-crossed lovers who lose each other and travel the caverns  of hell in their quest to find their way back together again.'

He saw the tears. He had said too much. Reaching out, he caught the  glass just before it slipped from her nerveless fingers. 'Our marriage  is a tragedy,' she told him thickly.

'No,' he denied, putting the hapless glass aside. 'You merely insist on turning it into one.'

'Because I hate everything you stand for!'

'But you cannot make yourself hate the man,' he added, undisturbed by her denunciation.

Leona began to back away because there was something seriously  threatening about the sudden glow she caught in his eyes. 'I left you,  remember?'

'Then sent me letters at regular intervals to make sure I remembered you,' he drawled.

'Letters to tell you I want a divorce!' she cried.

'The content of the letters came second to their true purpose.' He  smiled. 'One every two weeks over the last two months. I found them most  comforting.'

'Gosh, you are so conceited it's a wonder you didn't marry yourself!'

'Such insults' He sighed.

'Will you stop stalking me as if I am a hunted animal?' she cried.

'Stop backing away like one.'

'I do not want to stay married to you.' She stated it bluntly.

'And I am not prepared to let you go. There,' he said. 'We have reached  another impasse. Which one of us is going to win the higher ground this  time, do you think?'

Looking at him standing there, arrogant and proud yet so much her kind  of man that he made her legs go weak. Leona knew exactly which one of  them possessed the higher ground. Which was also why she had to keep him  at arm's length at all costs. He could fell her in seconds, because he  was right; she didn't hate him, she adored him. And that scared her so  much that when his hand came up, long fingertips brushing gently across  her trembling mouth, she almost fainted on the sensation that shot from  her lips to toe tips.

She pulled right away. His eyebrow arched. It mocked and challenged as he responded by curling the hand around her nape.

'Stop it,' she said, and lifted up her hand to use it as a brace against his chest.

Beneath dark blue cotton she discovered a silk-smooth, hard-packed body  pulsing with heat and an all-too-familiar masculine potency. Her mouth  went dry; she tried to breathe and found that she couldn't. Helplessly  she lifted her eyes up to meet with his.

'Seeing me now, hmm?' he softly taunted. 'Seeing this man with these  eyes you like to drown in, and this nose you like to call dreadful but  usually have trouble from stopping your fingers from stroking? And let  us not forget this mouth you so like to feel crushed hotly against your  own delightful mouth.'

'Don't you dare!' she protested, seeing what was coming and already  beginning to shake all over at the terrifying prospect of him finding  out what a weak-willed coward she was.

'Why not?' he countered, offering her one of his lazily sensual, knowing  smiles that said he knew better than she did what she really wanted-and  he began to lower his dark head.

'Tell me first.' Sheer desperation made her fly into impulsive speech.  'If I am here on this beautiful yacht that belongs to you-is there  another yacht just like it out there somewhere where your second wife  awaits her turn?"

In the sudden suffocating silence that fell between them Leona found  herself holding her breath as she watched his face pale to a frightening  stillness. For this was provocation of the worst kind to an Arab and  her heart began pounding madly because she just didn't know how he was  going to respond. Hassan possessed a shocking temper, though he had  never unleashed it on her. But now, as she stood here with her fingers  still pressed against his breastbone, she could feel the danger in  him-could almost taste her own fear as she waited to see how he was  going to respond.                       
       
           



       

What he did was to take a step back from her. Cold, aloof, he changed  into the untouchable prince in the single blink of an ebony eyelash.  'Are you daring to imply that I could be guilty of treating my wives  unequally?' he responded.

In the interim wave of silence that followed, Leona stared at him  through eyes that had stopped seeing anything as his reply rocked the  very axis she stood upon. She knew she had prompted it but she still had  not expected it, and now she found she couldn't breathe, couldn't even  move as fine cracks began to appear in her defences.

'You actually went and did it, and married again,' she whispered, then  completely shattered. Emotionally, physically, she felt herself fragment  into a thousand broken pieces beneath his stone-cold, cruel gaze.

Hassan didn't see it coming. He should have done, he knew that, but he  had been too angry to see anything but his own affronted pride. So when  she turned and ran he didn't expect it. By the time he had pulled his  wits together enough to go after her Leona was already flying through  the door on a flood of tears.

The tears blinded what was ahead of her, the abaya having prevented her  from taking stock of her surroundings as they'd arrived. Hassan heard  Rafiq call out a warning, reached the door as Leona's cry curdled the  very air surrounding them and she began to fall.

What he had managed to prevent by the skin of his teeth only a half-hour  before now replayed itself before his helpless eyes. Only it was not  the dark waters of the Mediterranean she fell into but the sea of cream  carpet that ran from room to room and down a wide flight of three  shallow stairs that led down into the yacht's main foyer.

CHAPTER THREE

Cursing and swearing in seething silence, Hassan prowled three sides of  the bed like a caged tiger while the yacht's Spanish medic checked her  over.

'No bones broken, as far as I can tell,' the man said. 'No obvious blow to the head.'

'Then why is she unconscious?' he growled out furiously.

'Shock-winded,' the medic suggested, gently laying aside a frighteningly limp hand. 'It has only been a few minutes, sir.'

But a few minutes was a lifetime when you felt so guilty you wished it was yourself lying there, Hassan thought harshly.

'A cool compress would be a help-'

A cool compress. 'Raflq.' The click of his fingers meant the job would be done.

The sharp sound made Leona flinch. On a single, lithe leap Hassan was  suddenly stretched out across the bed and leaning over her. The medic  drew back; Rafiq paused in his step.

'Open your eyes.' Hassan turned her face towards him with a decidedly unsteady hand.

Her eyes fluttered open to stare up at him blankly. 'What happened?' she mumbled.

'You fell down some stairs,' he gritted. 'Now tell me where you hurt.'

A frown began to pucker her smooth brow as she tried to

'Concentrate,' he rasped, diverting her mind away from what had happened. 'Do you hurt anywhere?'