The Sheikh's Chosen Wife

The car turned and began driving along the top of the harbour wall taking them towards a pair of wrought iron gates, which cordoned off the area where the two yachts were tied.

Climbing out of the car, Leona stood looking round while she waited for Ethan to join her. It was even darker here than she had expected it to be, and she felt a distinct chill shiver down her spine when she realised they were going to have to pass the unlit boat to reach the other.

Ethan’s hand found her arm. As they walked towards the gates, their car was already turning round to go back the way it had come. The guard manning the gates merely nodded his dark head and let them by without a murmur, then disappeared into the shadows.

‘Conscientious chap,’ Ethan said dryly.

Leona didn’t answer. She was too busy having to fight a sudden attack of nerves that set butterflies fluttering inside her stomach. Okay, she tried to reason, so she hadn’t put herself in the social arena much recently, therefore it was natural that she should suffer an attack of nerves tonight.

Yet some other part of her brain was trying to insist that her attack of nerves had nothing to do with the party. It was so dark and so quiet here that even their footsteps seemed to echo with a sinister ring.

Sinister? Picking up on the word, she questioned it impatiently. What was the matter with her? Why was everything sinister all of a sudden? It was a hot night—a beautiful night—she was twenty-nine years old, and about to do what most twenty-nine-year-olds did: party when they got the chance!

‘Quite something, hmm?’ Ethan remarked as they walked into the shadow of the larger yacht.

But Leona didn’t want to look. Despite the tough talking-to she had just given herself, the yacht bothered her. The whole situation was beginning to worry her. She could feel her heart pumping unevenly against her breast, and just about every nerve-end she possessed was suddenly on full alert for no other reason than—

It was then that she heard it—nothing more than a whispering sound in the shadows, but it was enough to make her go perfectly still. So did Ethan. Almost at the same moment the darkness itself seemed to take on a life of its own by shifting and swaying before her eyes.

The tingling sensation on the back of her neck returned with a vengeance. ‘Ethan,’ she said jerkily. ‘I don’t think I like this.’

‘No,’ he answered tersely. ‘Neither do I.’

That was the moment when they saw them, first one dark shape, then another, and another, emerging from the shadows until they turned themselves into Arabs wearing dark robes, with darkly sober expressions.

‘Oh, dear God,’ she breathed. ‘What’s happening?’

But she already knew the answer. It was a fear she’d had to live with from the day she’d married Hassan. She was British. She had married an Arab who was a very powerful man. The dual publicity her disappearance could generate was in itself worth its weight in gold to political fanatics wanting to make a point.

Something she should have remembered earlier, then the word ‘sinister’ would have made a lot more sense, she realised, as Ethan’s arm pressed her hard up against him.

Further down the harbour wall the lights from the Petronades boat were swinging gently. Here, beneath the shadow of the other, the ring of men was steadily closing in. Her heart began to pound like a hammer drill. Ethan couldn’t hold her any closer if he tried, and she could almost taste his tension. He, too, knew exactly what was going to happen.

‘Keep calm,’ he gritted down at her. ‘When I give the word, lose your shoes and run.’

He was going to make a lunge for them and try to break the ring so she could have a small chance to escape. ‘No,’ she protested, and clutched tightly at his jacket sleeve. ‘Don’t do it. They might hurt you if you do!’

‘Just go, Leona!’ he ground back at her, then, with no more warning than that, he was pulling away, and almost in the same movement he threw himself at the two men closest to him.

It was then that all hell broke loose. While Leona stood there frozen in horror watching all three men topple to the ground in a huddle, the rest of the ring leapt into action. Fear for her life sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through her blood. Dry-mouthed, stark-eyed, she was just about to do as Ethan had told her and run, when she heard a hard voice rasp out a command in Arabic. In a state of raw panic she swung round in its direction, expecting someone to be almost upon her, only to find to her confusion that the ring of men had completely bypassed her, leaving her standing here alone with only one other man.

It was at that point that she truly stopped functioning—heart, lungs, her ability to hear what was happening to Ethan—all connections to her brain simply closed down to leave only her eyes in full, wretched focus.

Tall and dark, whip-cord lean, he possessed an aura about him that warned of great physical power lurking beneath the dark robes he was wearing. His skin was the colour of sun-ripened olives, his eyes as black as a midnight sky, and his mouth she saw was thin, straight and utterly unsmiling.

‘Hassan.’ She breathed his name into the darkness.

The curt bow he offered her came directly from an excess of noble arrogance built into his ancient genes. ‘As you see,’ Sheikh Hassan smoothly confirmed.

CHAPTER TWO

A BUBBLE of hysteria ballooned in her throat. ‘But—why?’ she choked in strangled confusion.

Hassan was not given the opportunity to answer before another fracas broke out somewhere behind her. Ethan ground her name out. It was followed by some thuds and scuffles. As she turned on a protesting gasp to go to him, someone else spoke with a grating urgency and Hassan caught her wrist, long brown fingers closing round fleshless skin and bone, to hold her firmly in place.

‘Call them off!’ she cried out shrilly.

‘Be silent,’ he returned in a voice like ice.

It shocked her, really shocked her, because never in their years together had he ever used that tone on her. Turning her head, she stared at him in pained astonishment, but Hassan wasn’t even looking at her. His attention was fixed on a spot near the gates. With a snap of his fingers his men began scattering like bats on the wing, taking a frighteningly silent Ethan with them.

‘Where are they going with him?’ Leona demanded anxiously.

Hassan didn’t answer. Another man came to stand directly behind her and, glancing up, she found herself gazing into yet another familiar face.

‘Rafiq,’ she murmured, but that was all she managed to say before Hassan was reclaiming her attention by snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her towards him. Her breasts made contact with solid muscle; her thighs suddenly burned like fire as they felt the unyielding power in his. Her eyes leapt up to clash with his eyes. It was like tumbling into oblivion. He looked so very angry, yet so very—

‘Shh,’ he cautioned. ‘It is absolutely imperative that you do exactly as I say. For there is a car coming down the causeway and we cannot afford to have any witnesses.’

‘Witnesses to what?’ she asked in bewilderment.

There was a pause, a smile that was not quite a smile because it was too cold, too calculating, too—

‘Your abduction,’ he smoothly informed her.

Standing there in his arms, feeling trapped by a word that sounded totally alien falling from those lips she’d thought she knew so well, Leona released a constricted gasp then was totally silenced.

Car headlights suddenly swung in their direction. Rafiq moved and the next thing that she knew a shroud of black muslin was being thrown over her head. For a split second she couldn’t believe what was actually happening! Then Hassan released his grasp so the muslin could unfurl right down to her ankles: she was being shrouded in an abaya.

Never had she ever been forced to wear such a garment! ‘Oh, how could you?’ she wrenched out, already trying to drag the abaya off again.

Strong arms firmly subdued her efforts. ‘Now, you have two choices here, my darling.’ Hassan’s grim voice sounded close to her ear. ‘You can either come quietly, of your own volition, or Rafiq and I will ensure that you do so—understand?’

Understand? Oh, yes, Leona thought painfully, she understood fully that she was being recovered like a lost piece of property! ‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she breathed thickly.

His response was to wedge her between himself and Rafiq and then begin hustling her quickly forward. Feeling hot, trapped and blinded by the abaya, she had no idea where they were taking her.

Her frightened gasp brought Hassan’s hand to cup her elbow. ‘Be calm,’ he said quietly. ‘I am here.’

His reassurance was no assurance to Leona as he began urging her to walk ahead of him. The ground beneath her feet gave way to something much less substantial. Through the thin soles of her shoes she could feel a ridged metal surface, and received a cold sense of some dark space yawning beneath it.

‘What is this?’ she questioned shakily.

‘The gangway to my yacht,’ Hassan replied.

His yacht, she repeated, and thought of the huge dark vessel squatting in the darkness. ‘New toy, Hassan?’ she hit out deridingly.

‘I knew you would be enchanted,’ he returned. ‘Watch your step!’ he cautioned sharply when the open toe of her flimsy shoe caught on one of the metal ridges.

But she couldn’t watch her step because the wretched abaya was in the way! So she tripped, tried to right herself, felt the slender heel of her shoe twist out from beneath her. Instinct made her put out a hand in a bid to save herself. But once again the abaya was in the way and, as she tried to grapple with it, the long loose veil of muslin tangled around her ankles and she lurched drunkenly forward. The sheer impetus of the lurch lost Hassan his guiding grip on her arm. As the sound of her own stifled cry mingled with the roughness of his, Leona knew she hadn’t a hope of saving herself. In the few split seconds it all took to happen, she had a horrible vision of deep dark water between the boat and the harbour wall waiting to suck her down, with the wretched abaya acting as her burial shroud.

Then hard hands were gripping her waist and roughly righting her; next she was being scooped up and crushed hard against a familiar chest. She curled into that chest like a vulnerable child and began shaking all over while she listened to Hassan cursing and swearing beneath his breath as he carried her, and Rafiq answering with soothing tones from somewhere ahead.

Onto the yacht, across the deck, Leona could hear doors being flung wide as they approached. By the time Hassan decided that it was safe to set her down on her own feet again, reaction was beginning to set in.

Shock and fright changed to a blistering fury the moment her feet hit the floor. Breaking free, she spun away from him, then began dragging the abaya off over her head with angry, shaking fingers. Light replaced darkness, sweet cool air replaced suffocating heat. Tossing the garment to the floor, she swung round to face her two abductors with her green eyes flashing and the rest of her shimmering with an incandescent rage.

Both Hassan and Rafiq stood framed by a glossy wood doorway, studying her with differing expressions. Both wore long black tunics beneath dark blue cloaks cinched in at the waist with wide black sashes. Dark blue gutrahs framed their lean dark faces. One neatly bearded, the other clean-shaven and sleek. Both held themselves with an indolent arrogance that was a challenge as they waited to receive her first furious volley.

Her heart flipped over and tumbled to her stomach, her feeling of an impossible-to-fight admiration for these two people, only helping to infuriate her all the more. For who were they—what were they—that they believed they had the right to treat her like this?

She began to walk towards them. Her hair had escaped from its twist and was now tumbling like fire over her shoulders, and somewhere along the way she had lost her shawl and shoes. Without the help of her shoes, the two men towered over her, indomitable and proud, dark brown eyes offering no hint of apology.

Her gaze fixed itself somewhere between them, her hands closed into two tightly clenched fists at her side. The air actually stung with an electric charge of anticipation. ‘I demand to see Ethan,’ she stated very coldly.

It was clearly the last thing either was expecting her to say. Rafiq stiffened infinitesimally, Hassan looked as if she could not have insulted him more if she’d tried.

His eyes narrowed, his mouth grew thin, his handsome sleek features hardened into polished rock. Beneath the dark robes, Leona saw his wide chest expand and remain that way as, with a sharp flick of a hand, he sent Rafiq sweeping out of the room.

As the door closed them in, the sudden silence stifled almost as much as the abaya had done. Neither moved, neither spoke for the space of thirty long heart-throbbing seconds, while Hassan stared coldly down at her and she stared at some obscure point near his right shoulder.

Years of loving this one man, she was thinking painfully. Five years of living the dream in a marriage she had believed was so solid that nothing could ever tear it apart. Now she couldn’t even bring herself to focus on his face properly in case the feelings she now kept deeply suppressed inside her came surging to the surface and spilled out on a wave of broken-hearted misery. For their marriage was over. They both knew it was over. He should not have done this to her. It hurt so badly that he could treat her this way that she didn’t think she was ever going to forgive him for it.

Hassan broke the silence by releasing the breath he had been holding onto. ‘In the interests of harmony, I suggest you restrain from mentioning Ethan Hayes in my presence,’ he advised, then simply stepped right past her to walk across the room to a polished wood counter which ran the full length of one wall.

As she followed the long, lean, subtle movement of his body through desperately loving eyes, fresh fury leapt up to save her again. ‘But who else would I ask about when I’ve just watched your men beat him up and drag him away?’ she threw after him.

‘They did not beat him up.’ Flicking open a cupboard door, he revealed a fridge stocked with every conceivable form of liquid refreshment.

‘They fell on him like a flock of hooligans!’

‘They subdued his enthusiasm for a fight.’

‘He was defending me!’

‘That is my prerogative.’

Her choked laugh at that announcement dropped scorn all over it. ‘Sometimes your arrogance stuns even me!’ she informed him scathingly.

The fridge door shut with a thud. ‘And your foolish refusal to accept wise advice when it is offered to you stuns me!’

Twisting round, Hassan was suddenly revealing an anger that easily matched her own. His eyes were black, his expression harsh, his mouth snapped into a grim line. In his hand he held a bottle of mineral water which he slammed down on the cabinet top, then he began striding towards her, big and hard and threatening.

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you,’ she burst out bewilderedly. ‘Why am I under attack when I haven’t done anything?’

‘You dare to ask that, when this is the first time we have looked upon each other in a year—yet all you can think about is Ethan Hayes?’

‘Ethan isn’t your enemy,’ she persisted stubbornly.

‘No.’ Thinly said. Then something happened within his eyes that set her heart shuddering. He came to a stop a bare foot away from her. ‘But he is most definitely yours,’ he said.

She didn’t want him this close and took a step back. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she denied.

He closed the gap again. ‘A married woman openly living with a man who is not her husband carries a heavy penalty in Rahman.’

‘Are you daring to suggest that Ethan and I sleep together?’ Her eyes went wide with utter affront.

‘Do you?’

The question was like a slap to the face. ‘No we do not!’

‘Prove it,’ he challenged.

Surprise had her falling back another step. ‘But you know Ethan and I don’t have that kind of relationship,’ she insisted.

‘And, I repeat,’ he said, ‘prove it.’

Nerve-ends began to fray when she realised he was being serious. ‘I can’t,’ she admitted, then went quite pale when she felt forced to add, ‘But you know I wouldn’t sleep with him, Hassan. You know it,’ she emphasised with a painfully thickening tone which placed a different kind of darkness in his eyes.

It came from understanding and pity. And she hated him for that also! Hated and loved and hurt with a power that was worse than any other torture he could inflict.

‘Then explain to me, please,’ he persisted nonetheless, ‘when you openly live beneath the same roof as he does, how I convince my people of this certainty you believe I have in your fidelity?’

‘But Ethan and I haven’t spent one night alone together in the villa,’ she protested. ‘My father has always been there with us until he was delayed in London today!’

‘Quite.’ Hassan nodded. ‘Now you understand why you have been snatched from the brink of committing the ultimate sin in the eyes of our people. There,’ he said with a dismissive flick of the hand. ‘I am your saviour, as is my prerogative.’

With that, and having neatly tied the whole thing off to his own satisfaction, he turned and walked away—Leaving Leona to flounder in his smooth, slick logic and with no ready argument to offer.

‘I don’t believe you are real sometimes,’ she sent shakily after him. ‘Did it never occur to you that I didn’t want snatching from the brink?’

Sarcasm abounding, Hassan merely pulled the gutrah from his head and tossed it aside, then returned to the bottle of water. ‘It was time,’ he said, swinging the fridge door open again. ‘You have had long enough to sulk.’

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

‘Whatever,’ he dismissed with a shrug, then chose a bottle of white wine and closed the door. ‘It was time to bring the impasse to an end.’

Impasse, Leona repeated. He believed their failed marriage was merely stuck in an impasse. ‘I’m not coming back to you,’ she declared, then turned away to pretend to take an interest in her surroundings, knowing that his grim silence was denying her the right to choose.

They were enclosed in what she could only presume was a private stateroom furnished in subtle shades of cream faced with richly polished rosewood. It was all so beautifully designed that it was almost impossible to see the many doors built into the walls except for the wood-framed doors they had entered through. And it was the huge deep-sprung divan taking pride of place against a silk-lined wall, that told her exactly what the room’s function was.

Although the bed was not what truly captured her attention, but the pair of big easy chairs standing in front of a low table by a set of closed cream velvet curtains. As her heart gave a painful twist in recognition, she sent a hand drifting up to her eyes. Oh, Hassan, she thought despairingly, don’t do this to me…

She had seen the chairs, Hassan noted, studying the way she was standing there looking like an exquisitely fragile, perfectly tooled art-deco sculpture in her slender gown of gold. And he didn’t know whether to tell her so or simply weep at how utterly bereft she looked.

In the end he chose a third option and took a rare sip at the white wine spritzer he had just prepared for her. The forbidden alcohol content in the drink might be diluted but he felt it hit his stomach and almost instantly enter his bloodstream with an injection of much appreciated fire.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ he announced, and watched her chin come up, watched her wonderful hair slide down her slender back and her hand drop slowly to her side while she took a steadying breath before she could bring herself to turn and face him.

‘I’ve been ill—with the flu,’ she answered flatly.

‘That was weeks ago,’ he dismissed, uncaring that he was revealing to her just how close an eye he had been keeping on her from a distance. The fact that she showed no surprise told him that she had guessed as much anyway. ‘After a virus such as influenza the weight recovery is usually swift.’

‘And you would know, of course,’ she drawled, mocking the fact that he had not suffered a day’s illness in his entire life.

‘I know you,’ he countered, ‘and your propensity for slipping into a decline when you are unhappy…’

‘I was ill, not unhappy.’

‘You missed me. I missed you. Why try to deny it?’

‘May I have one of those?’ Indicating towards the drink he held in his hand was her way of telling him she was going to ignore those kind of comments.

‘It is yours,’ he explained, and offered the glass out to her.

She looked at the glass, long dusky lashes flickering over her beautiful green eyes when she realised he was going to make her come and get the drink. Would she do it? he wondered curiously. Would she allow herself to come this close, when they both knew she would much rather turn and run?

But his beautiful wife had never been a coward. No matter how she might be feeling inside, he had never known her to run from a challenge. Even when she had left him last year she had done so with courage, not cowardice. And she did not let him down now as her silk stockinged feet began to tread the cream carpet until she was in reach of the glass.

‘Thank you.’ The wine spritzer was taken from him and lifted to her mouth. She sipped without knowing she had been offered the glass so she would place her lips where his lips had been.

Her pale throat moved as she swallowed; her lips came away from the glass wearing a seductively alluring wine glossed bloom. He watched her smother a sigh, watched her look anywhere but directly at him, was aware that she had not looked him in the face since removing the abaya, just as she had stopped looking at him weeks before she left Rahman. And he had to suppress his own sigh as he felt muscles tighten all over his body in his desire to reach out, draw her close and make her look at him!

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 carefully 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?’