‘Come in, shut the door, then tell me how you would feel about committing a minor piece of treason?’ Hassan smoothly intoned.
Below the white gutrah a pair of dark eyes glinted. ‘Sheikh Abdul?’ Rafiq questioned hopefully.
‘Unfortunately, no.’ Hassan gave a half smile. ‘I was in fact referring to my lovely wife, Leona…’
Dressed for the evening in a beaded slip-dress made of gold silk chiffon, Leona stepped into a pair of matching beaded mules then turned to look at herself in the mirror.
Her smooth russet hair had been caught up in a twist, and diamonds sparkled at her ears and throat. Overall, she supposed she looked okay, she decided, giving the thin straps at her shoulders a gentle tug so the dress settled comfortably over her slender frame. But the weight she had lost during the last year was most definitely showing, and she could have chosen a better colour to offset the unnatural paleness of her skin.
Too late to change, though, she thought with a dismissive shrug as she turned away from her reflection. Ethan was already waiting for her outside on the terrace. And, anyway, she wasn’t out to impress anyone. She was merely playing stand-in for her father who had been delayed in London due to some urgent business with the family lawyer, which had left her and her father’s business partner, Ethan, the only ones here to represent Hayes-Frayne at tonight’s promotional dinner.
She grimaced as she caught up a matching black silk shawl and made for her bedroom door. In truth, she would rather not be going out at all tonight having only arrived back from San Estéban an hour ago. It had been a long day, and she had spent most of it melting in a Spanish heatwave because the air-conditioning system had not been working in the villa she had been attempting to make ready for viewing. So a long soak in a warm bath and an early night would have been her idea of heaven tonight, she thought wryly, as she went down the stairs to join Ethan.
He was half sitting on the terrace rail with a glass in his hand, watching the sun go down, but his head turned at her first step, and his mouth broke into an appreciative smile.
‘Ravishing,’ he murmured, sliding his lean frame upright.
‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’
His wry nod accepted the compliment and his grey eyes sparkled with lazy humour. Dressed in a black dinner suit and bow tie, he was a tall, dark, very attractive man with an easy smile and a famous eye for the ladies. Women adored him and he adored them but, thankfully, that mutual adoration had never raised its ugly head between the two of them.
Leona liked Ethan. She felt comfortable being with him. He was the Hayes in Hayes-Frayne, architects. Give Ethan a blank piece of paper and he would create a fifty-storey skyscraper or a whole resort complete with sports clubs, shopping malls and, of course, holiday villas to die for, as with this new resort in San Estéban.
‘Drink?’ he suggested, already stepping towards the well stocked drinks trolley.
But Leona gave a shake of her head. ‘Better not, if you want me to stay awake beyond ten o’clock,’ she refused.
‘That late? Next you’ll be begging me to take you on to an all-night disco after the party.’ He was mocking the fact that she was usually safely tucked up in bed by nine o’clock.
‘Do you disco?’ she asked him curiously.
‘Not if I can help it,’ he replied, discarding his own glass to come and take the shawl from her hand so he could drape it across her shoulders. ‘The best I can offer in the name of dance is a soft shoe shuffle to something very slow, preferably in a darkened room, so that I don’t damage my ego by revealing just how bad a shuffler I am.’
‘You’re such a liar.’ Leona smiled. ‘I’ve seen you dance a mean jive, once or twice.’
Ethan pulled a face at the reminder. ‘Now you’ve really made me feel my age,’ he complained. ‘Next you’ll be asking me what it was like to rock in the sixties.’
‘You’re not that old.’ She was still smiling.
‘Born in the mid-sixties,’ he announced. ‘To a free-loving mother who bopped with the best of them.’
‘That makes you about the same age as Hass…’
And that was the point where everything died: the light banter, the laughter, the tail end of Hassan’s name. Silence fell. Ethan’s teasing grey eyes turned very sombre. He knew, of course, how painful this last year had been for her. No one mentioned Hassan’s name in her presence, so to hear herself almost say it out loud caused tension to erupt between the both of them.
‘It isn’t too late to stop this craziness, you know,’ Ethan murmured gently.
Her response was to drag in a deep breath and step right away from him. ‘I don’t want to stop it,’ she quietly replied.
‘Your heart does.’
‘My heart is not making the decisions here.’
‘Maybe you should let it.’
‘Maybe you should mind your own business!’
Spinning on her slender heels Leona walked away from him to go and stand at the terrace rail, leaving Ethan behind wearing a rueful expression at the severity with which she had just slapped him down.