‘I suspected that you would do,’ Hassan quietly commended. ‘It is the kind of training we instilled into you that you never forget.’
‘But this was different.’ She got up, wrapped her arms around her body. ‘I knew it felt different. I should have heeded that!’
‘No—don’t get upset.’ Following suit, Hassan stood up and reached for her. She was as pale as a ghost and shaking like a leaf. ‘My people were also there watching over you,’ he assured. ‘The car driver was my man, as was the man at the gate. I had people watching their people. There was not a single moment when you were not perfectly safe.’
‘But to dislike me so much that they should want to take me!’ Hurt beyond belief by that knowledge, Leona pushed him away, unwilling to accept his comfort. It had been hard enough to come to terms with it, when she’d believed he had snatched her back for his own purposes. But to discover now that he had done it because there was a plot against her was just too much to take. ‘What is it with you people that you can’t behave in a normal, rational manner?’ she threw at him, eyes bright, hurt and accusing. ‘You should have phoned me not my father!’ she cried. ‘You should have agreed to a divorce in the first place, then none of this would have happened at all!’
The you people sent Hassan’s spine erect; the mention of divorce hardened his face. ‘You are one of my people,’ he reminded her curtly.
‘No, I am not!’ she denied with an angry shake of her head. ‘I am just an ordinary person who had the misfortune to fall in love with the extraordinary!’
‘At least you are not going back to denying you love this extraordinary person,’ he noted arrogantly. ‘And stop glaring at me like that!’ he snapped. ‘I am not your enemy!’
‘Yes, you are!’ Oh, why had she ever set eyes on this man? It would have been so much easier to have lived her life without ever having known him! ‘So what happens now?’ she demanded. ‘Where do we go from here? Do I spend the rest of my days hiding from dark strangers just because you are too stubborn to let me go?’
‘Of course not.’ He was standing there frowning impatiently. ‘Stop trying to build this into more than it actually is—’
More? ‘Don’t you think it is enough to know that I wasn’t safe to be walking the streets in San Estéban? That my life and my basic human rights can be reduced to being worth nothing more than a mere pawn in some wretched person’s power game?’
‘I am sorry it has to come to this—’
Well, that just wasn’t good enough! ‘But you are no better yourself!’ she threw at him angrily. ‘Up to now you’ve used abduction, seduction and now you’ve moved onto intimidation to bring the wayward wife into line.’ She listed. ‘Should I be looking for the hidden cameras you are using so that you can show all of Rahman what a strong man you can be? Do I need to smile now?’ she asked, watching his face grow darker with the sarcasm she tossed at him—and she just didn’t care! ‘Which way?’ she goaded. ‘Do I need to let Rafiq shroud me in an abaya again and even go as far as to abase myself at your exalted feet just to save your wretched face?’
‘Say any more and you are likely to regret it,’ he warned very grimly.
‘I regret knowing you already!’ Her eyes flashed, her body shook and her anger sparkled in the very air surrounding her. ‘Next I suppose you will have me thrown into prison until I learn to behave myself!’
‘This is it—’ he responded, spreading his arms out wide in what was an outright provocation. ‘Your prison. Now stop shouting at me like some undignified fishwife,’ he snapped. ‘We need to—’
‘I want my life back without you in it!’ Leona cut loudly across him.
What she got was the prince. The face, the eyes, his mood and his manner changed with the single blink of his long dark eyelashes. When his shoulders flexed it was like a dangerous animal slowly raising its hackles, and the fine hairs on her body suddenly became magnetised as she watched the metamorphosis take place. Her breathing snagged; her throat grew tight. He was standing perhaps three yards away from her but she could suddenly feel his presence as deeply as if he was a disturbing inch away.
‘You want to live your life without me, then you may do so,’ he announced. ‘I will let you go, give you your divorce. There, it is done. Inshallah.’ With a flick of the hand he strode across the room and calmly ordered tea!
It was retaliation at its most ruthless and it left her standing th
ere utterly frozen with dismay. Inshallah. She couldn’t even wince at what that single word represented. The will of Allah. Acceptance. A decision. The end. Hassan was agreeing to let her go and she could neither move nor breathe as the full power of that decree made its stunning impact.
She had not deserved that, Hassan was thinking impatiently as he stood glaring down at the telephone. She had been shocked, angry, hurt. Who would not be when they discovered that people they cared about, people they had tried to put before themselves, had been plotting to use them ruthlessly in a nasty game called politics? She had every right to vent her feelings—he had expected it! It was the reason why he had found them privacy before telling her the truth!
Or part of the truth, he then amended, all too grimly aware that there was yet more to come. But the rest was going to have to wait for a calmer time, for this moment might be silent but it certainly was not calm, because—
Damn it, despite the sensible lecture he was angry! There was not another person on this planet who dared to speak to him as she had just done, and the hell if he was going to apologise for responding to that!
He flicked a glance at her. She hadn’t moved. If she was even breathing he could see no evidence of it. Her hair was untidy. Long silken tendrils had escaped from the band she’d had it tied up in all day and were now caressing her nape, framing her stark white profile to add a vulnerability to her beauty that wrenched hard on his heart-strings. Her feet were bare, as were her slender arms and long slender legs. And she was emulating a statue again, only this time instead of art-deco she portrayed the discarded waif.
He liked the waif. His body quickened; another prohibited sigh tightened his chest. Curiosity replaced anger, though pride held his arrogant refusal to be the first one to retract his words firmly in place. She moved him like no other woman. She always had done. Angry or sad, hot with searing passion or frozen like ice as she was now.
Inshallah. It was Allah’s will that he loved this woman above all others. Let her go? Not while he had enough breath in his body to fight to hold onto what was his! Though he wished he could see evidence that there was breath inside hers.
He picked up an ornament, measured the weight of the beautifully sculpted smooth sandstone camel then put it back down again to pick up another one of a falcon preparing to take off on the wing. And all the time the silence throbbed like a living pulse in the air all around them.
Say something—talk to me, he willed silently. Show me that my woman is still alive in there, he wanted to say. But that pride again was insisting he would not be the one to break the stunning deadlock they were now gripped in.
The light tap at the door meant the ordered tea he didn’t even want had arrived. It was a relief to have something to do. She didn’t move as he went to open the door, still hadn’t moved when he closed it again on the steward he’d left firmly outside. Carrying the tray to the low table, he put it down, then turned to look at her. She still hadn’t moved.
Inshallah, he thought again, and gave up the battle. Walking over to her, he placed a hand against her pale cheek, stroked his thumb along the length of her smooth throat then settled it beneath her chin so he could lift her face up that small inch it required to make her look at him.