Out there at sea, the dying sun was throwing up slender fingers of fire into a spectacular vermilion sky. Down the hill below the villa, San Estéban was beginning to twinkle as it came into its own at the exit of the sun. And in between the town and the sun the ocean spread like satin with its brand-new purpose-built harbour already packed with smart sailing crafts of all shapes and sizes.
Up here on the hillside everything was so quiet and still even the cicadas had stopped calling. Leona wished that she could have some of that stillness, put her trembling emotions back where they belonged, under wraps, out of reach from pain and heartache.
Would these vulnerable feelings ever be that far out of reach? she then asked herself, and wasn’t surprised to have a heavy sigh whisper from her. The beaded chiffon shawl slipped from her shoulders, prompting Ethan to come and gently lift it back in place again.
&nbs
p; ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘It wasn’t my intention to upset you.’
I do it to myself, Leona thought bleakly. ‘I just can’t bear to talk about it,’ she replied in what was a very rare glimpse at how badly she was hurting.
‘Maybe you need to talk,’ Ethan suggested.
But she just shook her head, as she consistently had done since she had arrived at her father’s London house a year ago, looking emotionally shattered and announcing that her five-year marriage to Sheikh Hassan ben Khalifa Al-Qadim was over. Victor Frayne had tried every which way he could think of to find out what had happened. He’d even travelled out to Rahman to demand answers from Hassan, only to meet the same solid wall of silence he’d come up against with his daughter. The one thing Victor could say with any certainty was that Hassan was faring no better than Leona, though his dauntingly aloof son-in-law was more adept at hiding his emotions than Leona was. ‘She sits here in London, he sits in Rahman. They don’t talk to each other, never mind to anyone else! Yet you can feel the vibrations bouncing from one to the other across the thousands of miles separating them as if they are communicating by some unique telepathy that runs on pure pain! It’s dreadful,’ Victor had confided to Ethan. ‘Something has to give some time.’
Eventually, it had done. Two months ago Leona had walked unannounced into the office of her family lawyer and had instructed him to begin divorce proceedings, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. What had prompted her to pick that particular day in that particular month of a very long year no one understood, and Leona herself wasn’t prepared to enlighten anyone. But there wasn’t a person who knew her who didn’t believe it was an action that had caused a trigger reaction, when a week later she had fallen foul of a virulent flu bug that had kept her housebound and bedridden for weeks afterwards.
But when she had recovered, at least she’d come back ready to face the world again. She had agreed to come here to San Estéban, for instance, and utilise her design skills on the completed villas.
She looked better for it too. Still too pale, maybe, but overall she’d begun to live a more normal day to day existence.
Ethan had no wish to send her back into hiding now she had come out of it, so he turned her to face him and pressed a light kiss to her brow. ‘Come on,’ he said briskly. ‘Let’s go and party!’
Finding her smile again, Leona nodded her agreement and tried to appear as though she was looking forward to the evening. As they began to walk back across the terrace she felt a fine tingling at the back of her neck which instinctively warned her that someone was observing them.
The suspicion made her pause and turn to cast a frowning glance over their surroundings. She could see nothing untoward, but wasn’t surprised by that. During the years she had lived in an Arab sheikhdom, married to a powerful and very wealthy man, she had grown used to being kept under constant, if very discreet, surveillance.
But that surveillance had been put in place for her own protection. This felt different—sinister. She even shivered.
‘Something wrong?’ Ethan questioned.
Leona shook her head and began walking again, but her frown stayed in place, because it wasn’t the first time she’d experienced the sensation today. The same thing had happened as she’d left the resort site this afternoon, only she’d dismissed it then as her just being silly. She had always suspected that Hassan still kept an eye on her from a distance.
A car and driver had been hired for the evening, and both were waiting in the courtyard for them as they left the house. Having made sure she was comfortably settled, Ethan closed the side door and strode around the car to climb in beside her. As a man she had known for most of her adult life, Ethan was like a very fond cousin whose lean dark sophistication and reputed rakish life made her smile, rather than her heart flutter as other women would do in his company.
He’d never married. ‘Never wanted to,’ he’d told her once. ‘Marriage diverts your energy away from your ambition, and I haven’t met the woman for whom I’m prepared to let that happen.’
When she’d told Hassan what Ethan had said, she’d expected him to say something teasing like, May Allah help him when he does, for I know the feeling! But instead he’d looked quite sombre and had said nothing at all. At the time, she’d thought he’d been like that because he’d still been harbouring jealous suspicions about Ethan’s feelings for her. It had been a long time before she’d come to understand that the look had had nothing at all to do with Ethan.
‘The Petronades yacht looks pretty impressive.’ Ethan’s smooth deep voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I watched it sail into the harbour tonight while I was waiting for you on the terrace.’
Leandros Petronades was the main investor in San Estéban. He was hosting the party tonight for very exclusive guests whom he had seduced into taking a tour of the new resort, with an invitation to arrive in style on his yacht and enjoy its many luxurious facilities.
‘At a guess, I would say it has to be the biggest in the harbour, considering its capacity to sleep so many people,’ Leona smiled.
‘Actually no, it wasn’t,’ Ethan replied with a frown. ‘There’s another yacht tied up that has to be twice the size.’
‘The commercial kind?’ Leona suggested, aware that the resort was fast becoming the fashionable place to visit.
‘Not big enough.’ Ethan shook his head. ‘It’s more likely to belong to one of Petronades’ rich cronies. Another heavy investor in the resort, maybe.’
There were enough of them, Leona acknowledged. From being a sleepy little fishing port a few years ago, with the help of some really heavyweight investors San Estéban had grown into a large, custom-built holiday resort, which now sprawled in low-rise, Moorish elegance over the hills surrounding the bay.
So why Hassan’s name slid back into her head Leona had no idea. Because Hassan didn’t even own a yacht, nor had he ever invested in any of her father’s projects, as far as she knew.
Irritated with herself, she turned her attention to what was happening outside the car. On the beach waterfront people strolled, enjoying the light breeze coming off the water.
It was a long time since she could remember strolling anywhere herself with such freedom. Marrying an Arab had brought with it certain restrictions on her freedom, which were not all due to the necessity of conforming to expectations regarding women. Hassan occupied the august position of being the eldest son and heir to the small but oil-rich Gulf state of Rahman. As his wife, Leona had become a member of Rahman’s exclusive hierarchy, which in turn made everything she said or did someone else’s property. So she’d learned very quickly to temper her words, to think twice before she went anywhere, especially alone. Strolling just for the sake of just doing it would have been picked upon and dissected for no other reason than interest’s sake, so she had learned not to do it.