Son and daughter. Hassan stiffened in shock, for he had not expected the Al-Kadahs to bring along their children on this cruise. Leona, on the other hand, was pulling away from him, turning away from him—hiding away from him? Had his pleasant surprise turned into yet another disaster? He turned to see what she was seeing and felt his chest tighten so fiercely it felt as if it was snapping in two. For there stood Raschid, as proud as any man could be, with his small son balanced on his arm while the beautiful Evie was in the process of gently relieving him of his small pink three-month-old daughter.
They began walking up the gangway towards them, and it was his worst nightmare unfolding before his very eyes, because there were tears in Leona’s as she went to meet them. Real tears—bright tears when she looked down at the baby then up at Evangeline Al-Kadah before, with aching description, she simply took the other woman in her arms and held her.
Raschid was watching them, smiling, relaxed while he waited a few steps down the gangway for them to give him room to board the boat. He saw nothing painful in Leona’s greeting, nor the way she broke away to gently touch a finger to the baby girl’s petal soft cheek.
‘I didn’t know,’ she was saying softly to Evie. ‘Last time I saw you, you weren’t even pregnant!’
‘A lot can happen in a year,’ Raschid put in dryly, bringing Leona’s attention his way.
The tableau shifted. Evie moved to one side to allow her husband to step onto the deck so he could put his son to the ground, leaving his arms free to greet Leona properly. ‘And aren’t you just as proud as a peacock?’ She laughed, defying the Arab male-female don’t-touch convention by going straight into Raschid’s arms.
What was wrong with Hassan? Leona wondered, realising that he hadn’t moved a single muscle to come and greet their latest guests. She caught his eye over one of Raschid’s broad shoulders, sent him a frowning look that told him to pull himself together. By the time he was greeting E
vie Leona was squatting down to say hello to the little boy who now clutched his mother’s skirt for safety. Dark like his father; golden-eyed like his father. The fates had been kind to these two people by allowing them to produce a son in Raschid’s image and a daughter who already looked as if she was going to be a mirror of her mother.
‘Hello, Hashim.’ She smiled gently. They had met before but she was sure the small boy would not remember. ‘Does that thumb taste very nice?’
He nodded gravely and stuck the thumb just that quarter inch further between sweetly pouting lips.
‘My name is Leona,’ she told him. ‘Do you think we can be friends?’
‘Red,’ he said around the thumb, looking at her hair. ‘Sunshine.’
‘Thank you.’ She laughed. ‘I see you are going to be a dreadful flirt, like your papa.’
Mentioning his papa sent the toddler over to Raschid, where he begged to be picked up again. Raschid swung him up without pausing in his conversation with Hassan, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have his son on his arm.
Tears hit again. Leona blinked them away. Hassan gave a tense shift of one shoulder and in the next moment his arm was resting across her shoulders. He was smiling at Evie, at her baby, at Raschid. But when Leona noticed that he was not allowing himself to so much as glance at Raschid’s son it finally hit her what was the matter with him. Hassan could not bear to look at what Raschid had, that which he most coveted.
Her heart dropped to her stomach to make her feel sick again. The two men had been good friends since—for ever. Their countries lay side by side. And they shared so many similarities in their lives that Leona would have wagered everything that nothing could drive a wedge between their friendship.
But a desire for what one had that the other did not, in the shape of a boy-child, could do it, she realised, and had to move away from Hassan because she just couldn’t bear to be near him and feel that need pulsing in him.
‘May I?’ she requested of Evie, holding out her arms for the baby.
Evie didn’t hesitate in handing the baby over. Soft and light and so very fragile. It was like cradling an angel. ‘How old is she?’ she asked.
‘Three months,’ Evie supplied. ‘As quiet as a mouse, as sweet as honey—and called Yamila Lucinda after her two grandmothers, but we call her Lucy because it’s cute.’
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Lucy opened her eyes to reveal two perfect amethysts the same as Evie’s, and Leona found herself swallowing tears again.
You’re so lucky, she wanted to say, but remarks like that were a potential minefield for someone in her situation. So she contented herself with lifting the baby up so she could feel her soft cheek against her own and hoped that no one noticed the small prick of tears she had to blink away.
A minute later and other guests began appearing on the shade deck to find out who else had joined them. Sheikh Raschid earned himself looks of wary surprise from some. From all he was awarded the respect accorded to a man who held absolute rule in his own Gulf state of Behran. His children brought down other barriers; the fact that Evie had achieved what Leona had not, in the shape of her small son, earned her warm smiles instead of stiffly polite ones that conveyed disapproval. Still, most of the tension from the evening before melted away in the face of the newcomers, and Leona was deeply grateful to them for succeeding in neutralising the situation.
When it was decided that they would move up to the sun deck, with its adjoining salon, to take refreshment and talk in comfort, Leona quickly shifted herself into hostess mode and led the way upstairs with her small bundle in her arms and her husband walking at her shoulder.
He didn’t speak, and she could sense the same mood about him he had donned when he’d come face to face with Raschid and his son. It hurt. Though she strove not to show it. But his manner made such a mockery out of everything else he had said and done.
They arrived on the upper deck as the yacht slipped smoothly from its moorings and began making its way towards the mouth of the Suez Canal. Medina Al-Mahmud suddenly appeared in front of Leona and politely begged to hold the baby. She was a small, slight woman with nervous eyes and a defensive manner, but as Leona placed the little girl in her arms Medina sent her a sympathetic look which almost broke her composure in two.
She did not want people’s pity. Oh, how she had come to hate it during her last year in Rahman when the rumours about her had begun flying. With a desperate need of something else to do other than stand here feeling utterly useless, she walked into the salon to pick up the internal phone and order refreshments.
It was really very bad timing for Hassan to follow her. ‘I must offer you my deepest apologies,’ he announced so stiffly it was almost an insult. ‘When I arranged this surprise for you I did not expect the Al-Kadahs to bring their children with them.’
She was appalled to realise that even Hassan believed her an object of such pity. ‘Oh, stop being so ultra-sensitive,’ she snapped. ‘Do you really believe that I could resent them their beautiful children because I cannot have them for myself?’
‘Don’t say that!’ he snapped back. ‘It is not true, though you drive me insane by insisting it is so!’