‘I’ll finish the rest for myself,’ she decided dryly.
‘I think that would be wise,’ Hassan grinned, and pulled the dishdasha off over his head to show her why he had said that.
‘I don’t know.’ She was almost embarrassed by how fiercely one responded to the closeness of the other. ‘I’m supposed to be ill and tired and in need of much pampering.’
A set of warm brown fingers gently stroked the flush blooming in her cheek. ‘I know of many ways to pamper,’ he murmured sensually. ‘Slow and gentle. Soft and sweet…’
His eyes glowed darkly with all of those promises; hers grew darker on the willingness to accept. The gap between them closed, warm flesh touched warm flesh, mouths came together on a kiss. Then he showed her. Deep into the night he showed her a hundred ways to pamper a woman until she eventually fell asleep in his arms and remained there until morning came to wake them up.
At breakfast she actually ate a half-slice of toast with marmalade and drank a full cup of very weak tea—hopefully without giving away the fact that it was a struggle not to give it all back up.
Little Hashim came to beg to be allowed to sit on her lap. Leona placed him there and together they enjoyed sharing the other half of her slice of toast, while Hassan looked on with a glaze across his eyes and Evie posed a sombre question at her husband, Raschid, with expressive eyes.
He got up and stepped around the table to lay a hand on Hassan’s shoulder. The muscles beneath it were fraught with tension. ‘I need a private word with you, Hassan,’ he requested. ‘If you have finished here?’
The same muscle flexed as Hassan pulled his mind back from where it had gone off to. ‘Of course,’ he said, and stood up. A moment later both men were walking away from the breakfast table towards the stairs which would take them down to the deck below and Hassan’s private suite of offices.
Most watched them go. Many wondered why Sheikh Raschid felt it necessary to take Sheikh Hassan to one side. But none, friend nor foe—except for Evie, who kept her attention firmly fixed on the small baby girl in her arms—came even close to guessing what was about to be discussed.
By the time Raschid came to search his wife out she was back in their suite. She glanced anxiously up at him. Raschid lifted a rueful shoulder, ‘Well, it is done,’ he said. Though neither of them looked as if the statement pleased them in any way.
Well, it is done. That more or less said it. Well it is done, now held Hassan locked in a severe state of shock. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to believe it, but did not dare let himself because it changed everything: the view of his life; the view of his marriage.
He had to sit down. The edge of his desk was conveniently placed to receive his weight, and his eyes received the cover of a trembling hand. Beyond the closed door to his office his guests and the tail end of the cruise carried on regardless, but here in this room everything he knew and felt had come to a complete standstill.
He couldn’t move. Now his legs had been relieved of his weight, they had lost the ability to take it back again. Inside he was shaking. Inside he did not know what to feel or what to think. For he had been here in this same situation before—many times—and had learned through experience that it was a place best avoided at all costs.
Hope—then dashed hopes. Pleasure—then pain. But this was different. This had been forced upon him by a source he had good reason to trust and not to doubt.
Doubt. Dear heaven, he was very intimate with the word doubt. Now, as he removed the hand from his eyes and stared out at the glistening waters he could see through the window, he found doubt being replaced by the kind of dancing visions he had never—ever—allowed himself to see before.
A knock sounded at the door, then it opened before he had a chance to hide his expression. Rafiq walked in, took one look at him and went rock solid still.
‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Father?’
Hassan quickly shook his head. ‘Come in and close the door,’ he urged, then made an effort to pull himself together—just in case someone else decided to take him by surprise.
Leona.
Something inside him was suddenly threatening to explode. He didn’t know what, but it scared the hell out of him. He wished Raschid had said nothing. He wished he could go back and replay the last half hour again, change it, lose it—
‘Hassan…?’ Rafiq prompted an explanation as to why he was witnessing his brother quietly falling apart.
He looked up, found himself staring into mirrors of his own dark eyes, and decided to test the ground—test those eyes to find out what Leona would see in his eyes if she walked in here right now.
‘Evie—Raschid,’ he forced out across a sand-dry throat. ‘They think Leona might be pregnant. Evie recognises the signs…’
CHAPTER TEN
SILENCE fell. It was, Hassan recognised, a very deathly silence, for Rafiq was already showing a scepticism he dared not voice.
Understanding the feeling, Hassan released a hard sigh, then grimly pulled himself together. ‘Get hold of our father,’ he instructed. ‘I need absolute assurance from him that I will not be bringing Leona back to a palace rife with rumour attached to her return.’ From being hollowed by shock he was now as tight as a bowstring. ‘If he has any doubts about this, I will place her in Raschid’s safekeeping, for she must be protected at all cost from any more anguish or stress.’
‘I don’t think Leona will—’
‘It is not and never has been anyone else’s place to think anything about my wife!’ The mere fact that he was lashing out at Rafiq showed how badly he was taking this. ‘Other people’s thinking has made our life miserable enough! Which is why I want you to speak to our father and not me,’ he explained. ‘I will have this conversation with no one else. Leona must be protected from ever hearing from anyone else that I am so much as suspecting this. If I am wrong then only I will grieve over what never was. If I am correct, then she has the right to learn of her condition for herself. I will not take this away from her!’
‘So I am not even to tell our father,’ Rafiq assumed from all of that.