‘Why not?’ he countered, offering her one of his lazily sensual, knowing smiles that said he knew better than she did what she really wanted—and he began to lower his dark head.
‘Tell me first.’ Sheer desperation made her fly into impulsive speech. ‘If I am here on this beautiful yacht that belongs to you—is there another yacht just like it out there somewhere where your second wife awaits her turn?’
In the sudden suffocating silence that fell between them Leona found herself holding her breath as she watched his face pale to a frightening stillness. For this was provocation of the worst kind to an Arab and her heart began pounding madly because she just didn’t know how he was going to respond. Hassan possessed a shocking temper, though he had never unleashed it on her. But now, as she stood here with her fingers still pressed against his breastbone, she could feel the danger in him—could almost taste her own fear as she waited to see how he was going to respond.
What he did was to take a step back from her. Cold, aloof, he changed int
o the untouchable prince in the single blink of an ebony eyelash. ‘Are you daring to imply that I could be guilty of treating my wives unequally?’ he responded.
In the interim wave of silence that followed, Leona stared at him through eyes that had stopped seeing anything as his reply rocked the very axis she stood upon. She knew she had prompted it but she still had not expected it, and now she found she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even move as fine cracks began to appear in her defences.
‘You actually went and did it, and married again,’ she whispered, then completely shattered. Emotionally, physically, she felt herself fragment into a thousand broken pieces beneath his stone-cold, cruel gaze.
Hassan didn’t see it coming. He should have done, he knew that, but he had been too angry to see anything but his own affronted pride. So when she turned and ran he didn’t expect it. By the time he had pulled his wits together enough to go after her Leona was already flying through the door on a flood of tears.
The tears blinded what was ahead of her, the abaya having prevented her from taking stock of her surroundings as they’d arrived. Hassan heard Rafiq call out a warning, reached the door as Leona’s cry curdled the very air surrounding them and she began to fall.
What he had managed to prevent by the skin of his teeth only a half-hour before now replayed itself before his helpless eyes. Only it was not the dark waters of the Mediterranean she fell into but the sea of cream carpet that ran from room to room and down a wide flight of three shallow stairs that led down into the yacht’s main foyer.
CHAPTER THREE
CURSING and swearing in seething silence, Hassan prowled three sides of the bed like a caged tiger while the yacht’s Spanish medic checked her over.
‘No bones broken, as far as I can tell,’ the man said. ‘No obvious blow to the head.’
‘Then why is she unconscious?’ he growled out furiously.
‘Shock—winded,’ the medic suggested, gently laying aside a frighteningly limp hand. ‘It has only been a few minutes, sir.’
But a few minutes was a lifetime when you felt so guilty you wished it was yourself lying there, Hassan thought harshly.
‘A cool compress would be a help—’
A cool compress. ‘Rafiq.’ The click of his fingers meant the job would be done.
The sharp sound made Leona flinch. On a single, lithe leap Hassan was suddenly stretched out across the bed and leaning over her. The medic drew back; Rafiq paused in his step.
‘Open your eyes.’ Hassan turned her face towards him with a decidedly unsteady hand.
Her eyes fluttered open to stare up at him blankly. ‘What happened?’ she mumbled.
‘You fell down some stairs,’ he gritted. ‘Now tell me where you hurt.’
A frown began to pucker her smooth brow as she tried to remember.
‘Concentrate,’ he rasped, diverting her mind away from what had happened. ‘Do you hurt anywhere?’
She closed her eyes again, and he watched her make a mental inventory of herself then give a small shake of her head. ‘I think I’m okay.’ She opened her eyes again, looked directly into his, saw his concern, his anguish, the burning fires of guilt—and then she remembered why she’d fallen.
Aching tears welled up again. From coldly plunging his imaginary knife into her breast, he now felt it enter his own. ‘You really went and did it,’ she whispered.
‘No, I did not,’ he denied. ‘Get out,’ he told their two witnesses.
The room emptied like water down a drain, leaving them alone again, confronting each other again. It was dangerous. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could hardly breathe. She was his. He was hers! They should not be in this warring situation!
‘No—remain still!’ he commanded when she attempted to move. ‘Don’t even breathe unless you have to do so! Why are females so stupid?’ he bit out like a curse. ‘You insult me with your suspicions. You goad me into a response, and when it is not the one you want to hear you slay me with your pain!’
‘I didn’t mean to fall down the stairs,’ she pointed out.