The sheikh's chosen wife (2 page)

'That makes you about the
same age as Hass..."

And that was the point
where everything died: the light banter, the laughter, the tail end of Hassan's
name. Silence fell. Ethan's teasing grey eyes turned very sombre. He knew, of
course, how painful this last year had been for her. No one mentioned Hassan's
name in her presence, so to hear herself almost say it out loud caused tension
to erupt between the both of them.

'It isn't too late to
stop this craziness, you know," Ethan murmured gently.

Her response was to drag in
a deep breath and step right away from him. 'I don't want to stop it,' she
quietly replied.

'Your heart does."

'My heart is not making
the decisions here.'

'Maybe you should let
it."

'Maybe you should mind
your own business!'

Spinning on her slender
heels Leona walked away from him to go and stand at the terrace rail, leaving
Ethan behind wearing a rueful expression at the severity with which she had
just slapped him down.

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 Esteban 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.

'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 Estaban, 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

Leandros Petronades was
the main investor in San Esteban. 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 Esteban 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.

This last year she hadn't
gone out much because to be seen out had drawn too much speculation as to why
she was in London and alone. In Rahman she was known as Sheikh Hassan's pretty
English Sheikha. In London she was known as the woman who gave up every freedom
to marry her Arabian prince.

A curiosity in other
words. Curiosities were blatantly stared at, and she didn't want to offend Arab
sensibilities by having her failed marriage speculated upon in the British
press, so she'd lived a quiet life.

It was a thought that
made Leona smile now, because her life in Rahman had been far less quiet than
it had become once she'd returned to London.

The car had almost
reached the end of the street where the new harbour was situated. There were
several large yachts moored up—and Leandros Petronades' elegant white-hulled
boat was easy to recognise because it was lit up like a showboat for the
party. Yet it was the yacht moored next to it that caught her attention. It was
huge, as Ethan had said—twice the length and twice the height of its neighbour.
It was also shrouded in complete darkness. With its dark-painted hull, it
looked as if it was crouching there like a large sleek cat, waiting to leap on
its next victim.

The car turned and began
driving along the top of the harbour wall taking them towards a pair of wrought
iron gates, which cordoned off the area where the two yachts were tied.

Climbing out of the car,
Leona stood looking round while she waited for Ethan to join her. It was even
darker here than she had expected it to be, and she felt a distinct chill
shiver down her spine when she realised they were going to have to pass the
unlit boat to reach the other.

Ethan's hand found her
arm. As they walked towards the gates, their car was already turning round to
go back the way it had come. The guard manning the gates merely nodded his dark
head and let them by without a murmur, then disappeared into the shadows.

'Conscientious chap,'
Ethan said dryly.

Leona didn't answer. She
was too busy having to fight a sudden attack of nerves that set butterflies
fluttering inside her stomach. Okay, she tried to reason, so she hadn't put
herself in the social arena much recently, therefore it was natural that she
should suffer an attack of nerves tonight.

Yet some other part of
her brain was trying to insist that her attack of nerves had nothing to do with
the party. It was so dark and so quiet here that even their footsteps seemed to
echo with a sinister ring.

Sinister? Picking up on
the word, she questioned it impatiently. What was the matter with her? Why was
everything sinister all of a sudden? It was a hot night—a beautiful night—she
was twenty-nine years old, and about to do what most twenty-nine-year-olds did:
party when they got the chance!

'Quite something, hmm?'
Ethan remarked as they walked into the shadow of the larger yacht.

But Leona didn't want to
look. Despite the tough talking-to she had just given herself, the yacht
bothered her. The whole situation was beginning to worry her. She could feel
her heart pumping unevenly against her breast, and just about every nerve-end
she possessed was suddenly on full alert for no other reason than—

It was then that she heard
it—nothing more than a whispering sound in the shadows, but it was enough to
make her go perfectly still. So did Ethan. Almost at the same moment the
darkness itself seemed to take on a life of its own by shifting and swaying
before her eyes.

The tingling sensation on
the back of her neck returned with a vengeance. 'Ethan,' she said jerkily. 'I
don't think I like this."

'No,' he answered tersely.
'Neither do I.'

That was the moment when
they saw them, first one dark shape, then another, and another, emerging from
the shadows until they turned themselves into Arabs wearing dark robes, with
darkly sober expressions.

'Oh, dear God,' she
breathed. 'What's happening?'

But she already knew the
answer. It was a fear she'd had to live with from the day she'd married Hassan.
She was British. She had married an Arab who was a very powerful man. The dual
publicity her disappearance could generate was in itself worth its weight in
gold to political fanatics wanting to make a point.