‘Come and greet me properly,’ he commanded her. ‘And you two can leave us. My daughter-in-law and I have things to discuss.’
There was a pause, a distinct hesitation in which Hassan looked ready to argue the point. The old man looked up at him and his son looked down; a battle of the eyes commenced that made Leona frown as a strange kind of tension began to sizzle in the air. Then Hassan conceded by offering a brief, grim nod and left, with Rafiq making the situation feel even stranger when, as he left with him, he placed a hand on Hassan’s shoulder as if to reassure him that it would be okay.
‘What was all that about?’ she enquired as she reached down to brush a kiss on her father-in-law’s hollowed cheek.
‘He worries about you,’ the old sheikh answered.
‘Or he worries about you,’ she returned.
He knew what she was referring to and flicked it away with a sigh and a wave of a hand. ‘I am dying,’ he stated bluntly. ‘Hassan knows this—they both do. Neither likes knowing they can do nothing to stop it from happening.’
‘But you are resigned?’ Leona said gently.
‘Yes. Come—sit down here, in your chair.’ Discussion over, he indicated the low cushion-stuffed chair she had pulled up beside his divan years ago; it had remained there ever since. ‘Now, tell me,’ he said as soon as she was settled, ‘have you come back here because Hassan bullied you into doing so, or because you still love him?’
‘Can it be both?’ she quizzed him.
‘He needs you.’
‘Rahman doesn’t.’
‘Ah,’ he scathed, ‘that stupid man, Abdul, thought he could force our hand and soon learned that he could not.’
‘So it was Sheikh Abdul who plotted to take me,’ Leona murmured ruefully.
Eyes that were once a rich dark brown but were now only pale shadows sharpened. ‘He did not tell you,’ he surmised on an impatient sigh. ‘I am a fool for thinking he would.’
‘Maybe that is why he didn’t want to leave me alone with you,’ Leona smilingly replied. ‘Actually, I had already guessed it,’ she then admitted, adding quietly, ‘I know all about Nadira, you see.’
The name had a disturbing effect on Sheikh Khalifa: he shifted uncomfortably, pulled himself up and reached out to touch her cheek. ‘Rahman needs my son and my son needs you. Whatever has to happen in the future I need to know that you will always be here supporting him when I can no longer do so.’
Strange words, fierce, dark, compelling words that sealed her inside a coating of ice. What was he saying? What did he mean? Was he telling her that Nadira was still Hassan’s only real option if he wanted to continue in his father’s footsteps?
But before she could ask him to elaborate, as after most brief bursts of energy, Sheikh Khalifa suddenly lay back exhausted against the cushions and, without really thinking about it, Leona slipped back into her old routine. She picked up the book lying face down on the table beside him and began reading out loud to him.
But her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was filling up with contracts and Hassan’s method of feeding her information on a need-to-know only basis. She saw him as he had been that same morning, relaxed, at peace with both her and himself. Then Raschid had begged a private word. When he’d eventually reappeared later it had been as if he had changed into a different man—a tense, preoccupied and distant man.
A man who avoided eye contact, as if he had something to hide…
The old sheikh was asleep. Leona put down the book.
Doubts; she hated to feel the doubts return. It was no use, she told herself, she was going to have to tackle Hassan about what Zafina had said to her. Once he had denied ev
erything she could put the whole stupid thing away, never to be dredged up again.
And if he didn’t deny it? she asked herself as she left the old sheikh’s room to go in search of the younger one. The coating of ice turned itself into a heavy cloak that weighed down her footsteps as she walked in between pale blue walls on a cool, polished sandstone flooring.
She didn’t want to do this, she accepted as she trod the wide winding staircase onto the landing where pale blue walls changed to pale beige and the floor became a pale blue marble.
She didn’t want to reveal that she could doubt his word, she thought dully as she passed between doors made of thick cedar fitted tightly into wide Arabian archways, the very last one of which led through to Hassan’s private suite of offices.
Her head began to ache; her throat suddenly felt strange: hot and tight. She was about five yards away when the door suddenly opened and Hassan himself stepped out. Slender white tunic, flowing blue thobe, no covering on his raven-dark head. He saw her and stopped, almost instantly his expression altered from the frowningly preoccupied to…nothing.
It was like having a door slammed in her face. Her doubts surged upwards along with her blood pressure; she could feel her pulse throbbing in her ears. A prickly kind of heat engulfed her whole body—and the next thing that she knew, she was lying on the pale blue marble floor and Hassan was kneeling beside her.
‘What happened?’ he rasped as her eyes fluttered open.
She couldn’t answer, didn’t want to answer. She closed her eyes again. His curse wafted across her cheeks. One of his hands came to cover her clammy forehead, the other took a light grasp of her wrist then he was grimly sliding his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and coming to his feet.