The sheikh's chosen wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

nonetheless, 'when you openly live beneath the same roof
as he does, how I convince my people of this certainty you believe I have in
your fidelity?'
    "But Ethan and I
haven't spent one night alone together in the villa,' she protested. 'My father
has always been there with us until he was delayed in London today!'
    'Quite.' Hassan nodded.
'Now you understand why you have been snatched from the brink of committing the
ultimate sin in the eyes of our people. There,' he said with a dismissive
flick of the hand. 'I am your saviour, as is my prerogative.'
    With that, and having
neatly tied the whole thing off to his own satisfaction, he turned and walked
away— Leaving Leona to flounder in his smooth, slick logic and with no ready
argument to offer.
    'I don't believe you are
real sometimes,' she sent shakily after him. 'Did it never occur to you that I
didn't want snatching from the brink’
    Sarcasm abounding, Hassan
merely pulled the gutrah from his head and tossed it aside, then returned to
the bottle of water. 'It was time,' he said, swinging the fridge door open
again. 'You have had long enough to sulk.'
    ‘I wasn't sulking!'
    'Whatever,' he dismissed
with a shrug, then chose a bottle of white wine and closed the door. 'It was
time to bring the impasse to an end.'
    Impasse, Leona repeated.
He believed their failed marriage was merely stuck in an impasse. 'I'm not
coming back to you,' she declared, then turned away to pretend to take an
interest in her surroundings, knowing that his grim silence was denying her the
right to choose.
    They were enclosed in
what she could only presume was a private stateroom furnished in subtle shades
of cream faced with richly polished rosewood. It was all so beautifully designed
that it was almost impossible to see the many doors built into the walls except
for the wood-framed doors they had entered through. And it was the huge
deep-sprung divan taking pride of place against a silk-lined wall, that told
her exactly what the room's function was.
    Although the bed was not
what truly captured her attention, but the pair of big easy chairs standing in
front of a low table by a set of closed cream velvet curtains. As her heart
gave a painful twist in recognition, she sent a hand drifting up to her eyes.
Oh, Hassan, she thought despairingly, don't do this to me...
    She had seen the chairs,
Hassan noted, studying the way she was standing there looking like an
exquisitely fragile, perfectly tooled art-deco sculpture in her slender gown of
gold. And he didn't know whether to tell her so or simply weep at how utterly
bereft she looked.
    In the end he chose a
third option and took a rare sip at the white wine spritzer he had just prepared
for her. The forbidden alcohol content in the drink might be diluted but he
felt it hit his stomach and almost instantly enter his bloodstream with an
injection of much appreciated fire.
    'You've lost weight,' he
announced, and watched her chin come up, watched her wonderful hair slide down
her slender back and her hand drop slowly to her side while she took a
steadying breath before she could bring herself to turn and
    'I've been ill—with the
flu,' she answered flatly.
    'That was weeks ago,' he
dismissed, uncaring that he was revealing to her just how close an eye he had
been keeping on her from a distance. The fact that she showed no surprise told
him that she had guessed as much anyway. 'After a virus such as influenza the
weight recovery is usually swift.'
    'And you would know, of
course.' she drawled, mocking the fact that he had not suffered a day's illness
in his entire life.
    'I know you,'' he
countered, 'and your propensity for slipping into a decline when you are
unhappy...'
    'I was ill, not unhappy."
    'You missed me. I missed
you. Why try to deny it?'
    'May I have one of
those?' Indicating towards the drink he held in his hand was her way of telling
him she was going to ignore those kind of comments.
    'It is yours,' he
explained, and offered the glass out