LITMIR.BIZ

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she loved Rafiq as a brother, not as a lover—just as he loved her as a sister. Plus, he had his mysterious dancer, she added wryly, as she poured herself another cup of tea in a clean cup, then reached for a slice of toast.

      ‘You look pale. What’s wrong?’ Glancing up, she found Hassan’s eyes were narrowed on her profile.

      ‘She hates surprises.’ Rafiq offered a reply.

      ‘Ah. So I am out of favour,’ Hassan drawled. ‘Like the milk and the butter…’ he added with the sharp eyes that should have been gold, like a falcon’s, not a bottomless black that made her feel as if she could sink right into them and never have to come back out again.

      ‘The milk was off, it turned my stomach, so I decided not to risk it or the butter,’ she said, explaining the reason why she was sipping clear tea and nibbling on a piece of dry toast.

      Keeping dairy produce fresh was an occupational hazard in hot climates, so Hassan didn’t bother to question her answer—though Leona did a moment later when a pot of fresh coffee arrived for Hassan and the aroma sent her stomach dipping all over again.

      Hassan saw the way she pushed her plate away and sat back in the chair with the paleness more pronounced, and had to ask himself if her pallor was more to do with anxiety than a problem with the milk. Maybe he should not be teasing her like this. Maybe no surprise, no matter how pleasant was going to merit putting her through yet more stress. He glanced at his watch. Ten more minutes. Was it worth him hanging on that long?

      ‘You look stunning,’ he murmured.

      She turned her head, her wonderful hair floating out around her sun-kissed shoulders and the perfect heart-shape of her face. Her eyes were like emeralds, to match the one she wore on her finger, glowing with a passion she could never quite subdue no matter how low she was feeling. Kiss me, her small, soft, slightly sulky mouth seemed to say.

      ‘I am de trop.’ Rafiq broke through the moment and rose to his feet. ‘I will go and awaken Samir and drag him to the gym for an hour before I allow him breakfast.’

      Neither bothered to answer even if they heard him, which Rafiq seriously doubted as he went to leave. Then a sound beyond the canvas awning caught his attention, diverting him towards the rail. A car was coming down the concrete quay towards them, its long black sleekly expensive lines giving him a good idea as to who was inside it.

      This time he made sure he commanded attention by lightly touching Hassan’s shoulder. ‘Your surprise is arriving,’ he told him, then left as Hassan stirred himself and Leona blinked herself back from wherever she had gone to.

      Getting up, Hassan went to capture one of her hands and urged her out of her chair. ‘Come,’ he said, and keeping hold of her hand walked them down the stairs, across the foyer, out onto the shade deck and to the rail beside the gangway, just in time to watch a beautiful creature with pale blonde hair step out of the car and onto the quayside.

      Beside him he felt Leona’s breath catch on a gasp, felt the pulse in her wrist begin to race. ‘Evie,’ she whispered. ‘And Raschid,’ she added as Sheikh Raschid Al-Kadah uncoiled his long lean body out of the car.

      ‘They’re sailing with us?’ Now her eyes were shining with true pleasure, Hassan noted with deep satisfaction. Now she was looking at him as if he was the most wonderful guy in the world, instead of the most painful to be around.

      ‘Will their presence make your miserable lot easier to bear?’

      Her reply was swift and uninhibited. She fell upon him with a kiss he would have given half of his wealth for. Though it did not need wealth, only the appearance of her closest friend and conspirator against these—arrogant Arabian men, as she and Evie liked to call Raschid and himself.

      ‘After six years, I would have expected the unrestrained passion to have cooled a little,’ a deep smooth, virtually accent-free voice mocked lazily.

      ‘Says the man with his son clutched in one arm and his daughter cradled in the other,’ mocked a lighter, drier voice.

      Son and daughter. Hassan stiffened in shock, for he had not expected the Al-Kadahs to bring along their children on this cruise. Leona, on the other hand, was pulling away from him, turning away from him—hiding away from him? Had his pleasant surprise turned into yet another disaster? He turned to see what she was seeing and felt his chest tighten so fiercely it felt as if it was snapping in two. For there stood Raschid, as proud as any man could be, with his small son balanced on his arm while the beautiful Evie was in the process of gently relieving him of his small pink three-month-old daughter.

      They began walking up the gangway towards them, and it was his worst nightmare unfolding before his very eyes, because there were tears in Leona’s as she went to meet them. Real tears—bright tears when she looked down at the baby then up at Evangeline Al-Kadah before, with aching description, she simply took the other woman in her arms and held her.

      Raschid was watching them, smiling, relaxed while he waited a few steps down the gangway for them to give him room to board the boat. He saw nothing painful in Leona’s greeting, nor the way she broke away to gently touch a finger to the baby girl’s petal soft cheek.

      ‘I didn’t know,’ she was saying softly to Evie. ‘Last time I saw you, you weren’t even pregnant!’

      ‘A lot can happen in a year,’ Raschid put in dryly, bringing Leona’s attention his way.

      The tableau shifted. Evie moved to one side to allow her husband to step onto the deck so he could put his son to the ground, leaving his arms free to greet Leona properly. ‘And aren’t you just as proud as a peacock?’ She laughed, defying the Arab male-female don’t-touch convention by going straight into Raschid’s arms.

      What was wrong with Hassan? Leona wondered, realising that he hadn’t moved a single muscle to come and greet their latest guests. She caught his eye over one of Raschid’s broad shoulders, sent him a frowning look that told him to pull himself together. By the time he was greeting Evie Leona was squatting down to say hello to the little boy who now clutched his mother’s skirt for safety. Dark like his father; golden-eyed like his father. The fates had been kind to these two people by allowing them to produce a son in Raschid’s image and a daughter who already looked as if she was going to be a mirror of her mother.

      ‘Hello, Hashim.’ She smiled gently. They had met before but she was sure the small boy would not remember. ‘Does that thumb taste very nice?’

      He nodded gravely and stuck the thumb just that quarter inch further between sweetly pouting lips.

      ‘My name is Leona,’ she told him. ‘Do you think we can be friends?’

      ‘Red,’ he said around the thumb, looking at her hair. ‘Sun-shine.’

      ‘Thank you.’ She laughed. ‘I see you are going to be a dreadful flirt, like your papa.’

      Mentioning his papa sent the toddler over to Raschid, where he begged to be picked up again. Raschid swung him up without pausing in his conversation with Hassan, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have his son on his arm.

      Tears hit again. Leona blinked them away. Hassan gave a tense shift of one shoulder and in the next moment his arm was resting across her shoulders. He was smiling at Evie, at her baby, at Raschid. But when Leona noticed that he was not allowing himself to so much as glance at Raschid’s son it finally hit her what was the matter with him. Hassan could not bear to look at what Raschid had, that which he most coveted.

      Her heart dropped to her stomach to make her feel sick again. The two men had been good friends since—for ever. Their countries lay side by side. And they shared so many similarities in their lives that Leona would have wagered ev-erything that nothing could drive a wedge between their friendship.

      But a desire for what one had that the other did not, in the shape of a boy-child, could do it, she realised, and had to move away from Hassan because she just couldn’t bear to be near him and feel that need pulsing in him.

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