Innocent in the Desert: The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin / The Sheikh's Convenient Virgin / The Desert Lord's Bride

His voice, rough with concern, was close by; she knew all she had to do was turn around and she could lay her head on his chest.

She fought off the mad impulse and shook her head. ‘No, just …’ Her eyes brushed his. ‘Totally … totally … Goodbye.’ Eyes on the ground, she brushed past him and grabbed the offending item and then, like a scared rabbit, she thought, wincing every time she mentally replayed the scene later, she scuttled away, her heart pounding like a piston.

It was actually good to meet up with her new and bewilderingly large family when she arrived in Azharim; fielding comments on her marriage was less enjoyable. It was a veritable minefield of potential embarrassment. Keeping up the pretence in front of her clearly curious relatives—who only stopped asking direct questions in deference to an edict by her grandfather—gave her a permanent headache.

After the first couple of days time began to drag heavily and, as crazy as it seemed, she missed Karim—if the combination of the achy feeling lodged behind her breastbone, feeling restless, distracted and unable to concentrate constituted missing?

You chose to come here, she reminded herself.

And he didn’t try and stop you.

The necessary distraction came in the form of her neglected thesis. Instead of moping and soul-searching, Eva decided to put some serious work in on her almost-completed doctoral dissertation.

Never had she shown more enthusiasm for the boring detail of collating statistics, and, despite her initial scepticism on her ability to concentrate, the work did get done.

She was putting the finishing touches to her thesis, an occasion that only recently had been her total focus in life, when she received news that Karim and Amira had been allowed to fly home by the doctors.

The urgency to get the final draft printed and bound faded.

They hoped, so the message said, to see Eva very soon.

It was as impersonal as the rest of the communications she had received from Karim. While he had made contact regularly during the three weeks she had been here, there was nothing in the impersonal e-mails she had received that could not have been read by her grandfather.

But as she had asked herself—What else do you expect, Eva?

Her problem was she had lost the ability to separate expectations and fantasies.

He wasn’t likely to confide a yearning to hear her voice. Or indulge in a lot of gushing stuff about not being able to stop thinking about her.

They had not exactly parted on the best of terms and the man had a lot of things, more important things, on his mind.

But then maybe the things they needed to discuss were better spoken of face to face.

She tried to view the opportunity to do just that with hope rather than fear … and managed excitement and exhilaration that tipped over without warning into open gibbering panic.

As Eva arranged to leave on the next flight, she was on the excitement stomach-clenching stage, until, that was, a casual remark by one of her cousins revealed that Karim and his daughter had already been home a week.

Talk about being brought to earth with a bump!

Eva struggled to hide the sharp stab of hurt as the news drained away every last trace of her buoyant mood. She was too depressed to manage even gibbering panic.

It must have shown in her face because good-natured Ruhi added, ‘I expect he wanted to give the little one time to settle in before producing a new stepmother … That’s always tricky.’

‘I expect you’re right.’ And thank you, Ruhi, she thought, for giving me something else to worry about. She’d given so much time to the wife issue she’d not paused to consider the equally precarious role of stepmother.

Given this occurrence, it was hardly surprising that she was rather subdued when she arrived at the palace to meet her stepdaughter, trying hard as she did so not to think about Karim’s formal cold reception at the airport. Like a new over-hyped blockbuster, it had been a major anticlimax.

Even the incredible atrium with the mosaic ceiling of lapis lazuli failed to awaken her enthusiasm—she just kept seeing his expression when he had walked out to meet her on the tarmac.

Karim had looked at her as though she were a stranger, or at least someone he wished were a total stranger rather than the wife he had to take home to meet his daughter. Someone he was saddled with for the rest of his life.

The little girl, though, didn’t notice any atmosphere between the adults. She showed no sign of illness as she literally bounced with excitement when she saw Eva.

She immediately became entranced by the colour of Eva’s hair and announced she wanted her own hair to be that colour when it grew back, just like her new mama.

Eva had a lump in her throat when she told her that she had always wanted black hair and people rarely liked what they had. The little girl was allowed to have tea with them before she was ushered away for a nap by her nurse.

With a spontaneous display of affection she climbed on Eva’s knee and hugged her before her nurse dragged her away.

‘She’s lovely.’ Eva had been conscious of Karim’s silent presence, but while the child was there she had not been forced to actually look at him.

She did so now and she could do this. She wanted him, so why pretend? Even the scent of his skin from this distance was driving her totally crazy.

‘Yes, she’s a charmer.’

Obeying a compulsion he could not resist, his hooded glance slid over the soft contours of her face, greedily drinking in the details. Her skin was softer and even whiter than he remembered. The dimple in her cheek, though, was absent; she was not smiling.

She had not been smiling except for a faint tragic flicker when he had met her on the tarmac. The greeting had borne no resemblance to the one in his head, the one where she had flung herself into his arms.

It was ironic that what had displeased him would have pleased the small but vocal minority in the capital he had spent the last week identifying. After identifying them he had made a point of explaining that he would not look favourably on people who spread tales about his wife’s past. They had been suitably chastened, but the situation would bear watching. It would be hard enough for Eva to adapt without the moral majority who thought a virgin bride was the only suitable mate for a future King talking behind their hands.

They could think what they liked, but he made no bones about how vigorous his response would be if he heard them.

Conscious that if he touched Eva his ability to pull back was in doubt, Karim had ignored the cheek she offered him. He had also ignored the discussion of the weather.

He had had more trouble ignoring her warm mention of Luke, who apparently had let her know that her tutor was extremely pleased with the final draft of her thesis.

If the man had been within his grasp he would have taken more than a little pleasure from spoiling his pretty face.

For a man who had always prided himself on his control it was shocking to suddenly have none, though not in the same shocking league as the almost audible sound of the floodgates that had held back his emotions for years buckling when he had seen her standing there on the tarmac.

Looking so small and lost and vulnerable, her hair like a beacon.

He had never wanted a woman in a way that defied logic and reason—he did now.

He had spent the previous three weeks since they had last been together—it would have been two if he hadn’t arrived back and found more than a little bad feeling directed towards his new wife—alternating between feeling furious that he had allowed himself to be trapped for a second time into a marriage that was not convenient for him, and being furious with Eva for choosing to spend that time with her family and not with him and more specifically in his bed.

The fact he had made no attempt to stop her and had not disagreed with King Hassan’s suggestion only increased the level of Karim’s sense of impotent fury.

It was a lot of fury.

And at one level Karim was conscious that it was a lot easier to be angry than actually examine his feelings in any great depth. As they had driven in silence in the car with three feet and a wall of silence separating them he had repeated to himself like a mantra, This is just sex, this is just sex.

And when it was more than imagined sex he would be sane again.

Even repeating it twice did not make it sound true.

‘And she’s well.’