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

Her vehemence appeared to take the Frenchman aback, but he smiled and said tentatively, ‘A glass of water?’

‘That would be nice,’ she said, thinking, Pull yourself together, Eva, at least until you get out of here. ‘There’s no need to worry Karim,’ she added.

Alain nodded, but did not look entirely convinced by her addition and, catching sight of herself in the reflective surface of a plate-glass window, Eva was not surprised. The only colour in her face was the green of her eyes, which looked enormous in her pale face.

She pressed her fingers to her temples where the thudding intensified as the pressure in her head increased.

Getting out of here was her one coherent thought in a brain that was seething with confusing and ambiguous thoughts. As soon as the Frenchman moved out of view she made her way towards the open glass doors.

People had spilled out into the enclosed courtyard where the sound of tinkling fountains was a pleasant background noise to conversation.

Her heels clicked on the mosaic floor as she exchanged a few comments with people. She had no idea what she said, but presumably she must have made sense, unless they were just politely ignoring the fact that she was talking gibberish.

As she stepped through a large metal-banded door and into the corridor beyond, closing the door behind her, the almost monastic silence hit her.

CHAPTER TEN

CLOSING HER EYES AS she pressed her shoulders into the wall, Eva felt the tears begin to seep from under her lashes.

Angrily she brushed them away and straightened up.

She sniffed and inhaled. ‘Don’t get hysterical, Eva. This isn’t love … it’s sexual attraction and it will pass.’ She began to laugh as the irony struck her that she was upset because there was a possibility she was in love with her own husband.

‘Now how crazy is that?’ she asked the painting that showed a stern man with a nose like Karim’s looking noble astride a flashing-eyed stallion.

He didn’t comment, neither did any of the servants she encountered as she walked through a maze of corridors with no particular idea of where she was going. Being the boss’s wife had some perks and there was no sign of her shadows.

When some time later she found herself outside and near a gated entrance to the compound, the idea of escaping, at least temporarily, was too strong to resist.

Maybe outside without people watching her every move she’d be able to think straight? She held her breath as she walked past the armed guards and expelled it again when they made no attempt to detain her as she left the palace compound that was situated a few miles outside the capital, whose lights illuminated the horizon to the south.

When she had last passed along this well-lit palm-lined avenue it had been seething with people; now it was totally deserted. Recalling Karim’s rather stern lectures on security and the dangers of the desert, she felt a faint twinge of anxiety but she pushed it away.

This was not the desert, it was a street with electric lights. She could have been anywhere except there was no litter, and there were no sprawling suburbs—civilisation stopped abruptly and gave way to desert. Karim himself had told her that there was virtually no crime here.

She was perfectly safe and she was allowed to take a walk if she felt like it. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle. Karim probably wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t there.

And if she was needed Eva had no doubt Layla would be only too happy to deputise.

You’re not in prison, Eva, she told herself.

But she was—a beautiful luxurious prison, but nonetheless that was what it was and what made it worse was she had walked inside, locked the door, thrown away the key and fallen for her jailer!

She shook her head and muttered, ‘No, it’s just sex.’

Her brooding thoughts returned to the reception. Was it just sex with Layla or was Karim in love with the curvaceous brunette?

Perhaps that was why a sexless marriage did not seem to bother him in the slightest—he had the lissom Layla to keep him warm when the sun went down.

The graphic images that went with this line of speculation made Eva’s stomach churn sickly. Her hands balled into fists as she barred her teeth in a determined grimace; she was going to get the truth out of him if it killed her!

She had been here long enough to know how palace gossip worked and she was sure that if Layla was his mistress she was probably the only person who didn’t know! The humiliation of being an object of pity was something she just could not bear.

She couldn’t bear their unconsummated marriage, and the irony was that her celibacy had never bothered her before. She had occasionally speculated on what she was missing—now what she was missing was driving her slowly insane.

The trouble was it wasn’t exactly a level playing field. He was the world’s sexiest man and not exactly inexperienced, while her experience consisted of a couple of goodnight kisses and a narrow escape from a supposed friend who had turned into a groper when they’d shared a taxi.

How did you confess to a man who thought you were some sort of sexual expert that you were in fact clueless?

A clueless virgin!

Did he know she couldn’t think of anything else but him?

Of course he knew … With a grimace of self-disgust she shook her head angrily. You could only take self-deception so far … and Karim not knowing that her bones ached with longing when he was near was about as likely as him not touching her because he was afraid of rejection!

And now there was the further complication of Layla, who was not clueless or flat-chested and had possibly spent the last week in his bed.

An emotional rush of misery rushed up to clog Eva’s throat and with a sniff she hitched her narrow skirt that was making it hard to walk above her knees and tucked a long strand of hair that had been pulled free of her elegant topknot behind her ear.

The strong warm wind that blew in from the desert immediately swept it back into her eyes.

With a disconsolate sigh she left it there and thought … Are they having an affair?

The possibility brought a militant light to her eyes; if he thought she was going to put up with him installing Layla as his official mistress, he could think again! Eva’s pace quickened in response to the energising rush of anger that swept through her body.

Karim should have told her about Layla; she had a right to know before she committed herself. Though as not committing herself would have made her responsible for destabilising an entire region and destroying economic progress it was extremely doubtful that her decision would have been different.

This was not what she had signed up for.

She had been so lost in her dark reflections that Eva had walked on several hundred yards before she realised she had run out of streetlamps.

With a sigh she turned and began to reluctantly retrace her footsteps, slowly now as the anger that had consumed her had burnt itself out.

As she walked she became aware that the buffeting wind had increased in strength and while it should be on her back now it was actually everywhere, hitting her from all sides.

She bent her head as the sand in the air stung her face.

She had not gone a few feet before she became aware that she was in trouble: the lights above were barely visible through the sand that stung and bit into every exposed inch of her skin. She couldn’t see where the road surface ended and the desert began and the tall turrets and gleaming spires of the royal palace were barely visible.

Mind-numbing panic running just beneath the surface of her paper-thin stoic calm, she refused to recognise it as she told herself that it was lucky she had not strayed from the highway or walked far.

All she had to do was walk in a straight line.

‘How difficult can that be?’

A few minutes later she was forced to acknowledge that her forced jovial comment had been a classic case of tempting fate. The surface she now stumbled over was not tarmac, it was uneven and rocky. Even if she had been able to lift her head there was no point—the visibility was nil, the world was black and the sand cut into every exposed inch of tender flesh without mercy.

She coughed, unable to breathe as she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to protect her face.