The Sheikh's Virgin. Jane Porter

home, into this odd world where she belonged to a man she knew only from her childhood? It was ridiculous. Preposterous. She wasn’t a medieval bride.

      “No.” Hands shaking, legs feeling like brittle strands of ice, Keira pushed away from the table. “No. You’re wrong.” Her body was cold and yet her eyes burned hot, gritty, and she blinked, refusing to let one tear form or fall. “You’re wrong, Kalen Nuri, about everything.”

      In her bedroom Keira curled up in one of the overstuffed armchairs and buried her face in the crook of her arm. She wasn’t staying here. She couldn’t stay here. What was she supposed to do here?

      The panic rose, filling her, and her eyes felt as if they were dusted with sand but she couldn’t cry.

      What had happened in Baraka to create such friction between Kalen and her father? And what made Ahmed Abizhaid so dangerous that Kalen refused to see her family and Ahmed’s join in marriage?

      And was her father really the problem or could the problem be Kalen himself?

      She knew her father had never liked the youngest Nuri prince. And yet because of his loyalty to the Sultan, her father had never, could never, voice his suspicion aloud, but from the reports she’d once found on her father’s desk she knew her father kept Kalen Nuri under surveillance.

      This was more than personal, she thought. This was bigger than that. So what was it really about?