The Sheikh's Hidden Heir. Оливия Гейтс

which just happens to be close by. I might go out and look…’

      There was a ghost of a smile on the edge of his mouth as she walked past him.

      ‘No, don’t bother getting up, Karim. I’ll get them.’

      He caught her ankle, smiled up at her, and it was brighter than the sun outside. Scorching, warming, and it dazzled.

      ‘You talk too much.’ Still he held her ankle.

      ‘You talk too little.’

      ‘Sit.’ He let go of her ankle and patted the cushions beside him, but she just kept on walking. ‘Felicity,’ Karim said with a rather strained sigh, ‘why don’t you have a seat and we can talk for a while?’

      It was a little like being back in the restaurant—formal and awkward at first. But they avoided hot topics, like sex and babies, and given there wasn’t much else between them spoke about the one other thread they had in common—their work.

      ‘I just always wanted to be one,’ Felicity answered when he asked. ‘I think I was born wanting to be a midwife. I love pregnant women, and I just adore newborns.’

      But that was about babies…At every turn they couldn’t avoid their issues, couldn’t talk about her hopes to work in a natural birthing centre when she returned to England, because somehow it was too much to acknowledge that that hope was now gone. And she couldn’t talk about her family, about her father and the legacy his alcoholism had left, because that would mean she trusted Karim.

      And she didn’t.

      Finally, after a few stalled attempts, they spoke about Karim—which didn’t help either, because the more that was revealed the more she liked him.

      And the more confused she became.

      ‘So you practise medicine out here?’

      ‘With Bedra’s help.’

      It was Stockholm syndrome, Felicity told herself—where you fell in love with your captor. Only she’d loved him long before that, and every moment he intrigued her more.

      ‘It is like a mobile hospital,’ Karim explained. ‘I cannot practise any more at the hospital. It is not appropriate.’

      ‘But you trained as a surgeon.’ Felicity blinked. ‘You worked as a surgeon.’

      ‘I cannot be accessible to the people.’ He frowned at her, and she chose to stay silent—chose instead of arguing just to listen. After a long pause, Karim delivered perhaps his first honest admission. ‘I do miss it at times.’

      Felicity blinked at the revelation, at his first display of emotion, feelings—proof that this remote man was actually real.

      ‘You do not choose to be a surgeon. I believe it chooses you. And yet my country, my role, for reasons you do not understand make it impossible to do both. But here in the desert…’ He was silent for a moment, as if drawing on the vastness. Even the wind wailing outside hushed for a moment as he centred himself and drank from the endless cup of wisdom this hard land brought. ‘I can fulfil both. I can be a royal and I can heal—Bedra is a doctor,’ he explained. ‘She trained overseas and has returned to Zaraq to help her people. That is why I chose her to be here. The palace staff think she and Aarif are really servants. The Bedouin people are proud and remote, they would not line up at a royal tent for help, so Bedra takes help to them. That is the vehicle you saw, and with GPS she can summon assistance from the hospital. Sometimes, for things Bedra cannot do—she is not a surgeon—I go out with her…’

      ‘You run clinics?’

      ‘My family do not know. You are not to say anything,’ he warned. ‘I am working on a project to send doctors into the desert as part of the hospital rotation. However, for now I am servicing that need quietly.’

      He made it sound as if he were running a brothel instead of practising medicine. How could saving lives be a secret?

      ‘Change has to be slow,’ Karim said at her furrowed brow. ‘But there is change. There is the university, the new hospital. Women will not have to go overseas to study. I can work as a surgeon, and of course save lives, or as a royal prince I can slowly implement programmes that will change lives.’

      As King he could just do it. Karim swallowed on that uneasy thought.

      As King he could make more progress than his father or Hassan ever would. He loved his country, the traditions, its ways. But at times, at certain points, it frustrated him—angered him, even. Progress was so slow, yet as King himself more good could be done.

      But it couldn’t be about what he wanted, and it had nothing to do with Felicity, so he stood up and ended the conversation there.

      Felicity didn’t understand. He made her head spin. At every turn it was a different Karim—the man in England, the Prince in his palace, and this doctor in the desert. But she wanted him—all of him. She wanted the blurred image to focus, for the many facets of this man to join into one.

      She wanted him.

      ‘I have to leave tomorrow.’ He offered no explanation other than that, but this time Felicity refused to stay quiet. He always did this, Felicity was beginning to realise. Gave a little of himself and then regretted it, withdrew further and confused her more.

      ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘That is not your concern.’

      ‘Karim, please…’

      ‘My father has surgery in a couple of days.’

      ‘And you didn’t think to tell me? Karim, I am your wife.’

      ‘A wife who refuses sex is a poor wife.’

      ‘A husband who doesn’t trust is a poor husband!’ Felicity retorted, but he was prowling the tent now.

      ‘When the helicopter comes to collect me, they will bring staff to take care of you.’

      ‘No!’ She hurled herself off the cushions towards him, scared of being left in the desert with strangers. ‘No, Karim. I won’t stay.’

      ‘You will do as you are told.’

      ‘No!’ she begged. ‘Surely your wife should be with you? Surely your family will expect that?’

      His family expected nothing from her. He stared at her with black soulless eyes, held her wrists as she attempted to claw at him. Could she not understand that his family did not care, that all that was wanted from her was her baby—be it as Hassan’s or his.

       His.

      For a second he relented, let go of her wrists and let her beat at his chest.

      They did not care about her and he must not, Karim told himself, holding her arms again. But she kicked with her feet, beating her way into his closed heart.

      ‘Let me come with you, Karim. Surely I should be—?’

      Only his mouth could silence her, and it felt so good to feel her. He held her angry body in his arms and kissed her quiet. Every time she pulled back he kissed her harder. Now he could taste her, his tongue curling around her rigid one, pressing her right into him so that she could feel what she was missing, feel the heat that had been building for so long now. It was a heat he had refused to douse himself, relishing the challenge like a fast in the desert—because when she came to him, and she would come, how much sweeter victory would taste.

      Her mouth was softer now, her body more pliant in his arms. But then she resisted again—and Karim dropped her.

      ‘I have told you already—the desert is our home till the marriage is consummated. It is entirely up to you.’