Claimed For The Desert Prince's Heir / A Shocking Proposal In Sicily. Heidi Rice

you’re finally awake.’

      Zane strode into the chamber, the picture of health and vitality, the bastard.

       Except he isn’t the bastard—you are.

      But why had Zane called him by his Kholadi name? Raif frowned, confusion adding to his growing misery. His tired mind struggled to grasp the implications. The new intimacy between them was almost as disturbing as knowing he’d been at his brother’s mercy for two weeks.

      ‘How is he?’ Zane addressed the doctor.

      She reeled off a string of jargon and he realised he had been operated on because of a burst appendix. That he had nearly died. Then she told his brother he was on the mend.

      But he didn’t feel on the mend, he felt broken. And it had nothing to do with the tenderness still lingering in his gut.

      How could he have sunk this low? To have risked his life. To follow a woman. A woman who didn’t want him. Who had run from him and had no respect for his honour or her own. And how could he still want her?

      The burning shame in his chest began to change into something more fortifying. He was limp with exhaustion, yes, but that would pass, and when it did he would find Kasia Salah. And he would make her pay for bringing him to this.

      After more admonitions for him to remain in bed and focused on his recovery, the doctor left the room, leaving him alone with his brother.

      Zane sat in the chair the doctor had vacated and leaned forward. ‘So, Kasim…’ He paused. ‘Sorry, I mean Raif.’ He folded his fingers together, levelling Raif with a stare that brooked no argument. ‘Why didn’t you tell me years ago you prefer to use the name Raif? And why the hell did you ride all the way here in agony?’

       CHAPTER NINE

       Hey, Kaz,

       I hope all’s good with you, and you’re over your hot night with the mystery tribesman. You’ll be glad to know no one has turned up here to claim your hand in marriage, so I hope you’ll consider coming back for a visit again very soon.

       Why haven’t you been in touch? Six texts saying precisely nothing in four weeks doesn’t count btw—just in case you were wondering.

       All’s good on the home front.

       Zane has bought Kaliah her own pony and begun teaching her to ride. Personally, I think five-going-on-fifteen is too young, but I’ve been overruled by both of them, as usual! I include photos of her on her horse for her Auntie Kaz, at her insistence.

       William, meanwhile, continues to be an absolute terror. I can’t believe he still isn’t sleeping through the night and he’s nearly two. Neither can Zane, who says he’s going to get tough on his son, then doesn’t…

       His Divine Majesty is a complete push-over where his children are concerned, and unfortunately for us both they know it.

       We got a surprise visit from Prince Kasim—over a month ago now—who promptly collapsed and had to be nursed back to health. He turned up unannounced and without the usual honour guard of tribesmen. He left us last week.

       He had a burst appendix and had to be operated on. When he finally came round he steadfastly refused to talk about why he had come to visit us in the first place and ridden for three days in agony to get here.

       I told him he was definitely taking the whole ‘Bad-Boy Sheikh’ thing a bit too far. He did not see the funny side—having apparently had a major sense of humour failure. As it turns out, desert princes make the worst possible patients! Who knew?

       The doctor also noticed he had a fresh scar on his arm from what she thought might be a bullet wound—which made me think of your mystery tribesman. But I’m guessing your guy couldn’t possibly be Prince Kasim—or Raif, as Zane now calls him, for no reason I can fathom—because you totally would not have kept the juiciest piece of girl talk in a millennium a secret from your BFF, now, would you?

       Give me a call soon and let me know how everything is going.

       I miss you.

       All my love

       C xox

      KASIA RE-READ THE handwritten letter, which had arrived that morning, for the sixth time in as many minutes. Tears stung her eyes and dripped onto the photo Cat had sent of her five-year-old daughter. Kaliah’s wide grin showed off her missing front tooth as she sat on her new pony.

      Kasia wiped the moisture off her cheeks and stuffed the letter back into its envelope. Then, with trembling fingers, pinned the print of Kaliah and her pony onto the board above her desk.

      Raif had been seriously ill for three weeks because of her. He’d only just recovered. How would she ever forgive herself?

      Guilt and nausea roiled in her stomach, making the fatigue that had been dragging her down for a week weigh on her shoulders like a slab of concrete.

      Placing the letter in the top drawer of the desk, she fished out the cardboard box she’d bought from the chemist’s yesterday.

      She turned the pregnancy testing kit over in her hands and read the instructions. Again.

      She couldn’t put it off any longer. Cat’s letter and the devastating news about Raif’s illness and recovery was a sign. A sign she had to start taking responsibility for her actions. She was convinced her symptoms were psychosomatic—even though he hadn’t pulled out during their lovemaking, she had been at the very beginning of her cycle. And her period was only two days overdue, which wasn’t that unusual for her.

      This obsession with her so-called symptoms—the mild nausea, the tender breasts, the emotional roller-coaster, the bone-deep fatigue that had hit every evening for a week—was some weird psychological hangover from her time in the desert, which she hadn’t been able to get out of her head.

      Every night she dreamed of him. Not just the vivid erotic dreams that woke her up sweaty and unfulfilled, her skin prickling with sensation, her heart thundering, her clitoris slick and swollen from the far-too-real memory of his tongue stroking her to orgasm. But also the much more unsettling visions of him when they had ridden together through the storm, when he’d cried out in his sleep and the harsh frown of disbelief on his face as she’d galloped away from him.

      And now Cat’s letter had made all those symptoms that much more pronounced.

      Something had happened to her at the oasis, something profound and life-changing that went beyond the sex. Something she wasn’t going to be able to come to terms with until she made absolutely sure, once and for all, that she wasn’t pregnant with Raif Kasim Ali Kholadi Khan’s child.

      Emotion caused a lump to form in her throat as she walked into the small en suite bathroom of her room in the hall of residence.

      After unwrapping the test stick, it took her several agonising minutes to manage to pee on it. She placed it on the vanity unit and washed her hands, then sat on the toilet seat and set the stopwatch on her smartphone to the required two minutes to get the result.

      Which turned in to the longest two minutes of her entire life.

      The questions she didn’t want to answer that were roaring around in her head were almost as deafening as the sandstorm she and Raif had survived all those weeks ago.

      She should have done this yesterday when she’d bought the test. Why hadn’t she? Was it because she didn’t want to have a pregnancy confirmed, or the much more disturbing thought that she did? Why would she want to be pregnant by a man she barely knew? A man who appeared to comprehensively lack the sensibilities