The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin Read Free

towards the child that bore his name the same way he would have had she been his flesh and blood—which as far as the rest of the world was concerned she was.
    When the baby had arrived eight months after the weddingmost had pretended not to be able to do the maths, though his father had given his son an indulgent wry look and commented on the impatience of the young, and his cousins had indulged in the odd joking comment. Their reactions might have been less amused if they had known the truth—if they had known that, far from anticipating his wedding vows, he had never slept with his wife, who had chosen their wedding night to inform him that she was carrying another man’s child.
    Despite this vow Karim had never expected to feel the emotions that a man felt for his own child, but he had been wrong. Her mother had lain still heavily sedated when the screaming wet bundle had been placed in his arms and he had been utterly unprepared for the rush of feeling that had washed over him.
    The screaming red-faced scrap had seemed to look directly at him, and by the time she had stopped crying Karim’s heart had been firmly in the clenched little baby fist.
    The baby was now eight and the situation had not changed, except since her mother’s death two years earlier he was the only one who knew the secret—Amira was not his biological daughter.
    Now the doctor knew. When the subject of marrow donation had arisen Karim had been forced to admit that it was unlikely he would be suitable, and then responding to the medic’s tactful probing he had revealed that he had no idea who her biological father was.
    For the first time he had cause to bitterly regret his lack of interest in the identity of his wife’s married lover. If he had asked the question there might be someone out there who could help Amira.
    But he hadn’t asked.
    Of course, if he had loved Zara, Karim might have wanted to torture himself with the details, but he had not. And a day did not go by that Karim was not grateful for this and his apparent inability to fall in love. History was littered by men leftdestroyed and humbled when the women they loved had cheated and deceived them.
    It was not a situation that Karim ever intended to place himself in. If he ever had been a romantic his marriage had opened his eyes to the dangers of that condition. No, he would marry for duty; for love or, rather, sex, he would look elsewhere.

Chapter Two
    W HEN he spotted the car parked on the kerb on the other side of the narrow road, Karim’s first thought was that his bodyguard escort had seen him leaving the precinct of the hospital earlier…How much earlier?
    He frowned as he attempted to clear the fog in his brain and tried to think…Why could he not think? His glance drifted downwards, and the permanent groove between his darkly delineated eyebrows deepened. He was wet. He brushed a hand across the fabric of his saturated suit and said out loud, ‘Very wet.’
    Suggesting…suggesting what? Karim, struggling to make the mental connection, lifted his face to the rain. He stood there with it streaming over his face and realised he had no conscious recollection of leaving the hospital precinct. He felt a surge of impatience. Presumably, as he had not just materialised here, he had done so. What was that taste in his mouth?
    Of course…Tariq’s tea—he had slipped away to get some air.
    To get some air, but he had obviously got more air than he’d intended and, though he had unintentionally escaped the hospital precinct, he had not escaped the dark thoughts that gnawed with the merciless precision of a surgical blade into his head—he had brought them with him.
    He had to get back from here, but where, he wondered,scanning the street he found himself in, was here? He recognised nothing, including the men in the parked car. Men who would, if they were any good at their job, have noticed him before he had registered them.
    They were paid to be observant; they were paid