The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin Read Free Page B

to make his wife—if such things existed outside the pages of romances—though someone who didn’t actively dislike the idea of sharing his bed would be a step up from the first time.
    But the lost princess would not be his first or last choice.
    And anyway there was no hurry—he was enjoying his freedom and he was only thirty-two. Young, but not as young as some—Amira was eight.
    And he would have given all he had to exchange places with her. An image of her little face beneath the cap she’d taken to wearing since the chemo had made her sweet curls fall out flashed across his vision. If ever he had been under the illusion that life was either fair or certain he had learnt otherwise over the past weeks.
    Pushing aside the dark thoughts, he concentrated on taking the next shallow, slightly shabby step and then the next. Best not to think too far ahead…marriage too was far in the future. Why marry now when he was enjoying his freedom, and enjoying sex without guilt or responsibility? He mentally skimmed over the post-coital emptiness that, had he been a man given to introspection, might have bothered him.
    Of course, if Amira had been a boy things would have been different. Marriage would not be on his agenda and there would not be the ever-present pressure from those advising him to marry.
    Karim did not need others to point out his duty. He would eventually have to remarry and provide the much-desired heir.
    His face relaxed into a half-smile that briefly warmed the bleakness of his platinum eyes as his thoughts returned to his daughter. It amazed him that two people who could only make each other so unhappy had produced such a marvellous, perfect little creature.
    It was 1:00 a.m. when Eva decided to head for a shower as she was too wound up and plain mad to sleep. Irrational really. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted him to turn up, but bad manners were bad manners even if she had no complaint about the result.
    Her night had started badly and gone steadily downhill. For starters her computer had crashed and she’d lost a week’s work, and then the manager in the hotel bar where she worked to supplement her adequate but not generous post-grad funding had rung to ask her to cover a shift.
    An offer she’d had to refuse so next time he wouldn’t ask her first, and with her computer on the blink she could do with the cash. Not that she was really broke—the startlingly generous allowance her grandfather had insisted on making her was sitting in the bank where it was going to stay. Using it somehow felt too much like relinquishing her freedom.
    God, this entire day had been a waste. As if she didn’t have anything better to do than spend hours deciding what to wear that was completely unsuitable and more hours artistically arranging Luke’s personal items in her bathroom and several articles of his clothing around her flat to suggest cohabitation.
    Of course she should have recognised the Prince wasn’t exactly keen as mustard when a flunky had rung to arrange the date a month previously—he clearly had a busy calendar.
    ‘Damn man!’ she muttered, kicking off her shoes. In a mood of righteous indignation she removed the rest of her unsuitable outfit. ‘Who does the man think he is anyway? Other than rich and powerful…obviously common courtesy and good manners don’t apply to royalty.’
    It was just a pity, she reflected, that not all the men in her life were letting her down tonight.
    Luke had arrived on cue. ‘Where is he?’
    ‘Not here.’
    Her tetchy tone had not been lost on Luke, who had not done the tactful thing and vanished but instead had hung around, wanting the gruesome details, enjoying immensely the joke at her expense.
    Eva liked to think that she didn’t take herself seriously, that she could laugh at herself with the best, but there were limits and someone laughing his socks off because she’d been stood up was definitely over her limit.
    She’d been pretty cranky and terribly