The Sheikh's Hidden Heir: Secret Sheikh, Secret Baby / The Sheikh's Claim / The Return of the Sheikh. Carol Marinelli

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       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      IT SHOULD have brought them closer, what they had shared, what they had achieved. Karim had been about to make love to her before the interruption, of that Felicity was absolutely sure, but as for the first time in his life Karim prepared his own bath his silence spoke volumes. He stonewalled her questions, pretending to be asleep by the time she’d bathed and returned to his bed.

      ‘Karim?’ She spoke to tense broad shoulders. ‘You did so well out there…’

      Yes, pretending to be asleep. Because in response to her question he proceeded to snore. And for all his ruthless ways, there were some redeeming features—and one of them was that Karim didn’t actually snore.

      It was worse than being told to be silent.

      She persisted in her own way. She refused a husband who was less than he could be, refused to live with his silence. So at various times, as the days dragged on and they were truly alone in the desert, she chatted happily, though mostly to herself.

      ‘I’ve cut myself,’ she said—and she had, lounging on cushions, reading a magazine. She had a tiny paper cut that really didn’t need anything doing to it, but she mentioned it just the same. ‘I wonder if there are any plasters…’ He was reading a thick black book, and he didn’t look up as she stood, just lay stretched out on cushions. ‘I know!’ Felicity said brightly. ‘They’ll be in the fully equipped mobile theatre 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 СКАЧАТЬ