CAROL MARINELLI - The Sheikh's Hidden Heir - Secret Sheikh, Secret Baby / The Sheikh's Claim / The Return of the Sheikh

Karim was dizzy.

He came often. But not like this—never once like this. He felt depleted—his thighs ached, the small of his back ached. It was as if he had dragged on hidden reserves to deliver all of his best. He couldn’t even take her to his bed for a moment, just stood as he lowered her down.

‘Thank you…’ she gasped, as weak and as dizzy as him. She stood till the world caught up, and then let him take her to his bed. She sat on the edge as he undressed her, garment by garment, kissing each newly exposed part of her body and then lying down on the bed beside her. He held her in the crook of his arm and felt her warm skin. ‘I loved it…’ Her voice was more normal now. ‘I never, ever, even in my wildest dreams…’

Her hand slipped down. He was about to tell her no, that it was too soon, too tender—but nature never ceased to amaze him. Her pleasure was so transparent, her wonder so catching, and he watched as he rose to greet her. And for Felicity—for her—he knew that he could do it all over again.

FOR three years, at some level, Karim had known this day would come.

Late afternoon his phone had buzzed quietly—not his regular phone, which he had long since turned off, but the one phone that he never could.

He had taken the call in the lounge, listened to the news and sat with his head in his hands in silence for a full five minutes afterwards. Then he had walked back into the bedroom, his gaze falling to where she slept, and all he’d wanted to do was climb in beside her, rest next to her soft skin and disappear. He wanted to wake with her in his arms and smile in relief as he realised it was just a dream. But to sleep now would have been to waste what he knew was his last taste of freedom.

The last few minutes in his life of being Karim—because, despite being the third-born son, he was being groomed to be King.

This day that should never had come—had never, when Karim had been a child, been anticipated. The third of four boys, relatively safe from the prospect of succession, he had run free. His mother had loved him with more abandon, the press had been less interested in the dark, wilful young Prince than in his elder brothers.

His elder brothers, Hassan and Ahmed, had been groomed, of course—Hassan the successor, Ahmed just in case. But for Karim, and later Ibrahim, there had been more freedom. It was a freedom that their mother had fought and begged for, and had been won only for her younger sons. Three of the boys had inherited some of their mother’s features. Hassan, the eldest, had her piercing blue eyes but none of her joy or lightness, Ahmed, the second boy, had a lighter complexion and hair and had inherited her high-strung personality too.

And young Ibrahim was a true mix of both—royal and abrupt, like his father, yet dashing and wild, like his mother.

Karim, though, was truly his father’s son.

He was, his father had said in a pensive moment, the one who would make the best King.

Decisive, arrogant, Karim held an innate strength, a deep streak of privacy that belied his public persona. Even when his mother’s indiscretion had been exposed and she had fled, shamed, to England, Karim, the closest to her, had been the only brother who had refused to cry.

It was how it had to be.

There could be no pardon, no erring from the rules—she was the wife of the King.

To Karim it was simple.

And, as third in line, it was simple: he could indulge his passion. While after their mandatory stint in the army his older brothers had studied politics and history, the young Karim had indulged his desire for medicine, heading to the UK, spending time with his mother, causing a stir on the social scene. A dashing Prince, he had had the young fillies of London eating out of his manicured hands.

At what point had it changed?

Staring out into the darkening London skies, Karim rested his forehead against the cool window and watched the cars, taxis and shoppers below enjoying the anonymity London afforded. He remembered the first time he had felt it, that shiver of realisation, a feeling he would later recognise as dread, sliding like black fingers around his heart. He felt it occasionally at first, then more regularly, until now each morning he awoke with a tight band around his heart.

Hassan had married. Karim remembered well the pride and the jubilation in Zaraq. Remembered too laughing at his father’s concerns when it had been two years and no heir.

‘There is plenty of time…’

Then it had been three years, then four, and then finally the news the country had waited for.

A baby due in April.

In February he had come—too soon for the little scrap of life named after the King. Karim had held his tiny nephew, Kaliq, on that last day. As a doctor he had known at first glance that no machines or technology could help. When neither Hassan nor his wife, Jamal, had been able to face it any longer he had held Kaliq in the palm of his hand, stared at the little life that was too weak, too frail, and yet so wanted, then held him to his cheek as his life had slipped away.

Those first voices of dread had started to speak up, but he had quashed them, dismissed them out of hand. Because if Hassan could not produce, then long in the future, if the King should die, there would be Ahmed.

Ahmed. Despite the grooming, despite the bravado, Karim had always known that his brother was fragile emotionally—just how fragile Karim had refused to consider. Burdened by the prospect that one day he might be King, Ahmed had one day taken his four-wheel drive into the hostile desert. Suicide was a sin, so it had been called ‘heat exhaustion’.

By November the country had been plunged into mourning again.

Nothing was ever voiced.

Nothing had ever actually been voiced.

As third in line, Karim had always indulged in his passion for surgery, but as the line of succession had shortened, so too had his theatre and patient list. Slowly he’d been moved away from the hospital and from direct contact with patients. Instead he built a new hospital and a new university, trying to ignore the voices. Because if he acknowledged they were real…

Today they were real.

Today they spoke.

You are strong, Karim said to himself. You will be a good leader for the people.

He knew he was strong. And he wouldn’t acknowledge, even to himself, the deep and buried truth.

Instead he pushed it aside and chose to get on with what he had been summoned to do.

The room was still and dark when Felicity awoke, stretching luxuriously. For that moment all she felt was peace—not a smudge of regret for what had taken place.

Karim was standing by the window, staring out on to the street below. Just as she was about to smile and greet him, she stilled. She saw the grave expression on his face, the weary set of his shoulders, and a chill of foreboding swept through her.

‘Karim?’

He came over, forced a half-smile on his grim face, and sat on the bed beside her.

‘You looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘Is something wrong?’ There was a different energy to him. They had made love on and off throughout the day, and Felicity had shared with him not just her body but her mind. She had told him how she adored her family, how it was tearing her apart to leave them even for this short while, how she adored her work, her friends. Bit by bit she had revealed herself to him, but now, as she stared up at his strained face, despite his tender words she realised Karim had revealed so very little.

‘My father is ill.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He has been ill for some time, but I have just found out that he has been admitted to hospital. I have to leave tonight for Zaraq.’ His face was stamped with pain.