The Sheikh's Forbidden Virgin by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt [Hewitt, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-14T09:14:03+00:00

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she called. Her nurse’s maternal worrying was sweet, yet it also made Kalila feel guilty. She didn’t deserve

Juhanah’s concern. What would her nurse say if she told her…?

THE SHEIKH’S FORBIDDEN VIRGIN

25

KATE HEWITT

HARLEQUIN PRESENTS 2859

THE ROYAL HOUSE OF KAREDES

Kalila closed her eyes. She wouldn’t tell her, wouldn’t tell anyone. And yet Aarif would tell someone. He’d said as much.

He would tell his brother.

What had she been expecting to happen? she wondered. Had she thought Aarif would tell her he loved her, that everything

had changed? Had she actually believed, even for a moment, that an hour or two of passion changed everything? Anything?

Yet it had seemed so much more than that. When she’d held him in her arms, felt his heart beating against hers, felt that

they were one…

That was what she wanted, she realised. That was why her heart and mind resisted marriage to Calista’s king. She wanted

love, and for a few moments it had felt as if she’d found it with Aarif.

You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me. His words that morning mocked her. How could she believe it was love

when she barely knew him? And what she knew, she wasn’t entirely sure she liked.

He was hard, unrelenting, grim-faced, determined. Yet she’d seen flickers of humour, tenderness, need.

No, she didn’t love him, Kalila knew. Yet she wondered if she could.

She also wondered about the dream that had tormented him so, what horrible memory still held him in its grip.

Understanding that memory, Kalila felt, would be a key to understanding Aarif.

Yet how could she understand him when he would spend the next few weeks avoiding her at all costs? And, she reminded

herself bleakly, when she was still engaged to his brother?

The water had grown cold and Kalila soaped herself quickly, her hands suddenly stilling on her flat belly. Yet another

repercussion of those few moments with Aarif occurred to her with icy shock.

Pregnancy. A baby.

Aarif’s child.

Yet even as her lips curved in a helpless smile at that thought, her mind recognised the disastrous consequences of such a

possibility. A royal bastard, conceived before she’d even been married.

Of course, Kalila knew, Zakari could think the baby was his, conceived on their still-to-be wedding night, but if Aarif told

him—

She closed her eyes again. This was such a mess. A mess, a mistake, and she had no idea how to fix it or where to begin.

She thrust the thoughts away, all of them, to untangle later. It was too much to deal with now, and Kalila had a feeling it would always be too much.

The bath had made her sleepy, and when Kalila emerged from the bathroom swathed in a robe and saw the wide,

comfortable bed with the duvet turned down, it seemed only natural to slip between the crisp, clean sheets and let herself be lulled to sleep by the lazy whirring of the ceiling fan. The last sound she heard was the gentle click of the door as Juhanah let herself out.

When she awoke to the sound of a knock on the door, the sun was low in the sky, the room cast in shadow, the air sultry

and still.

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