Page 34 of The Sheikh's Fake Bride Scheme

Keira shook her head. “I haven’t.” She had only seen the river from a car window, in fact. She had passed by it a few times over the last week or so, but you couldn’t get a great look at it from the road, and she did want to see.

Kareem led her down a side street. Keira found herself moving closer to him as they walked.

Of course I’d do that. Qalmar might be an incredibly safe country, but the US isn’t, and walking alone at night is an intimidating thing. Of course I’d want to stay close to the man I’m walking with.

She forced down the thoughts that tried to rise up within her. The thought that shedidn’tfeel unsafe, not in the slightest, so there was no reason for her to seek protection. The thought that she knew perfectly well she was trying to get close to Kareem for some other reason altogether.

That reason couldn’t be allowed, couldn’t be acknowledged. It was impermissible.

They reached the river’s edge. It was so dark that Keira couldn’t see it very well — it was just an interruption of black amid the lights of the city. But she could hear it lapping against the shore, sounding astonishingly close.

“Here.” Kareem guided her to something large and a bit chilly. “You can sit here.”

“What is this?”

“A rock. This was where I would sit when I’d come here as a teenager.”

She settled on the rock. “Don’t tell me — your family made you come here to practice the way a sheikh ought to behave in the presence of water?”

She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was smiling. “My family never even knew I came here,” he said. “I used to sneak out and come down here when I wanted to be alone. Of course, I always had to disguise myself to avoid being noticed and having my picture taken — as you said.”

“You disguised yourself?”

“Not well. I’d just wear western clothes. Lots of Qalmese people do, of course, but no one expects to see the royal family in jeans and sneakers. And just in case, I’d wear a hoodie, so you couldn’t really see my face. Someone would have had to get very close to figure out that it was me — and nobody ever did.”

“Why did you sneak down here?”

“I had to get away sometimes,” he said. “I’m sure you can understand, now that you know what it’s like in my family. It’s all right for me now that I’m an adult and can choose how and when I interact with them, but when I was younger it was much more difficult. I had to deal with my father’s disappointment in me every single day. I had to stand next to my brothers and feel the weight of my parents’ comparisons and expectations every day. It was terrible. Sometimes I just needed some distance from all of that.”

Keira nodded. “That makes sense,” she said softly. “I can understand why you would feel that way.”

She felt the warm presence of another person next to her on the rock and knew that Kareem had sat down beside her. “You can’t see the river now,” he said. “But you can hear it.”

“I was just thinking that.”

“Listening to it is the main reason I’d come here,” he said. “You can see the river from a lot of places in this city — including a few of the windows at the palace. But to be so close to it that you can hear the water rushing by is a different experience. It got rid of all the noise in my head, somehow. It made me feel calmer.”

“You should spend more time here now,” Keira said.

Kareem chuckled. “Are you saying I need to calm down?”

“I think we could all stand to calm down a bit,” Keira said seriously. “It’s not a you thing, but everyone has a tendency to take life too seriously from time to time. God knows I do it.” She stared out at the river she was unable to see, thinking about just how true that was. How much trouble she had relaxing and going with the flow sometimes, and how much better off she would be if she could bring herself to do it.

“I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you, Keira,” Kareem said after a long silence. “I would have thought that this would be strictly a business arrangement. That was my intent when I brought you here. But it hasn’t been that, has it?”

“I’ve never sat beside a river and talked about life with anyone who was just a business partner,” Keira said softly. “But I never expected a sheikh of Qalmar to become one of my… good friends.”

“It’s almost less surprising to have you as my wife,” Kareem agreed. “At least that was something I expected. That was a decision we made. But this — I never saw this coming at all.”

“I wish I understood why it feels so surprising,” Keira said. “It isn’t as if you’re the first unexpected friend I’ve ever made.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, but the air felt heavy with tension, and Keira wondered whether Kareem could possibly be thinking what she was thinking.

Her heart hammered as she waited to see what he would say.

It felt crazy to hope that he might be thinking the way she was — but then, it had been crazy to imagine him taking her hand at dinner, and that had happened. For that matter, it was crazy to imagine a sheikh marrying her at all, even if it was purely for business reasons. A lot of strange things were happening in Keira’s life lately.

She felt his arm brush up against hers.

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