Page 17 of The Sheikh's Fake Bride Scheme

She turned away from him and stared out the window, and he decided to let her. The truth was that he was experiencing plenty of anxiety of his own. It took a lot to rattle Kareem, but the experience he was facing was doing it. He was so close to getting everything he had ever wanted, achieving a lifelong dream, but if he and Keira put a foot wrong over the next two weeks, it was all going to slip away.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep. The next thing he knew, the sharp shock of the plane’s wheels striking the jetway was jolting him awake. He looked over at Keira and saw that shewas red-eyed and sitting bolt upright, as if she’d had an iron bar fused to her spine.

“You haven’t slept at all, have you?” he said.

Keira shook her head. “Couldn’t.”

The anxiety that had been simmering in Kareem’s gut hours earlier erupted into a full-blown boil. He composed his face carefully. She couldn’t be allowed to see how nervous he was — it would only make her own nerves worse. And besides, what he had told her was true. There was no way for this to go well, no way his father was going to be impressed.

She didn’t look at him as they disembarked and walked over to the car that awaited them. Kareem decided that he wasn’t going to try to engage her in conversation. Instead, he simply opened the car door for her and allowed her to slide in before walking around to join her on the other side.

They passed the ride in utter silence. Kareem, who had broken the habit of biting his fingernails before his seventh birthday — it was unseemly for a member of the royal family — felt the urge to do it again for the first time in years. At least it would have settled his nerves.

There was no reason to be nervous. This meeting didn’t matter. He wasn’t introducing his father to his real wife. He didn’t need his father to like Keira. All he needed was for the man to accept his reason for having her here in Qalmar. And that wasn’t going to be a problem. His father would easily believe that Kareem had indulged in an impulse marriage. If anything, he would be surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.

Still, their arrival at the palace seemed to happen altogether too quickly. Kareem found himself breathing more rapidly than wasnormal as he got out of the car, and he forced himself to settle down. For Keira’s sake, he had to stay calm.

Her face was composed as they made their way up the walk, but he noticed that her hands were trembling. Without thinking too hard about it, he reached out and took one of her hands in his own, giving it a squeeze.

She looked up at him. Their eyes met, and for a moment Kareem nearly forgot that this wasn’t real. Itfeltreal. His heart was hammering and her eyes were wide with nervous anticipation… surely this was exactly what introducing a real wife to his father would have felt like, had he ever attempted such a thing.

“Do they know I’m coming?” Keira asked.

“Oh.” Kareem grinned sheepishly. “I knew there was something I was forgetting.”

“You didn’t tell them? Kareem!”

She pulled against his grip, but it was too late to go back now. The front doors were opening, and the valet had stepped out.

“Sheikh Kareem,” he said. “Welcome home. Your father has asked me to bring you directly to him.”

“Thank you, Ismail,” Kareem said. “We’ll go right away.”

“May I have your guest escorted to the library, perhaps, to await you?”

“No,” Kareem said firmly, gripping Keira’s hand more tightly in his own. Now that they were here, they were going to have to sell the image that they were husband and wife — two lovers so madly smitten with one another that they hadn’t been able toresist a reckless marriage. “We’ll both go to meet with my father, thank you.”

Ismail’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair, but he asked no follow-up questions. He nodded, turned on his heel, and led the way toward the throne room.

CHAPTER 8

KEIRA

King Hassan turned out to be a heavyset man in his early sixties. Upon first sight, Keira’s thought was that he looked like the father of anyone else her age. His hair was graying and there were lines on his face. She felt herself begin to relax.

Then he spoke. “Kareem, who have you brought before me?”

It was so formal, and his voice was so tight, that Keira’s muscles froze right back up. She was hard-pressed not to turn and run away.

Only Kareem’s hand in hers kept her where she was. “There’s someone I want you to meet, Father,” he said. “This is Keira Harding. My wife.”

The room was so silent that Keira could hear the echo of her own breathing, which suddenly seemed thunderous. She held her breath, trembling.

“Your wife?” the king repeated, his tone ominous.

“We married in the United States,” Kareem said.

“You just met this woman?”

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