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  This couldn’t be happening! For so long she’d told herself her reaction to him all those years ago had been the product of girlish fantasy.

  ‘My condolences on your recent loss.’

  Karim’s words leached the fiery blush from her face and doused the insidious sizzle of awareness. Shame enveloped her, leaving her hollow and surprisingly weak.

  How could she respond like that to the mere sight of Karim when she’d buried her husband just weeks ago?

  Abbas might not have been perfect. He might have been cold and demanding. But she owed his memory respect. He’d been her husband.

  Safiyah looked at her clenched hands, white-knuckled in her lap. Slowly she unknotted them, spreading stiff fingers and composing them in a practised attitude of ease.

  She lifted her head to find Karim sitting opposite her, long legs stretched out in a relaxed attitude. Yet his eyes told another story. Their gaze was sharp as a bird of prey’s.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She said no more. None of the platitudes she’d hidden behind for the past few weeks would protect her from the guilt she harboured within. A guilt she feared Karim, with his unnerving perceptiveness, might somehow guess. Guilt because after the first shock of discovering she was a widow, and learning that Abbas hadn’t suffered, she’d felt relief.

  Not because she’d wanted her husband dead. Instead it was the relief of a wild animal held in captivity and suddenly given a glimpse of freedom. No matter how hard she tried, she hadn’t yet managed to quell that undercurrent of excitement at the idea of taking control of her own life—hers and Tarek’s. Of being simply...happy.

  But it was too early to dream of freedom. Time enough to do that when she knew Tarek was safe.

  ‘I’m waiting to hear the reason for your visit.’

  Safiyah had imagined herself capable of handling most things life threw at her. She was stunned to discover Karim’s brusque tone had the power to hurt.

  She blinked, reminding herself that to hurt she would have to care about him, and she’d stopped caring long ago. She’d meant nothing to him. All the time he’d pretended to be interested in her he’d had other plans. Plans she hadn’t understood and which hadn’t included her. At best she’d been a smokescreen, at worst an amusement.

  Safiyah lifted her chin and looked him full in the face, determined to get this over as soon as possible.

  ‘I want you to take the Assaran crown.’

  Copyright © 2019 by Annie West

  ISBN-13: 9781488044908

  The Innocent’s Emergency Wedding

  Copyright © 2019 by Natalie Anderson

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