7. Kareem
CHAPTER 7
KAREEM
“ T ell me that’s not the way most Americans do weddings,” Kareem said as they boarded the jet. They had been married for all of an hour, and were now headed to Qalmar, wasting no time in enacting the next stage of their plan.
“Of course it isn’t,” Keira said. She had just stepped off the stairs that led into the plane, and now she turned a slow circle, taking it in. “And I’m assuming this isn’t the way most people from Qalmar do air travel?”
“It’s not the standard, no,” Kareem admitted with a smile. “I can’t fly commercial for security reasons — nobody in the royal family can. But also, I can’t think why anyone would want to. Commercial planes seem horrible.”
“Have you ever been on one?”
“No, but I’ve seen them in movies. They look like torture devices to me. All those people packed into such a small space, practically sitting on top of one another. I don’t understand why anybody does it.”
“For most people, it’s the only realistic way to travel,” Keira said. “Most of us can’t afford private jets with plush interior carpeting and wide, comfortable chairs, you know?” She looked around. “Which seat is mine?”
“Whichever one you want.” Kareem settled in one of the seats. “Make yourself comfortable. It’s a long flight to Qalmar, and you’re going to need to meet my father when you arrive, so you’ll want to be rested.”
“Wait. I’m going to meet the king? Right away? I thought I would have some time to adjust, Kareem.” She planted her hands on her hips, and Kareem was both pleased and impressed to see that she was more annoyed than she was intimidated. A reaction like that boded very well for how she might handle herself in front of royalty. Of course, she wasn’t going to be able to act indignant around his father — she would have to be more respectful than she was currently. But the worst thing she could possibly be was cowed, and that didn’t seem like a risk.
“You’ll have to meet him first thing, because if I take you back to my estate, the staff will let him know that I’ve moved an unknown person onto the premises, and he’ll start to draw his own conclusions.”
“Wow,” Keira said. “I thought my family was bad. You really don’t have any privacy at all, do you?”
“More than just about anyone else in my family does, actually,” Kareem said. “I’m under less scrutiny than either of my brothers. And it was worse for me when I was younger, because everyone wants to take pictures of the king’s adorable children. Every time we left the house, flashes would go off in our faces. There are pictures of me all over the internet, if you search for them. It’s different now.”
“There aren’t pictures of you anymore?”
“There are, but it isn’t the same. Usually something has to happen. I’ve been named Qalmar’s Sexiest Bachelor a couple of times, and there’s usually a big burst of pictures around that.”
“You’re Qalmar’s Sexiest Bachelor?” Keira stared at him.
Kareem laughed. “Is that so unbelievable? I know I’m not as handsome as the American men you’re used to.” He winked so she would know he was teasing. American men were no competition. They drank cheap beers and laughed far too loudly, and most of them had no idea how you ought to treat a woman. The idea of being intimidated by an American man was laughable to Kareem.
Keira blushed. “That’s not— I wasn’t saying you weren’t handsome.”
So she thought he was handsome? That was interesting. “Go on.”
“I only meant that it’s an impressive title to have,” she said.
“Well, it’s not as impressive as it probably sounds to you. Qalmar is a small country, and I’m a public figure. It isn’t like they’re going to name some random person nobody has ever heard of as Qalmar’s sexiest bachelor. It’s got to be someone they can leak some juicy gossip about and sell photos of on magazine covers. It has to be someone the people are going to recognize.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Keira agreed. “This wedding is going to put you back in the limelight.”
“It will, but less so than usual, I think,” Kareem said.
“Really? You think being Qalmar’s Sexiest Bachelor is going to be more interesting to the people of your country than the fact that you got married?”
“No, don’t misunderstand me — they’re going to be over the moon about the fact that I’m married. It’s the juiciest thing to hit Qalmar in years. But it isn’t me they’re going to be interested in, Keira. It’s you. You’re the one the paparazzi will be chasing. You’re the one everyone’s going to want to know about.”
“Oh,” Keira said, her eyes widening. “I never thought about that.”
“Truly, you didn’t? You never realized that the people of Qalmar would want to know about their new sheikha?”
“Well, it makes sense now that you say it,” Keira said. “But no, I didn’t think about it. I guess I just thought… I don’t know. I paid attention to things like impressing your father. I wasn’t concerned with what it would mean to the rest of the country that we were married.”
“But you’ll be all right,” Kareem said, a prickle of nervousness making its way through the calm he had maintained effortlessly so far during this process. He had been counting on this fact. “You know what it’s like to be a public figure, so none of this is going to be new to you.”
“I’m hardly a public figure,” Keira countered. “Not in the way you mean it. Look at what you told me about being named your nation’s sexiest bachelor. Nothing like that would ever happen to me.”
“I can’t see why not,” Kareem said. “You’re very attractive, Keira.”
It was true. He had thought so from the moment he’d met her. She had an athletic build, leading him to believe that she must spend a lot of time running or going to the gym — but then again, maybe it was just the intensity of the job she did. He’d shadowed her for a single day and it had left him feeling exhausted. He could only imagine what it must be like to have such days on a regular basis, and for the first time, he had gained a true appreciation for the ease and comfort in which he lived his own life. He had to go to the palace gym if he wanted to bulk up, because his everyday life didn’t give him opportunities to exert himself.
Keira’s fit frame was offset by delicious curves, and though Kareem knew it was a little inappropriate, he’d found himself repeatedly checking her out when she wasn’t looking. He wasn’t sure whether the fact that she was his wife now made it more or less acceptable for him to stare at her butt when she walked away from him. It wasn’t as if theirs was a conventional marriage, and he had the idea that she probably wouldn’t like it if she knew he was doing that.
Then again, maybe she would. She was wearing very tight jeans, after all.
Now she raked her hands through her auburn curls, arranging them into some semblance of order. The attempt made Kareem smile. He hadn’t known her long, but he had spent enough time with her to know how quickly her hair would fall back into a disorderly state. He enjoyed it. It was a part of her charm.
“I can’t walk right off a plane and meet the king,” she told him. “I was counting on having a chance to go shopping first. I need something to wear.”
“You didn’t bring a dress?”
“Not a meet the king dress, Kareem!”
“You don’t have to go to any trouble,” he told her. “Wear whatever you have. You can change on the plane.”
“Oh my God. Your father is going to completely disapprove of me.”
“Yes, he is.” Kareem smiled. “But you could show up wearing the most expensive Qalmese fashion on the market and that would still be true. He’s not going to disapprove because of anything you do, Keira. It’s going to happen because he doesn’t approve of me, and so any woman I marry is automatically going to be unworthy in his eyes. You need to let yourself stop worrying about that. There isn’t anything you can do to impress him. That’s not what this meeting is for. We just need him to know who you are — to understand who’s moving into the estate and for what reason. Then he won’t have any questions about it, and he’ll leave us alone to go about our business.”
Keira sighed and knit her fingers together. “I don’t like this.”
“Take it easy. It’s going to be completely fine, I promise.”
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 she was 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 was normal 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. It felt real. 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 to resist 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.