Scandals Of The Crown: The Life She Left Behind / The Price of Royal Duty / The Sheikh's Heir

As though she was not carrying his child.

“I think there are those in the medical profession who call it shock,” she said, some of the fire he recognized returning to her tone.

“I see.” He looked out his office window, out into his lushly landscaped courtyard. It reflected nothing of the desert beyond it. None of the hot, red sand that stretched as far as any man could see in every direction. “I will send for you. Tonight.”

The heat of Texas hadn’t prepared her for the arid, invasive climate of Rahat. Stepping out of the air-conditioned car that had been sent to the airport and into the elements had been a shock. It wasn’t heat that seared her skin, it was fear that seared her skin and reached down her throat, pulling out every drop of moisture, scorching her lungs.

The sky was bleached white, the sand red, nothing green or living visible anywhere. And the only thing more forbidding than the environment was the man who seemed to rise from it. Standing in front of the gates to the castle, heat waves blurring her view of him, but not disguising who he was.

Taj was waiting for her. His arms crossed over his broad chest, his expression stoic.

She took a step away from the car and looked back at the driver, who told her in fluent English that her bags would be sent in and up to her room.

Her room. At least she would have her own room. She didn’t think she could handle the forced intimacy of sharing one with Taj. Not now.

“Salaam,” he said, moving away from the gates and coming to greet her, his strides long and certain. He looked so at home here. He looked like a part of the desert. And she had never felt more alone.

“Hello, Sheikh,” she said, inclining her head, feeling the weight of his title fully for the first time with his grand palace in the background.

She’d known he was a sheikh. That he was the ruler of a country. And yet, when she’d met him it had been in Texas. They’d made out in a barn and laughed and talked. He had seemed approachable. Accessible.

He seemed nothing of the sort now.

“Taj,” he said. He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face up to him. “You must call me Taj.”

“Taj,” she repeated.

“You are well?”

“As well as can be expected.”

A shadow passed over his handsome face, his eyes darkening. “Good.” He looked up at the sky, shielding his face with his hand. “Come, Angel, we need to get you in from this heat.”

She turned and followed him into the palace. It took her a few moments to realize he’d called her Angel.

Chapter Five (#u3deddbef-46f5-59cf-a22b-7d90f6eda70b)

“Is everything up to your standards?” Taj studied Angelina’s sullen face at dinner. She looked pale. She looked unhappy. She looked like a woman about to face capital punishment rather than one who had been moved into a palace and offered a position as queen.

Although, maybe offered was the wrong word.

“Everything is lovely,” she said, his focus on her dinner plate.

“And yet you sound like a petulant child who has been denied a pony for Christmas.”

Her head snapped up, her green eyes glittering. “Do you think so?”

“I know so.”

“Quite the pronouncement. Especially coming from a man who’s never been denied anything.”

He shrugged. “It’s true, I had seven of my own Arabian horses by the time I was six. They were not considered ponies.” He studied the glass of sharbat in front of him. “But you’re wrong.”

His stomach burned as she glared at him, the green turning arctic, the corners of her lush lips curved down. “Is that so?”

“I have been denied things I’ve desired greatly,” he said, thinking of the years he’d gone without her, of the months after she’d left him. Of the feeling of arousal, relief and utter fear he’d felt when she’d called him again.

“Have you?” she said, scraping her empty plate with her fork.

“You have no idea, do you?”

“I don’t play guessing games, Sheikh, so you might as well cut to the chase.”

“Taj. You will call me Taj. And I’m not trying to play a game. Do you think I gave no thought to you over the past three years?”

She tilted her chin up. “I can hardly say.”

“I did. I thought of you every night. Every time a woman looked my direction. I thought of the one woman I truly desired. And how she had been denied to me.”

Her lips thinned, her body going stiff. “Now who sounds like the petulant child, Taj?”

He leaned back in his chair, arousal and annoyance battling each other. “I have been accused of being petulant, it’s true. But I am royal and it’s my right.”

“Indeed!” she snapped.

“Yes. Indeed. But one thing I am not and you should know this, Angel, is a child.”

Crimson color flooded her cheeks and she stood. He stood as well, anger more in play than any sense of good manners. “I can’t deal with you right now.”

She turned to go and he caught her arm. “Then when will we deal with each other?” He leaned in and caught her scent. Vanilla soap and something beneath it, something clean and unique to Angelina. “When?” he asked again, loosening his hold on her but keeping his hand on her soft skin, his thumb stroking her. “On our wedding night? When our child is born?”

She shook her head. “I…no. But not now.”

He leaned in and kissed her, a challenge. To her strength. Her defiance. To the fact that she seemed so utterly composed and distant while he felt like his desire was a living thing, burning him alive from the inside out.

She kissed him back. Her lips clinging to his, her body arching to his. Then, as suddenly as she acquiesced, she broke away, her eyes wide, her chest rising and falling on short, choppy breaths.

“I’m not in the mood for that, either,” she said.

“Your body, and your manner, would suggest otherwise, my Angel,” he said, his need threatening to strangle him.

“My body isn’t running the show. My mind is.”

“Was that true a couple of months ago?”

A false smile curved her lips. “I think we both know it wasn’t. Call it temporary insanity, sugar.” That name again. She used it to put distance between them. He would not allow it.

“With permanent consequences,” he said.