Chapter Four

      She felt awful. More awful than usual. And she’d pretty much felt awful for the past two months, since she’d left Taj lying in her bed and packed her bags as quietly as possible. So feeling worse really was something.

      At least she knew why now. Those two pink lines didn’t lie.

      Misery washed through her. She’d made a mistake. A big one. And now there was nothing left to do but try to call Taj and tell him. It was her responsibility. Did sheikhs have listed phone numbers? She wasn’t certain.

      She put her head in her hands for a moment, then straightened from her near-fetal position on the bed and took her phone from her nightstand. Dissolving into a puddle wasn’t happening.

      The past two months hadn’t been great. She’d missed Taj. Missed him desperately. But the facts hadn’t changed. He didn’t love her. And she was perilously close to loving him again.

      She’d tried to throw herself into taking care of Luca. Getting him adjusted to his new life in Santa Christobel with Carlotta and her fiancé, Rodriguez. That had helped. When they’d arrived, she’d been called on a lot while the new royal couple had been learning to deal with one another.

      And Rodriguez had been scared to death of Luca at first.

      But things were changing now. They needed her less and less.

      And now she’d found out that she had a child who needed her even more than her little charge. Her own child. And Taj needed to know.

      She let out a low whine and surfed through the contacts on her phone. She found the number for Rodriguez’s personal secretary, a number she had just in case there was an emergency and for some reason neither Rodriguez nor Carlotta could be reached.

      She hit Send.

      “Hi. This is Angelina.”

      “Is everything all right with Luca?”

      “Everything’s fine. He’s with his parents today I…I was wondering if you knew how to get a hold of the palace in Rahat.”‘

      “Taj?”

      Taj’s stomach tightened, his heart beating hard. It was Angelina. He knew it with certainty. Not because he recognized her voice, though he did, but because only she made his body react in the way it was reacting now. It was a near supernatural connection. One he would have scoffed at had he not felt it personally.

      “Angelina?”

      “Yes. I’m…I need to talk to you.”

      He tightened his hold on the phone. “You are talking to me. What is it?”

      “I…I shouldn’t have just left that morning. I’m sorry.”

      “It isn’t as though I have wasted much time thinking about it.” A lie. He had thought of nothing else. No demons had been exorcised that night. It had not brought back his desire for other women. If anything, he was less interested than he’d been before. Angelina seemed to fill him, surround him.

      Angelina Carpenter was an addiction he couldn’t seem to kick.

      “I’m certain you haven’t,” she returned, her voice sounding muted. “But whether or not you’ve thought of me at all…well, that doesn’t really matter. I’m not calling to confess my undying love.”

      “Of course not.” He ignored the fierce seizing in his chest.

      “I’m pregnant.”

      He dropped the phone. It crashed onto the marble floor and he prayed fervently that he had not lost the call as he bent to pick it back up. “You’re what?” he asked, his tone rough.

      “I’m pregnant.” The silence hung thick between them, the only sound in the room the beating of his heart, his harsh intake of breath. “You’re the father, by the way. That’s why I called.”

      “I know I’m the father,” he bit out. “What do you suppose I think of you?”

      “It wouldn’t be an insult, I suppose. How many lovers have you had since we parted?”

      “None,” he snapped.

      “Oh.” She sounded shocked. Subdued.

      “You must come here.”

      “I figured as much. I’ll have to tell Carlotta and…and Luca.” She sounded sad about that. Sad to be coming to him? Or sad to leave her charge?

      “We have to get married,” he said.

      “I figured that, too.”

      “You sound very calm.” It maddened him that she could be so calm. So unaffected. As though the world had not just tilted on its axis. As though she had not just agreed to marry him.

      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.