The Scandalous Collection

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.

Chapter Five

“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.

Lust leached from him as he looked down at her flat stomach. A sense of surreal awe filling him. She was carrying his baby. Their baby.

He’d thought about children, in terms of heirs and fulfilled duty. But he’d never thought about what it would really mean to create a child. To have a baby that was part of him, part of its mother. Part of Angelina.

If they had a daughter, would she have her mother’s red hair? Or would his Middle Eastern heritage dominate? He’d never given time to such thoughts before. And now he seemed to be bogged down by them.

“You’re pregnant,” he said, releasing his hold on her completely and taking a step back. It was no longer desire that was trying to strangle him.

She swallowed visibly. “Yes. That is why I’m here.”

“But…you’re having a baby.”

“That’s what pregnant means,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m a wreck, actually, Taj, but thank you for asking.”

He frowned. “What has wrecked you?”

“I feel like the world’s biggest idiot. I slept with a guy, that’s you, with no protection and there’s no excuse for that. None.”

“It was my responsibility. I failed. You were…you were a virgin,” he said.

“So? I didn’t live under a rock. I know how things work. I know about being responsible and I wasn’t.”

“Desire gets the best of people sometimes.” It had certainly gotten the best of him. For the past three years it had gotten the best of him.

She shook her head. “I suppose that’s true. Because there is no other explanation for it.”

She turned to walk out of the room and he felt something large, indefinable, squeezing his chest. “Do you regret it, Angelina?”

She stopped, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know yet,” she said, her voice quiet.

He vowed right then that she would never regret it. Not if he could help it.

Chapter Six

It was only six in the morning and already the temperature was rising. The palace was cool, but stifling, the walls feeling like they were closing in on her. She doubted she would ever get used to this place. She wanted to run. She wanted to hide.

It wasn’t an option.

Taj had sent dressers to her room this morning with beautiful silk gowns in bright colors. They were cut into Western styles but bore beautiful Eastern influences. They were fit for the Queen of Rahat, one of the women said.

And they were right. But she wondered if it was the mistresses of Rahat who had worn them before. If they’d been used by other women. The idea made her skin itch. Made her feel violently possessive and jealous in a way she had no right feeling.

She’d run away from being Queen of Rahat once. Now it seemed she was trapped.

“Sheikh Taj is on his way,” the other woman said. “You are meeting the press this morning and he would like to make sure you are prepared.”

Her stomach sank, a faint impression of nausea wrapping itself around her. “You can tell him that I would rather have bamboo shoots shoved up my fingernails,” she muttered.

“Noted.”

She turned and saw Taj standing in the doorway. She froze and her two aids bent their heads and scurried out of the room.

“Did you bring bamboo, sugar?” she asked, turning her Texas drawl up a notch.

“I thought perhaps you would prefer tea,” he said, lifting a delicate china cup up to chest level. “It’s green tea, no caffeine. I thought it might be preferable to torture.”

“Tea, yes, a meet-the-press moment, no.”

“Our engagement must be announced.”

She wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to keep from falling apart. “I haven’t even been here for twenty-four hours.”

“We’ll need to marry before it becomes obvious you’re pregnant.”

“I forgot you’re traditional around here.”

“Show me the royal family that disregards such traditions completely. Have they disregarded them in Santina?”

Angelina thought of Princess Carlotta, of the shame the press had put her through for having a child out of wedlock. Even now, years after the fact, it marked her. Marked her entire existence, and the existence of her son. “No.”

“Then do not play like Rahat is such an anomaly. We have traditions to uphold, certain expectations we must meet. You will become accustomed to it.”

“I’m not sure I can,” she said, her voice hardly achieving the volume of a whisper.

When he responded, his tone was surprisingly gentle. “What other option is there, Angelina?”

She could leave. She could go into hiding. Hope that he never found her. She could take her child away from his father; she could steal her child’s birthright. Deny it the chance to be royalty, the first born of a king.

Yes, she could do that. But it would be wrong. It would be selfish. If Taj were a bad man, if he were incapable of being a good father, of loving their child, then maybe it would be excusable. But the fact was, he was just as likely to be a good parent as she was.

The look on his face after dinner last night, when his eyes had fallen to his stomach, had nearly brought her to her knees. There had been tenderness there, a longing that had made her chest ache in response.

No, she could not take Taj’s child from him. She couldn’t take her baby from his father.

And that meant, no matter how much it sucked for her, she had to stick it out.

She met Taj’s eyes and her heart tripped and fell over itself. There were certain things that wouldn’t be a hardship. Being with Taj…it had been incredible. Unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

He had been as amazing as she’d imagined. No, even more amazing.

But she was afraid of what he made her feel, too. Afraid of getting involved with him again. Afraid of loving him again.

He was arrogant and entitled, with strong and proud tendencies when he was angry. Loving him should take effort. Yet, she found it was a lot harder to stop herself from loving him. And that was just stupid.

“There is no other option,” she said.

“You knew that from the beginning.”

She nodded. “Yes. I did.” From the moment she’d seen the positive test, she’d known. It was either hide the truth from him forever, or embrace life as his queen. “But…where did these dresses come from?” If she really was going to be his wife she would take a stand here at least. She wasn’t wearing cast-off gowns from cast-off women.

His face hardened, for a moment he looked like he’d been carved from stone. “They have been here. Just as this room has been here. Awaiting its queen.”

“What?”

“They are yours. I had them prepared when you accepted my proposal.”

“And you…kept them?”

He tilted his chin upward, the gesture making him look haughty. Defiant. “I was to marry one day with or without you. Clothes are altered easily enough, why should I replace them.”

“Why indeed?” she struck back. “If the woman in question does not matter, if she’s only part and parcel to a business agreement then why does it matter what she might want? Who she is?”

“It matters,” he said, his voice rough.

She took a step back, her stomach curling in. “Oh. I…I…”

He appraised her for a moment, his dark eyes searching. “It will not be so bad to be my wife, will it?”

She didn’t know what to say. Words stuck in her throat. Words in denial and in agreement.

His expression hardened. “Well then, let us prepare to speak to the media.”

She had a feeling she’d done the wrong thing. But she could not find the words to placate him. Because they would be a lie.

It would be hard to be married to him. Hard to guard her heart against feelings she didn’t want but wasn’t certain she could deny.

“You were exquisite,” Taj said as he closed the limo door and encased them in the air-conditioning.

“I hardly spoke.” She felt horrible. Her head was pounding, and she was still shaking from having to sit there in front of so many people.

“And in Rahat, that will be considered a bonus.”

“Oh, I do hope you’re joking,” she said, treating him to her deadliest glare. In addition to the headache, she was hot, starving and in no mood to take garbage off anyone. Least of all Taj.

He shrugged, as if shaking off her anger. “I was. Sort of. But the way the more traditional citizens of my country think is not necessarily the way I think.”

“And how do you think, Sheikh Taj Ahmad, because I think I’m entitled to know that seeing as I’m about to leg-shackle myself to you for the rest of our lives.”

Something flashed in his dark eyes. Amusement mixed with something deeper. Deadlier. “A leg shackle doesn’t do anything for me fantasy-wise. Handcuffs, perhaps.”

“I am in no mood,” she said, keeping her sharp glare trained on him.

“My apologies,” he said, his voice stiff. “I expect a wife to meet my needs. To provide me with heirs.”

“What?” she asked, leaning forward in her seat. “Meet your needs? What does that mean?”

“I expect for her to share my bed, to accompany me to events, to have my children. That’s straightforward enough.”

“That’s…sexist enough,” she said.

“How? It has nothing to do with you being a woman, and everything to do with being the wife of a sheikh. I have particular duties as ruler, and you have particular duties as the spouse of a ruler.”

“So if I was sheikh…”

“You very likely wouldn’t be called sheikh.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. If I were sheikha,” she said, drawing out the syllables, “then you would be expected to fulfill my sexual needs and hang on my arm at events?”

“That sounds fair,” he said, a frown marring his features. “I take it you are not thrilled with my expectations?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, feeling panic start to rise in her breast. “Does any of it matter? I’m stuck. You have the power here. You and I both know that.”

“I am not a tyrant, neither am I a dictator. I get no pleasure from beating you into submission. What do you expect from a husband?”

Love. If there was love, so many other things could be forgiven. But without it…what was there? “I…I would like to be considered as a person, not an ornament. I don’t want my life to begin and end with my husband’s needs. I want him to consider mine. I want a husband who will love his children and take an interest in them.” A husband who loves me.

His brows were drawn together, his expression contemplative. “It is not how things are done.”

“What isn’t?”

“There are…certain things expected of the Sheikh of Rahat, things I learned as a child and…they did not include caring for children or…many of the other things you mentioned. My duty is to my people.”

“But if you can’t love the people in your household, how can you expect to care for those you rule?”

“Ruling requires distance and a firm hand.”

Something inside her deflated and sank down to her toes. “It’s the love that you have trouble with.”

“I did not learn it.”

The way he said it, so authoritative and so final, told her he never intended to try.