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.