“Can you please go?”
He nodded once. “I’m on my way out.”
He walked out of the sitting room and she heard the double doors to her segment of rooms close behind him.
Only then did she allow tears to fall.
Chapter Eleven
On the day that would have been her wedding day Angelina took one last look at her suite of rooms in the Rahatan palace, and closed the double doors behind her.
She didn’t know where she would go. She’d given up her house in Italy to follow Princess Carlotta to her new home in Santa Christobel, and she’d given up her position there to come and marry Taj.
She could go back to Texas. That thought only brought intense regret.
She looked out the window at the sun-washed desert and wondered if she would ever feel home anywhere else. Anywhere besides this place that had seemed an alien planet when she’d first arrived.
She moved through the corridor and tried to ignore the way the staff moved around her. The way they ignored her presence. She supposed she was written off now. Cast off by their sheikh, cast off by them.
Taj. Oh, Taj.
Her heart bled his name with each beat.
It was hot outside. It was always hot there. She should be glad to leave the miserable heat. She would be happier if she had any idea of where she would end up. Anywhere beyond the lovely, modern hotel in the center of the capital city.
That was her next stop. It would do for now.
She closed her eyes and looked to the sun, letting it warm her face. She ignored the limousine that had pulled up to the front of the palace courtyard, waiting for her. Waiting to take her away.
“Angel?”
She turned sharply, her eyes opening. “Taj?”
He was standing at the entrance to the gardens. She hadn’t seen him in the days since he’d broken things off with her. She’d assumed he’d gone to one of his other homes. It was what she’d been told.
“I didn’t think you were here.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, his voice rough. “I was trying to keep away until you’d left.”
“Am I so repulsive to you?” she asked, her voice crisp, masking the wound his words left in her heart.
He closed the distance between them, his strides long and fast. “Are you repulsive to me?” he asked, his expression stark. Open. “You can’t ask me that? Do you realize that for the three years since I first met you I have wanted no one else? That I’ve had no lovers because the memory of your kiss was enough to keep me from being aroused by any other woman?”
“Lust.” The word came out a whisper. She couldn’t believe it. That he hadn’t wanted anyone else. That he hadn’t had anyone else. It didn’t seem possible. “Lust is all that is. It isn’t enough.”
“Lust is cheap, Angel. If it were lust I could have satisfied it with any number of women in any number of ways. That’s not what it is.”
“Then why are you making me go?” she asked, her voice breaking, her pride forgotten for the moment.
“Because I will not hold you prisoner. I will not bend your will to fit with mine. I will not make you miserable to ensure my own happiness. Not anymore.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“I saw you, in your father’s home, so beautiful. So perfect. And I wanted you. I sought out to buy you like I would anything else I coveted. Because nothing in my life had ever been denied me. I simply asked, or wrote a check, and it was mine. I thought you would be no different. But you left me. And I thought I would forget. But I couldn’t. When I saw you again, standing in the balcony at the palace in Santina, I thought only of satisfying my desire for you. Of having you. Possessing you. Exactly like the first time.”
Angelina crossed her arms beneath her breasts, tightening her hold on herself. She would stand upright. She would not dissolve. “And now what? You’ve decided you want to return me?”
“Then I had you. And you left,” he said, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “I swore I wouldn’t chase you. I swore to forget you. Still I could not. And when you told me you were having my baby…the chance at last to tie you to me forever. To bring peace to my world. I was happy. Happy because you could not leave me. Because this time you had to stay.”