perfection.
This woman, with her strawberry hair pulled back into something as juvenile and unsophisticated as a ponytail, was not the Angelina of his fantasies.
That could only mean she was real.
Cold pin pricks dotted over his back, a clammy sweat on his forehead, as he wove through the ballroom, headed to the back doors. Unless there were secret passageways in the Santina palace, and it was possible, she would have to pass by the ballroom when she went down the stairs.
He moved quickly through the crowd, paying no attention to the people who tried to greet him. He hardly heard them, hardly understood them. The low din of conversation and the strains of music simply faded.
He pushed the doors open and cursed when he saw the empty corridor. Perhaps it had been an illusion. Another round of torture at the hands of Angelina Carpenter. Three years since he’d seen her and still she tormented him.
He heard a sound to his left and he followed it, feeling a fool on an even more foolish errand. But he could not stop himself. Not now.
His heart thundered and he rounded the corner and into another stretch of hallway, just in time to see long strawberry hair disappearing around the next corner.
And he ran.
It couldn’t be him. No, it very well could be him, and that was the problem. The very scary, very bad, very heart pounding-hand-shaking problem.
Angelina leaned against the wall in the vacant corridor and closed her eyes, tried to catch her breath. Taj.
Flashes. Pictures. The happiest moments of her life flashed behind her eyes. Taj when she’d met him for the first time, his warm smile. His attempt at wearing a cowboy hat and adapting to the Western style of horseback riding. And the evening they’d spent in the main barn at her father’s ranch, the night she’d fallen in love with him.
She fought hard against the pain that was threatening to overwhelm her. So much of her life, of what had happened in the past three years, was tied to Taj. All of it, really. Because without Taj, without her father’s deception, she never would have run away from Texas. Never would have ended up in Italy, taking care of Princess Carlotta’s son, Luca.
Without Taj, she would never have known what it felt like to love someone, and find out how much it hurt when they didn’t love you back.
A muttered curse in Arabic brought her head up, and her gaze collided with Taj’s coal colored eyes. He looked the same. Dark and commanding. His black hair cropped short, no sign of the slight curl at his neck that she’d loved to twirl around her fingers.
It was the same Taj, yet different somehow. Leaner. Harder.
The impact he had on her hadn’t changed, either. Her heart was pounding, her body shaking, a surge of adrenaline making her blood run hotter, faster.
He was the man who haunted her dreams. The reason she woke up in a cold sweat, aching and unsatisfied. The reason no man had appealed to her in the least since she’d left home.
He exhaled a breath and for the first time since spotting him from the balcony, she drew breath in.
“It is you.” He sounded like a man addressing a ghost. He looked about like that, too.
She tried to smile. “And it’s you.”
“I was invited to help celebrate this occasion. What escapes me is why you’re here. No one has heard from you in three years.”
“How do you…how do you know that?”
“I keep in touch,” he said, his voice cold as stone and just as hard.
She bet he did. Her father had one of the things that Sheikh Taj prized above all else. Oil. Their money was slick with it, and they had been ready to make an alliance. She imagined they had made it, even without her as the glue to hold it together.
Without her as the sacrificial virgin.
“You and my father always did have a lot in common,” she said, her tone sharp and lofty. Rich, considering she was standing in front of him in jeans and a ratty ponytail while he was in a custom made suit.
“Not as much as you might think,” he said.
“I don’t have time to wonder what that means. I have to get back.”
“To?”
“Luca. He’s asleep he…”
“You have a lover with you?” he asked, his voice going cold.
She laughed in spite of the situation. “Luca is a child.”
He jerked back as though she’d hit him. “Your child?”
“Princess Carlotta’s child. I’m his nanny.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “You traded your life, your future, as my queen to be a nanny?”
“No. I traded being your queen for some self-respect.”
She turned and walked away from him, her entire body shaking, regret threatening to climb up from her chest and strangle her.
She closed the door to her room behind her and leaned against the doorway. She’d lied to escape from him, but hey, who could blame her?
Luca was sleeping in his own room, and he didn’t require her care at night. That was one reason she’d felt confident enough to sneak down to the engagement party. To catch a glimpse of the life she no longer lived. Glittering royals, an undercurrent of drama beneath the smooth, refined setting. It was all so familiar.
That had been her three years ago, down among the people with her formal gown and fake smile. An heiress with a comfortable, wealthy life stretching in front of her. But she’d told Taj the truth. She’d traded all that for self-respect. For a chance to control her own life and find out what she could be other than a pawn.
A hard knock vibrated the door behind her and she turned sharply, her hand over her mouth. He’d followed her. She shouldn’t be surprised.
The worst thing was, she wanted to open the door. Her hand was already on the knob. Just like three years ago, what she truly wanted, was to be with him.
But then, she hadn’t wanted marriage without love. And Taj hadn’t loved her. He’d wanted to acquire her, along with a significant merger with her father’s oil company.
Of course, she hadn’t known that. She’d thought the young, Arabic leader had been smitten with her. That he’d looked at her and seen something special. That he’d been as crazy about her as she’d been about him. She’d been so young then. So naive. Love had seemed an easy, wondrous find. It had seemed the be-all and end-all.
She’d learned since that that wasn’t true.
If love was so powerful, so important,
