The Life She Left Behind

The Santina Crown… Royalty has never been so scandalous!

Heiress Angelina Carpenter traded in diamonds for denim—and the freedom to make her own choices—when she fled from her arranged marriage to Sheikh Taj Ahmad. Now working as a nanny for the royal family of Santina, Angelina can’t help but risk a glimpse at the glamorous life she left behind during a lavish party…and runs straight into Taj! And this time, the ruthless sheikh has no intention of letting his runaway bride get away…

A prequel novella to The Santina Crown series.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Preview: The Price of Royal Duty

Chapter One

It had finally happened. Sheikh Taj Ahmad, ruler of Rahat, had lost his mind completely. She was there, standing in the shadows on the otherwise vacant balcony that extended over the back portion of the ballroom. In an instant all the well-dressed, beautiful women that surrounded him faded away. He could see nothing but Angelina Carpenter.

So many times she had featured in his dreams, and yet, she had never quite looked like this. Hair pulled back into a ponytail, skinny jeans hugging her curves. This was a formal event, the engagement party for Prince Alessandro Santina. And famed oil heiress Angelina Carpenter was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

The entire party had possessed an air of the surreal from the moment it had started. The presence of the loud, tacky Jackson family, the prince’s future in-laws, with their penchant for drama had turned the royal setting on its head from the beginning.

The tension was only heightened by the attendance of Alessandro’s ex-fiancée, who looked beautiful and brittle, ready to crack at any moment.

But none of that mattered now. He couldn’t see it anymore. He could hardly remember the reason he’d come tonight. There was nothing but Angelina now.

She turned her head, her eyes clashing with his, in spite of the distance and every person between them. She froze, up in her hiding place there on the balcony, her beautiful lips parting.

He could see her intake of breath, see her hold it, and he held his in answer. Or possibly because breathing had simply become too difficult.

“Taj,” the woman to his right, the one who had been attempting to climb him all evening, purred his name, her fingers curving into his bicep, “would you go and fetch me a drink?”

He turned to look at her, breaking the spell Angelina had held him under. The room came back, conversation rising in volume. His unwanted companion’s red lips were pursed into a pout. His stomach clenched. With annoyance, not desire.

“I do not fetch,” he said, breaking out of the woman’s grasp, redirecting his attention to the balcony.

Angelina was gone.

Had she really been an illusion? A dream? A waking one this time, sent to tempt and torment him with the memory of what he could not have?

It wasn’t possible. Angelina, in his dreams, was always the polished heiress. Never undone, not even in his more erotic dreams, when he pictured holding her in his arms, their naked limbs entwined. Even then she was the soul of high-gloss 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.

Chapter Two

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, then the moment her love for Taj had died, all of her thoughts of him would have dissolved and blown away like desert sand. They hadn’t. He still plagued her sleep. He was still the man her body desired.

The absence of love hadn’t changed that. It was a sobering realization, just how much Taj still mattered. How much power he still possessed. That he could make her run. She gritted her teeth. No. She didn’t run. At least, she wouldn’t run now. Wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, that level of importance.

She took a breath and her hand turned the door handle before she’d fully processed the action, and she found herself staring into Taj’s obsidian eyes.

“Don’t run from me again,” he bit out.

“Again? Don’t flatter yourself. I was never running from you. I was running to independence. I’m not a frightened child. I don’t run from things.” She crossed her arms beneath her chest.

“Liar. In the hall just now, you were very much running from me. From the attraction that still exists between us.”

“Attraction? Have you been drinking tonight?”

“I don’t drink. You know that. And yes, attraction. It has always been there, or have you forgotten the night we spent in your father’s barn?”

“You make it sound like we…” His gaze dropped to her lips. “We kissed. That’s all.” And they’d cuddled up together, looking at the night sky through a hole in the roof, her hand on his chest, her mouth spilling out all of her stupid dreams for the future. Dreams she’d believed he’d shared in. But while she’d been counting stars, he’d been counting money. The money he would make when he married her.

“There are simple kisses, Angelina, and then there are the kinds of kisses we shared that night. And they are not the same thing.”

No, they weren’t. But the only reason they’d been different was because she’d been barely twenty and had fancied herself in love. They’d felt new and precious, and more exciting than anything else ever had.

“We just kissed, Taj.”

“And if we kissed again? You think you would feel…?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I would feel nothing.”

He leaned in and her breath caught. She didn’t back away from him. She couldn’t. “Is that so? You have not thought of me since you left? Not once?”

Always. “No.”

“You lie again,” he said, his voice rough, his eyes glittering in challenge.

If he was trying to intimidate her, it wouldn’t work. Her eyes were open now, to the world, to the people around her. People she’d thought loved her.

She was not a child anymore. And she would not act like one. Wouldn’t allow him to walk into her life and devastate it or think even for a moment that he could. She wouldn’t allow him to have all the control. No. She had control now. She had power.

She put her hands on his face, his stubble rough beneath her palms. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his. They were hot and hard, immobile. Her stomach tightened, a fierce rush of need flowing through her, the kind of need she hadn’t felt since the last time Taj had held her in his arms.

He didn’t move and she angled her head, sliding her tongue against the seam of his lips. That was when he moved, like a man breaking free from chains. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, deepening the kiss, his tongue moving against hers.

She could feel his heart beneath her hands, raging hard, out of control. Every bit as out of control as she felt.

He took a step and she took a step back, then he took another and she followed. He released her for a moment to shut the door hard behind him, the sound jarring her back to reality.

“What are you doing?”

“You started it, Angel, shouldn’t you have the answer?” he asked.

“I don’t…” Her pulse thundered in her head and she tried to form a coherent sentence. She had meant to show him she had command now. That she wasn’t so easily manipulated. But all of those intentions had been knocked right out of her the moment their lips had touched.

She couldn’t prove a point, not while she was so utterly lost in sensation.

He took a step toward her, his expression changing, softening. He put his hand on her cheek. “You are real. You must be.”

“I…of course I am.”

“You never said goodbye to me when you left.”

“I was angry at you.”

The corners of his lips turned down. When he made that face, it was easy to imagine him as a sulky, spoiled child. Nothing about that should be endearing, and yet, she found it was. “I surmised as much. I never did find out why.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head. “I assumed perhaps you had found a better prospect, and yet here you are, a nanny, so I’m certain now that isn’t the case.”

She laughed. “I did find a better prospect. Independence. Life beyond being your accessory. When I found out my father was promising you my hand in order to cement the merger I…I couldn’t stay. I’m not a thing, Taj, and I refused to be traded like I was.”

“Angelina…”

“Is this the part where you tell me I misunderstood? That you weren’t really going to do it? That you had other motives?” She’d wondered over the years. Wondered if she’d been too quick to run. If she should have stayed and talked to him.

Waiting for the words now was tantamount to torture.

“No. I’m not going to say that. Because I was using you to get the merger. Though, I confess I thought you were complicit in the arrangement.”

Only because she’d imagined she’d meant something to him. That when he’d kissed her, there had been feeling in it.

“I wasn’t.”

“And now what, Angelina? Do I leave you here? Do we never see each other again?”

The idea of Taj turning and walking away, the thought of never seeing him again, made her heart ache. More than that, it reminded her of the ache that had existed since she’d lost him the first time.

He was the man she’d never been able to forget. The one demon from her past left unexorcised. What would it take? What would it take to rid her body of her desire for him? To squeeze those deeply held feelings from her heart? To erase him from her mind.

Her body burned from the kiss. Her heart burned from looking at him.

She hated it. She hated how much he controlled her. Whether he was standing in front of her, or in another country entirely, the man held too much power. It had to end.

He turned away, and her stomach jolted. Leaving, separation, that wouldn’t work. It wasn’t enough. She knew it. And she was desperate. Desperate to make it go away. Her desire for him was beneath her skin, in her blood.

There was only one way she could think of to bleed herself of it, to pour it out of her.

“Don’t go,” she said.

He stopped, his shoulders going ridged. “What?”

It wasn’t too late to go back. To stop herself from touching him. From confirming what she was certain he suspected. But she didn’t want to. She had run from him, from her feelings, her heartbreak, all those years ago. But she hadn’t escaped it. It had clung to her, wrapped itself around her heart like a clinging vine.

Distance hadn’t killed it. But he was here now. Maybe if she could have him, just once, she could draw a line through that part of her life and call it done.

She took a deep breath, ignoring the trembling in her fingers as she reached out to put her hand on his shoulder. “Stay. Stay with me tonight.”

Chapter Three

Taj’s original theory, the one in which Angelina was a mirage, was starting to seem likely again. She had felt real beneath his hands, beneath his lips. Her unsteady fingers felt real on his back, but the words she’d just spoken made it all seem like a fantasy.

He turned to face her, his heart raging, his blood hot. “What did you say?”

She bit one of her lips, swollen from his earlier attention. “Stay. I want you to stay.”

“And count stars?” he asked, his tone sardonic, his stomach tight with the memory.

She snorted a breath and shook her head, her strawberry colored ponytail swinging with the motion. “No. I’m not a girl who thinks she’s in love anymore. I’m a woman. I got everything I could ask for from my relationship with you. Heartbreak. Betrayal. And yet I never got the one thing that might have made it all worth it.”

“You want sex,” he said, going for direct. Because if direct didn’t frighten her, then he wouldn’t question her bold proposition.

Her chin tilted up a fraction, her expression hard. “Yes.”

“Sweet, romantic, Angelina who wanted to wait until our wedding night? Who told me just now she ran because she did not want any sort of arranged marriage?” His words were harsher than he intended, much harsher. But he could hardly breathe. His chest was tight, his muscles so tense they were shaking.

He had been waiting for this moment, for her, for what seemed like an eternity. And she was here now, wanting him. He was afraid that if he moved she would vanish into smoke.

“I might have been those things at one time but I’ve grown up. A lot,” she said, her tone hard. Sad. “And I understand that we can’t have everything we want in life. But I can have something I want. I can have you.”

“You want me?” He needed to hear her say it, and that need was a weakness he didn’t want to stop and examine.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked you to stay.”

“Why now?”

“You aren’t the only one here capable of capitalizing on an opportunity,” she said.

He stopped then and looked at her more closely. She had been so young when he’d first met her. And while three years hadn’t changed much in terms of physical age, she was different now. Gone was that magical glitter in her green eyes, that sweet and easy smile. She looked tired. She looked hard.

She looked like a woman who had seen too much, rather than one just starting out into the world.

Had he caused that? Or had something happened to her after she’d left Texas? He didn’t like to think it had been either of those things.

Back then he had been doing just what she’d said: capitalizing on an opportunity. But he had liked her. He had treated her well. He’d certainly never meant to hurt her.

He had paid, though; he had paid dividends since she’d walked out of his life. In ways he could not begin to explain.

Just one of the many things affected had been his sex drive. He’d had no desire for a woman, for sex at all, since she’d left. And now that she was here, that had changed. It had changed drastically.

Desire didn’t feel like he remembered. Had it always made him feel like he was standing on the edge of a cliff? Had it always stolen his breath and made his body tremble? He didn’t think it had. But it was now. He felt perilously close to losing his balance. To losing himself.

“Then that is what I am to you,” he said, “an opportunity?”

“An opportunity was all I was to you, sugar.” She’d called him that back in Texas. It had sounded sweet then. An endearment. Silly but it had done something to him. Now it seemed more of an insult.

“I am not interested in banter, or arguments,” he said. “If you want me, come here and show me.”

It was not his way to have a woman make the first move. It never had been. But he had to give the power to Angelina now, mostly because he stood powerless before her. What had happened in the space of the past half hour?

Taj Ahmad, Sheikh of Rahat, ruler of many, transfixed, controlled, by a woman.

But the revelation didn’t bring the power to prevent it. He had no strength to stop what was unfolding. And no desire to stop it, either.

She took a step toward him, her eyes darkening, the emotion in them unknowable to him. And for once, he was grateful to be ignorant of something.

“This time,” she said, “you have to kiss me.”

If he did, he would be the one laying down his hand. The one giving in. He did not give in. It wasn’t in him.

At the moment, his body seemed to disagree. Because he was moving to her. And then he took her in his arms. He relished the feeling for a moment, the sensation of having her breasts pressed against his chest, of her softness. Her strength.

It was little wonder no woman had managed to appeal to him since Angelina. She was like no other woman, and his desire for her had remained piqued but unsatisfied since he’d met her.

He needed satisfaction. He needed to have her. In his arms. In his bed, or her bed, so that he could move on.

Resisting wasn’t an option. It wasn’t a possibility.

He was lost, in her kiss, her touch. He pushed his hand beneath her shirt and felt her smooth, creamy skin. He pulled his hand away, as though he’d been burned. He felt like he had been. Down to his soul. He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t want to.

Not when she was arching against him, whispering words of encouragement, her hands moving over his back.

He looked at her face and saw her eyes, closed tight, as though she was afraid to open them.

“Look at me,” he growled. Her eyes opened wide. “I would have you know who you’re with.”

She looked confused. Dazed. “How could you be anyone else?”

With a groan, he claimed her lips again, walking her back to the opulent bed that was in the corner. He laid her down on the soft duvet, and peeled her shirt over her head, revealing snow-white breasts barely covered by a thin web of a lace that was trying to pass for a bra.

His hand shook as he traced the line of the bra with his fingertip. Had a woman ever made him shake before? He did not think so.

For a moment, he feared it would it be over too quickly. A fear he had never experienced in his life. But three years without sex was a long time. And now that he was breaking his fast, it was with the object of his fantasies.