PENNY JORDAN - Scandals Of The Crown - The Life She Left Behind / The Price of Royal Duty / The Sheikh's Heir

“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.”

He shook his head, a sudden flash of disgust curling his lip. “But something changed. I found myself wanting to give to you. And as I did, I realized how much your happiness meant. How much more it meant than my own. How could I be happy when you were so miserable? How could I hold you prisoner and call you mine?”

“But…but… Does my father have anything to do with this…has he?”

“Nothing,” he said, his voice fierce. “I rejected his offer of a partnership after I lost you. It was I who rejected it, not him. Because I couldn’t face having a connection to you without having you.”

“You said you kept in touch.”

His expression turned bleak. “I called sometimes. To see if there had been word of you.”

“You did?”

“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I love myself, and I don’t think I have ever felt that way. I’m certain I haven’t. I want…I want your happiness so much more than I want my own. So you must promise me, Angelina, that you will be happy. And then I will let you go with a smile.”

Angelina’s breath caught, her hands shaking. “You…love me?”

“Yes,” he said.

She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “I…I can’t do what you asked just now. I can’t go and be happy.”

“What do you need?” he asked, his eyes shining. “What do you need and I will give it to you.”

“You,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face. “I need you.”

One of his arms curved around her waist and he lowered his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “Why did you wish so badly for things to be different, then?”

“Because you didn’t love me. I wanted your love and knowing I couldn’t have that…that’s why I was sad.”

He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers. “I did love you. I didn’t know what to call it. And I did not love you in the right way. I know with certainty that I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. But now I’m ready to love you right.”

“What changed?” she asked.

“I did. I think it’s because of you. No, I know it is. You have changed me. You have humbled me. And I needed it, badly.”

“I love you, Taj. I loved you then. But I couldn’t stand the thought of marrying you just because you wanted to strengthen your nation’s economy. I wanted to be more to you than that.”

“You are,” he said. “Though I could not have said it then. I was foolish.”

“Maybe we both were.”

“Maybe we will be again,” he said.

“But we love each other. And that’s why we’ll stay together.”

“You’ll stay with me then? Be my wife?”

“Yes,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, her heart swelling with emotion, tears sliding down her cheeks.

He kissed her deeper, tightening his hold on her.

“I’ll get a procession of camels, right, sugar?” she whispered, nipping his earlobe.

He chuckled. “Nothing is too grand for you.”

“On second thought, I don’t need the camels.”

“You don’t?”

She shook her head, raised her hand and traced a line of moisture on his cheek. “No. I only need you.”

* * *

The Price of Royal Duty

Penny Jordan

‘A SH.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.

She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually seeing him with that strikingly sensual maleness of his that she remembered so well were two very different things.

She would have recognised him anywhere, just as she had done now merely from her brief glimpse of the back view of him as he walked into the ballroom and then turned to refuse a glass of champagne. Just the turn of his head, just the thick dark sheen of his hair and the way it curled into the nape of his neck, was enough to conjure up old memories. Memories of longing recklessly for the right to bury her fingers in its softness, curl them around its strands and then urge his mouth down to her own. A shudder of sensual awareness jolted through her. Some things never changed. A certain kind of need, a certain kind of desire, a certain kind of love.

First love? Surely only a fool believed that first love was an only love, and she prided herself on not being that. No, Ash had killed that tremulous, tender love when he had rejected her, telling her that she was a child still who was putting herself in danger by offering herself to a man of his age, that she was fortunate that his own sense of honour and the repugnance he felt at the very thought of taking what she offered meant that she was protected from him taking advantage of her naivety. Telling her that even if she had been older he would not have wanted her because he was wholly committed to someone else.

She had promised herself then that in future her love would only be given to a man who was worthy of it and who valued it and her. A man who loved her as much as she did him. And because of that promise to herself, she needed Ash’s help now, no matter how much her pride reacted angrily against that need.

Putting down her virtually untouched drink, she started to walk towards him.

Standing in the packed ballroom in the castle on the Mediterranean island of Santina, the official residence and home of the royal family of Santina, Ashok Achari, Maharaja of Nailpur, frowned as his grim, obsidian gaze swept the scene in front of him. Beyond the open doors to the stunningly elegant ballroom with its crystal chandeliers and antique mirrors stood footmen wearing the livery of the royal family. An impressive dress-uniformed group of the king’s own personal guard had been standing motionless in front of the castle in honour of the occasion and the guests. As a fellow royal, Ash had seen them salute him as the limousine that had picked him up from the airport had swept up to the main entrance. It was plain that no expense was being spared to celebrate the engagement of the king’s eldest son and heir.

His fellow guests milled around him, and laughter and the sound of conversation filled the air.

Ash had gone to school with the groom-to-be, Alex, and they were still close friends. Even so, he hadn’t wanted to attend this engagement party as he had more pressing matters to deal with at home, but duty was important to Ash—far more so than any personal desires—and duty had compelled him to accept.

He had, though, ordered his pilot to have his private jet standing ready to fly him back to Mumbai where he had an important business meeting in the morning.

A sixth sense had him turning round just as an exquisitely beautiful petite brunette came hurrying towards him.

Sophia.

A woman now, not the girl she had been the last time he had seen her in person. Where he had remembered a girl trembling on the brink of womanhood, innocent and eager, in need of protection from herself, he was now being confronted by a woman who clearly knew all about her sexuality and its power and how to both use it and take pleasure from it. That his body had recorded and registered that information in the time it had taken him to exhale and breathe again pointed to a weakness within himself of which he had previously been unaware.