Читать книгу Royal Temptation: Protecting the Desert Princess / Virgin Princess, Tycoon’s Temptation / The Prince's Second Chance - Carol Marinelli, Brenda Harlen - Страница 15

CHAPTER EIGHT

LAYLA AWOKE LONG after sunrise and lay in bed for a happy hour, just remembering Mikael’s kiss and replaying it over and over, before ringing down for breakfast—only to find out that it was lunchtime.

‘What would you like, Layla?’ The staff thought she was wonderful, and the head chef was brought to the phone to help her with her order.

‘I want someone to come and help me put on the television, and I want a thinly sliced and peeled apple to cleanse my palette, and then something nice to eat.’

‘Such as?’

‘Sweet,’ Layla said. ‘Some fruit. You choose for me. One other thing—can I get a joint from you?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, just some sweet milk to drink, then.’

Apart from when she had caught that cold from wearing damp clothes Layla had never spent a day in bed before, and she intended to enjoy it.

The maids delivered her food and Terrence, the butler, gave her a tutorial on the television’s remote control, and Layla lay in bed, still in Mikael’s shirt, dipping raspberries in white chocolate sauce and drinking milk laced with cinnamon and nutmeg while watching television.

It was fantastic!

She watched as the couple on the screen started kissing, and blew out her breath as she remembered her kiss last night with Mikael again.

She watched, eyes wide, as the man started to take off the woman’s top, and started to blush as he undid her bra.

Oh!

Layla knew that she should not be watching this, that she should turn it off, but she could not stop herself. She wanted some lemonade from the fridge. Usually she would use the phone to get Terrence to fetch it for her, but she did not want to be disturbed and so, with her eyes not leaving the screen, for the first time Layla fetched a drink for herself.

The couple were now on the bed, with a sheet over them, and Layla just about choked on her lemonade at the noises they were making. She reached for the phone—not to call down to the desk, though; instead she called Mikael.

‘I can’t speak now, Layla,’ he said. ‘I’m about to have a meeting with my client’s family.’

‘Just one question?’ she begged.

‘One.’

‘I am watching television and I think people are having sex in the middle of the day and they are not married to each other.’

‘You’re not watching television, then,’ he said. ‘You’ve put on the adult channel.’

God, he thought, another thing he’d have to have removed from her bill before her brother saw it.

‘Oh!’

He heard her gasp of disappointment. ‘Now they are putting on the thing where they try to make me thirsty again.’

‘That’s a commercial.’ He laughed. Okay, so she wasn’t on the adult channel. ‘Do you know the name of the show that you’re watching?’

Layla told him.

‘That’s what we call a soap,’ Mikael explained. ‘They’re not really having sex—they’re just acting.’

‘Well, it’s very good acting,’ Layla said. ‘She looks how I felt when you kissed me last night. Are they dressed beneath the sheet?’

‘I would think so.’

‘But I saw the top of his bottom.’

‘I have to go.’ Mikael hesitated as Wendy buzzed. ‘Hold on a moment, Layla.’

She would happily hold on, she thought—her show was back on and the couples were lying together and smiling.

‘I really do have to go, Layla.’

‘Just one more question…’ She didn’t get to ask it.

‘Layla, the jury’s returning.’

‘So soon? But—’

Mikael had already hung up.

He met with his client, who was sweating. ‘It’s not good that they’re back so soon, is it?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘A little bit of hope would be nice.’

He did not respond. He had done his very best for the filth that now sat next to him. What hope had he given his victim that night?

Mikael sat, his face impassive, waiting.

‘All rise.’

Mikael did.

* * *

Layla hopped on one leg as she watched the court reporter on the court’s steps and Terrence stood beside her, navigating social media and giving her updates.

‘The verdict’s coming.’

‘Oh,’ Layla said. ‘Do you think he’ll be upset if he loses?’

‘He rarely loses,’ Terrence said. ‘Probably…’ Terrence paused. ‘Okay, here it is…’ He paused for a moment and then read out the verdict. ‘Guilty.’

Layla gasped as pandemonium hit the courtroom.

‘They’re shouting abuse from the public gallery,’ Terrence said, reading from a laptop as Layla watched the news. ‘The judge is thanking the jury.’

‘What are they saying about Mikael?’ Layla demanded.

Nothing the court reporter or Terrence could find gave her a clue as to how he was feeling.

Mikael Romanov, the court reporter said, was, as always, a closed book.

Not even later, as he walked down the court steps and ignored the reporters, did his expression give Layla an inkling as to his thoughts.

‘Send someone to tidy the room,’ Layla said, ‘and I want more fruit and chocolate sauce and champagne…’ Rapid were her orders.

‘Champagne?’ Terrence checked. ‘I don’t think he’ll be in the mood for celebrating.’

‘Now, Terrence, please!’

* * *

Mikael’s expression was unreadable as he walked back to chambers—just as it would have been had his client been found not guilty.

No one could ever guess what went on in his mind.

He de-robed and took a long drink of sparkling water. Then, a short while later, his car gunned from the car park and Mikael left in a puff of smoke, driving straight to the hotel, where he threw his keys at the valet and this time told him to park it. He took the elevator to her door.

‘Enter,’ Layla called, and he took out his swipe card and let himself in.

She was sitting up in bed, still wearing his shirt. There was champagne in a bucket and he hadn’t had a drink in two months, and there was fruit and chocolate sauce. She understood him, Mikael realised, somehow she understood him—or rather she simply let him be.

‘Are you upset?’ Layla asked.

‘No.’

‘Because I thought you could just hide in bed with me. Not for sex. I have always dreamt of it, but today I found out it is really nice to sit in bed and just eat.’

‘Okay…’ Mikael’s voice was a touch wary, but he took off his jacket and tie, shoes and socks, and then opened the champagne. He poured two glasses and joined her, but lay on top of the bed rather than getting in.

‘How do you feel?’ Layla asked, and Mikael thought for a moment before answering.

‘Elated.’ He turned and looked at her. ‘There’s no such thing as a bad day at the office for me, Layla. That bastard is going down for a very long time.’

He breathed out, stunned at his own honesty.

‘Do you ever not try your best?’ Layla’s eyes narrowed as she asked a very brave question—one perhaps no one else would ever dare ask.

‘I try my best for all my clients. I fight for them with everything I have.’

‘Always?’

‘Always,’ Mikael said. ‘And then, if they are found guilty, I know, as best I can know, that a guilty man has gone down.’

The champagne tasted nice, Mikael thought.

‘Aren’t you going to ask if it bothers me…?’ He was surprised by the lack of the oh, so familiar question.

‘Clearly it doesn’t,’ Layla said. ‘I doubt many people could get you to do something you did not want to do.’

‘You did,’ Mikael said. ‘I took you on when I didn’t want to.’

‘Ah, but you were attracted to me,’ she said, and dipped a raspberry in white chocolate sauce. ‘Intrigued.’

‘I was,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t trouble you, then?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, and instead of eating the raspberry herself she fed it to him, liking the feel of his lips on her fingers and the wetness of his tongue so much that she did it again as she spoke on. ‘For a system to work, both sides need to be represented well. In some lands there is no such system.’

‘How does it work in Ishla?’

‘If you are found guilty of a crime you are either pardoned, removed or killed.’

‘You can be pardoned?’

‘Of course. It is at my father’s discretion and once you are pardoned there is no grudge, no stigma. If you cannot be fully pardoned then you are removed from society till you can be fully pardoned.’ She looked over at him where he lay on the bed, silent. ‘Why are you smiling?’

‘That’s what you do to me,’ he admitted. Maybe it was because she was here just for a few days—just a transient timeframe—which meant he could let down his perpetual guard a touch.

‘Did you always want to study law?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you?’

Mikael shook his head. His guard wasn’t that low. ‘It’s just as well you don’t read and write,’ he said, pulling her into the crook of his arm. ‘You’d be running for prime minister.’

‘But I can read and write,’ Layla said. ‘Just not English. But I am going to learn—it will be good for my work.’

‘You work?’ This he had to hear!

‘Of course—though I don’t get paid for it. My father was concerned because although the girls in Ishla were receiving an education their grades were far lower than the boys. We had a discussion and decided that I would speak with them once a month and encourage them. Now I speak to all the classes. Every day I have students, but I cannot know all their names. Their grades are improving,’ Layla said. ‘I’m very good at it and they love me.’

‘You’re modest too.’

She shrugged. ‘I loathe false modesty. I tell my girls to be proud of themselves and their achievements.’

They drank more champagne in silence.

Sometimes she felt his mouth on her hair; sometimes she felt his fingers stroke her forearm. It was the most peaceful Layla had ever felt. He dozed, and she liked the thump-thump of his heart in her ear, liked the rise and fall of his chest, and she liked the view too—because she could see the outline of what had been pressing into her last night.

‘What are you doing?’ Mikael asked as her fingers moved to undo the bottom part of his shirt.

‘I want to see the hairy bit beneath your navel again,’ she said, but his hand moved hers away and held it and she watched with a smile as the outline widened and stretched.

‘What made you want to study law?’ she asked again.

‘You’re persistent, aren’t you?’

‘Very, very persistent.’ Layla nodded. ‘I always get my own way in the end, so it would be much easier on you to just give in now.’

It was tell her or let her hand go.

Speak or find her mouth.

Mikael knew what he would prefer, but she had invited him to her bed ‘not for sex’, and it had been the nicest hiding place he had ever had.

He couldn’t even be bothered to put the news on and find out what was being said.

Okay, he’d tell her why he had studied law.

Some of it.

‘When I grew up I had no family. I just remember a flat and lots of people, but there was no one there that I called a parent. There were other children and lot of fights, drinking. One night everyone was moved on and I started to live on the streets.’

‘As a beggar?’

‘And a thief,’ Mikael said. ‘When I was around twelve, maybe thirteen—I don’t know exactly how old I was—a government worker helped me. His wife was dead and he took me in. I shared his home with him and his son, I got an identity, an assumed date of birth, and I went to school. I was always Mikael, but I took his surname.’

‘What was it?’

‘Igor Romanov,’ Mikael said.

‘He adopted you?’

‘No,’ Mikael said. ‘I just took the surname. I was grateful to him, and worked very hard at school, but I still got into a lot of trouble. I was very angry. But when I got the gold medal at school Igor suggested law.’

Layla lay there trying to imagine a life without her family. She missed her mother every day, and even though she had never met her she knew so much about her.

Imagine not knowing anything…

Mikael lay in the dark place in his mind that he didn’t visit very often.

How he had fought to survive in a world where no one had cared if he lived.

Worse than that, though, had been the boredom—hour after hour to fill.

Had he not had chess, Mikael knew that he would have lost his mind. Day in, day out, night in, night out, hour after hour, he would sit with men older than him who taught him so well he could soon beat them—until people had started to pay for a chance to play him.

They hadn’t paid much, but it had been enough to feed him.

That was when Igor had stepped in, having heard about this boy who was being paid to play chess. Mikael had carried on playing, but there had been books then, and study, as Mikael had fast made up the years of education he had lost on the streets.

Layla’s persistent fingers had slid into the gap between his shirt buttons and now idly stroked the hair there. He went to move them, but from her breathing and the sudden stillness of her fingers he realised she was sleeping.

Mikael lay and watched the sun set over Sydney as the tension of the past few months receded.

‘Layla…’ He felt her stir, and despite having washed her hair himself he could still smell the exotic scent when she moved. ‘Would you like to go out?’

‘Out?’ Her hand pulled away from his stomach.

‘Dancing.’

She was off the bed in a moment, and peeling off his shirt as she headed to the bathroom. Mikael had never known anybody get dressed so quickly.

‘I’ve never danced,’ she said excitedly as she pulled on her glittery shoes. ‘What if I can’t do it?’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage,’ he said, ringing down for a driver and preparing to head out into the world instead of locking himself in for the night.

The trial was over; it was time for some fun.