Читать книгу Royal Temptation: Protecting the Desert Princess / Virgin Princess, Tycoon’s Temptation / The Prince's Second Chance - Carol Marinelli, Brenda Harlen - Страница 18

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SUNRISE FOUND MIKAEL back in her bed, but wearing only hipsters this time, with Layla asleep by his side. He inhaled the traces of bergamot in her hair—it was fading.

Nothing had happened last night. Layla had been crying too much and it had taken for ever for her to go to sleep.

He didn’t love her, Mikael decided in the warm light of morning. Instead, he told himself, it was as Layla herself had once said—he was attracted to her, perhaps a bit infatuated.

His world operated much more easily when it was devoid of love.

He picked up the snowglobe she had given him as she stirred awake beside him and watched snow fall for the first time on the Opera House.

‘It doesn’t snow in Sydney,’ he said. ‘Not since 1836.’

‘It’s a global warming snowglobe,’ Layla said, curling into him, loving the feel of her leg sliding over his. ‘The weather is doing crazy things everywhere.’

He stared at the settling snowflakes, wishing that she did not make him smile so easily.

If he did love her, then it was a very pointless love.

‘What time are we leaving?’ she asked, and Mikael’s jaw gritted—because just to stop her crying he had suggested that today she check out of the hotel and they go to his home.

He’d rather hoped she might have forgotten his offer. Mikael’s home was his haven. He had needed to be there the other night just to get away from the case, and he did not like sharing it with anybody else.

It was either here or to his city apartment that he brought women.

‘I was just thinking about that,’ he said. ‘It’s probably not such a good idea. There are no clubs or anything—just beach.’ He’d hoped that Layla would decline, yet she seemed delighted with the idea.

‘I would love to go to your home,’ she said. ‘And even if there aren’t any nightclubs there shall still be dancing,’ She smiled. ‘Thank you!’

She felt calmer this morning. Last night had been horrible. After Mikael had stormed off she had realised just how selfish she had been—not just to Mikael. She was glad he was putting her brother’s mind at ease but so terribly worried too, because Zahid would demand to know why Mikael had been with her at those times.

He would sort all that out, Mikael had said.

She hadn’t believed him last night, but this morning she did. Because, warm and safe in his arms, she was sure that there was nothing he could not do.

‘Before I take you to my home I have to go and see Demyan,’ Mikael said. ‘His wife has just had a baby and I need to visit. While I am gone you can sort out your stuff, and then I will come back and you can check out.’

‘What present are you taking for the baby?’

‘A snowglobe?’

‘Mikael!’ Layla scolded. ‘That was my present to you. You have to keep it for ever. Though you do have to take a present for the baby,’ she said. ‘We can go shopping and choose one, and then I would love to meet your friends. We can go on the way to your house.’

He said nothing, but Layla was becoming literally too close to home for him.

* * *

Checking her out proved just as complex as checking her in.

A case was needed for the rather remarkable amount she had accumulated, and even the chef came to say farewell to her. Terrence carried the flowers that Mikael had bought her.

It was only as they drove off that it dawned on Layla that she wouldn’t ever stay there again, and as they passed the court she struggled to come to terms with the fact that the magical day she had spent watching Mikael was the only one she would ever have.

She had planned her getting here so hard, and had been so determined to have fun and to cram all she could into her one special week, but it had never occurred to her that it might kill her to say goodbye.

And that was just to the hotel staff.

It was starting to dawn just how hard it was going to be to say goodbye to the other.

For both of them.

They stopped at the very boutique Layla had escaped from and bought a cashmere blanket and some little clothes and waited as they were giftwrapped. Then they stopped at another boutique and bought a bikini and some beach dresses for Layla, before heading to Demyan and Alina’s very luxurious penthouse.

‘What is Demyan like?’ Layla asked as they took the elevator up.

Mikael just shrugged, not quite comfortable with the cosiness of it all.

‘Surely he’s not as talkative as you?’ she teased. ‘What about his wife?’

‘I have only met her a couple of times,’ Mikael said. ‘She seems more pleasant than the first wife, but the bar was not set very high.’

Back to cynical, Mikael told himself. It was safer that way.

‘This is Layla,’ Mikael introduced her.

Alina was sitting down, holding the baby, and Demyan looked as if he hadn’t shaved or slept since they’d last spoken. Mikael tried to ignore the slight start of surprise on Demyan’s face. He had never brought a woman to his friend’s home before.

‘Actually, this is Princess Layla, and she’s on the run.’

‘You said not to tell anyone,’ Layla scolded. ‘You said that I was not to use my title.’

‘Demyan and Alina are fine,’ Mikael said. ‘Congratulations!’ He gave Alina a brief kiss on the cheek and then peered at the baby. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he duly said.

‘It’s okay, Mikael.’ Alina smiled. ‘I’m not going to breastfeed in front of you.’

Mikael actually smiled at someone who wasn’t Layla. ‘Okay, I will have a seat, then!’

Despite his reluctance to bring her along with him, Layla made the whole visit so much easier for Mikael. She handed over their gift to Alina and oohed and ahhed over the baby while Mikael and Demyan walked over to the bar, where they chatted for a while as they shared a congratulatory drink, speaking in Russian.

‘She’s gorgeous!’ Demyan said. ‘You are good together.’

‘We are good together because she’s temporary,’ Mikael said.

‘So was Alina,’ Demyan said, and they shared a wry smile because Alina had started as Demyan’s temp.

‘Well, in this instance it really is temporary. Layla has to return to her family in a few days.’ Mikael shrugged as if it really didn’t matter. ‘I’ll probably be bored with her dramas by then.’

He very much hoped that he would be.

But he doubted it very much too.

‘How is fatherhood second time around?’ Mikael asked.

‘Just as good,’ Demyan said. ‘Actually, better. I know a bit more what I am doing than I did with Roman. Alina is a natural mother.’

Even though they spoke in Russian this was all a foreign language to Mikael. What was a ‘natural mother’? He looked over to his friend—a man he had had a fist fight with a few months back, when Mikael had suggested that he stop paying child support for his son, given that Demyan’s ex-wife had told him that Roman might not be his.

Mikael had laughed then at Demyan’s passion.

He was starting to glimpse it now.

‘Why does she have to go back to her family?’ Demyan asked.

‘Because they love her,’ Mikael answered, ‘and because she loves them too.’

‘Mikael—?’ Demyan started, but Mikael shook his head.

‘Don’t.’

There was no point discussing it, for there was nothing he could do.

As they headed out to the elevator Layla was all smiles, but when the doors closed she rolled her eyes.

‘What does that mean?’ Mikael asked.

‘You know.’ Layla smiled.

‘No.’

‘All my cousins have babies, and you hold them and you smile, and you say the right thing, but…’ Layla held out her palms in a helpless gesture. ‘Then you run out of things to say.’

Very reluctantly Mikael smiled, but that was enough incentive for Layla to speak on.

‘Now Trinity and Zahid are having a baby it will be the same with them. That was how I escaped. Trinity was watching me like a hawk, but I suggested we go in a baby boutique and once we were in I might just as well have not been there.’

‘You don’t like babies?’

‘I don’t dislike them,’ she said, ‘though they do freak me out a bit, with their big heads and eyes. I know I shall love mine, but really I would love more of this.’

‘Of what?’

‘Kissing and dancing,’ she said as they stepped out of the elevator. ‘Anyway, pregnancy isn’t always a good thing…’

‘Are you worried that it might ruin your figure?’ He smiled.

Just when he thought he knew a little of what went on in her mind, Mikael found out there was so much more he didn’t know.

‘No.’ Layla shook her head as they stepped out onto the street. ‘I worry about death, given that it was pregnancy that killed my mother—she died giving birth to me.’

‘Layla…’ He went to catch her wrist but she shook it off.

‘It is not something I wish to speak about,’ she said.

‘You can.’

‘What’s the point in that?’ she challenged.

There was none.

They walked to the car in silence.

Layla was dreading a future with Hussain by her side.

Mikael felt suddenly ill at the thought of the same.

It was a bit strained on the drive to his property.

Layla was lost in her thoughts and Mikael glanced over several times, trying to work out what she was thinking. Layla wished she hadn’t told him that, for she did not like to discuss her fears about getting pregnant, and there was nothing that could be done about them anyway.

So, as they left the city behind, rather than sit in pensive silence Layla nagged him to teach her to drive instead.

‘Please, Mikael….’ she said, for perhaps the twentieth time. They were miles from anywhere and there was barely a car on the road, just mile after mile of ocean, and then a low white property came into view and she glimpsed what must be his luxurious house. ‘Please let me drive.’

‘No,’ Mikael said as they pulled up on his huge drive.

He took her case in and left it in the hall as Layla looked around.

It was like nothing she had ever seen—a green oasis, and the tropical bush land outside seemed a feature of the home.

The place gleamed with a mixture of modern appliances and a few treasured antiques. A huge black and silver globe hung in one corner, and Layla guessed rightly that it was perfectly angled.

‘I am there,’ she said, pointing straight to Ishla.

If only the world were really that small, Mikael thought as she clipped on high heels through his home.

It was terribly hard for him to comprehend that the last time he had been home Layla hadn’t existed in his world.

‘Oooh, I like your chess set.’

‘Leave it,’ he said, watching her fingers hover over his knight. It felt strange having her here—a streak of feminine beauty in a home that was very male. He did not like the way her eyes seemed to take in each ornament, or each book that lined the walls, and he tried to distract her with the delicious view.

As they walked through to the lounge there was a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean, with its waves constantly rolling in, and Mikael opened the French windows to let in the magical sound.

‘Do you want to go the beach?’ he offered.

‘Maybe later.’ She shrugged and with a complete lack of boundaries walked through the house to his bedroom, which looked out onto the water also.

‘Where are the maids?’ Layla asked with mild interest.

‘I don’t have maids,’ Mikael said. ‘I have someone who comes in daily when I am here and weekly at other times.’

‘So it really is just us?’

He should be offended, Mikael thought as she snooped through his wardrobe and then into his study, except he couldn’t be, for she simply had no concept of living alone.

She thought his home was very beautiful and absolutely intriguing. Unlike the palace, Mikael’s walls were not lined with portraits of ancestors, for he did not know from where he came. Instead the art was modern, and Layla stared at a red line on the wall that was fractured in several places before continuing and branching out.

‘What is that?’ She frowned and peered closer.

‘It’s a lifeline,’ he said, admiring his favourite piece. It had cost an absolute fortune and it spoke to him in many, many ways—not just about this past but about his clients, their victims.

‘A lifeline?’ she queried. ‘Oh, you mean like this?’ She held up her palm and then looked back at the painting and pointed to the first fracture. ‘So is this you in Russia?’

‘It’s just a painting.’

It was more than that, though, to Mikael, and he looked at it and thought of the future and the next fracture that would appear when Layla left.

She wanted to know more—there was so much that she wanted to know—yet intuitively she knew that he had already shared more than he was comfortable with. It might take months, possibly years, to truly know him, and all they had were days.

‘Layla…’ Mikael broke the tense silence because there was a question that needed to be asked. If she felt a tenth of what he did then something needed to be addressed. ‘Are you sure that you want…?’

She did not want his question—she did not want this tension that was building to a head—and so she interrupted him before he could say what he must not.

‘I actually think I could paint that,’ she said stepping back from the painting and nodding. ‘If you got me some red paint I could do another one for you…’ She turned and saw his rigid lips and kissed them. ‘I’m playing,’ she said. ‘Well, sort of.’ Because she was quite sure that she could paint it—after all it was just a broken red line! ‘I love your home. It is very…’ she tried to think of a word to use ‘…very Mikael.’

‘So, what do you want to do?’ he asked, because he didn’t like her examining his things.

‘I already told you—I want to learn to drive,’ she said.

‘Layla, it’s not something you learn in a few days,’ he explained. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be doing other things?’

She looked at his delicious mouth and then back to his eyes.

‘Teach me to screw, instead.’

Deliberately he did not blink. Mikael knew she had picked up that word from him, and really he would prefer that she didn’t return to Ishla with that in her vocabulary.

‘That’s not a great choice of word, Layla.’

‘You said it the other night—you said that she didn’t want to lose a good—’

‘Lover,’ he said, but that didn’t work—because he had never been in love until now, and what was the point of falling in love when any day now she’d be gone?

‘I want to come again,’ Layla said.

‘That’s better.’

‘I want you to come too. I want to see.’

Still he did not blink, but Mikael chose the safer option. ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’

He watched the smile play on her lips as they headed back out to his car. ‘You think you won there, don’t you?’

‘I think I did.’

He turned the car around and went through a few basics with her, but she just kept turning his radio on. ‘Listen to me, Layla’ he said, turning the music off for the third time. ‘If I say brake then you are to brake—there is to be no arguing.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m in charge here…’ Mikael warned, but he saw the press of her lips and the dark mood that had been building since last night inched towards breaking point. Was she serious about anything? he wondered, though he had enough insight to know he wasn’t talking about driving.

A mini-tornado with black hair and eyes had spun into his life and changed every part of it, and she didn’t even seem aware of the damage she would leave behind.

‘Layla!’ he warned as her fingers moved towards the stereo, and the anger in his voice was more than was merited, perhaps, but it came from within.

‘Can I just remind you that I am a princess…?’

He climbed out of the car with his mounting temper and walked back to his sprawling home. She rushed after him.

‘Don’t walk away from me,’ Layla ordered. ‘Mikael. You do not walk away from me.’

She soon changed her mind when he turned and she saw the look in his eyes as he strode back towards her.

‘Okay, you can go now,’ she said, but he did not stop walking till he was right in her face.

‘Never,’ Mikael said, ‘pull the princess rank on me.’

‘But I am one.’

‘Don’t we all know it?’

‘You’re cross with me.’

‘You—’ Mikael was on the edge of losing his temper; he never did—nothing goaded him, he was the goader ‘—are the limit. Have the keys.’ He tossed them at her. ‘Better yet, I’ll take you back to the hotel and leave you there. Better still, I’ll take you back to the city and leave you on the street. I’m done.’

He bent down to pick up the keys from the ground and headed back to the car. It was better that he was away from her; she’d have his heart otherwise.

‘Come on.’

‘Where?’

‘I just told you.’

‘You can’t leave me in the city.’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Everyone is looking for me.’

‘You’ll be very easy to find,’ he said, and opened the door for her. ‘In.’

‘No.’

‘In.’

‘No.’

‘Fine,’ he said, ‘then you get to stay at the house. I’m off to the hotel…’

He started the engine and she ran in front of the car.

He sat with the engine idling, in air-conditioned comfort, as Layla stood in the hot Australian sun, and he was a fool to even pretend that he did not love her.

Life, Mikael thought as she came round to his window, had been so much more straightforward without her in it.

She tapped on the window and waited as it slid down.

‘Please don’t go.’ she pleaded, but he said nothing. ‘I was playing and I should have listened.’ Still Mikael stared ahead. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘For…?’

‘Not listening when you were trying to teach me.’

He went to slide up the window.

‘For being a princess.’

‘You can be a princess, Layla, just not when it’s the two of us. Do you get it?’

‘I think so.’

Even he was having trouble defining it. ‘When I say enough, or stop, or there is danger, you must listen to me without question.’

‘You are just like my brother and father—’

‘Please,’ Mikael dismissed. ‘Do you know, I’m actually starting to lean to their side? If they’ve had to put up with your dramas for the last twenty-four years I’m full of admiration, in fact, that they got you to adulthood alive.’

‘We only have a couple of days and you spoil them by being mean to me,’ she said.

‘You forgot to stamp your foot.’ He saw her tense, frustrated face as still she did not get her way. ‘It won’t work with me, Layla.’

‘It worked before.’

‘It won’t work in the important things. Now, do you want to learn to drive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who’s in charge when you’re a learner driver in my car?’

‘You are.’

She climbed in, and this time Layla did listen.

Half an hour later they bunny-hopped back into his long drive…

‘More to the left,’ he said, his hand hovering over the handbrake, and wondered if he should take the wheel. But she righted the car—though a fraction too late.

‘What was that noise?’ Layla asked.

‘My paintwork.’

‘Oh.’ She pulled to a halt, actually quite smoothly. ‘How did I do?’

‘Very well,’ Mikael said, wondering why he wasn’t jumping out of his car to inspect the damage; instead he leant his head back on the headrest and gave up fighting it.

Pointless and hopeless, perhaps, but in love was where he was.

She was the important thing.

Which meant that something had to be discussed.

And this time when he raised it he wouldn’t let Layla interrupt him.