‘I’m over impressing the maids too,’ James responded.
‘You’re cross.’
‘Yep.’
‘Because?’
‘I’m sure you shan’t bother to work it out.’
They barely spoke all morning and it was a relief when Leila went to work. James rang Manu to ask about a dressmaker for Leila but was taken aback when Manu responded angrily.
‘Did you speak with her family before you proposed to her?’ Manu asked. ‘Have you included them in your plans?’
‘No.’
‘That is offensive,’ Manu said.
‘I’m trying to do the right thing here,’ James said. ‘I asked her to marry me, didn’t I? Surely that’s the right thing to do by them?’
‘James, she is a princess, her father is a king...’
‘Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?’
‘Not railroad her into marrying you. Not cause irreparable damage between her and her parents might have been a good start. You should have listened to me when I told you not to do this.’
‘Just give me the name of a dressmaker,’ James snapped, irritated, yet Manu’s words had rattled him. And they were still niggling even as they sat at the doctor’s and he filled out five hundred forms that made even him blink.
He was rather tempted to ask if her harp money might fund an overseas visitor to the US for a pregnancy but decided to choose his battles wisely.
And he chose not to say anything when the receptionist called her name and Leila stood.
‘Did you want James to come in?’ the receptionist offered. ‘Catherine will be doing an ultrasound.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Leila said. ‘You may not believe it but I’m actually quite capable.’
God, she was arrogant, James thought as Leila strode in.
Leila wasn’t just arrogant, she was terrified.
She did not want to be examined, and neither did she like all the questions that Catherine asked. However, when she lay there trying to be brave as Catherine put some jelly on her stomach, Leila did work out why James had been cross this morning.
Only then did she understand why James might have wanted to be here because there on the screen was their baby. This tiny little thing with a tiny head, arms, legs, fingers, hands and a nose. It even kicked its little legs and Leila was almost overcome with emotion as she saw what that night had made.
‘We’ll do a more thorough ultrasound at eighteen weeks but for now everything looks completely fine. Do you have any questions?’
Leila shook her head.
Catherine tried to engage her, tried to get more information from her, but Leila refused to go there. As she stepped out of the examination room there was James waiting and she could see the anxiety on his features.
‘It is the size of a pea pod,’ Leila said, and held up her thumb and finger in a guess of the size. ‘It has a nose.’
‘That’s good to know,’ James said, and she handed him a photo.
‘If you want to, there is another ultrasound in about five weeks’ time. I think you might like to see it.’
‘I’d like that a lot,’ James said.
‘Where I come from a man would not be there for such a thing. I thought you were offering to come in with me out of sympathy...’
James gave her a smile as they worked a little more of the other issues out. ‘Dinner?’ he asked.
Leila nodded.
Choosing to walk, James dismissed his driver and they went to a gorgeous Italian restaurant that was tucked away from the busy crowds. It was so nice to sit and relax and simply talk and eat as they both took turns to look at the ultrasound photo and admire a very beautiful nose.
‘Are you going to find out?’ James asked.
‘Find out what?’
‘If you’re having a boy or girl.’
‘Does it matter?’ Leila asked, and her voice held a challenge.
‘Of course not.’
‘It did in my family,’ Leila said. ‘My parents hoped I would be a boy.’
‘Well, I’m very glad that you’re not,’ James said, and when she didn’t return his smile he knew there was a much bigger hurt there. He could never have fathomed just how much. ‘I am sorry for the trouble with your family.’
‘It is not your fault.’
‘I’m quite sure that your parents don’t agree,’ James said. ‘Do you miss them?’
He watched her struggle to respond. Leila truly didn’t know how to answer him, for yes, she missed them but she had missed them all her life.
‘Maybe once the baby is here they’ll come around?’ James gently suggested, but she gave a small shake of her head and he could see that she was struggling so he left it.
For now.
‘I got you this...’ James went into his pocket.
‘Another present?’ Leila excitedly asked, and then pouted when he gave her a phone. ‘So you can track me.’
‘You can track me too.’
‘I don’t know how to use it,’ Leila admitted.
‘It’s all set up for you.’ James pulled out his and her phone bleeped and Leila looked to the screen that said James.
He was very patient and walked her through it and she smiled when she saw the text he had sent.
We make beautiful babies.
It was a very nice first text to have from him and it took a few goes but finally Leila replied to him.
We do.
Dinner was served and Leila discovered that she loved pasta and was delighted at a new use for her fork as she twirled spaghetti around it, like James did, pressing it into the spoon.
‘It tastes so good!’ Leila said. ‘Just so creamy and fantastic!’
‘And it comes in so many shapes and sizes too!’
His sarcasm was completely wasted on Leila; she just smiled. ‘Does it? I can’t wait to try them all.’
‘Well, while I’ve got you in such a good mood, I have two things to tell you. Do you want the good news first or the bad news?’ James offered.
‘The bad news,’ his back-to-front fiancée replied.
‘We have to go to dinner with my parents tomorrow night.’ He pulled a face. ‘Spencer will be there too. It will be awkward and uncomfortable and I just want to tell you up front that any tension has nothing to do with you—in public they’re fine, in private it’s a subdued hell.’
‘You really don’t like them!’
‘I really, really don’t,’ James said, and he chose to explain the strange dynamics to her. ‘My father, Michael, isn’t the sunniest person. They married young and my father, just like his brother, cheated...’
‘At what?’ Leila asked.
‘He cheated on my mother,’ James explained. ‘He had affairs, rather a lot of them. Anyway, he was always a bastard growing up, especially to Spencer, and recently we found out why. Well, I found out why. My other brother Ben found out when he was eighteen and it turns out that was the reason he left home...’
‘Found out what?’
‘That my mother had an affair of her own, and it turns out that Spencer isn’t my father’s...’
‘Your mother cheated too!’
‘She did!’ James matched her wide eyes. ‘You are so completely shockable.’
‘But it is shocking. Does your father know?’
‘Yep. There was a massive row a few years back and it all came out. He’d always guessed, which is why he was even meaner to Spencer. No one mentions it now though.’
‘They just carry on as normal?’
‘Hardly normal,’ James said. ‘You’ll see it for yourself soon. Anyway, I’m very sorry to inflict them on you.’
‘It’s fine.’ Leila shrugged. ‘What is the good news?’
‘And slippers?’
‘And slippers,’ James said.
He had found more than a dressmaker. On Monday he was starting Arabic lessons. Whatever James put his mind to he succeeded at, and he had no doubt, after intensive private lessons that, in a few weeks’ time, he would be able to speak with her father and explain the little that Leila wanted—for them not to take their anger with him and Leila out on their child. Not that he told Leila that. His father had been so demanding, so critical, that James never revealed anything till it was achieved.
It was a cool evening but they again chose to walk, and was it for potential cameras that they held hands?
Leila wasn’t sure; she just knew that she liked it.
And she wasn’t sure if the hand that went around her waist when they passed a rowdy group standing on a corner was for her sake, or the sake of the baby.
They walked towards The Chatsfield and just a little way away from it James stopped and turned her around.
‘A kiss for the cameras?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Oh, the press are always sniffing around The Chatsfield. There’s always some scandal going on.’
‘One kiss then,’ Leila agreed.
One blissful kiss that was light and delicious. His lips were warm and they teased, and when he pulled her a little into him, his hand was back on her waist. He hadn’t shaved since the proposal and she liked the roughness of his jaw and remembered how it had felt on her mouth that night.
He stepped in a fraction closer and she wanted his coat around them; she remembered how they had danced. Leila remembered how those lips, how that rough jaw, had felt when he had kissed her some place other than her mouth and her lips parted.
She wanted more passion, she wanted a more intimate taste of him, and she opened her eyes to find his were open too, smiling into hers as he refused her his tongue.
‘Once bitten...’ James said, pulling away, very, very pleased as to how much she had liked it.
Oh, she had.
She was blushing in the elevator as she remembered the kiss he had given her in here. She didn’t know that the tune he was whistling was ‘Memories’; she just knew she was under a different but delicious attack by his mouth.
They headed up to their suite and when Leila came out from taking her make-up off James was in bed.
‘If I go to the sofa I’m staying there for the whole night,’ James warned, and he knew that he’d won because she shrugged and came over to the bed and climbed in.
‘You’ve got a bump,’ James commented, because he had noticed the little swell of her stomach as she came out of the bathroom.
‘I know!’
She picked up her little bottle of oil and rubbed some into her hands and then smelled them.
‘Will you buy our baby such nice presents?’ Leila asked.
‘I already bought it one when I got your ring.’
‘Really?’ Leila said, and then examined the ring that she hadn’t so much as glanced at when he had put it on.
‘It’s actually very beautiful,’ Leila admitted. It was. A platinum band was beaded with little diamonds but it was the huge centre stone that Leila was examining, and she sat up in bed watching it sparkle under the light. ‘Who gifted the stone?’
James smiled at her odd question. ‘Tiffany’s.’
‘I can’t believe that it fits.’
James could.
As he watched her long slender fingers he recalled buying the ring. The jeweller had said it could be sized later. And yet, he had pictured her fingers so many times. Pictured them tracing his body and he had also suckled each one with his lips. He had placed the jeweller’s sizer on the very tip of his little finger and had known beyond doubt that the ring would fit.
Leila turned out the light. James had remembered just a little too much of that night and the kiss downstairs had only confirmed their attraction and so he reached for her.
Leila fought with herself as she lay there on her side with her back to him. His hand was on her stomach and she could feel the heat of his palm as he stroked her newly emerged bump.
He held her most mornings but that was when she went to him.
This was different from that, Leila knew.
She was angry at the want in herself, at the temptation to turn around to his mouth as he started to kiss her shoulder and move his lips up to her neck. She was angry because as his hand stroked her stomach she was willing it to move down.
It obliged.
And still she lay there, fighting herself, for she wanted the roam of his hand and Leila wanted the skill of his mouth. She didn’t want to be in want of him; she didn’t want the power of his touch to enslave her again. She didn’t want the weakness that his touch and words procured, for he was telling her now that he was crazy about her, that he craved her scent, her skin.
He turned her towards him and he came half over her, his mouth seeking hers, his erection nudging against her thigh, and the weight of him was blissful. She ached for his kiss, yet she refused it; she would not give all of herself to him. Leila moved her head so that when she spoke it was to his cheek.
‘Just do it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You don’t have to kiss me, you don’t have to caress me, you don’t have to tell me you care—just do it...’
‘Can you feel that?’ James asked, and didn’t wait for her answer. ‘I doubt it, because it isn’t there any more.’
She got then that he was talking about his erection, or what had been one.
He cussed and then turned on his back and they lay in tense silence until Leila broke it.
‘Is it me you want?’ Leila checked. ‘Or is it just that I am here.’
James rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ He looked over. ‘You’d be a pretty hard fantasy to top.’
She turned her back to him.
‘Look what happened when I wasn’t here.’
‘Yes, I do get what you’re saying,’ James conceded. ‘We’re forced together, but that doesn’t mean...’
‘You forced us together, James,’ Leila interrupted. ‘You pushed for this just because you want to be close to the baby, so that I couldn’t take him or her with me. So please don’t rewrite history and don’t try to pretend that you gave me a choice.’
‘Why don’t we rewrite our history?’ James nudged. ‘Why don’t we start being nice to each other and try dating—holding hands...’ He yawned. ‘Conversation. All the stuff that I’ve spent my life avoiding.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m hot for you, Leila,’ James said, and he made her cheeks pink. ‘Because I remember how good we were and it’s going to be a bloody long seven years otherwise.’
‘James...’ She turned and looked at him, at her very honest playboy, and she offered a suggestion. ‘It isn’t a turn-on when you keep pointing out we have a limited time frame.’
‘Noted.’ James smiled at the progress they made. ‘I’m going to date you, Leila.’ He watched as she tried to hold on to a very reluctant smile. ‘And given I can’t wine you, I’m going to have to dine you. A lot. After tomorrow though.’
‘After tomorrow?’ Leila checked.
He let out a sigh. ‘We’re having dinner with my parents, remember?’
CHAPTER NINE
LEILA WAS MEASURED for her new robes and slippers. It went on for the entire afternoon. She chose from swatches of heavy silks in light colours and made her selection of beads and threads. It was so different from home where her clothes simply arrived and Leila was expected to wear them without comment.
‘They’re going to be bea
utiful,’ Leila said as she told James about them when he came out of the shower to dress for dinner with his parents. ‘I have chosen soft colours—back at home it was all silver and gold...’ She could sense his distraction and her voice trailed off. ‘What should I wear to meet your parents?’
‘Whatever you feel most comfortable in,’ came James’s less than helpful response.
She could feel his tension and she recognised it, for it was how Leila had felt every day when she had lived at the palace.
Leila selected her gold robe and she did up the little buttons at the back that her maid had usually done. James tried not to watch the small struggle it took for her to do that. He tried not to remember the night she had unzipped her dress for him while, at the same time, Leila sulked that he did not help her.
‘Did you get buttons at the front for your new robes?’ James asked once Leila had finally done them up.
‘A woman of standing has buttons at the back and doesn’t do up her own. It is common to have them at the front.’
She noticed him, too, though.
There were beads of water on his back that he had missed while drying. As he went to get out his shirt, Leila wanted to take up the towel and dry his back. She wanted to kiss his tense shoulders, but instead she watched as he slipped his shirt on and selected a tie.
‘You didn’t shave,’ Leila commented because he had said that he was going to.
‘And I didn’t cut my hair,’ James clipped, and then he saw her frown. ‘You’ll see.’
They were driven to his parents and Leila attempted conversation. ‘I am thinking that maybe I should try and ring my parents,’ Leila said. ‘Though no doubt I have been disowned.’
‘I dream of the day my parents disown me...’ James stared moodily out of the car window and then stopped. ‘That was insensitive.’
‘You are at times.’ Leila turned and smiled. ‘I like that about you.’
‘Like what?’
‘That you speak your truth.’
‘Well, you’re the only one who does!’
He took her phone and she gave him the number of the palace phone and he found the international code for Surhaadi, which he tapped into the phone.
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