Princess's Secret Baby

She just feared the conversation ahead.

Leila let out a breath and chose to face it. ‘I’m fine,’ she said to the worried receptionist. ‘You don’t need to send anyone.’

‘Tell them to send afternoon tea because we’re going to be here some time.’ James turned his head but she ignored that request and put down the phone.

‘Get dressed,’ he said.

Leila went to her closet and tried to decide what to wear. She found western clothes very confusing and longed for robes, but she had only brought one with her.

Oh, what to wear?

‘Leila...’ James warned as she took her time.

He was here to discuss the business of their child so Leila selected a black linen suit that she had seen the beautiful businesswomen wearing as she sat in Central Park and watched the world go by.

She laid it out on the bed and then opened a drawer and looked for underwear and a top that would go with the suit. She could hear him tapping his foot in impatience but Leila refused to be rushed.

It was more than impatience; he knew she had undone her robe and he was fighting instinct not to turn around.

Leila felt strange having him here in the room as she dressed, for she remembered the heat of their undress.

She pulled on panties that she had bought in Macy’s when her card had still been working. Then she pulled on a little silver top that she had bought there too.

‘How long does it take to get dressed, Leila?’

‘It takes me a considerable time,’ Leila answered. ‘I’m not used to dressing myself and neither am I used to buttons.’

He tried not to smile and then he grimaced as he remembered her tearing off his shirt.

‘Are you dressed yet?’

‘I haven’t tied back my hair,’ Leila said.

His patience ran out and he stood. As she picked up her hairbrush James removed it from her hand and put it on the dresser and for the first time today they met the other’s eye.

‘The hair is fine,’ James said. ‘We’re going to talk now.’

Not yet, James realised, as there was a knock at the door.

He knew it would be someone to discreetly check if she was okay.

It was.

‘I would tell you if I wanted to be disturbed,’ Leila said rudely, and James raised his eyebrows at the tone of her voice and wondered where the woman he had met all those weeks ago had gone. ‘Dismissed.’

She closed the door and turned to James.

‘Take a seat at the table,’ he told her.

Unlike the night they had met, he sat opposite her. When he spoke, his voice was not kind as it once had been.

‘No lies, Leila. You are going to tell me the truth...’

‘I don’t lie.’

‘Oh, is that so,’ James said, ‘Ms travelling musician from Dubai.’

‘I like music.’

‘Did you set out to get pregnant?’

Leila looked at him. ‘No.’

‘I said no lies!’ James was doing his best not to shout.

‘I am not lying. I would never choose this—I vomit all the time. It is the most horrible thing to happen to me...’ Her eyes reproached him as if he was the cause of it.

Which he was, of course, but... ‘You told me you were on the pill.’

‘I was,’ Leila said. ‘James, I did not set out to get pregnant.’

‘So what did you set out for?’ James asked.

‘I ran away,’ Leila admitted, and she looked at the man who had taken her heart the night she had run, and she hated him for walking out the next day.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were pregnant?’

‘You seemed busy with your blonde women,’ Leila sneered.

Busy trying to get over you, James thought, though he didn’t tell her that.

‘Yep, I was also busy being beaten up in dark alleys.’

‘I apologise for my brother’s violence towards you. If it makes you feel any better, I am not speaking to him now,’ Leila said. It wasn’t just for that reason though that Leila wasn’t speaking to her brother—Zayn had called Leila last night to warn her that the news of her pregnancy would break today and that the father would be named. He had also told her that he was no longer marrying the woman he had been betrothed to. In fact, the woman he was seeing now, Sophie, was the journalist who had revealed James’s name to the press.

‘Who else did you tell?’ James asked.

‘No one.’

‘So how do the papers know?’

‘Perhaps the doctor...’

‘Oh, and did the doctor ask you your lover’s name?’

He blocked every exit with his cool stare. ‘No,’ Leila said, gulping.

‘So, who else did you tell?’

‘I told no one apart from my brother.’