‘Do you want to go down for breakfast?’ James said.
‘We could have it here,’ Leila answered, for she knew she could not put on last night’s dress and shoes.
‘Why don’t we go somewhere,’ James pushed, and Leila stared back. Her eyes felt gritty from a lack of sleep, and as she looked at James she started to realise that whatever they had found last night had gone.
‘Come on,’ James said, ‘let’s go down for breakfast.’ He wanted her to tell him that her luggage had been delayed, he wanted her to tell him her reasons, yet Leila did not.
‘Why are you getting dressed?’ Leila asked.
‘I’ve got a meeting at nine,’ James said.
It was just after six.
He was actually conflicted.
For the most part he did not want to leave, yet it wasn’t just getting involved with her, or even her innocence, that unnerved him, but her deception.
He simply couldn’t leave it there though. It would seem for Leila he broke every rule.
‘Call me...’ James said, writing down his cell phone number and putting it by her bedside. ‘Give me your number...’
‘My number?’
‘Your cell phone.’
‘I don’t have one...’ Leila said, and then remembered she was supposed to be a businesswoman from Dubai and of course she would have a cell phone. ‘I mean, I don’t have it to hand...’
‘Of course you don’t,’ James said tartly, and then finished dressing and left.
No, angels did not fall from heaven.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE HAD BEEN worth the trouble he now found himself in.
The stars that James saw, as his head was slammed against a wall, were not dissimilar to the ones he had glimpsed that night all those weeks ago with Leila.
For a second the world was a deep navy, with glimpses of silver.
It consisted of nothing more than that.
James closed eyes and took in the simple scenery and would rather have liked to stay there but an angry voice was demanding his return.
A night, such as the one he and Leila had shared, could not come without consequence, James thought, and now here it was.
That’s right, James remembered as he opened his eyes to hostility, he was in an alley behind The Chatsfield and about to be beaten to within an inch of his life by the Royal Prince Zayn Al-Ahmar of Surhaadi for deflowering his sister.
He’d known that Leila was lying from the very start.
He understood why a little better now.
No wonder she had needed to escape, James thought, for Zayn spoke of possession and dishonouring not just Leila but the royal family and his people.
‘That’s a very heavy burden to place on one woman’s body,’ James responded to Zayn’s furious rant, and got a hand around his throat as a reward for his words, but it didn’t stop him speaking. ‘I was not aware that the integrity of the nation rested upon your sister’s maidenhead.’
‘You have no place to comment on integrity,’ Zayn said, and James felt the grip tighten around his throat. ‘You are a man in possession of none.’
Zayn was wrong. James had had integrity around Leila—he simply could not discard her. After he had left her that morning he’d barely made it till nine before he’d caved and sent flowers, asking her to call him.
He’d sent more flowers the next day and the next and yet Leila still hadn’t responded to him. He’d caved again and called The Harrington, but that they were so discreet combined with the fact he didn’t even know her surname had meant that they would neither confirm nor deny that she was staying there.
He found himself at her door once but had attempted to let go of the madness and turned around.
In the end James had taken himself off to France for a spot of skiing, determined to screw his way out of it, but all roads led to Leila in the erection stakes. He’d danced, he’d kissed, he’d been his flirtatious, outrageous best, but nothing with another produced even a stirring. Rather than destroy his formidable reputation with a no-show in that department he’d returned each night to his luxurious cabin alone.
And thought of Leila. How they had sat and talked for hours, how easily it had been to open up to the other.
How, for a while there, as they had drank shots and celebrated being the two black sheep, they had felt the same.
He looked at her brother and James was angry for her.
‘At least I don’t treat women like they are my property.’
‘Perhaps not, Chatsfield, but the fact remains that you have badly handled what belongs to me. My family, anyone beneath my protection, belongs to me. You are fortunate we are not in my country, for there, I would not hesitate to remove the member that committed the offence.’