No.
Even now she still wanted to trust him.
Even now, as she stepped in and pressed the button and took the elevator up to the seventeenth floor, she tried to tell herself that she was wrong.
She had to be wrong, for the man who had made love to her the night before last would not do this. The man who had brought her to his home could not do this to her.
Or had he brought her to his home so that he could free himself to carry on with his ways here?
As she walked along the plush corridor Leila thought of the nights he had returned smelling of perfume.
Leila walked, wondering what one he was behind, and then she heard the one thing she was dreading—the sound of James’s voice and a woman laughing behind a hotel door.
She wanted to kick the door, she wanted to burst in on them and scratch his face, but what was the point?
What would it change?
From the start he had told her he was a playboy. She had fallen in love with a man who had, as it turned out, wanted nothing more than a one-night stand.
Circumstance had forced them together.
Tears would not come, anger would not come—all she felt was weary from a world that denied her love over and over.
She asked his driver to take her home.
‘You are loved though,’ Leila said to the small life inside her. ‘You are so loved and you are so wanted and I am going to do everything I can to ensure that you know it every day that I am with you.’
And she would do it alone.
Leila refused to be with a man who did not truly love her, refused to be like James’s parents. Her daughter would have a mother who was a strong woman instead of a martyr. Her daughter would have a mother who refused to turn the other cheek.
Anger was coming now and Leila threw a few clothes into the small case she had brought with her from home.
She wanted nothing from him.
Nothing.
Leila tore off the robe he had made for her and put on the one she owned and decided that she would send for her things later. She simply couldn’t bear to be here anymore, amongst his things, his scent, close to the man who had stolen her heart.
She took her cash she had saved from working and her passport and put them in her bag and then Leila removed the ring that James had given her at that appalling showy proposal where he had attempted to trap her.
He never would.
I hope she was worth it... Leila texted, and sent it, and then she threw the phone he had given her onto the bed and left the building.
James received the text just as he was getting into his car after leaving The Chatsfield and he immediately called her but it went straight to messages.
‘Was Leila okay when you took her home?’ James asked his driver.
‘She didn’t say much,’ he answered, ‘although she never does.’ Then he told James he had taken her to The Chatsfield earlier, and James felt his stomach clench. ‘Then I brought her home again.’
He told his driver to wait for him, but as soon as he stepped in their home James knew that she had gone.
Her phone was there, her ring was there, everything was there—just not Leila.
He went to the drawer where she kept all her cash and passport and even without opening it he knew they’d be gone.
He asked his driver to take him to The Harrington and when they told him about their confidentiality policy, one look at his murderous expression and they reneged. ‘We haven’t had anyone by that name check in.’
‘By any other name?’ James said, and perhaps it was more his anguish than anger that produced a small shake of the receptionist’s head.
James called Manu and told her what had happened and asked her to park herself in The Harrington’s reception just in case Leila did arrive.
‘I will explain what happened to her if she arrives,’ Manu offered, and James thanked her.
She wouldn’t go there though, James knew it. Leila would surely know that it would be the first place he would look.
It was the worst evening that turned into the worst night ever.
His driver drove around for hours as James’s eyes scanned the busy streets but all to no avail. They went to the Middle Eastern restaurant where she had worked, but no, they hadn’t seen her either though they promised to let him know if she did show up.
James rang Spencer and asked him to be on the lookout.
He went to JFK airport where she had stood tasting snow on the night she had arrived here and he actually didn’t know what to do.
He had her phone and he even considered calling her parents, and asking them if he could be put through to Zayn, but James knew the pointlessness of that.
It had finally happened, James thought, when, like some drunk, he found himself calling out her name in the alley where Zayn and he had fought.
She’d made his wish come true because here he was at rock bottom and it looked as if he had lost them both.