Princess's Secret Baby

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘That was not hurt,’ Leila whispered. Hurt was a world without him, hurt was a lifetime of being ignored. She placed her hand over his buttock and did not like that she was without his kiss and her mouth sought his.

  ‘You should have told me...’ James said.

  ‘I did,’ Leila said. ‘I told you I had never...’

  He’d run out of questions; all he could feel was her wrapped tight around him and the slight pressure of her hand that told him to go on. He moved back a little and then in again, and it must have hurt her because James could see tears in her eyes and her teeth gritting. He moved up on one elbow and put an arm beneath her head to have her mouth more accessible to him. He kissed her as he had never kissed another and Leila’s heart knew it. He kissed away the pain as he moved just a little inside her. Not the pain down below, for there was bliss coming back there now. His lips made up for every slight, for every cruel word that had been said, and he was better than music, for Leila knew then that love existed.

  His hesitation diminished as her body started to move to his. He moved his arm so her head dropped back to the mattress and her hips started to lift. Her moans of pleasure, Leila realised, drove him on. So, too, did the lift of her groin. Faster and harder he moved as her body willed his to and then when he could surely not fill her anymore, he swelled further.

  And it was then she found it.

  The place she had always been seeking. It was navy and silver and she entered that place with James.

  He saw it, too, as he shot into her.

  It was all he could see as she sobbed out his name and her tight space clenched around him over and over as he filled her.

  She loved the collapse of him on top of her and the twitch of both of them after, sated but still sensitive, as they came back to the world together.

  He had a million questions but there was not one he could think of now because nothing really mattered as they kissed and then lay there.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ James said, because he could feel her soft and exhausted, and her eyelashes were blinking on his chest as she fought to keep her eyes open.

  Instead she lay there pretending to be asleep until he was.

  She did not want to cry out, even though Leila was quite sure that she would not tonight for she had never felt such peace in her life. It wasn’t just the sex; it was the feel of his arm around her and the rise of his chest as he breathed beneath her cheek.

  It was the bliss of finally being held in another’s arms; it was contact. And now she had it she would stay awake forever if she had to, just to revel in this.

  And stay awake Leila did till morning. James stirred and her face turned to his chest and she tasted again the salty skin. Her hand slid down and she closed her fingers around the solid length that had driven her to new places in the night, felt again its power and her kiss to his chest deepened.

  James’s hand came over hers for a moment, guiding her slow movement, giving in to the sensations.

  James didn’t, as a rule, like morning sex.

  It was too intimate; it promised too much and it was promising it now.

  He wanted to turn, wanted to lift her chin and kiss her; he wanted his hand that was stroking her buttocks to slip between her legs and part her and take her again.

  He was that close to doing that, but last night’s many questions were making themselves known now, and he told Leila that he was going to take a shower.

  The mirror told the tale.

  His chest was bruised by her mouth and his hangover was starting to catch up with him. One cocktail too many, James thought as he stepped into the shower. That, he was used to, but as James looked down and saw the smear of blood at the top of his thighs, it wasn’t his hangover that was troubling him—one virgin was one virgin too many for him.

  That, he wasn’t used to.

  He reached for soap and looked around; he liked the clues of a woman’s bathroom. He expected exotic fragrances, for her hair had smelled divine, but it was just the exclusive toiletries synonymous with The Harrington.

  Out of the shower he wrapped his hips in a towel and opened a hotel toothbrush and that niggle that something didn’t sit right started to multiply.

  No woman, no woman he had ever been with, possessed so little. There was a hairbrush and a small toiletry bag with a lipstick and, thank God, James thought, there was a packet of contraceptive pills.

  His businesswoman from Dubai sure travelled light.

  Leila watched as he came out of the shower. She could see the tense set of his unshaven jaw as he walked towards the large fitted wardrobe.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just getting a robe.”

  James pulled one from the hangers but he wasn’t there for a robe; instead he had confirmed his suspicions, for there were no clothes, no shoes, no bags.

  Nothing.

  Instead of putting on the robe he dried himself and looked over to the mystery woman who lay in bed.

  Was she a journalist? James wondered. They were all over him at the moment. God knows he’d told her far too much last night.

  Had Isabelle hired her as some sort of plant when she’d heard that James was at the hotel? That would make more sense because Isabelle would do anything to discredit the Chatsfield name.

  ‘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.

&
nbsp; 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.’

  Offence?

  There had been nothing remotely offensive about that night. It had stayed with James for weeks now. An offence might have occurred if the seduction hadn’t been so mutual. James could very well have pointed out that Leila had been a very willing participant in the supposed downfall of her country, but he chose not to make this salacious comment.

  Instead he shrugged Zayn off in one easy motion and told him a few other home truths—that Zayn was positively biblical. When Zayn warned him never to repeat what had happened, nor to let it out in the press, James merely laughed in his face and told him that he didn’t need the publicity. That here in New York the Chatsfields were royalty.

  Fighting down some back alley was an experience James did not need and so he walked away from it.

  Winded from the fight, he would not let Zayn see that and only when he got onto the street did he take a moment to get his breath.

  His hands went to his pocket, checking for his wallet and keys, but instead they closed around a tube of lip balm and his mind went straight back to Leila.

  A princess!

  Despite his nonchalant responses to the threats, James was starting to realise the enormity of what he had done.

  James headed for home, to his luxurious penthouse that overlooked Central Park, and he eyed the damage in the mirror.

  There were finger marks around his neck, a bruise to his eye and the size of the lump on the back of his head probably meant that he should get checked out by a doctor.

  Instead James poured himself a whisky and lay on the bed, pondering his next move.

  He picked up his phone to check, and no, she hadn’t called him.

  Leila was the one woman who didn’t.

  He’d thought her a journalist, or that it might be a set-up by Isabelle. Instead she was a princess and her family was clearly incensed by what had taken place. He just hoped she was okay and that he’d been the sole receiver of Zayn’s fury.

  Why would she have told her brother? He hoped to God she wasn’t pregnant, but she had been on the pill—James had seen them for himself. James was quite certain from Zayn’s fury that, had he got the precious princess pregnant, then he’d have been told about it, just before he took his dying breath! He lay there brooding, wondering why Leila would have told her brother what had gone on between them. The more he thought about that night, the clearer it became to him that Leila had walked into that bar with one thing on her mind. She’d used him, perhaps, to get out of marriage. No doubt the Al-Ahmars wanted her kept a virgin.

  James lay there, angry at her, used by her, hard for her.

  Five lots of flowers!

  He could imagine her rolling her eyes when she took the deliveries.

  Loser.

  Well, he wasn’t going to spend time looking over his shoulder, waiting to see what sort of further punishment Zayn had in mind for him.

  He’d wasted enough time over Leila, waiting for her to call.

  James pulled out his case and he thought of all the women he hadn’t been with since that one night. He didn’t like that he had become so pensive, didn’t like how hung up he was on Leila.

  He took out a shirt; it was the one he had worn that night and her exotic scent still clung to it. James buried his head in it for a moment and inhaled her. He was hard for her still.

  Time to take care of that, James decided.

  But rather than returning to the bed and his memories as he had these past weeks, he tossed the shirt back to the floor of the wardrobe and packed his case and decided on a return to France and the snowy slopes.

  There was still some of the screwing season left after all!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS HANGOVERS WENT, this was a particularly bad one.

  James sat on the terrace of the ski resort behind dark glasses and took a very welcome sip of strong, sweet coffee as he eyed the magnificent view.

  He looked over to the black run that he would hurl himself down later.

  At least it would clear his head.

  Last night had been a particularly heavy one. Some idiot had hired a flash mob to take over the bar to assist in his wedding proposal. The man had clearly needed every assistance because the poor woman had, to James, looked as if she wanted to run.

  Without the onlookers, James was quite sure that she would have said no to him.

  Instead James had watched as the man had dropped to his knees and asked her if they could return here next year on their—wait for it, James thought— honeymoon!

  ‘How romantic,’ a leggy blonde woman beside him had said.

  How awful, James had privately thought, though he hadn’t said that. Instead he had bought Longlegs a drink.

  And another.

  He was like a repeat prescription, James thought as he sat there recovering the next morning.

  He resisted opening the American newspaper that had been pre-emptively placed on his table, for usually he requested one.

  Just not today.

  James really didn’t want to see himself leaving the club with yet another glossy blonde.

  What was her name?

  Certainly it wasn’t Leila, because when this morning he’d inadvertently called her that, it had earned him a slap to the cheek.

  Christ.

  He’d tried to ski his way out of it, tried to screw his way out of it, but still every morning he woke hard for Leila.

  Every night was an attempt to relive that one.

  Not just the sex, although it was a lot about t
he sex. Still he kept remembering the moment she had walked into the bar.

  His ex, who had gone to the press with his stories, had taken months just to get some salacious tidbits out of him. He’d spoken so readily with Leila.

  She hadn’t with him though, James remembered.

  He’d been used; James knew that much.

  He could have been anyone.

  Rather than think about it James opened up the paper and took another sip of coffee as he turned to the business section.

  Then something caught his eye and he almost spat out his coffee.

  There was Leila, dressed in finery, her head and mouth covered, but it was certainly her, for he would never forget those eyes.

  And there, looking far less than regal, was a very tacky shot of himself and some blonde making out at the bar.

  All this he took in as he sat there, his mind choosing to linger on the images than focus on the headline, but then not even James could ignore what was written.

  Princess Leila Al-Ahmar of Surhaadi was three months pregnant and, according to extremely reliable sources, the father was none other than James Chatsfield.

  He looked at the caption beneath the image of himself and a woman.

  James Chatsfield celebrating the happy news!

  It never even entered his head that he might not be the father.

  Oh, she’d used him that night, all right.

  He picked up his phone and scrolled through it and called The Harrington, his temper mounting as, thanks to their bloody discretion, they still refused to even confirm or deny if Leila was staying there.

  ‘Put me through now,’ James shouted to the receptionist. ‘I know that she’s staying there, and I don’t care if it’s the middle of the bloody night—you will put me through now.’

  But again he was politely reminded of The Harrington’s policy on guest confidentiality and it dawned on James that she possibly wasn’t there. He looked back at the newspaper and acknowledged that this might not be some library image the paper had produced. She could be back in Surhaadi now.