‘No.’ Leila smiled. ‘You must have had too much shisha.’ She pointed to a café that was closed. ‘That is where I get my coffee after my shift and then I take it over to the park and I watch the people and I dream.’
‘What do you dream?’
‘That I belong.’
‘We could go over there now.’
‘It’s nighttime,’ Leila said.
‘But you’re not alone,’ James said. ‘And you do belong.’
She’d always been alone, Leila thought, yet she didn’t feel that she was now.
They walked through the dark and she led him to a bench where she usually sat, but tonight they decided that they would lie on the grass and they looked up to the stars.
‘There are so few,’ Leila said. ‘Where I live there are millions...’
‘There are millions here also,’ James said. ‘There are just too many lights in the city to be able to see them.’
‘You’re a very nice teacher,’ Leila said, because he never made her feel stupid. ‘You are very patient in the way you explain things to me.’
He turned and looked at her. ‘Do you miss home?’
Leila did not look back at him; instead she stared up at the sky and wondered how he would react if she told him that this was home now, that he was her home. That the affection and the care he had shown to her these past weeks, even during the most trying of times, was more than she had known in her life.
She didn’t answer him; it was James who broke the long silence
‘I miss home,’ James said, and he watched as she turned to him. ‘I’ve got an apartment about a ten-minute walk from here. I honestly thought we’d do better in the hotel—you know, dinner in the restaurant...’
‘We don’t go down for dinner much though.’
‘No,’ James said. ‘And I’m starting to really enjoy having breakfast in bed.’ Their gazes held. ‘With you.’
‘I am too,’ Leila admitted.
He leant up on his elbow and his hand was on her cheek. ‘Come and live with me, Leila, in my home.’
‘You want to live with me?’
‘I could think of nothing nicer,’ James said, and his mouth came down on hers.
Soft and slow, he kissed her, and it was Leila whose tongue slipped in first.
She was deeply in love with him, Leila knew. She wanted the endearments, wanted more of the kiss he gave. His hand was resting on the ground by her head, hers was at the back of his head. She knew every part of where their minds and bodies were when he pulled his lips away with just enough breath to say the words she had longed to hear—‘I’m in love with you.’
And she was in love with him too. In this space that was theirs, that had been found by them.
‘I loved you from that first night,’ Leila admitted.
‘I know that now,’ James said, and so he knew just how badly he had hurt her. ‘There were no clothes, no make-up, no phone number. I thought you were a journalist, or someone that Isabelle had set me up with to trick me...’
His hand was stroking her breast, and when he told her what had happened, she simply better understood that morning now. She wasn’t scared to tell him that he was right, that Zayn’s new girlfriend at the time had been the spy who had exposed their names to the media, just not now, not yet.
It wasn’t needed.
They were in love and he was taking her home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE WALKED HER past the doorman and through the elegant foyer and Leila looked up at the huge chandelier and then to a row of brass-gated elevators. There was a gleaming walnut table in the centre, as big as any at the palace, and the flowers that sat atop it rivalled the palace flowers too.
There were beautiful shops and bars and restaurants and there was a very well-dressed elderly couple walking in front of them, clearly back from a night out and arguing loudly.
It was busy, it was exciting—even this late at night.
Yes, Leila loved Manhattan.
‘Meet the neighbours,’ James said with a nudge.
‘Esther and Matthew, this is Leila...’ James introduced her as they stepped in the elevator and there was that pride in his voice again.
The couple said hello and then carried on rowing till they got out on the seventh floor, though they paused to wish James and Leila goodnight.
She hadn’t even seen his home but she loved it already.
To the top they went and he felt that it was important to make one small point. ‘You’re the first woman I’ve brought here.’
‘And the last,’ Leila said, but assuredly now, then she smiled.
She didn’t know where she was; she just knew she was in heaven. A tour could wait—they had been turning the other on long before the park—and he took her straight to his bedroom.
She was shaking when he turned her around and his voice was deliciously impatient as he struggled with those buttons. ‘Can we get zips fitted to your gowns?’
‘Yes.’
She was so perfect, the dress was so perfect, that he did not tear it. He was undressing her as best he could as he undid the buttons right to the end and she slipped her robe off.
‘I’m never wearing socks again,’ James said as he took them off and she dealt with her bra.
And then he turned her around, both now naked right to their hearts. They kissed, and James’s hands took in the swell of her stomach, and the heavier weight of her breasts were finally his to explore. First his fingers grew familiar with her body and then his mouth and tongue joined the caress too. His bed was like lying on a pillow, Leila thought as he swirled one thick nipple with his tongue and slid his fingers into her.
‘James...’ She wanted to clamp her thighs together, as deep within her he found another sensitive spot. Delighted with her response, James parted her thighs further. Leila lay trembling with the torture of it as he explored her deeply—his fingers massaging her on the inside as his mouth suckled her clitoris until she sobbed with the delicious hurt, her hands tightening around his wrist, almost dragging him from her as he brought her to a deep orgasm.
She had been scared to make love for this reason, because he simply owned her when they did, but she knew that she owned his heart too, because when she went to kiss him he rolled her onto him.
‘Get on top—I want to see you.’
And it meant, Leila found out, that she got to see him too.
It was Leila’s second time dancing and this time it was with him inside. His hands held her hips loosely enough that she could move as she wished, and there was nothing crude about this belly dance.
Slowly she worked out what worked for her and he was as patient as he always had been.
She loved the freedom he gave her, the feel of his hands on her breasts as he started to match her moves and lift into Leila.
Leila liked the feel of his eyes on her; she liked how sexy he made her feel and that she could touch her own breasts as he played with the magic spot he had discovered in her.
She felt hotter than she did when working at the restaurant, more breathless than she did when her temper rose.
She loved the hard work of him, the grittiness of being allowed to be herself as she moved over and over his thick length.
He started tweaking at her nipples and in a tease Leila leant forward, her hands either side of his head, her full breast over his mouth, and she found out then that his patience wasn’t infinite because James’s hands were back on her hips and starting to pull her down faster.
He could feel her building, just as he had on the dance floor. For now, he knew her sexually better than Leila knew herself, but not for long, James knew.
Even as she tried to tell him not yet, James made her a liar because she was lifting her head and arching her back, p
ressing her hands to his chest as she came to his body’s command.
Her scream was the first she had knowingly given; it felt like she was on the top of a mountain, dragging in the thin air and spinning as James took her to a place that only he ever could.
She had been searching for freedom, Leila realised. But not the decadent kind. Instead she had been seeking the freedom that the love of another gave and she had found it now in James.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A NIGHT WITHOUT TEARS.
Her first one.
James watched the smile spread on Leila’s face as she woke and looked out of the huge window to the spectacular view of Central Park. She could see the lake where she often walked, the beautiful trees and the lush grass where they had lain last night.
‘Wait till you see it in fall,’ James said. ‘It never gets old.’
‘What is it like in winter?’
‘Spectacular,’ James said. ‘Especially when it snows overnight and you weren’t expecting it.’
She thought of tasting snow on her tongue in the taxi rank and knew that somehow she had been on her way to here.
‘Do you have dinner parties with your family here?’ Leila asked.
‘No,’ James said. ‘They came over once when I first bought it and my father said that had I spoken to him, he could have got a better price in another building and a better view too.’
‘There is no better view,’ Leila said.
‘I said the same to him.’
‘Do you wish you were closer to them?’ Leila asked, and James thought for a little while before he answered her.
‘I used to when I was growing up but I finally worked out it wasn’t worth wasting my time. I didn’t run away quite as dramatically as you. In fact, I haven’t even left town, but really, apart from the odd get-together I’m done with them. We’re runaways,’ James said.
‘I like being on the run. We’ll never move?’
‘Never, though we’ll have to baby-proof it,’ James said, and then rolled his eyes, because he never, ever thought he’d be saying that about his home. ‘Do you want a tour?’
Together they explored his home. There were views of the park from every window, there were bedrooms and bathrooms and just all things James—such as a bedroom with the cupboard filled with skis and things.
‘This is your room,’ James said, and showed her the kitchen.
‘Ha, ha,’ Leila said, because she got his sarcasm now. ‘You will go very, very hungry if you wait for me to cook, and you don’t want to hear about when I tried to do dishes.’ She did make concessions though. ‘Show me how this works.’
James pressed a button on the kettle. ‘But there has to be water in it.’
They were so happy that even boiling a kettle was a celebration, but when he showed her another room, Leila thought she might cry. It was empty apart from a shelf that had a silver teddy on, the one he had bought when he had got her engagement ring.
It was another happiest day of her life; every day with him turned into that.
All her clothes and belongings were brought over from The Chatsfield, and James had staff put them away, right down to the last pair of shoes.
She was in, she was home, and the best part for James was, that night there were, again, no tears.
They overslept, of course.
James’s phone bleeped a text and he found out from a rather irate Manu that he was half an hour late for their meeting.
‘I have to go,’ James said.
‘Where?’
‘I’ve got meetings at The Chatsfield over the next couple of days,’ James lightly explained. ‘I’ll call Muriel and tell her to come in tomorrow so you can get your bearings today.’
‘Who’s Muriel?’
‘She takes care of the place,’ James said. ‘She just comes in once a week while I’m away, but now I’m back she’ll come in daily, just for an hour or two. Well, not at the weekends.’
‘No cook?’
‘I told you, you can ring the restaurants downstairs.’
‘Just one person for a couple of hours a day?’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No.’ Leila smiled. ‘It’s wonderful.’
As he showered he thought about them and as he put on his suit he told her some of what he’d been thinking. After sixteen years of being ignored, James doubted his stilted Arabic could solve that in any conversation with her parents, but her brother kept trying to contact her and maybe there, there was something that he could do. ‘What about your brother?’ James asked when he came out. ‘Why don’t you make contact with him? He does seem to be trying to speak with you.’
‘I’m not talking to Zayn for what he did to you.’
‘Well, I didn’t appreciate it at the time but I get why he did what he did now. What if I spoke to him?’ James said, while not particularly relishing the thought, and he watched her guilty swallow.
‘I have something to tell you.’
Finally, James thought. ‘Please do,’ he said.
‘It is something that might make you cross.’
‘Do tell!’
‘It was Sophie who revealed our names to the press.’
‘Zayn’s wife?’
‘She had her reasons to do so, Zayn said. Something to do with Jasmine, but I was so cross that I told them I didn’t want to hear their excuses.’ He was putting on his tie and seemed as bothered with what she’d said as if she’d told him it had just started raining outside. ‘I’m worried what it will do to us,’ Leila admitted.
‘To us?’ James grinned. ‘Why would it affect us? Does the fact my father is, and I quote, “vile”, make you think less of me?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So, don’t worry about it. God, if you think we’re going to row every time one of our family members stuffs up, then marrying me might not be such a good idea.’
She smiled at his reaction. ‘You’re like no one I’ve ever met.’
‘Snap,’ James said.
‘Snap,’ replied Leila.
‘I was right though,’ James said as he finished his tie. ‘Isabelle did have someone on me. I knew it!’ he said. ‘I knew I was being followed.’
She laughed when he lifted the trousers of his immaculate suit a few inches. ‘Look, no socks.’
He gave her a lovely kiss before leaving and Leila lay back happily in his bed, looking out at the view of Central Park.
Surely she belonged now.
* * *
James and Manu had never really got on but he did accept that she knew her stuff.
They headed to the near-empty restaurant and to a table in the far corner, where they ordered breakfast, but five minutes into his meeting with her James started to question getting Manu involved.
‘Leila’s happy...’
‘Really?’
‘She is,’ James said ‘We’re happy. It’s just her parents that are proving a problem and her brother.’
‘I wonder why that might be!’
‘She hasn’t got on with her parents since her sister died. I’m thinking of approaching her brother...’ James attempted to explain, but again Manu shook her head.
‘Let’s get back to Leila...’
James actually had Leila Deficit Disorder because one hour out of bed and he needed contact, but he was aware of his own arrogance and also needed to be sure he was right.
Are you happy? James texted.
So, so happy! Leila replied, and James smiled and simply forgot that Manu was there.
Go and look at the bottom of the wardrobe.
Leila texted him back. A present?
Just go and look.
There was nothing there though. She looked up on the
shelves and there were just cases and shoes and so she checked the bottom of the wardrobe again and there was nothing there either, save a shirt that had fallen from the hanger.
No, Leila realised, it hadn’t fallen from the hanger. It was wrinkled and hadn’t been laundered.
Her heart skipped in hope and she knew they had found love that night for he had kept it. She buried her face in it and smelled not just the musk of herself but the citrus note to the cologne that he wore and the masculine scent that was James.
I’m wearing it now!
Send me a picture! James replied as Manu droned on.
It was the tamest picture of a woman in bed that James had ever received but it was by far his favourite— Leila sitting up in bed wearing the shirt and smiling brightly for him and lightly he teased her. Undo the top button at least!
‘You are so insolent, James,’ Manu said, and James looked up and for a moment he wondered if she had been standing over his shoulder and reading his phone, but Manu didn’t need to read what was written. James realised that he had been very rudely ignoring her.
‘Look, I apologise, I honestly...’
He didn’t know how to explain that he was in love, in serious love, and just so open to Leila-distraction at the moment. How did he tell Manu, who was looking at him with such distaste, that he had never felt anything like it before?
‘You’re just a rich boy who is far too used to getting whatever it is that he wants,’ Manu sneered.
‘Not necessarily.’ James commenced a smart reply, but then he remembered why he was here and swallowed his retort down. ‘I just want Leila to be happy.’
‘You just said that she was.’
Well, apart from her wish for her parents to at least not take things out on their child and that she was estranged from her brother. Apart from the tears she sobbed each night, but since she’d been in his home they had stopped.
‘You cause offence at every turn,’ Manu said.
There was that bloody word again.
When he was with Leila, when it was just the two of them, it was all so uncomplicated. Yet, James conceded, Leila hadn’t responded to his flirt. She hadn’t sent another text. Perhaps he had offended and so James pocketed his phone.
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