Manu now had his full attention and what she had to say was sobering indeed.
* * *
Oh, he so did not cause offence.
Leila had actually laughed at James’s text. No, she would not be unbuttoning to her phone, but he made her so happy that she felt brave.
Brave enough to handle anything.
Leila picked up her phone and stared, but not at James’s texts. She went to the address book and to where James had keyed her parents’ number into the phone.
She looked at the time in Surhaadi, as James had added a clock with the time there.
It was after dinnertime now.
She knew that the phone rang in the lounge where they had had that terrible row and knew that they would be sitting there now.
Leila held her breath as a maid answered it.
‘I wish to speak with my mother,’ Leila said, and when she heard the shocked gasp, Leila remembered her new manners with maids. ‘Please.’
It took ages for her mother to come to the phone—no doubt she would be shooing out all the servants—and Leila waited.
And she waited.
Leila was starting to wish she had done this when James was here because he had helped her to forget a little how her mother’s spite made her feel.
She was starting to remember it now.
It was the same maid who came back to the phone.
‘She says that whoever you are you are a cruel trickster for her only daughter died many years ago.’
Leila cleared her throat before speaking. ‘Tell my mother that if she will speak with me this once, then, if it is her wish, she will never have to speak with me again.’
Leila closed her eyes and waited and finally her mother came to the phone.
‘Sharmota.’ Her mother called her a whore, which Leila had expected given all that had happened.
‘Mother, please,’ Leila calmly attempted. ‘I know it seems terrible but James is a wonderful man and we are getting married. You know that we are having a baby, please think about it—this will be your first grandchild...’ Leila played the best card she had. ‘If it is a girl we shall call her...’
‘Your dirty street bastard is no relation to me.’
And something rose in Leila as her mother spoke like that about the tiny baby that grew inside her.
‘I am not ringing because I need your approval, Mother. I am just calling to let you know that I am safe and that I am loved.’
‘Loved?’ Farrah’s voice was incredulous.
‘Yes, loved,’ Leila said. ‘James loves me.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He did.’
Oh, she tried, how she tried to stand up to her, but even the bed seemed to shake beneath her and Leila clung to the sheet with one hand and tried to resist being dragged back to the mad vortex that she had fought so hard to escape from.
‘Did he tell you he loved you just before you parted your legs or during?’ her mother asked and Leila screwed her eyes closed. ‘Because he does not love you, Leila. Tell me, please, why would he?’
‘He just does,’ Leila said.
‘But why?’
Leila’s conviction wavered and she could not answer at first, so she sought James’s words. ‘I’ll be an amazing mother...’
‘As I said, you are not my daughter. There are no portraits on the walls of you anymore.’ She had been removed, Leila realised, and she thought of herself standing and looking at the portraits and now any one with her in it was gone. She had simply been deleted from their lives. ‘Don’t worry for us,’ her mother continued, ‘the palace is happier now without you. Your father has started taking evening walks again, which he has not done since Jasmine’s death. I have started a new tapestry. Even the maids smile more as they go about their day. We are better without you.’
* * *
James arrived home to find Leila in bed and he was just about to say that that she was just where he liked to find her when he saw her face, which was whiter than the shirt she wore.
‘Leila?’
She shook her head—she could not tell him, she could not find her voice. But he could taste the grief in the room.
‘The baby?’ James asked.
Leila shook her head again and tried to remember how her voice worked. ‘I spoke with my mother...’ and that was all she could say.
‘When?’
Leila didn’t answer but James had already worked it out. At first he had thought he might have caused offence when she didn’t respond to his flirt. And after eight hours being lectured by Manu as to just how offensive he could be at times, James had been certain that was why she hadn’t responded to his text. Now though he knew the truth.
She had been like this for hours, James realised, just lying on the bed with her pain.
‘Go,’ Leila said.
‘I can’t.’
‘Please.’
He made it to the kitchen and found some green tea bags, which were the only remotely herbal thing James had, and added some honey, no doubt from the wrong bees, and brought it in to her.
‘It’s nice,’ Leila said, and sipped the hot tea.
‘I didn’t have orange blossom honey though,’ James said. ‘We’ll have to do a Leila shop tomorrow.’
It was the saddest thing he had ever seen—watching her trying and failing to smile for him.
He got undressed and got into bed; no sex was going to fix this and so he held her instead.
Don’t disown me, she wanted to say.
Please don’t hurt me.
Please don’t come home stinking of perfume.
Even pretend to love me, just never let me know that you don’t.
Her mother’s words had more than stung, they had crushed, and she didn’t know what to believe anymore.
His hand was on her stomach, the reason he was here perhaps.
‘She called the baby a dirty street bastard,’ Leila finally spoke.
‘Excuse me!’ James said, perhaps a little too loudly for her fragile state, but as the baby kicked and she realised he was talking on behalf of the baby, now Leila managed a pale smile. ‘I think someone’s rather offended,’ James said as the baby kicked again, and he rubbed her stomach. ‘Tell your mother,’ he said to their child, ‘that we can fix that and I’ll marry her any day that she wants.’
‘You can’t fix this, James.’
No, but he could make contact with Zayn, James thought, especially when later she cried in the night, for so wretched were her tears.
* * *
He was up and dressed and certainly he would not be late for Manu this morning.
‘I’ve got meetings till six,’ James said, knowing that Manu flew back tonight. ‘Will you be okay?’
‘We have the ultrasound at two.’
‘Of course we do.’ James eyes briefly shuttered. ‘I’ll meet you there at ten to two.’
He’d forgotten, Leila decided.
He paused; a part of him wanted to tell her his plans, but the other part of him that was terrified of promising something he could not achieve was confirmed when he met a stony-faced Manu in the foyer of The Chatsfield.
‘What the hell?’ Manu demanded.
She handed him a newspaper and James looked. Their kiss in Central Park had been captured—even worse, his hand was on her breast.
‘I didn’t think anyone was around...’
‘We’re not discussing this here,’ Manu said. ‘I’ve booked a business suite on the seventeenth floor.’
Manu swiped the door and they stepped into the suite and then set straight to work. Manu took the newspaper from him and James didn’t really need to be told how bad it looked.
‘I didn’t know there was anyone
nearby and certainly not someone with a camera.’
‘Your hand is on her breast,’ Manu said. ‘While I get that you want to fool the public here that your relationship is real, talk about a slap in the face for her parents and for her brother...’
James blew out. He wasn’t trying to fool anyone now; he and Leila had moved far past all that.
‘You get their virgin daughter pregnant,’ Manu said, and it felt like judgment day. ‘You leave her alone to deal with it and have been seen with other women since then...’ She just spelled it out and James could see the disgust in Manu’s eyes. ‘Yes, you propose and then you make out with her in the park.’
‘It was a kiss that went too far.’
‘Any kiss in public is a kiss that has gone too far. It is not just this kiss. You walk in the street holding her hand—that must only happen behind the closed doors of your home. Can’t you see that everything you do just further insults not only her family, it insults Leila. You’re not even married...’
‘About that, I don’t know if I should try and speak with her brother before or after we marry...’ James started, and then he hesitated. Forcing Leila into marriage had seemed so straightforward at the time; it had been about protecting his baby, yet even that made less sense now.
‘I’m going to discuss things with Leila,’ James said. ‘I’m going to sort out what it is that she wants. But if we do marry...’
‘Then you would need to meet face to face with her father, though I doubt that he would receive you.’
‘What about her brother?’
‘You would need a mediator, someone to approach him on your behalf.’
‘Someone like you?’ James said, but his smile was met with cold eyes.
‘Do you know why I’m so expensive, James? It is because I have a very good reputation in the business world. I don’t know if I want my name attached to you if you offend the king again in a year or so.’
‘I’m not going to cause any offence,’ James said.
‘Oh, so this marriage is going to last?’ Manu checked. ‘You’re going to be faithful...’
‘Why is everyone so sure that I’m going to cheat?’
‘You’re a Chatsfield,’ Manu said. ‘Oh, and you’re James Chatsfield.’
As his rather depraved past caught up with him, James simply sat there. He had always been able to charm his way out of anything, buy his way out of anything...just not so easily in this, the one thing that mattered the most to him.
‘It’s going to take a lot of work, James,’ Manu warned. ‘A serious lot of work. I will think about acting as a medium for you with Leila’s brother but I want to see you put in some effort before I do. If you want to help Leila to rebuild her relationship with her family, then you need to sit up and listen.’
James did.
He listened and he tried to take it all in.
He did it for Leila, not that she knew it.
Instead, at five minutes past two, she stood on the street outside the OB’s and tried to tell herself not to overreact because he was late.
‘I had an appointment,’ James said as he got out of his car. ‘It dragged on.’
He didn’t kiss her; he didn’t take her hand as they walked into the waiting room. He just sat there as they waited for her name to be called.
He glanced to Leila and to where her gaze fell—to the coffee table with today’s newspaper on it and there they were, kissing with his hand on her breast.
‘Leila...’ James said. ‘I apologise for that. I know that things went too far and if I in any way...’
‘Apologise?’ Leila demanded. ‘How could you ever say sorry for that night? Anyway, it is not so bad. Muriel tells me that she has seen far worse from people in your very building.’
‘Ah, so you’ve met Muriel.’
Leila certainly had. Muriel had blue hair and spoke nonstop. She had come in to where Leila lay curled up in bed and had told Leila if she wanted the bed made up, then she’d better get out of it!
Leila had sat in a chair as the maid cleaned around her. Then Muriel had proceeded to tell Leila about some of the goings-on in the very building where she was living. ‘At least it was your breasts he was playing with,’ Muriel had said as Leila got back in the fresh bed. ‘Don’t get me started on my ex!’
Now, sitting in the waiting room, Leila got that Muriel must have assumed that Leila had seen the newspapers.
‘She’s wonderful,’ Leila said. ‘But does she ever stop talking?’
‘Never.’ James smiled.
‘Princess Al-Ahmar.’
James took in a tense breath, not just at the interruption, but at the use of her title. He had mocked Zayn that night in the alley and told him that here in New York he was royalty.
James better understood the tightening of Zayn’s hand around his throat now.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ he offered, trying to remember some of what Manu had told him.
‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ Leila said, and stalked off.
Everything had changed and Leila simply didn’t know why. For, instead of coming over and sitting beside her, James stood back.
The chase was over, Leila decided as she lay there staring at the ceiling. She had given up her job, had moved in with him and she had admitted her love.
He knew that he had her heart now.
As the obstetrician lifted Leila’s gown James saw the swell of her stomach and a small flash of pubic hair as she tucked in a towel and James shifted his gaze and looked to the wall.
But then he heard it—the sound of their baby’s heartbeat—and he looked to the screen. He’d expected to see little but there it was, their baby, with one arm lifting and moving its tiny hand to its face. Hands, feet and there was that perfect nose. James wanted to go over; he wanted to sit at Leila’s head and kiss her. He wanted to touch her stomach and the baby within, but instead he stood there.
‘Did you want to know what you are having,’ Catherine asked.
‘Whatever Leila wants,’ James said.
‘I’d like to know,’ Leila said, and she looked from the screen to James, and watched his eyes close as they were told they were expecting a girl.
A girl.
He’d accepted responsibility the second he had found out, but faced with the reality that he was going to be a father to a daughter had James reeling as he recalled the many mistakes he had made.
His head was spinning.
Everything he had done, he had seemingly done wrong. From the gaudy over-the-top engagement to the passionate kiss the other night.
No.
Leila was right—why the hell would he apologise for the best night of their lives?
He looked at the dark shadows under Leila’s eyes as she lay on the examination table—it was her mother who had put them there, not he.
James was sure of that, just not quite sure enough.
He could almost feel himself being smacked upside the head for thinking he might have got something right as Leila walked out to the street with him.
‘Are you disappointed that it is a girl?’ Leila asked as they stepped outside.
‘Disappointed?’ James said. ‘No, of course I’m not. I’m thrilled that we’re having a girl.’
‘Because if you wanted a boy...’
‘Leila.’ He picked up her hand and he watched her fingers close around his and he listened to his heart. He was sick of all the schools of thought and words of wisdom as to the unsuitability of them.
He was going to go back now and tell Manu thanks very much but he’d got this now.
‘I have to go, Leila,’ James said. ‘Go home and have your rest. I won’t be gone long and when I’m back we’ll have a proper talk.’
‘About?’
‘Us,’ James said. He gave her his smile but he did not take her into his arms. He would discuss what was appropriate with Leila later, but he squeezed her hand. ‘Leila, I’m thrilled that it’s a girl. I’m stunned. I never thought we’d get to see her as clearly as we did.’
James saw her into the car and Leila sat there. She turned her head and watched him walk briskly off.
As his driver headed towards his home, Leila’s head too was spinning. Her mother had got into her head again and simply would not leave. Those seeds of doubt that James had had when he had dined at his parents that night were in Leila’s head now. They hadn’t just been given a decent soaking though—noxious weeds were flourishing and Leila would not wait till the master returned to find out what it was that he cared to discuss with her.
Instead it was time to be brave.
She did what she hadn’t had the courage to on the first night she had arrived in New York.
When the car pulled up at James’s home, instead of getting out she remained seated and spoke to the driver.
‘Take me to The Chatsfield.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MANU WAS THERE when James returned. She was waiting for him in reception, and speaking with some of the staff that she knew.
‘I’m just waiting on a call from the Dubai hotel,’ Manu said, and James nodded.
Spencer was passing through and came over and asked James if he’d made any plans for the wedding.
‘I’ll let you know,’ James said, while privately deciding he’d perhaps tell his family well after the event.
Once Manu was ready they took the elevator in silence up to the suite. James had no issue with letting her go but, given how he might want to keep her onside, he was working out how best to tell her that her services were, for now, not required.
He might need her to speak with Zayn after all.
‘I’m going to go home now and talk with Leila,’ James said.
‘I thought you wanted to work on this,’ Manu said. ‘I have to go back to Dubai tonight.’
‘I know that,’ James said, ‘and while I do appreciate all your help, I need to discuss things with Leila.’
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