Protecting the Desert Princess

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘No,’ Mikael said as they pulled up on his huge drive.

  He took her case in and left it in the hall as Layla looked around.

  It was like nothing she had ever seen—a green oasis, and the tropical bush land outside seemed a feature of the home.

  The place gleamed with a mixture of modern appliances and a few treasured antiques. A huge black and silver globe hung in one corner, and Layla guessed rightly that it was perfectly angled.

  ‘I am there,’ she said, pointing straight to Ishla.

  If only the world were really that small, Mikael thought as she clipped on high heels through his home.

  It was terribly hard for him to comprehend that the last time he had been home Layla hadn’t existed in his world.

  ‘Oooh, I like your chess set.’

  ‘Leave it,’ he said, watching her fingers hover over his knight. It felt strange having her here—a streak of feminine beauty in a home that was very male. He did not like the way her eyes seemed to take in each ornament, or each book that lined the walls, and he tried to distract her with the delicious view.

  As they walked through to the lounge there was a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean, with its waves constantly rolling in, and Mikael opened the French windows to let in the magical sound.

  ‘Do you want to go the beach?’ he offered.

  ‘Maybe later.’ She shrugged and with a complete lack of boundaries walked through the house to his bedroom, which looked out onto the water also.

  ‘Where are the maids?’ Layla asked with mild interest.

  ‘I don’t have maids,’ Mikael said. ‘I have someone who comes in daily when I am here and weekly at other times.’

  ‘So it really is just us?’

  He should be offended, Mikael thought as she snooped through his wardrobe and then into his study, except he couldn’t be, for she simply had no concept of living alone.

  She thought his home was very beautiful and absolutely intriguing. Unlike the palace, Mikael’s walls were not lined with portraits of ancestors, for he did not know from where he came. Instead the art was modern, and Layla stared at a red line on the wall that was fractured in several places before continuing and branching out.

  ‘What is that?’ She frowned and peered closer.

  ‘It’s a lifeline,’ he said, admiring his favourite piece. It had cost an absolute fortune and it spoke to him in many, many ways—not just about this past but about his clients, their victims.

  ‘A lifeline?’ she queried. ‘Oh, you mean like this?’ She held up her palm and then looked back at the painting and pointed to the first fracture. ‘So is this you in Russia?’

  ‘It’s just a painting.’

  It was more than that, though, to Mikael, and he looked at it and thought of the future and the next fracture that would appear when Layla left.

  She wanted to know more—there was so much that she wanted to know—yet intuitively she knew that he had already shared more than he was comfortable with. It might take months, possibly years, to truly know him, and all they had were days.

  ‘Layla…’ Mikael broke the tense silence because there was a question that needed to be asked. If she felt a tenth of what he did then something needed to be addressed. ‘Are you sure that you want…?’

  She did not want his question—she did not want this tension that was building to a head—and so she interrupted him before he could say what he must not.

  ‘I actually think I could paint that,’ she said stepping back from the painting and nodding. ‘If you got me some red paint I could do another one for you…’ She turned and saw his rigid lips and kissed them. ‘I’m playing,’ she said. ‘Well, sort of.’ Because she was quite sure that she could paint it—after all it was just a broken red line! ‘I love your home. It is very…’ she tried to think of a word to use ‘…very Mikael.’

  ‘So, what do you want to do?’ he asked, because he didn’t like her examining his things.

  ‘I already told you—I want to learn to drive,’ she said.

  ‘Layla, it’s not something you learn in a few days,’ he explained. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be doing other things?’

  She looked at his delicious mouth and then back to his eyes.

  ‘Teach me to screw, instead.’

  Deliberately he did not blink. Mikael knew she had picked up that word from him, and really he would prefer that she didn’t return to Ishla with that in her vocabulary.

  ‘That’s not a great choice of word, Layla.’

  ‘You said it the other night—you said that she didn’t want to lose a good—’

  ‘Lover,’ he said, but that didn’t work—because he had never been in love until now, and what was the point of falling in love when any day now she’d be gone?

  ‘I want to come again,’ Layla said.

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘I want you to come too. I want to see.’

  Still he did not blink, but Mikael chose the safer option. ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’

  He watched the smile play on her lips as they headed back out to his car. ‘You think you won there, don’t you?’

  ‘I think I did.’

  He turned the car around and went through a few basics with her, but she just kept turning his radio on. ‘Listen to me, Layla’ he said, turning the music off for the third time. ‘If I say brake then you are to brake—there is to be no arguing.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m in charge here…’ Mikael warned, but he saw the press of her lips and the dark mood that had been building since last night inched towards breaking point. Was she serious about anything? he wondered, though he had enough insight to know he wasn’t talking about driving.

  A mini-tornado with black hair and eyes had spun into his life and changed every part of it, and she didn’t even seem aware of the damage she would leave behind.

  ‘Layla!’ he warned as her fingers moved towards the stereo, and the anger in his voice was more than was merited, perhaps, but it came from within.

  ‘Can I just remind you that I am a princess…?’

  He climbed out of the car with his mounting temper and walked back to his sprawling home. She rushed after him.

  ‘Don’t walk away from me,’ Layla ordered. ‘Mikael. You do not walk away from me.’

  She soon changed her mind when he turned and she saw the look in his eyes as he strode back towards her.

  ‘Okay, you can go now,’ she said, but he did not stop walking till he was right in her face.

  ‘Never,’ Mikael said, ‘pull the princess rank on me.’

  ‘But I am one.’

  ‘Don’t we all know it?’

  ‘You’re cross with me.’

  ‘You—’ Mikael was on the edge of losing his temper; he never did—nothing goaded him, he was the goader ‘—are the limit. Have the keys.’ He tossed them at her. ‘Better yet, I’ll take you back to the hotel and leave you there. Better still, I’ll take you back to the city and leave you on the street. I’m done.’

  He bent down to pick up the keys from the ground and headed back to the car. It was better that he was away from her; she’d have his heart otherwise.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘You can’t leave me in the city.’

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘Everyone is looking for me.’

  ‘You’ll be very easy to find,’ he said, and opened the door for her. ‘In.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘then you get to stay at the house. I’m off to the hotel…’

  He started the engine and she ran in front of the car.


  He sat with the engine idling, in air-conditioned comfort, as Layla stood in the hot Australian sun, and he was a fool to even pretend that he did not love her.

  Life, Mikael thought as she came round to his window, had been so much more straightforward without her in it.

  She tapped on the window and waited as it slid down.

  ‘Please don’t go.’ she pleaded, but he said nothing. ‘I was playing and I should have listened.’ Still Mikael stared ahead. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.

  ‘For…?’

  ‘Not listening when you were trying to teach me.’

  He went to slide up the window.

  ‘For being a princess.’

  ‘You can be a princess, Layla, just not when it’s the two of us. Do you get it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Even he was having trouble defining it. ‘When I say enough, or stop, or there is danger, you must listen to me without question.’

  ‘You are just like my brother and father—’

  ‘Please,’ Mikael dismissed. ‘Do you know, I’m actually starting to lean to their side? If they’ve had to put up with your dramas for the last twenty-four years I’m full of admiration, in fact, that they got you to adulthood alive.’

  ‘We only have a couple of days and you spoil them by being mean to me,’ she said.

  ‘You forgot to stamp your foot.’ He saw her tense, frustrated face as still she did not get her way. ‘It won’t work with me, Layla.’

  ‘It worked before.’

  ‘It won’t work in the important things. Now, do you want to learn to drive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who’s in charge when you’re a learner driver in my car?’

  ‘You are.’

  She climbed in, and this time Layla did listen.

  Half an hour later they bunny-hopped back into his long drive…

  ‘More to the left,’ he said, his hand hovering over the handbrake, and wondered if he should take the wheel. But she righted the car—though a fraction too late.

  ‘What was that noise?’ Layla asked.

  ‘My paintwork.’

  ‘Oh.’ She pulled to a halt, actually quite smoothly. ‘How did I do?’

  ‘Very well,’ Mikael said, wondering why he wasn’t jumping out of his car to inspect the damage; instead he leant his head back on the headrest and gave up fighting it.

  Pointless and hopeless, perhaps, but in love was where he was.

  She was the important thing.

  Which meant that something had to be discussed.

  And this time when he raised it he wouldn’t let Layla interrupt him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEY UNPACKED HER case and Layla put on her new bikini. They had a swim at the beach until, salty and dusty with sand, they returned home hungry.

  Layla was determined to make lunch herself.

  Hair tied up, her new bikini damp, she was frying a practice prawn in butter with Mikael behind her, telling her to turn it when it went pink.

  ‘It looks beautiful,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to tell my father about them.’

  ‘Do you want to go back to Ishla?’ Mikael asked the question he had tried to before, when Layla had been looking at his painting.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  She didn’t even hesitate in her response, but Mikael persisted, knowing her answer had been automatic.

  ‘Are you sure that you do?’ He saw her face turn just a little and her lovely smooth brow was marred by a frown.

  Until this morning she had not considered that she might have to say goodbye to people she cared about. Until now it had never entered her head that she might not want to go back to Ishla.

  That she had a choice.

  ‘Of course I am sure,’ Layla said, though her voice suddenly said otherwise. ‘I love my family.’

  ‘I know that you do.’

  ‘It would kill my father if I left.’ Her voice started to rise as she pointed out the reality. ‘It would honestly kill him.’

  ‘Okay,’ he soothed.

  ‘I don’t like that question,’ she said. ‘I don’t like how it makes me feel inside. Please don’t ask me things like that again.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Mikael turned off the gas and, still behind her, wrapped his arms around her and held her till she relaxed back into him. But he could feel that her heart was racing—as, he guessed, was her mind.

  ‘Go,’ she said, because his words had unsettled her. ‘Go and have your shower. I want to make lunch by myself.’

  Mikael left her to it, mentally kicking himself and wondering if he could have handled that any better.

  What the hell had he been thinking?

  Suppose she’d said no, that she didn’t want to go back?

  What then?

  Had he been asking her to be his wife?

  * * *

  Layla was determined to make a beautiful lunch—and she would if the butter knife she was trying to cut a tomato with didn’t flatten it so.

  And the onion had made her cry.

  Or was she just crying?

  Damn you, Mikael, for asking me that, she thought. Damn you for making me stand here and cry and not want to go home to the land and the people I love.

  ‘Mikael!’ She was suddenly angry and walked through to the bedroom. She could hear the shower was on but had no qualms about walking in. After all, he had bathed her a few times.

  What Layla saw, though, had her heart in her throat—and suddenly she wasn’t angry any more.

  He looked up and saw the shock on her face as his eyes lifted from where he had been concentrating and he saw her standing there, watching him.

  Then he watched her as the shock changed to a delicious smile and she stepped into the shower with him.

  ‘Continue,’ she said.

  Mikael wasn’t sure that he could—until her mouth started working his chest.

  ‘Is this why you have so many showers…?’ she asked, and he gave a half laugh. ‘I thought you were just very clean!’

  She loved the tension in him, loved the feel of his wet skin, and she slipped out of her bikini and then boldly dropped to her knees and kissed up his legs…slow kisses that changed to frantic, because she wanted so badly to touch and to taste what she must not.

  He almost pulled her up by her hair, but he wanted her to see this, and wanted her pleasure too. He took her hand and placed it over his, on the outside, so that she did not touch, but she felt the motion and the building tension.

  ‘Oh…’ It was the nicest thing she had ever felt.

  He bent his knees a little and rubbed himself over her and Layla watched in fascination, till her thighs were shaking.

  ‘Mikael…’ Every stroke brought her closer, and then she watched as their hands stilled but his shaft didn’t, and the moan that came from him as he shot over her was addictive, for she wanted to hear it again and again. It was that and the shots of silver that spilled over her that almost brought Layla to her knees with her own lovely orgasm.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Layla gasped, at the sound of bleeping, but she was talking to thin air as Mikael had suddenly bolted from the shower. ‘What is happening?’ she asked, following him out. ‘Mikael, what is that smell?’

  Layla found out what a fire extinguisher was as a naked Mikael tackled the wok that she had left unattended.

  ‘You’re supposed to turn the gas off,’ he said as he put the small fire out.

  ‘You shouldn’t have turned me on.’

  She had an answer for everything, and Mikael stood back breathless and looked at the smoke on his gleaming walls. All he could think was that he was going to miss this.

  ‘I’ll make lunch,’ he said. ‘
First, though, I’m going to get dressed…’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, wrapping her arms around him. ‘I like us like this.’

  So too did Mikael.

  ‘Do you want to watch some pawn while we eat?’

  He gestured to the chessboard and Layla nodded.

  ‘You didn’t laugh at my joke,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t joke about chess,’ she said.

  But he realised she probably had not understood.

  They had a very quick and less ambitious lunch, which consisted of tomato sandwiches with loads of black pepper, and then, naked, she took two chess pieces, shook them behind her back and held out her hands.

  Mikael peeled open the fingers on her right hand. He was black. There was a thrill of anticipation for Layla as he set the board up, and she lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. She had had the same flurry of nerves in her stomach when she had first played with a stranger online.

  A better flurry, in fact!

  ‘I don’t want any favours,’ she warned.

  ‘You won’t get them from me.’

  Layla was white, within three moves it was Mikael attacking and Layla on the defence.

  He watched as she removed his knight and then he swooped.

  ‘Mchfesa,’ she said.

  Mikael could guess what that meant.

  He set up again, and she opened as she had before, but again it was to no avail.

  ‘I am good at this!’ she said.

  ‘You are.’ Mikael smiled. ‘But I’m better.’ He wasn’t pulling rank. ‘I’ve played a lot.’ And, as naturally as breathing, he told her a bit about his time on the streets and how chess had saved his sanity.

  He didn’t want pity, and he didn’t get it from Layla.

  ‘I have played a lot too,’ she said. ‘I would be out of my mind otherwise. Before I had my students, chess was the best company I had.’

  Mikael looked up. ‘Have you ever heard the saying, “at the end of the day the pawn and the king go back in the same box”?’

  ‘No.’

  She thought about it for a moment too long.