Princess's Secret Baby(34)

                ‘We’ll go there once we’re married,’ James said. His home was his haven and the thought of sharing it with anyone made him shudder, though he didn’t tell Leila that. ‘I think we might have slightly less chance of killing each other here. There’s the restaurant, there’s the gym, you can take yourself off for a spa, or whatever...’

                ‘And it’s public,’ Leila said.

                ‘Exactly.’

                ‘James...’ Leila took a breath. She didn’t know how to tell him her truth but she made herself say it. ‘I can’t share a bedroom with you. I get bad dreams...’

                ‘I’m having one at the moment,’ came his glib response.

                ‘I shout out,’ Leila said. ‘I cry.’

                ‘You didn’t the night...’ His voice trailed off, for James did not want to think about that night.

                ‘I forced myself to stay awake.’

                ‘Do you grind your teeth?’

                ‘I don’t think so.’

                ‘We’ll go with the positives then.’ He gave her a thin smile. ‘So here we are.’

                Here they were.

                She looked at her finger marks on his cheeks. ‘I am sorry I hit you.’

                ‘Not that sorry,’ James said. ‘Given you went to again...’ Then he saw tension in her features. ‘It was a row.’

                ‘Even so.’

                ‘People row.’

                She felt like crying. Leila had spent her life avoiding rows. She was just terrified of them and rightly so because the one row she’d had revealed her mother’s truth.

                ‘You don’t have to force yourself to stay awake, Leila, and I’m not going to ship you off for a bit of noise. We all have our things. I’m sure, perfect though I am, there might even be a couple of things about me that annoy you...’

                Oh, there were many things, but she chose not to deal with the biggest one— that he had been with another since her.

                ‘Like forcing me into a marriage I don’t want?’

                ‘Yep!’

                ‘Like your socks?’

                ‘Excuse me?’ James frowned.

                ‘They are horrible.’

                ‘They’re black socks,’ James pointed out, but then he remembered her instruction to remove them, with so much authority to her voice that he’d thought she was about to produce a whip—they really knew anything about each other. ‘You want me barefoot in robes, do you?’ He peeled off his socks and threw them. ‘Better?’

                ‘It can never be better,’ Leila said.

                ‘How melodramatic.’ James yawned.

                ‘I’m going to have a bath.’ It was the only place she could think of to get away from him.

                She sat on the edge of the bath as it filled and thought about her situation. He seemed worried that she would flee, that her parents might come for her. He had no idea just how unwanted she was and was too embarrassed to tell him.