Princess's Secret Baby(39)

                James gave a very brief nod. ‘I need to get back...’

                ‘Are you worried she’s going to abscond the moment your back’s turned?’

                ‘Her name is Leila,’ James corrected, and then stalked out and headed back to the suite.

                ‘Leila...’ He knocked as he let himself in, but it soon became apparent that she wasn’t there.

                His heart galloped in his chest. Maybe Spencer’s little dig about her absconding hadn’t been such a remote possibility. He opened up the wardrobes and saw that all of her things had been delivered and put away. God, could Leila shop! There were clothes and shoes and bags and boots and when he walked in the bathroom there was a counter full of make-up and fragrances.

                There must be a hundred of them!

                There nearly was.

                There was one for every day she had been here.

                He understood her disappoint now as James remembered all the fragrances laid out on the table at her hotel and he thought of her in search of her own scent.

                James walked back into the bedroom; the safe was open. Though he’d already guessed that if she couldn’t operate the phone properly, then the safe might be beyond her. Finally he breathed again when he opened a drawer and found it stuffed full of cash and saw that her passport was there too.

                Perhaps she’d decided to have a spa.

                Or shopping perhaps, but no, he hadn’t sorted out a credit card for her yet. James got on to that and as he was ordering one he pulled a curtain and looked down, worried about her out there alone and then telling himself she’d been here for three months now and had survived.

                James then spent his requisite half hour updating his portfolio and was just about to take a very big gamble and move an awful lot of stocks into something not quite so secure, but with rapid potential indeed, when he hesitated. God, it had all been Monopoly money to him until now. All he had wanted to achieve was enough money to carry on living his depraved lifestyle and to leave his dysfunctional family behind.

                He had much more than that on his mind now and it would seem that he might just have ended up with the most high-maintenance wife in the world! He chose a slightly more sensible option and just played the gamble with half.

                And then he thought about Leila, searching for her own scent and the tears she had shed last night and he picked up the phone to fix the little he could.

                She was a mystery.

                A complete one because at 4:00 p.m. he looked up as the door opened and a very different-looking Leila walked in carrying several bags.

                She was dressed in gold, and her long black hair was flowing; her eyes were made up with kohl. He had possibly never seen anything more beautiful but, just as relief hit, he also remembered how worried he’d been. ‘Where have you been, Leila?’

                ‘We’re not married yet,’ Leila said, and hit him with his own response to her question this morning.

                ‘You look...’ He was rather lost for words. ‘Amazing.’

                ‘Thank you,’ Leila said. ‘Though really I am so tired of wearing this robe but it is the only one I brought with me...’ She was honest. ‘I don’t do well with the clothes here. I have tried so many things—I like to be covered but long dresses make me feel like a gypsy and trousers make me feel like a man.’