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.
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.