Princess's Secret Baby(75)

                Leila wouldn’t laugh.

                He knew that now.

                What he didn’t know though was that at this very moment he was                     breaking the heart of the woman he loved.

                * * *

                Leila had walked into the reception unseen by James and                     Manu. She had watched them walk over to the elevators and had hoped upon hope                     that this was not what it looked like.

                Leila tried to trust him, tried to tell herself that he                     wouldn’t take another woman to a bed that they had shared.

                She watched the light on the elevator stop at the seventeenth                     floor instead of the top one and she pressed it and watched in dismay as the                     elevator came straight down and opened empty.

                No.

                Even now she still wanted to trust him.

                Even now, as she stepped in and pressed the button and took the                     elevator up to the seventeenth floor, she tried to tell herself that she was                     wrong.

                She had to be wrong, for the man who had made love to her the                     night before last would not do this. The man who had brought her to his home                     could not do this to her.

                Or had he brought her to his home so that he could free himself                     to carry on with his ways here?

                As she walked along the plush corridor Leila thought of the                     nights he had returned smelling of perfume.

                Leila walked, wondering what one he was behind, and then she                     heard the one thing she was dreading—the sound of James’s voice and a woman                     laughing behind a hotel door.

                She wanted to kick the door, she wanted to burst in on them and                     scratch his face, but what was the point?

                What would it change?

                From the start he had told her he was a playboy. She had fallen                     in love with a man who had, as it turned out, wanted nothing more than a                     one-night stand.

                Circumstance had forced them together.

                Tears would not come, anger would not come—all she felt was                     weary from a world that denied her love over and over.