Protecting the Desert Princess(51)

                ‘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.’