Protecting the Desert Princess(64)

                ‘Layla—’

                ‘Please, Mikael, you are making this worse for me. I just wanted to sit with my coffee and my thoughts before I face my brother. I am more scared than I thought I would be, and I am so cross with them for telling my father.’

                Her tears ran silent now and he did not want her to leave. It was the last thing on earth he wanted, and yet he needed to do as she asked and somehow make this better for her, not worse.

                Mikael knew he needed to make this about her now, rather than them.

                ‘Is there anything I can do that will help?’

                ‘There is.’ She gulped. ‘Will you speak with Zahid? Can you tell him that nothing happened between us…? Can you tell him that I stayed with your married friends and that you were not with me when you texted in the evenings and nights, that your friends let you know how I was…?’

                ‘Will that make it easier on you?’

                ‘Much,’ Layla said. ‘If my father thinks I was alone with a man…’ She shook her head. ‘He cannot know. But please only agree if you are sure you can act as though you have no feelings for me—as though I am the trouble you first thought I was.’

                He moved into the seat beside her and she felt his arms around her for the last time, then his mouth on hers. It was a very tender kiss, for Mikael had not shaved, but it was so loaded with passion it would burn her lips every time she remembered it.

                ‘I don’t know how to let you go,’ he admitted.

                ‘If you care for me you will. I love my family. They will be cross, yes, but you are not sending me to savages, Mikael—you are returning me to my family and to people who love me.’

                He thought of her kitten-soft feet and how pampered and looked-after she had been, and of her father, who was devastated that she was missing and in agony that he might have lost her.

                Mikael was in agony too.

                ‘Please, Mikael—please don’t make this worse for me than it already is.’

                He couldn’t say no to her, and so he said yes to the most impossible task of his life.

                ‘We’ll do it at my chambers.’





                                      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

                THEY WENT OVER and over their stories before Mikael would call Zahid.

                ‘I’ll have Wendy make up a bill for units of time.’

                ‘Reduce them!’ Layla gave a thin smile.

                ‘Yep—and I’ll add the hotel costs…’

                ‘The hotel?’

                ‘I’m sure they would have remembered you and called the police—your family will know by now that you stayed there, I’ll tell Zahid that you stayed between there and Demyan and Alina’s.’

                He missed nothing.

                Mikael called the hotel and asked them to send an amended bill—with the alcohol removed.

                ‘Thank you.’