Protecting the Desert Princess(74)

                ‘Meaning?’

                ‘Prosecuting the bastards.’

                ‘Go you…’ Layla smiled.

                ‘How are your students?’

                ‘I am banned from teaching at the moment. After the wedding perhaps I will get to teach again, but I don’t think so.’

                ‘Layla?’ he asked, and she closed her eyes at the depth of his voice. ‘Did I look after you?’

                ‘Beautifully.’

                ‘Is there anything you regret?’ he said, for he worried that they might have gone too far.

                ‘Just one thing,’ Layla said. ‘That I laughed when you proposed. Mikael, I laughed only at the impossibility, not the sentiment.’

                ‘Can I please speak to your father?’

                ‘You will not get a fair hearing.’

                ‘I thought he was a fair man?’

                ‘Not about this,’ Layla said. ‘There is something else I regret—that I did not let you say I love you and that I did not tell you that I love you, and that I shall for the rest of my life.’

                Mikael felt his heart squeeze in pain, and then the knife in it twisted as she continued.

                ‘I wish you had been my first. Then I could perhaps have been punished and made a spinster…’

                ‘Layla…’

                ‘I have to go. Jamila is knocking at the door. Abadan laa tansynii,’ Layla said.

                ‘I’ll never forget you either,’ Mikael replied.

                ‘And I will love you for ever,’ she said.

                ‘I’ll love you for ever too.’

                Mikael’s answer was honest. His response immediate.

                He walked out and past Wendy and gave a shake of his head that said not now.

                He went straight to his car and smiled at the scratched paintwork before gunning it to the airport.

                Layla loved him.

                Which meant he was going to Ishla to plead his case.





                                      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

                ‘RETURN OR ONE-WAY?’

                ‘Return,’ Mikael said, and then changed his mind, for he could not imagine returning without Layla by his side, and in dark superstition he said, ‘One-way.’

                ‘It’s actually cheaper to buy—’

                ‘False economy,’ Mikael interrupted. ‘I’m going to be fed to the dogs when I get there.’ As he had with Alina, Mikael smiled again at another woman who was not Layla—for that was what Layla had done. She had been in his life for less than a week but, despite the pain of living apart from her, in ways he was happier than he had ever been for she made the world a nicer place.