‘I will only meet with you in the restaurant.’
‘Fine,’ James reluctantly conceded. ‘We’ll discuss our private business with half of the hotel watching on. Can you at least try and keep your shoes on this time?’
He ended the call and looked out to Central Park. The view sometimes soothed him but it didn’t today.
She’d leave, in his bones he was sure of it, and there was not a thing he could do once she was gone.
He’d marry her, James decided, even if he’d run from the very idea all of his life.
As if she’d agree though, James admitted to himself. He could barely get Leila to agree to dinner without threatening her with a lawyer.
A sudden thought occurred and again he found himself on the phone to Manu, who was completely appalled at the idea he had just had and said that she would have no part in its execution.
‘You can’t force her to marry you, James, that’s not fair.’
‘She’s pregnant with my child and could leave the country at any moment,’ James clipped. ‘I don’t have time to be fair.’
CHAPTER SIX
LEILA LOVED MANHATTAN.
If she wasn’t dreading meeting with James tonight, if she wasn’t estranged from her family, if her heart wasn’t lonely and heavy, then she would surely be singing as she dressed in the robe of gold she had arrived in before leaving the hotel to go to work.
Yes, work.
Leila had known she was in a holding pattern.
She had known that sooner or later the credit cards would stop, and she had decided that she would not be asking Zayn for money.
Yes, she was angry at him, yet she loved him.
He had asked her to trust him; he had promised that she would understand why Sophie had outed her and James if he could just explain.
She refused to let him.
Instead a very unskilled princess had attempted to get a job.
Rejected, disheartened, when her third trial at washing dishes had ended in its usual disaster, Leila had decided to cheer herself up by eating at her favourite Middle Eastern restaurant.
She had no idea it was incredibly exclusive. Leila simply ate the gorgeous food and enjoyed the gentle background music and then handed over the plastic at the end of her meal.
‘Where is the music?’ Leila had asked one day when the restaurant had only been filled with the noise of diners.
‘We’re trying to find someone,’ Habib the waiter had said.
It turned out that they just had!
Now, each day from eleven till three, Leila played her beloved qanun. She had been shocked at first by the pittance they paid her, but was enjoying herself all the same.
Now the tips were growing and they had asked her to consider working at night, but Leila, too nervous to walk alone at night, had declined.
Leila worked through her shift and smiled when she saw her tips and then headed as she always did to Central Park.
Oh, she loved it there. She would walk around a lake or simply sit on a bench with her coffee. It was wonderful hearing the laughter and chatter as she sat there and pretended that she belonged.
‘You’re so young to have three children,’ Leila said one day as a woman who looked like a teenager came and sat on the bench beside her and watched her children play.
‘They’re not mine.’ The young woman smiled. ‘I’m their nanny.’
‘Nanny?’ Leila checked.
‘I look after the children while their mother works.’
‘Oh!’ Leila thought for a moment. ‘Does she pay you to look after them?’
‘Not very much,’ the nanny grumbled.
She could do this, Leila decided as she walked back to the hotel. She could work and support her baby and she was going to tell James the same thing tonight.
He could carry on just as he had been, the louse.
The nannies all watched and sniggered as a very beautiful woman in robes of gold let out a bellow of rage and kicked a tree.
Bastard!
She shouted it in her own language and would say it in his tonight when they met.
No way, no way did she like him anymore.
No way would she ever let him near her.
No way did she still want him.
And Leila reminded herself of that as she dressed to meet him that evening and chose a dress in red. She put on red sandals that were very high, but she chose them not for their colour, more because there were straps around the ankles so they might be difficult to take off when temptation hit.
She had fallen in love that night, and not only had he simply left her lying in bed, he had shamed her over and over after he’d left.
‘We’ll send someone to collect your luggage,’ the receptionist said when she rang to inform Leila that Mr Chatsfield’s driver was here.
‘I’m not checking out,’ Leila said.
She meant it. Leila would rather the embarrassment of a mounting unpaid debt than being kept by James.