Nightmare scenario.
Leila flinched as his words cut into her like the nicks of a dozen tiny blades. That was all this was to him. Remember that. Hold that thought in your mind and never forget it. A nightmare scenario.
Had she thought that he would make everything all right? That he would sweep her into his arms as men sometimes did in films and stroke her hair, before telling her that she had no need to worry and he would take care of everything?
Maybe she had. Maybe part of her had still bought into that helpless feminine fantasy, despite everything she knew about men and the way they treated women.
‘Perhaps you could go and buy a pregnancy test for me,’ she suggested, staring out at the dark sky, which was punctured by tiny stars. ‘Since I find the thought of braving the London shops a little too much to contemplate at the moment.’
Something small and trembling in her voice made Gabe’s eyes narrow in unwilling comprehension. He wasn’t used to picturing himself inside the skin of a woman—except in the most erotic sense—but he did so now. He tried to imagine this pampered princess transplanted to a foreign country, bringing with her this terrible secret. How must it feel to give such momentous news to a man who did not want to receive it?
‘We’re not having some do-it-yourself session,’ he said flatly. ‘I will make an appointment for you to see someone in Harley Street tomorrow.’
Her eyes were suddenly wide and frightened.
‘But somebody might tip off the press if I am seen going to the doctor’s. And my brother mustn’t find out. At least, not in that way.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of the Hippocratic oath?’ he questioned impatiently. ‘And patient confidentiality?’
Leila almost laughed. She thought that, for a man of the world, he was being remarkably naive. Or maybe he just didn’t realise that royal blood always made the stakes impossibly high. It made the onlooking world act like vultures. Didn’t he realise that professional codes of conduct could fall by the wayside, when a royal scoop like this offered an unimaginably high purse?
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she said.
Gabe watched as she reached for her handbag. She was wearing that same damned raincoat, which reminded him uncomfortably of their erotic encounter in Qurhah. For one tempting moment he entertained the thought of having sex with her again. It had been the most amazing sex of his life and he still couldn’t work out why.
Because he had been the first?
Or because her touch had felt like fire on a day when his heart had been as cold as ice?
He remembered the way her long legs had parted eagerly beneath the quest of his hungry fingers. The way she had moaned when he had touched her. He could almost feel the eager warmth of her breath on his shoulder as he’d entered her, as no man had done before. Vividly, he recalled the sensation of tightness and the spots of blood on his sheets afterwards. He closed his eyes as he remembered seeing them spattered there like some kind of trophy. It had felt primitive, and he didn’t do primitive. He did cool and calculated and reasoned because that was the only way he’d been able to survive.
Pain gnawed at his heart as he tried to regain his equilibrium, but still his body was filled with desire. Wasn’t it also primitive—and natural—for a man to want to be deep inside a woman when she’d just told him she might be carrying his child?
His mouth tightened. If he pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her, she would not resist. No woman ever did. He imagined himself reacquainting himself with her scented flesh, because wouldn’t that help him make some kind of sense of this bizarre situation?
‘Leila,’ he said, but she had stood up very quickly and was brushing her hand dismissively over the sleeve of her raincoat, in a gesture which seemed more symbolic than necessary.
‘I must get back before anyone realises I’ve gone,’ she said.
She walked across to the other side of the room, and Gabe felt the bubble of his erotic fantasy burst as she fixed him with a cool look. For a moment it almost seemed as if she had just rejected his advances—even though he hadn’t actually made any.
‘Phone me at my hotel and tell me where to meet you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I will have to use Sara as a decoy again, but I’m sure I can manage it.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ he said with the grim air of a man whose whole world was about to change, whether he wanted it to or not.
CHAPTER FIVE