Princess's Secret Baby Read online

  Pregnant with his child.

  His phone rang and James saw that it was Spencer but he ignored it; he did not need a lecture from his brother right now.

  He needed to know how to deal with Leila and so he called Manu in Dubai, the only person he could think of who might be able to help. ‘What do you know about Surhaadi, about their royals?’

  ‘Not a lot, but I’d guess that right now you wouldn’t be their favourite person,’ Manu tartly answered. ‘She’s a royal princess, James, from an extremely conservative country. I would imagine they’ll close ranks around her and she won’t be seen in public from this point on. I certainly wouldn’t be holding my breath for an invitation to dinner to get to know the grandparents. What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking,’ James snapped. ‘Leila was the one doing that.’ James was quite certain of it now.

  ‘You’re saying she set out to trap you...’ Manu gave an incredulous laugh. ‘I don’t think she needs money to support her child.’

  ‘It wasn’t about money,’ James said, remembering her walking into the bar that night. ‘I could have been anyone...’

  ‘Poor James,’ Manu mocked him. They didn’t get on, they never had. Manu thoroughly disapproved of his ways. ‘I’m sure there are many women applauding the fact that you’re getting a taste of how it feels to be used.’

  ‘I think she did this to get out of some marriage...’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘What rights would I have?’

  ‘Rights!’ Manu gave another incredulous laugh. ‘You lost any right to a fair hearing from them long ago, James. The best I can suggest is that you attempt to sort things out with Leila before she returns there.’

  ‘She’s not gone back?’

  ‘Apparently she’s still at The Harrington,’ Manu said. ‘I just came off the phone with Spencer. He’s freaking out.’

  ‘I know,’ James said, ‘he’s trying to get through to me now.’ He rang off and took the call from Spencer.

  ‘This is a PR nightmare!’ Spencer shouted. ‘Have you any idea the damage that this is causing?’

  ‘Oh, and there I was thinking you were ringing to congratulate me,’ came James’s sarcastic response.

  ‘Have you seen the papers?’ Spencer sneered. ‘There’s nothing in them deserving of congratulations.’

  ‘I know.’ James let out a breath—it really was an appalling mess.

  ‘It gets better,’ Spencer continued with his rant. ‘Rumour has it that your little princess’s credit card has been stopped by her family. Probably in attempt to force her to come home.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I’ve got my spies at The Harrington,’ Spencer said. ‘I haven’t got to the best bit yet. Isabelle, out of the goodness of her heart, or rather to completely discredit us, is going to let your pregnant princess stay there for nothing. It’s the least she can do apparently.’ Spencer let out an angry breath. ‘Sort it, James.’

  ‘I intend to.’

  ‘God knows how. You know how much this means to me. You know I’m doing everything I can to show Gene I can run the place.’

  ‘Right now,’ James said, ‘I couldn’t give a damn about The Chatsfield.’

  ‘You never have. You only care about yourself, James, I get that. Know this much though—I am not letting the Chatsfield reputation slide just because you can’t keep it in your pants. Sort it,’ Spencer said again, and rung off.

  James took a helicopter to the airport and then had an hour to kill before his flight back to New York.

  He rang The Harrington but again they refused to put him through.

  She couldn’t hide from him forever.

  Oh, yes, she could, a small inner voice said—she was a royal princess from a foreign land.

  Eight hours’ flying time did nothing to improve James’s temper. New York was wet and grey and the cold sheets of rain meant that his driver could only move the car slowly through the heavy traffic.

  Thanks to the time difference, the day that brought him to her was lasting forever.

  He told his driver to take his luggage to his home and then to come and wait here for him. He strode through the foyer of The Harrington and James punched the elevator. He didn’t care if they’d changed her room; he’d knock on every door if he had to.

  ‘Sir, only guests staying here can use the elevators...’ A very worried concierge who’d been warned to be on the lookout for James Chatsfield was racing towards him.

  ‘Tough!’ James said as the elevator doors closed.

  It was the same one they had made out in, James knew that, though he did his level best not to think about that night now.

  They must have alerted Leila that he was on his way up because as he strode down the corridor her door opened and there she stood.

  He’d built her up to be some kind of shrew, some Desdemona, yet she stood dressed in a white hotel robe and such was her beauty he knew there and then why he hadn’t been able to get over her.

  She was thinner than he remembered and there were dark smudges under her eyes, but they did not meet his. Those once-pretty lips were pursed but she prised them open to give her orders.

  ‘I will come down and speak with you in the dining room,’ Leila said. ‘You will wait for me there.’

  ‘You don’t give me orders, Leila,’ James said.

  ‘I’m not even dressed...’

  ‘You’ve got far more on now than you did that night,’ James said, and he pushed past the door and into her suite. ‘Remember that night, Leila, the night you set out to get pregnant...?’

  ‘I did not,’ Leila said. ‘I was on the pill.’

  ‘Please...’ He looked at her, remembered her very deliberately removing the condom, and then he tried not to remember that.

  Leila stood with her heart hammering in her chest as James took a seat in a leather chair.

  ‘We’re going to talk.’

  ‘I need to get dressed.’

  He stood, lifted the chair and moved it to the bedroom doors, which he left open. He turned the chair around, so he faced outwards. ‘Get dressed then, but I’ll hear if you open a window,’ James said. ‘And, once dressed, you and I are going to have a very long talk.’

  The phone rang and Leila looked at it, but James, who knew hotels better than most, told her who it would be.

  ‘That will be reception checking to see if you’re okay and if you want me removed from your suite.’

  ‘I want you removed,’ Leila said.

  ‘Well, you’d better tell them to send the police then, because the only way they’ll take me out is cuffed. Like it or not we are going to talk, Leila. It might as well be now.’

  She answered the phone and looked at the back of his head. Leila could see the tense set of his shoulders, yet she didn’t really fear him as such.

  She just feared the conversation ahead.

  Leila let out a breath and chose to face it. ‘I’m fine,’ she said to the worried receptionist. ‘You don’t need to send anyone.’

  ‘Tell them to send afternoon tea because we’re going to be here some time.’ James turned his head but she ignored that request and put down the phone.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he said.

  Leila went to her closet and tried to decide what to wear. She found western clothes very confusing and longed for robes, but she had only brought one with her.

  Oh, what to wear?

  ‘Leila...’ James warned as she took her time.

  He was here to discuss the business of their child so Leila selected a black linen suit that she had seen the beautiful businesswomen wearing as she sat in Central Park and watched the world go by.

  She laid it out on the bed and then opened a drawer and loo
ked for underwear and a top that would go with the suit. She could hear him tapping his foot in impatience but Leila refused to be rushed.

  It was more than impatience; he knew she had undone her robe and he was fighting instinct not to turn around.

  Leila felt strange having him here in the room as she dressed, for she remembered the heat of their undress.

  She pulled on panties that she had bought in Macy’s when her card had still been working. Then she pulled on a little silver top that she had bought there too.

  ‘How long does it take to get dressed, Leila?’

  ‘It takes me a considerable time,’ Leila answered. ‘I’m not used to dressing myself and neither am I used to buttons.’

  He tried not to smile and then he grimaced as he remembered her tearing off his shirt.

  ‘Are you dressed yet?’

  ‘I haven’t tied back my hair,’ Leila said.

  His patience ran out and he stood. As she picked up her hairbrush James removed it from her hand and put it on the dresser and for the first time today they met the other’s eye.

  ‘The hair is fine,’ James said. ‘We’re going to talk now.’

  Not yet, James realised, as there was a knock at the door.

  He knew it would be someone to discreetly check if she was okay.

  It was.

  ‘I would tell you if I wanted to be disturbed,’ Leila said rudely, and James raised his eyebrows at the tone of her voice and wondered where the woman he had met all those weeks ago had gone. ‘Dismissed.’

  She closed the door and turned to James.

  ‘Take a seat at the table,’ he told her.

  Unlike the night they had met, he sat opposite her. When he spoke, his voice was not kind as it once had been.

  ‘No lies, Leila. You are going to tell me the truth...’

  ‘I don’t lie.’

  ‘Oh, is that so,’ James said, ‘Ms travelling musician from Dubai.’

  ‘I like music.’

  ‘Did you set out to get pregnant?’

  Leila looked at him. ‘No.’

  ‘I said no lies!’ James was doing his best not to shout.

  ‘I am not lying. I would never choose this—I vomit all the time. It is the most horrible thing to happen to me...’ Her eyes reproached him as if he was the cause of it.

  Which he was, of course, but... ‘You told me you were on the pill.’

  ‘I was,’ Leila said. ‘James, I did not set out to get pregnant.’

  ‘So what did you set out for?’ James asked.

  ‘I ran away,’ Leila admitted, and she looked at the man who had taken her heart the night she had run, and she hated him for walking out the next day.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were pregnant?’

  ‘You seemed busy with your blonde women,’ Leila sneered.

  Busy trying to get over you, James thought, though he didn’t tell her that.

  ‘Yep, I was also busy being beaten up in dark alleys.’

  ‘I apologise for my brother’s violence towards you. If it makes you feel any better, I am not speaking to him now,’ Leila said. It wasn’t just for that reason though that Leila wasn’t speaking to her brother—Zayn had called Leila last night to warn her that the news of her pregnancy would break today and that the father would be named. He had also told her that he was no longer marrying the woman he had been betrothed to. In fact, the woman he was seeing now, Sophie, was the journalist who had revealed James’s name to the press.

  ‘Who else did you tell?’ James asked.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘So how do the papers know?’

  ‘Perhaps the doctor...’

  ‘Oh, and did the doctor ask you your lover’s name?’

  He blocked every exit with his cool stare. ‘No,’ Leila said, gulping.

  ‘So, who else did you tell?’

  ‘I told no one apart from my brother.’

  ‘Still she lies,’ James said, because someone must have spoken to the media. ‘Well, your brother omitted to mention that you were pregnant when he had his hands around my throat. I’m assuming that he knew then.’

  Leila closed her eyes. ‘Yes, he tracked me down a few weeks ago and I told him that I was with child and that I didn’t know what to do...’

  ‘And yet, you didn’t think to ring me. Instead you sent him to beat me up.’

  There was a long stretch of silence before Leila spoke. ‘It’s complicated, James,’ Leila said instead. ‘Zayn is very protective towards me.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not complicated at all,’ James interrupted. ‘We had sex, and now we’re having a baby...’ It was starting to dawn on him that this was real. ‘You had no right, no right at all, to keep this news from me. Was I ever going to find out?’

  ‘I tried to call you.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I did,’ Leila said. ‘That number you gave me was wrong.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘It was,’ Leila said. ‘I tried many times to call you.’

  ‘Try it now,’ James challenged.

  He stood and so, too, did Leila and she took the number from a drawer and walked over to a walnut desk. James watched as she dialled the number and closed his eyes in brief frustration as she had omitted to dial for an outside line.

  ‘Are you kidding me, Leila?’

  ‘Kidding?’ Leila frowned.

  ‘You really don’t know how to get an outside line?’ He saw her blink and then frown in confusion.

  ‘I just press three and ask for my meals to be sent to me.’

  She went back and sat at the table. ‘I know you think I was trying to trap you but I truly was not. In many ways it has been good not being able to speak with you because I’ve been able to work through things myself and I’ve given it a lot of thought. I am angry with my brother about the fight, and anyway, I don’t want to rely on him or anyone. I am going to raise my baby alone.’

  ‘Our baby,’ James corrected, and Leila felt her throat constrict when she heard the snap of possession in his voice.

  ‘I don’t need your help in this, James.’

  ‘It’s not about what you need. It’s about what the baby needs,’ James said. ‘Though I’d suggest that you do need some help. I’ve heard on the grapevine that your credit card has been stopped. I guess Mommy and Daddy are not very amused with their daughter’s behaviour.’

  ‘I don’t think that they will ever speak with me again,’ Leila said, ‘so I doubt I will find out.’

  James looked at her and felt a bit bad then—his parents were trouble enough but Leila was dealing with a king and queen. ‘I’m sure they’ll come around.’

  He took a breath; a sense of disquiet was growing as the ramifications of that thought hit home. Yes, her parents would surely come around and what then?

  What happened then to the princess and her baby?

  What happened to his child?

  ‘How did your parents take the news?’ Leila asked.

  ‘I’m not here to talk about our families,’ James said. ‘I’m here to sort things out between us.’

  ‘There is no us,’ Leila said.

  ‘Who’s your OB?’ James asked, and she frowned. ‘Your physician? You have seen someone other than the hotel doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You haven’t had an ultrasound?’ James checked, and she simply stared back at him. ‘It might be twins!’

  ‘There are a lot of twins in my family.’

  The day just got better and better!

  ‘So, Leila, what are you going to do for money now that your parents have cut you off?’ James asked, and glanced around the room. He’d seen in the bedroom when he’d stood from the chair that her
once-empty wardrobe was now bulging and there was a lot of evidence of her extravagance here too—she must have fifty bottles of perfume laid out on the table and the diamonds sparkling from her ears hadn’t been there that night.

  Her make-up was amazing though—her lips were in a neutral shade much more subtly seductive than that terrible red lipstick she had worn, and the touch of mascara she wore now accentuated the gold of her eyes.

  ‘What I do for money is not your concern.’

  ‘Actually, it is,’ came James’s sarcastic response, ‘because given the news you’re no doubt entitled to half of mine...’

  ‘James,’ Leila interrupted. ‘I know there are laws here, that you will feel obligated, but I told you, I have already decided to go it alone. Anyway, I don’t want someone so promiscuous or reckless as a father...’

  ‘Don’t. You. Dare!’

  Leila shivered as she heard James, the man who had once made her smile, now speak in ice. The man whose voice had once soothed her now made her stomach clench.

  ‘Don’t you dare try to exclude me from my child’s life. I’m not one of your servants that you can dismiss.’

  ‘Actually,’ Leila coolly said, and James’s mouth gaped, ‘you are.’

  She got up and walked over to the table. She picked up the newspaper and tossed it to him, and then she opened a drawer and took out some magazines she’d spent a lot of time crying over and she tossed them at him too.

  Then Leila picked up the phone and dialled three.

  ‘I would like James Chatsfield removed now.’

  ‘Tell them that I’m already leaving,’ James said, and stood. He was struggling to stay calm. She was like no one he had ever dealt with, but there was no way that he’d let her simply remove him from his own child’s life.

  ‘I will call you later, Leila,’ James said. ‘And I very much suggest that you pick up the phone.’

  As he went to walk away, something shot past him and James watched as a stiletto met with the wall as Leila vented some of her fury towards the man who had walked out on her that morning. The man who had left her pregnant with his child.