Royal Temptation. Carol Marinelli

just told you.’

      ‘You can’t leave me in the city.’

      ‘I am,’ he said.

      ‘Everyone is looking for me.’

      ‘You’ll be very easy to find,’ he said, and opened the door for her. ‘In.’

      ‘No.’

       ‘In.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘then you get to stay at the house. I’m off to the hotel…’

      He started the engine and she ran in front of the car.

      He sat with the engine idling, in air-conditioned comfort, as Layla stood in the hot Australian sun, and he was a fool to even pretend that he did not love her.

      Life, Mikael thought as she came round to his window, had been so much more straightforward without her in it.

      She tapped on the window and waited as it slid down.

      ‘Please don’t go.’ she pleaded, but he said nothing. ‘I was playing and I should have listened.’ Still Mikael stared ahead. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.

      ‘For…?’

      ‘Not listening when you were trying to teach me.’

      He went to slide up the window.

      ‘For being a princess.’

      ‘You can be a princess, Layla, just not when it’s the two of us. Do you get it?’

      ‘I think so.’

      Even he was having trouble defining it. ‘When I say enough, or stop, or there is danger, you must listen to me without question.’

      ‘You are just like my brother and father—’

      ‘Please,’ Mikael dismissed. ‘Do you know, I’m actually starting to lean to their side? If they’ve had to put up with your dramas for the last twenty-four years I’m full of admiration, in fact, that they got you to adulthood alive.’

      ‘We only have a couple of days and you spoil them by being mean to me,’ she said.

      ‘You forgot to stamp your foot.’ He saw her tense, frustrated face as still she did not get her way. ‘It won’t work with me, Layla.’

      ‘It worked before.’

      ‘It won’t work in the important things. Now, do you want to learn to drive?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Who’s in charge when you’re a learner driver in my car?’

      ‘You are.’

      She climbed in, and this time Layla did listen.

      Half an hour later they bunny-hopped back into his long drive…

      ‘More to the left,’ he said, his hand hovering over the handbrake, and wondered if he should take the wheel. But she righted the car—though a fraction too late.

      ‘What was that noise?’ Layla asked.

      ‘My paintwork.’

      ‘Oh.’ She pulled to a halt, actually quite smoothly. ‘How did I do?’

      ‘Very well,’ Mikael said, wondering why he wasn’t jumping out of his car to inspect the damage; instead he leant his head back on the headrest and gave up fighting it.

      Pointless and hopeless, perhaps, but in love was where he was.

      She was the important thing.

      Which meant that something had to be discussed.

      And this time when he raised it he wouldn’t let Layla interrupt him.

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      THEY UNPACKED HER case and Layla put on her new bikini. They had a swim at the beach until, salty and dusty with sand, they returned home hungry.

      Layla was determined to make lunch herself.

      Hair tied up, her new bikini damp, she was frying a practice prawn in butter with Mikael behind her, telling her to turn it when it went pink.

      ‘It looks beautiful,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to tell my father about them.’

      ‘Do you want to go back to Ishla?’ Mikael asked the question he had tried to before, when Layla had been looking at his painting.

      ‘Of course I do.’

      She didn’t even hesitate in her response, but Mikael persisted, knowing her answer had been automatic.

      ‘Are you sure that you do?’ He saw her face turn just a little and her lovely smooth brow was marred by a frown.

      Until this morning she had not considered that she might have to say goodbye to people she cared about. Until now it had never entered her head that she might not want to go back to Ishla.

      That she had a choice.

      ‘Of course I am sure,’ Layla said, though her voice suddenly said otherwise. ‘I love my family.’

      ‘I know that you do.’

      ‘It would kill my father if I left.’ Her voice started to rise as she pointed out the reality. ‘It would honestly kill him.’

      ‘Okay,’ he soothed.

      ‘I don’t like that question,’ she said. ‘I don’t like how it makes me feel inside. Please don’t ask me things like that again.’

      ‘I won’t.’ Mikael turned off the gas and, still behind her, wrapped his arms around her and held her till she relaxed back into him. But he could feel that her heart was racing—as, he guessed, was her mind.

      ‘Go,’ she said, because his words had unsettled her. ‘Go and have your shower. I want to make lunch by myself.’

      Mikael left her to it, mentally kicking himself and wondering if he could have handled that any better.

      What the hell had he been thinking?

      Suppose she’d said no, that she didn’t want to go back?

      What then?

      Had he been asking her to be his wife?

      * * *

      Layla was determined to make a beautiful lunch—and she would if the butter knife she was trying to cut a tomato with didn’t flatten it so.

      And the onion had made her cry.

      Or was she just crying?

      Damn you, Mikael, for asking me that, she thought. Damn you for making me stand here and cry and not want to go home to the land and the people I love.

      ‘Mikael!’ She was suddenly angry and walked through to the bedroom. She could hear the shower was on but had no qualms about walking in. After all, he had bathed her a few times.

      What Layla saw, though, had her heart in her throat—and suddenly she wasn’t angry any more.

      He looked up and saw the shock on her face as his eyes lifted from where he had been concentrating and he saw her standing there, watching him.

      Then he watched her as the shock changed to a delicious smile and she stepped into the shower with him.

      ‘Continue,’ she said.

      Mikael wasn’t sure that he could—until her mouth started working his chest.

      ‘Is this why you have so many showers…?’ she asked, and he gave a half laugh. ‘I thought you were just very clean!’