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But he doubted it very much too.
‘How is fatherhood second time around?’ Mikael asked.
‘Just as good,’ Demyan said. ‘Actually, better. I know a bit more what I am doing than I did with Roman. Alina is a natural mother.’
Even though they spoke in Russian this was all a foreign language to Mikael. What was a ‘natural mother’? He looked over to his friend—a man he had had a fist fight with a few months back, when Mikael had suggested that he stop paying child support for his son, given that Demyan’s ex-wife had told him that Roman might not be his.
Mikael had laughed then at Demyan’s passion.
He was starting to glimpse it now.
‘Why does she have to go back to her family?’ Demyan asked.
‘Because they love her,’ Mikael answered, ‘and because she loves them too.’
‘Mikael—?’ Demyan started, but Mikael shook his head.
‘Don’t.’
There was no point discussing it, for there was nothing he could do.
As they headed out to the elevator Layla was all smiles, but when the doors closed she rolled her eyes.
‘What does that mean?’ Mikael asked.
‘You know.’ Layla smiled.
‘No.’
‘All my cousins have babies, and you hold them and you smile, and you say the right thing, but…’ Layla held out her palms in a helpless gesture. ‘Then you run out of things to say.’
Very reluctantly Mikael smiled, but that was enough incentive for Layla to speak on.
‘Now Trinity and Zahid are having a baby it will be the same with them. That was how I escaped. Trinity was watching me like a hawk, but I suggested we go in a baby boutique and once we were in I might just as well have not been there.’
‘You don’t like babies?’
‘I don’t dislike them,’ she said, ‘though they do freak me out a bit, with their big heads and eyes. I know I shall love mine, but really I would love more of this.’
‘Of what?’
‘Kissing and dancing,’ she said as they stepped out of the elevator. ‘Anyway, pregnancy isn’t always a good thing…’
‘Are you worried that it might ruin your figure?’ He smiled.
Just when he thought he knew a little of what went on in her mind, Mikael found out there was so much more he didn’t know.
‘No.’ Layla shook her head as they stepped out onto the street. ‘I worry about death, given that it was pregnancy that killed my mother—she died giving birth to me.’
‘Layla…’ He went to catch her wrist but she shook it off.
‘It is not something I wish to speak about,’ she said.
‘You can.’
‘What’s the point in that?’ she challenged.
There was none.
They walked to the car in silence.
Layla was dreading a future with Hussain by her side.
Mikael felt suddenly ill at the thought of the same.
It was a bit strained on the drive to his property.
Layla was lost in her thoughts and Mikael glanced over several times, trying to work out what she was thinking. Layla wished she hadn’t told him that, for she did not like to discuss her fears about getting pregnant, and there was nothing that could be done about them anyway.
So, as they left the city behind, rather than sit in pensive silence Layla nagged him to teach her to drive instead.
‘Please, Mikael….’ she said, for perhaps the twentieth time. They were miles from anywhere and there was barely a car on the road, just mile after mile of ocean, and then a low white property came into view and she glimpsed what must be his luxurious house. ‘Please let me drive.’
‘No,’ Mikael said as they pulled up on his huge drive.
He took her case in and left it in the hall as Layla looked around.
It was like nothing she had ever seen—a green oasis, and the tropical bush land outside seemed a feature of the home.
The place gleamed with a mixture of modern appliances and a few treasured antiques. A huge black and silver globe hung in one corner, and Layla guessed rightly that it was perfectly angled.
‘I am there,’ she said, pointing straight to Ishla.
If only the world were really that small, Mikael thought as she clipped on high heels through his home.
It was terribly hard for him to comprehend that the last time he had been home Layla hadn’t existed in his world.
‘Oooh, I like your chess set.’
‘Leave it,’ he said, watching her fingers hover over his knight. It felt strange having her here—a streak of feminine beauty in a home that was very male. He did not like the way her eyes seemed to take in each ornament, or each book that lined the walls, and he tried to distract her with the delicious view.
As they walked through to the lounge there was a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean, with its waves constantly rolling in, and Mikael opened the French windows to let in the magical sound.
‘Do you want to go the beach?’ he offered.
‘Maybe later.’ She shrugged and with a complete lack of boundaries walked through the house to his bedroom, which looked out onto the water also.
‘Where are the maids?’ Layla asked with mild interest.
‘I don’t have maids,’ Mikael said. ‘I have someone who comes in daily when I am here and weekly at other times.’
‘So it really is just us?’
He should be offended, Mikael thought as she snooped through his wardrobe and then into his study, except he couldn’t be, for she simply had no concept of living alone.
She thought his home was very beautiful and absolutely intriguing. Unlike the palace, Mikael’s walls were not lined with portraits of ancestors, for he did not know from where he came. Instead the art was modern, and Layla stared at a red line on the wall that was fractured in several places before continuing and branching out.
‘What is that?’ She frowned and peered closer.
‘It’s a lifeline,’ he said, admiring his favourite piece. It had cost an absolute fortune and it spoke to him in many, many ways—not just about this past but about his clients, their victims.
‘A lifeline?’ she queried. ‘Oh, you mean like this?’ She held up her palm and then looked back at the painting and pointed to the first fracture. ‘So is this you in Russia?’
‘It’s just a painting.’
It was more than that, though, to Mikael, and he looked at it and thought of the future and the next fracture that would appear when Layla left.
She wanted to know more—there was so much that she wanted to know—yet intuitively she knew that he had already shared more than he was comfortable with. It might take months, possibly years, to truly know him, and all they had were days.
‘Layla…’ Mikael broke the tense silence because there was a question that needed to be asked. If she felt a tenth of what he did then something needed to be addressed. ‘Are you sure that you want…?’
She did not want his question—she did not want this tension that was building to a head—and so she interrupted him before he could say what he must not.
‘I actually think I could paint that,’ she said stepping back from the painting and nodding. ‘If you got me some red paint I could do another one for you…’ She turned and saw his rigid lips and kissed them. ‘I’m playing,’ she said. ‘Well, sort of.’ Because she was quite sure that she could paint it—after all it was just a broken red line! ‘I love your home. It is very…’ she tried to think of a word to use ‘…very Mikael.’
‘So, what do you want to do?’ he asked, because he didn’t like her examining his things.
‘I already told you—I want to learn to drive,’ she said.
‘Layla, it’s not something you learn in a few days,’ he explained. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be doing other things?’
She looked at his delicious mouth and then back to his eyes.
‘Teach me to screw, instead.’
Deliberately he did not blink. Mikael knew she had picked up that word from him, and really he would prefer that she didn’t return to Ishla with that in her vocabulary.
‘That’s not a great choice of word, Layla.’
‘You said it the other night—you said that she didn’t want to lose a good—’
‘Lover,’ he said, but that didn’t work—because he had never been in love until now, and what was the point of falling in love when any day now she’d be gone?
‘I want to come again,’ Layla said.
‘That’s better.’
‘I want you to come too. I want to see.’
Still he did not blink, but Mikael chose the safer option. ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’
He watched the smile play on her lips as they headed back out to his car. ‘You think you won there, don’t you?’
‘I think I did.’
He turned the car around and went through a few basics with her, but she just kept turning his radio on. ‘Listen to me, Layla’ he said, turning the music off for the third time. ‘If I say brake then you are to brake—there is to be no arguing.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m in charge here…’ Mikael warned, but he saw the press of her lips and the dark mood that had been building since last night inched towards breaking point. Was she serious about anything? he wondered, though he had enough insight to know he wasn’t talking about driving.
A mini-tornado with black hair and eyes had spun into his life and changed every part of it, and she didn’t even seem aware of the damage she would leave behind.
‘Layla!’ he warned as her fingers moved towards the stereo, and the anger in his voice was more than was merited, perhaps, but it came from within.
‘Can I just remind you that I am a princess…?’
He climbed out of the car with his mounting temper and walked back to his sprawling home. She rushed after him.
‘Don’t walk away from me,’ Layla ordered. ‘Mikael. You do not walk away from me.’
She soon changed her mind when he turned and she saw the look in his eyes as he strode back towards her.
‘Okay, you can go now,’ she said, but he did not stop walking till he was right in her face.
‘Never,’ Mikael said, ‘pull the princess rank on me.’
‘But I am one.’
‘Don’t we all know it?’
‘You’re cross with me.’
‘You—’ Mikael was on the edge of losing his temper; he never did—nothing goaded him, he was the goader ‘—are the limit. Have the keys.’ He tossed them at her. ‘Better yet, I’ll take you back to the hotel and leave you there. Better still, I’ll take you back to the city and leave you on the street. I’m done.’
He bent down to pick up the keys from the ground and headed back to the car. It was better that he was away from her; she’d have his heart otherwise.
‘Come on.’
‘Where?’
‘I just told you.’
‘You can’t leave me in the city.’
‘I am,’ he said.
‘Everyone is looking for me.’
