‘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.’
‘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