Chapter Twenty-Eight
Leland
The past…
I rolled over in bed, opened my eyes, and found Layla curled up in the chair beside my bed.
She was wearing a little cheetah-print pajama set with her blond hair tied in a knot atop her head. There was a bit of color in her cheeks though her creamy skin was pale. The blue eyes trained on me were steady and with a hint of the openness I’d imagined she’d had as a girl before the Russian sex traffickers had kidnapped her to sell to Hector.
The sweetness of her gaze suffused my heart with warmth. “Why are you watching me sleep again? It can’t be very interesting. There must be something in the house more entertaining than me.”
She shook her head.
Laughing, I sat up in bed. “Can’t fool me. You’re bored and impatient, and want Leland awake”—my eyes narrowed—“to take you somewhere.”
Layla shook her head again and moved to sit on the bed close to me. This time I let the smile come to my face. Six months we’d been married and inch by inch I’d brought some slow healing to her abused psyche, enough that more mornings than not she crept from her room to mine and waited for me to wake.
There was a pucker in her brow as she studied me.
“It’s all right to need things, Layla,” I reminded her soothingly. “Anything you want. Anything you need. Always from me, my dear.”
Her brows hitched up. “But I don’t want or need anything. I have everything I want before I can even think to need it. You’re very generous. It’s just—” Her eyes clouded over briefly and I hated seeing it. “You were out very late with Hector last night. Later than usual. It scared me. The only thing I wanted was to see that you’d come home safe. And you did.”
I cupped her chin with my palm and lightly stroked her cheek. “You don’t have to worry about me or be afraid. I’ve told you nothing can hurt you here. I promise. I’m a very powerful and wealthy man. Even more than Hector Ramos. You believe me, don’t you?”
Layla made a small nod and I nodded back at her more firmly, then laughed. “Go get me my breakfast, and when you get back I expect Layla to tell me something she wants.”
She made a face and sprang from the bed. “I don’t want anything. I’ve already told you. I have more than there is to want.”
I listened to her running feet in the hallway and shook my head. Half a year married and I’d been so preoccupied with my wounded dove that I hadn’t fucked a man since I’d married her. Every free moment of my life not neck deep in CIA bullshit I devoted to Layla, and bizarrely—and quite unexpectedly—I almost enjoyed living again.
Jena had been right in Georgetown. There was something to this figuring out what you had to give to someone then giving it to them to make you feel a sense of worth.
Raking back my tousled hair, I rolled my eyes at myself, positive that Jena hadn’t meant rescuing a female slave and keeping her as a pet so I’d be less lonely in my living.
There was no helping that the idiotic marriage Hector has insisted upon had evolved into my needing Layla and her growing increasingly needy of me.
My only intent back then was to free her and return her home to her family, and while I couldn’t argue with Jena’s logic that I couldn’t do that without risking everything, it didn’t make my involvement with her sit one ounce better with me.
Not the keeping her.
Not that I suspected she was starting to have feelings for me. Feelings I could never return, not how she deserved them.
Nor the realization that the selfish part of me was glad I couldn’t let go yet. That in some unlikely way Layla was my path to finish healing and let go of Richard for good.
Richard…
I let the troubled sigh pass from my lips and leaned back against the pillows. I didn’t want to know, but there were moments it damn near tortured me not to know what’d happened to him after Montecito.
Was he still an addict?
How the fuck had that even happened, anyway?
Was he still with the FBI?
Did he have a new lover he wanted as much as he’d wanted Leland?
Questions I’d never get answered unless I looked, and that wasn’t something I’d do. Richard was in the past—I looked up to find Layla carefully carrying my breakfast tray—and I needed to keep him there. The unsolved puzzle parts of Richard wouldn’t be solved, not ever, by me.
Layla placed the tray across my lap, then quickly assessed the arrangement. “Everything perfect? You’re so exacting in your wants.”
I chided her with my eyes. “I’m not as particular as you make me sound. And yes, Layla, it’s perfect. It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t. Any man would eat every bite if a woman as beautiful as you brought their breakfast.”
“It’s important to me you get everything the way you want it.” She leaned forward and for the first time kissed me on the cheek.
My gut churned. It wasn’t good she was growing to care about me. “Listen, Layla,” I began softly, and she sat down beside me, eyes downcast now. “We’re not going to be living in Mexico forever. Once my business is concluded here, we’ll be back in the US. I can help you find your family so you can return to them.”
Her face shot up, stricken. “Return to them? Why? I’m doing my best to learn and make you happy. What am I doing wrong? Why do you want to send me away?”
Fuck, I hadn’t meant to alarm her.
My head tilted as my lips curled downward. “You’re doing nothing wrong, Layla. And I don’t want to send you away. I want to help you go where you want to be. Besides, why would you want to stay married to me? I’m too old for you and not at all fascinating.”
That last part I said teasingly, and her eyes began to sparkle as she pinned me with them. “You’re not too old and very fascinating.”
“All right. You win.”
I made a little shudder like I was annoyed and Layla giggled. Her laughter had the sweet innocence one wouldn’t expect to hear out of a nineteen-year-old girl with her history, and it never failed to charm me—or to get her way.
I made a shooing motion with one hand. “Get out of here so I can finish eating and dress.”
Her chin lifted. “Only if you promise you’re not sending me away. Not ever.”
“How about I promise I’m not sending you away today?”
“No, ever.”
“Fine. Never,” I growled affectionately, and she sprang from the bed to disappear through the door.
I was nearly done with my breakfast when Layla popped into my room again. “What is it this time, my little dove? Afraid I choked eating my omelet?”
That earned me a reaction more to my liking; she rolled her eyes at me. Another six months and she’d be a full-fledged American girl again.
“Your friend from college is here. The rude one with the bitch face.”
I laughed. “You mean Jena? What did you do with her?”
Her mouth scrunched up. “Not what I wanted to. I didn’t slam the door on her. I put her in the courtyard and she told me—exact words—to go fetch Lee now.”
Setting aside my tray, I tossed back the blankets and climbed from the bed. “You don’t like Jena very much, do you?”
“No, I don’t. She’s awful. And every time she visits, you disappear and tell me nothing. You take off and I don’t see you for days.”
Oh fuck, my dove had the eyes of a hawk.
“I don’t disappear. Well, not because of Jena. I travel for business. I’ve explained that.”
I went to my closet and Layla trailed after me. “But why do you go away so often? It can’t only be business. Is it to see a woman?”
My heart stopped.
Fuck. That was a jealous-wife question if ever a man heard one.
Damn it.
I focused on running my hand across my wardrobe instead of turning to meet her eyes. “Business. I leave for business.”
“Do you have someone else somewhere? Is it her you disappear to see? Is that why you never…bother…me?”
Sealing my emotions behind an expertly droll expression, I turned and pinned her with my gaze. “I bother you all the time and you let me know it. Now scoot so I can dress and get out to Jena.”
Her eyes were enormous on her face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s the answer you’re going to get,” I said, annoyed.
“Hector had me in his bed to do things to him every night, and you haven’t touched me since I got here. Why?”
Why. What was it with that word and women? I freed a pair of slacks from a hanger. “It wouldn’t be right. Not given our relationship. You should be with a man only if you want to, not because…”
“Because what?” she implored hotly.
Fuck. “Because you think you need to use your body to stay safe. That isn’t how things work with me, Layla. I’m not Hector Ramos.”
While I grabbed a shirt, I peeked at her out of my peripheral vision. I couldn’t tell what she thought of that and I wondered if, because we hadn’t been intimate, she was afraid she wasn’t safe. That I might hurt her or trade her to another man the way Hector had traded her to me.
Her history in my mind, as always, sickened me. Even if I hadn’t been gay I would’ve never harmed or forced myself on her. She’d come a long way living with me, but not far enough, and it hurt that I couldn’t bringing her along faster. Worse, that it was dangerous to me having her fear-driven suspicions.
The more she felt and behaved like the woman in my life the more distrustful of my activities she’d get, and that’d fucking ruin everything. At that moment, the only advantage I had not letting her see who I truly was hung on Layla not being able to see behind the curtain I held between us.
“Go sit with Jena in the courtyard until I get there,” I ordered harshly in a way that made her eyes flash with hurt.
I quickly went into my bathroom and closed the door before she could follow me.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, Leland, I reminded myself. I was sure mending a broken soul took longer.
As I put on my clothes I took solace in the knowledge that as she grew stronger and more back into who she would’ve been if not for Hector, the easier it would be for her to walk away from me.
I felt a sharp prick of something at the thought of Layla leaving, but it was the only way for this to end.