Chapter 30

• She met with her tutor and her decision to take a year out from her studies was accepted. While she negotiated the stairs back down to the busy ground floor of the university building, Layla was thinking resolutely positive thoughts about the seed of life in her womb. She was facing huge changes in her life, but the sacrifices she was making and the adjustments that would follow would all benefit her baby, she told herself soothingly.
• Marrying Lucas would give Layla the precious gift of time. She would have had time to come to terms with the prospect of motherhood and time to enjoy the first precious months of her baby’s life without the stress of wondering how she was to survive as a new mother. She would also have Lucas’ support. Any male that was keen on marrying her for their baby’s sake would be a hands-on father, and she very much wanted that male influence in her child’s life. She had never forgotten how much she herself had longed for a father as a little girl. In every possible way, her life would be more settled when she returned to her studies the following year, she reflected with relief.
• But as she went to bed that night, her mind was still in turmoil over her personal, private reactions to Lucas. She had dominated her thoughts from the first moment she laid eyes on him. How did that happen? Layla had always prided herself on her discipline over her emotions, but Lucas Jack had blasted through her defensive barriers like a blazing comet, awakening her to feelings and cravings that she had barely understood before. Was it infatuation? Was it simply sexual attraction? Or did she need to understand him, to note his gifts as well as his flaws, indicate a deeper, more dangerous form of attachment? Theirs would be a marriage of convenience, after all, and even Beverly had warned Layla not to expect more from Lucas than he was already offering her.