Sheikh's Hired Mistress (7 page)

***

The palace seemed endless. Laine got lost twice wandering through room after room, trying to wrap her head around designing for a home this large. Should she give each room a separate theme? Should the themes progress from room to room? Should she try to infuse Aziz’s culture and family history, or should she steer clear of things she knew nothing about?

The task was daunting, both in its size and for the fact she was jeopardizing her career to be here. There really was no option but to do a magnificent job.

Eventually, one of the servants approached her and offered to show her to the dining room. Deciding that she should tackle the problem in the morning after a good night’s sleep—provided Aziz made good on his promise not to enter her room—Laine followed the servant as she reviewed her notes in her head.

The dining room, like all the rooms, was enormous. The table stretched so long that Laine imagined no fewer than fifty businessmen sitting around it and chatting about sales and import tariffs. Instead, only one person sat at the table, and when Laine drew closer, she realized that it wasn’t Aziz. It was a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, wearing a flowing scarf over her head, with a row of jewels sewn along the edge where her hairline would be.

The woman rose as Laine approached, raked her eyes over Laine, and tilted her head to the side. “I thought that one would look lovely on you,” she said. “I told Aziz you would like it, and he would like you in it.”

Laine’s chest tightened as she found herself arrested by the young woman’s large green eyes. She was captivating, almost doll-like in her features. These were, in turn, enhanced by dark sweeping eyeliner and a well-contoured cheek, which didn’t need much enhancement to begin with. Laine might have burned in envy for those cheekbones even if they were bare. The woman’s long dress only enhanced her beauty and fell kindly over soft curves suggesting a lush figure hidden by modesty. Laine was both jealous and mesmerized.

“Oh,” she murmured. She was sure her cheeks were turning red under the woman’s approving scrutiny.
Where was Aziz?
“Thank you.”

The woman took another step toward Laine, parting her plump, mauve lips, and squeezed Laine’s shoulder affectionately. “I am sorry that Aziz will not be joining us for dinner tonight. He was called to the capital on business, and he’s been traveling so long that it could not be postponed. But I assured him that you and I could very well introduce ourselves.”

Her smile exuded warmth and a vibrancy of spirit.

And that was when Laine realized who this woman was.

“Are you Hadiya?” Laine asked. When the woman nodded, Laine grew warm again, but this time with embarrassment for having grown so jealous of Aziz’s little sister.

Hadiya took Laine by the arm and led her to a seat. “We’ll dine together. Our rooms are close. We don’t keep entirely separated from the men, but I told my brothers you would likely feel more comfortable in the house with a woman for company. Aziz is so silly, bringing women here on their own.”

“But you live here, don’t you?” Laine asked.

“Sometimes I do. Like our eldest brother Amin, I tend to spend more time in Manama.” Hadiya shrugged and touched Laine’s shoulder. “We are quite out of the way here in our family home.”

Hadiya lifted her other hand to signal the servant. They had a series of light dips with vegetables and pita bread to start, and a cool, refreshing drink from exquisite goblets. Hadiya opened Laine up easily, asking gentle questions about her work and her plans for her time there, without prying too deeply into Laine’s feelings about Aziz.

Laine had to wonder if Hadiya had been put up to this task more than once.

“Maybe you can give me some guidance about my designs as I go.” Laine licked a bit of some kind of spread that had been mixed with tahini from her fingers. “Aziz said that he wants something modern, but it feels like it would be a sin to just tear down all of this history and start fresh with—” Laine shrugged, “something post-modern or entirely Western.”

Hadiya tapped her index finger on the table. “You have to keep him balanced. It is a point of stubbornness with Aziz. He thinks he knows best; he thinks he knows what he wants…but he is not always right, and he changes his mind.”

Laine swallowed. Of course Aziz was fickle. A man that powerful could afford to be.

“Does he really want me to redecorate this whole palace?” Laine asked bluntly. “I’m not the first woman he’s bought here on a whim, am I?”

“Hardly.” Hadiya giggled. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t really want you to do this. He wouldn’t waste your time like that, and he did spend a good deal of time looking for a designer who he liked enough to bother with.”

“But he may decide afterward that he’d like something else better,” Laine surmised.

Hadiya placed her hand over Laine’s. “If so, I will tell him that he must keep your best work. If nothing else, the Amirmoez family values art.”

Laine blushed and laughed softly. “You and Aziz are a lot alike.”

“This may be true. I don’t travel as much as he does, however.”

Laine didn’t doubt that there were other differences. But Hadiya’s energy made Laine realize she missed having Aziz here, and she was disappointed that he wouldn’t see her in this dress. Instead, he was in Manama, doing business deals and probably flirting with—and perhaps assaulting fountains with—other girls. It was a necessary reminder to Laine that she needed to keep her mind on work, even if she couldn’t stop letting Aziz distract her body.

Chapter Eight

The next few days Laine spent on her own or with Hadiya, developing a plan for the palace. Laine would’ve run her ideas by Aziz, but with each day of his absence, she grew more annoyed and less apologetic about moving forward with her plans. She was, after all, on a deadline. One that she’d made a
huge
deal about, and one that promised either great rewards or a spectacular firing.

Laine elected to make only light changes to rooms that Hadiya suggested would be used for business reasons. Even though Bahrain was more progressive than its neighboring countries, Laine suspected that many of Aziz’s business associates and government officials would appreciate a more traditional approach. Laine could highlight the cultural history more in those rooms, while keeping her editorial touches structural in nature. It would be a good compromise that Aziz could live with after she was gone. Although Hadiya had confirmed that Amin and the rest of the family lived in Manama most of the time, there were rooms they might use for business or simply for a visit. It would be awkward to have highly abstract or ‘provocative’ art of the kind that Aziz liked in rooms that potentially conservative CEOs or state officials would frequent.

Laine slipped into one of her comfortable painting outfits to test glue and paint against a wall. Half of her wallpaper samples had disintegrated in the heat before she could even open the boxes, and she needed to see how the surviving supplies would perform. She would certainly need to be flexible with both her concepts and materials.

With her hair pulled back messily, Laine brushed a wide swath of paint against the wall to see how evenly it would spread in the heat. It globbed and then dribbled down the surface.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

“I’m not sure what I think of this style,” Aziz said from behind her.

Laine spun around, then pursed her lips and tilted her head to the side. “This isn’t a style. I’m trying to figure out what I can actually
use
in this godawful heat!”

“I don’t think God has much to do with it. Weather is different the world over.” Aziz strolled over to her notebooks and started to flip through them. Laine noted that he was back in a suit and admired the fine view.

“That’s it? No warning or greeting? You just come and go as you please?”

“I do have much business handle...There are many, many notes here,” Aziz said.

“There are many,
many
rooms.” Laine sucked in her cheeks. “I’ve been trying to get an overall plan together, but am stalled by the aforementioned absences and weather. It’s
cooked
my glues and paints!”

“We can order more supplies. That is not a problem.”

“I know what we need. I just was packing things so fast, and I didn’t have time to oversee what samples got put in, and the assistants don’t know what they’re doing. They didn’t pack the right stuff.”

Aziz strolled past her and ran his fingertips over the runny paint. “This is disgusting.”

“Yes, it
is
.” Laine smoothed her hands over her hair. A weight settled on her chest. She wasn’t sure how she could finish this job in two weeks. She had even less time, now that she’d spent so much time trying to work out what to
do
.

Laine’s mental deliberations were cut short as Aziz turned and smeared the paint across her cheek.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“It still spreads well enough!” he teased.

Laine put her hands on her hips. “But it won’t go on evenly!”

“I suppose we’ll have to see about that! Let me try another color…”

Laine stared him down and then reached for a different brush. Aziz didn’t back away as she painted glue over his chest.

“This isn’t paint,” he said.

She picked up her notebook, scribbled on it, and then tore out the page and stuck it to his chest. It read, “Big Fancy Accountant.”

“Big—
Laine
!” Aziz gasped. “I am not an accountant!”

“Mm-hm.”

“I manage the vast, vast holdings of our family’s estate—”

Laine just smiled.

“Which are both local to the Middle East and international!” Aziz turned as Laine stepped away to look at her notes. “And I consult on economic policy for our nation…”

After a moment of silence, Laine looked back just in time to see a can of cerulean blue being tipped over her head.

“Ah!”

“It is a good color on you!”

Laine huffed and grabbed a brush to swat his expensive suit with an emerald green.

Cans tipped, paint flew, glue splattered, as the two of them weaponized Laine’s now useless inventory of decorating samples. Aziz laughed heartily, and Laine wheezed, and a few minutes later, both collapsed against the wall.

Laine shook her head. “That’s one way to liquidate unusable stock.”

“The wall looks better now!” Aziz said.

Laine tilted her head back to see the splatters. “Absolutely not. That looks like a five-year-old did it.”

Aziz chuckled. “You should keep it. I will show it to Amin, and I will tell him we will do the whole palace in this style.”

“So you don’t like your brother much,” Laine joked.

“He had no interest in continuing the renovations. It is up to me, unfortunately, and he has not approved so far.”

“No one likes a backseat decorator. Take a picture of it and send it to him. People who don’t know much about art probably think it all looks like this now anyway.” Laine wiped paint from her forehead. The two of them looked like walking collages.

“Ah. This is true. I should take you to our modern art museum. People don’t think about Bahrain for art, but we are growing in that area quickly.” Aziz took her hand and let the paint smear together until purple oozed between their fingers.

“I admit that I don’t. But I honestly haven’t been in the art buying game for a while. I’m too busy with designing.”

“You selected those lovely pieces in your apartment,” Aziz argued. “You have an eye for it, even if you don’t spend every day discovering what others think.”

Laine pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. There was no reason not to explain to him where the paintings had come from, really. In some small way, though, she didn’t want him to know about her abandoned hobby.

“What is it?” Aziz asked.

“Well, to be honest, I didn’t select those paintings.”

Aziz’s face fell. “I see. So…you have another do that for you? Should I fly this person out as well, so you can do your job more efficiently?”

Laine made a noise. “I’m perfectly capable doing my job.”

“I did not mean to offend, but I would like some of that sense of art in the redesign.”

Laine stared at him hard. “I didn’t pick them out because I
painted
them, Aziz. I painted them years ago. You don’t need to hire someone else. You just need to get me paint I can actually work with. I’ll arrange for everything else.”

Aziz’s eyes widened and he straightened up, taking her in as though he’d seen her for the first time.

“
You
created those beautiful works of art?”

“Indeed, it was I,” she said sarcastically.

“You are angry with me, and I am not certain why. They are truly amazing. You are an artist as well as a business woman.” Aziz shrugged. “I am a businessman, but no artist. It is natural to admire what you cannot do.”

“I’m not…” Laine shook her head. “I’m just a designer. I’ve never worked as an artist.”

“You create art. This is all that is needed to be an artist.”

“Maybe. But it doesn’t pay, and it’s not practical. Emma has her acting career, and dad had a hard time making ends meet for a while. Right out of school, I had to be the practical one.”

Aziz pursed his lips and nodded. “A practical artist.”

Laine crooked her mouth to the side.

“I say we get cleaned up and take our artist out to get inspired.” He touched her hair gently.

“What, you suddenly have time to take me out?”

“Yes. I came home early because a meeting was canceled. It is that way sometimes. My time is not always my own.” Aziz pressed a kiss to a paint-free spot on Laine’s forehead. “But when it is, I am all yours.”

“We’ll see about that.”

***

It was uncanny walking through the malls in Bahrain. They were a bit like the ones Laine had grown accustomed to back home. There were shops located closely together, but the structure of the mall was different, somehow. The look and feel of it was different. It felt like they’d taken a bazaar and stuck it inside. More natural light lit the spaces. More open space allowed easier movement. Laine couldn’t quite put her finger on the biggest difference, though, and she mused on it as she and Aziz strolled through the broad common area.