She looked at what he carried. Tucked under one arm he had a bundle of blueprints, and in his hand a couple more disks for her. “More examples?”
“Yes. And no. Here, these are all the plans of the hospital that’s there now.” He didn’t say anything about her appearance, but here she stood in the presence of a gorgeous prince, at best disheveled and without a drop of make-up. Her bun felt loose and baggy too, she just knew it was hanging to the side as if she’d had her hair done by a drunken five-year-old.
Lifting one hand, she felt for the pencils and surreptitiously slid them free so she could unwind the still-damp mass of hair. At least that was somewhat concealing, even if it was the sloppiest mess of waves and tangled curls he had probably ever seen. To his credit, although he stopped unrolling the prints and shuffling papers around to look at her, he said nothing.
“Oh, well, that’ll be helpful so I can see how it’s working now. I just had a footprint of it before.”
“That’s not why I brought them.” He spun her chair, urged her to sit with one hand and then rounded the table to sit opposite her. “We’ve got a slight change in plans.”
“Change? Okay. What kind of change?”
“We’re not working on the hospital any more right now.”
Nira squinted at the plans he’d unrolled. “But this is the hospital.”
“Yes, I mean I want you to stop working on the new hospital designs for the time being. There are bigger worries.”
“New project?”
“Old building, new project. So I guess it’s still the same project, but we’re shifting priorities. We need to remodel the old theater and add a small addition to the building there. The surgical theater there isn’t only underused, it’s horrifying. I’ve liaised with the neighboring kingdoms and their hospitals are ready to receive any surgical patients we have for the next couple of months. And when I say remodeled, I mean gutted. Completely redone. And I want a tiny wing added to the side with a nursery to accommodate twins...”
“Who’s having a baby?”
“Zahir and his wife.”
Nira had to smile at that. She didn’t know Zahir was married, but a new baby was always welcome news. “And you want to get the hospital ready for the birth of the new babies.”
“It’s only one so far as I know, but I’d rather prepare for twins and have it only be one than prepare for one and need incubators and the like for two.”
“Got it.” She flipped through the prints to find the one for the theater layout. “So, all new everything, plumbing and electrical included?”
“Yes.”
“And a small addition with a nice patient room for the mother, a nursery with both beds and incubators, along with storage required for whatever babies would need. I’ll need some specs. Bathrooms, and...?” She reached for her pad and made some notes. “How far along is she?”
“Still first trimester. We have some time, but I want it sorted as quickly as possible so they can visit. As soon as you get those designs, I’ll hand them over to a contractor and crew for them to get started, and we’ll move back to designing the hospital.”
A challenge. She liked challenges, but even if her brain still wanted to focus on the hospital, she’d take some time and do this first. He was the boss. Plus, she wanted the baby to be safely born here too.
They discussed further specifications and Nira gave up making notes on her pad and instead plucked up the copy of the blueprint and went to the copier to make something she could write on. “So, am I right in guessing they won’t return and relieve you of your obligation to remain here if there’s nowhere safe for the baby to be born?”
“You are correct.”
“So you’re no longer worried about making Zahir come back and do things himself if he wants them a certain way?”
Dakan leaned back in his chair and watched her at the machine, lining up the wide paper and feeding it into the machine. Finally going to address that, it seemed.
“That doesn’t change what I want.”
“Why not? If you’re wanting him to take over, wouldn’t you want it to be something we won’t have to rip up and start over again? Not that I don’t want to stick around here and design for however long I’m needed, but I really don’t like wasted efforts. If he’s going to just want to rip things up and start over, I’d rather be going in his direction from the start.”
“But you work for me, and I don’t want to go in his direction. Not only because I want him to come do it himself but because I don’t think it’s the right way to go. It would be okay, but it leaves too much wiggle room for the system to revert to the old ways. We talked about this.”
“I know we did, but it seems a bit...out on a limb with a saw? Have you and Zahir talked about this?”
“Nira. Stop. Don’t worry about it. You work for me. I’ve thought this through.”
“I know I work for you, I’m just trying to understand the logic. I like logic, it offsets my more random instincts.”
Dakan sighed inwardly. This whole situation was convoluted. She wasn’t wrong that this could backfire, or at least get very messy—both his intended direction and his reasons for bucking the direction Zahir had expected him to go. And the feelings stirring within him for the unexpectedly beautiful architect could also lead to something messy. Very messy.
Yes, she worked for him, and as much as he told Zahir he was going to enjoy himself with her, the idea of taking full advantage didn’t sit right. Which meant he had to make sure she was on the same page with him. Be temptation. Show her what temptation looked like, because he already knew. Those flowing pajamas let him see every curve and every jiggle as she moved around the workspace. They didn’t even have to be transparent. Pair them with a skimpier top and she’d be harem-ready.
“I see your point, but even if it chafes you to have to rip up more work at the behest of the Al Rahals, I prefer to overwork you than to provide a substandard corruptible system for my people.”
Which probably surprised him more than anything. His first instinct had been to be a massive pain in the butt so Zahir would come back and be the leader. He was supposed to just be the follower when in Mamlakat Almas. But those early lessons about duty must have stuck, or maybe duty had become real in medical school when he’d begun to realize the gravity of duty to those you cared for.
“It’s okay. I figure you’re not used to being questioned. Mild temper tantrums are probably to be expected.” She delivered the words so gently and levelly that had it not been for the twinkle he spotted in her eye when she looked at him on her way back to the table with her new copies of the pages he might have wondered if he’d misheard her.
“Temper tantrums are a little louder. This was just me being an arrogant know-it-all. Get it right.”
Bending over the table, she began drawing and making notes directly onto the sheet, and her loose hair fell like a curtain, concealing her face from him. Was she smiling? He couldn’t tell. Every now and then she’d tuck the locks behind one ear, ask him a question and go back to her notes, but the heavy wavy locks always slipped free of her little ear and fell forward again.
“Why did you take the pencils out of your hair?”
Nira lifted her head and he saw a tiny blush blossom on her cheeks.
“Because it probably looked worse than it does down.”
It did. Her hair down made him want to put his hands in it, feel the texture and the weight of it. Made him want to nuzzle in and breathe her scent.
He couldn’t say that, so he shrugged. “Kept it out of your eyes, though.”
“I’ll put it up...”
“No. It’s fine with me as it is. I was just talking when I should probably leave and let you work.”
“Don’t go yet. I have a few more questions.”
“Okay.” H
e pulled his phone out and made as if he was checking notes, then wandered around the workstation to where her laptop sat. The photo was there, and she had her back turned. He took advantage of her distraction and snapped a couple of quick shots of the photo, then returned to the drafting table to see what she’d been feverishly working on before he’d arrived to derail her.
Little slips of graph paper had been cut into different-sized rectangles, and each one was labeled with one of the departments he’d requested. She still had one marked “Healers.”
He flipped through her sketchbook, looking at what could only be configurations for those departments. “Healers” was always included, but with a dotted line rather than a solid one. She expected him to change his mind, and already planned for it, at least at this stage where it was all boxes doodled on paper.
He’d let her keep on with it for now.
Although she claimed to be a classicist with regard to architecture, some of the concepts she’d doodled were daring and unique, something Dakan always appreciated. He liked buildings that didn’t look precisely like buildings. Who needed tall square structures when they could have curves and elegance that stood out from the city while blending in with natural shapes?
“What did you work on for your firm before coming here?”
“Whatever they told me to work on. I didn’t lead projects. This is my first time leading. I usually get shuffled into whatever team needs me, and whatever they were working on.”
“So how did Zahir find you?”
“He hired my firm, told them what he wanted—as blend of old and new. And they suggested me to him. I interned where I work now, and my supervisor witnessed some of the projects for my last couple of years in university. They all were just that, a blend of different kinds of Arabic architecture. Even some white-walled Moroccan styles. Though I knew that wasn’t where I came from, I still like it. I took a holiday in the south of Spain just to visit the Alhambra and soak in its style. It was the closest thing I could get away with before coming here. They still actually have a fair amount of Moorish influence visible throughout the country.”
“Moors are a bit different.”
“I know, but the styles blend.”
“So you really do like this building, you weren’t just trying to make me stop scowling at you that first day.”
“I really do like this building,” she confirmed. “It’s unexpected. Do you hate it so much?”
Dakan shrugged and went to sit down again. It was more entertaining to watch her than to look at her doodled boxes. “It is unexpected, and I can see the appeal of the contrast, but it’s also misleading. You said you expected the flat to be that old, heavy style, and it wasn’t.”
“That’s true, but I guess I like that mix. Not out of sentimentality either. Although there is a bit of that, I’m not sure how I can have nostalgia for something that happened before I was ever born, but I kind of do. Then again, a lot of architecture affects me that way. I love it. It...I don’t know how to explain without sounding crazy.”
Dakan watched her small delicate hands move over the paper, sweeping lines and text, feverishly moving until she suddenly stopped dead, stood straighter, and brought the blunt end of the pencil to her mouth and tapped it on her lower lip thoughtfully.
Drawing attention to the soft curve of her lower lip did things to his breathing. Made him need to look somewhere else, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Instead, he said, “I’m sure it won’t sound crazy. Tell me.”
Distract me.
Maybe crazy would take away some of the appeal.
“Don’t be so sure,” she muttered, but didn’t look away from the copy of the print she was marking up.
“Tell me,” he repeated, taking a cue from her and chucking a nearby eraser at her.
The bit of white rubber bounced off her hip and she did finally look at him. A sigh and she bent to retrieve it from the floor, sat and focused back on the print.
“I already told you some of it. I had one outlet. I didn’t know, well, I don’t know anything about my family on his side. If I even have a family on his side. Architecture was the one thing I could learn and study that made me feel connected to him. To them. It’s a feeling... I can’t describe it. I felt it the other day in the bazaar when I first got there, but it sounds strange. Like those people who fall in love with inanimate objects.”
Dakan had been expecting some quirky story about inspiration, about building things that lasted. But this was something else. Her voice started to wobble a little just as she stopped talking. Vulnerability.
He leaned forward, not sure whether or not he should ask for clarification.
Vulnerability was Big Emotion territory. And it might interfere with his plan. “You mean...” What was it called? “Objectophilia?”
“Objectophilia? That sounds like a sexual deviant word of some kind. Like necrophilia...”
“It’s feelings of love, commitment, and even sexual attraction to objects.”
“No. It’s not like that.” She stopped with another sigh, and though she still looked at the print she worried the pencil between her fingers and tap-tap-tapped the tip in a tight cluster on the print. “The books became like family albums, that’s the closest I can describe it. Architecture affects me. I feel something when I see these things with my own eyes now, and I know it sounds weird.” She waved a hand, affecting a slight change in her voice as she announced, “Oh, I feel like this ogival arch is my cousin, and that barrel vault is my sister. Domes... My father is a dome.” She didn’t look at him the whole time, and she didn’t now, just repeated in a softer voice, “I’m not explaining this well. I know how it sounds. I hear how it sounds.”
Dakan didn’t know what to say to her, but understanding burned down his throat.
He’d thought she’d just wanted to learn, scratch that itch to know where she’d came from. That this was something she’d be able to let go of once she had experienced the region for herself. But it was more than that. This wasn’t a whim.
Nira swiveled in her chair and rolled to the laptop to open some program, self-comforting by distraction. Use busyness to distract from emotions.
He could see the wound now. Old, but still raw. And he didn’t know how to help her.
She’d been assigning emotion to pictures in books since childhood, probably long before she’d had that photo of her father to shift her emotion to.
Pulling himself from the chair, he stepped up behind hers and began to gather the long damp locks back.
It was an excuse to touch her when all he really wanted to do in that moment was hug her and say whatever would act as some kind of balm. An action he couldn’t run with any more than he could his last reaction—the desire to kiss her.
She froze in her seat, her head very still as the long, heavy strands slid through his fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting it back up for you.”
Without any direction for him to stop, Dakan slowed down and combed his fingers through her hair, taking his time. A fragrant cloud of her scent mixed with fruity-smelling shampoo, he wanted to bury his face in her hair and breathe. But that would be even more intimate than kissing her. At the slide of her hair through his fingers, cool and sleek, his chest tingled with the imagined weight of the damp locks draped across his bare flesh.
Sweet mercy, he had to just finish the task, get her hair up before he had to tear himself away and make it seem like he was just playing with her hair.
“I don’t think you’re weird,” he said with some effort, though he’d already told Zahir he thought she was a little weird. With the bunch gathered in one hand, he slowly twisted it to wrap around on itself. “It’s understandable, you filled a need in whatever way you could.” Everyone did things to try and heal themselves. He understood, even if it broke hi
s heart a little.
“I don’t know why I even told you all that.” She didn’t sound as vulnerable then, mostly dismayed and a little breathless.
“I made you tell me. And you probably needed to say it to someone.” He eyed the pencils on the desk. Securing the somewhat neater bun with them was definitely outside his ability. “You’re going to have to put the pencils back into it. I’ve no idea how.”
Quietly, she reached up to transfer the bun from his hand to hers in a way that didn’t let it unwind, then worked pencils into it in some snaking fashion that somehow held it.
“You say it’s not weird, but I bet you don’t have any similar eccentricities.”
“I’m sure I do. I just can’t think of any right now.”
“If you did, they’d stand out. There’s nothing strange enough if you don’t at least lightly question your sanity over it.”
One thing stood out, he just didn’t want to examine it. Self-awareness was overrated, and definitely more Zahir’s territory. His own territory was keeping so busy he didn’t have time to become bogged down by things he couldn’t change.
He changed the subject.
“Tomorrow we’re going to the hospital so you can see what you have to work with.”
She spun in the chair and the smile she gave him was a tiny thing but very welcome.
“And I’ll make sure you get to see whatever you want to see. You have my word. Domes. Arches. Vaulted ceilings. Mosaics. The royal oasis... Whatever you want.”
“After the new project gets going.” Nira stood and although she maintained a good centimeter of space between them, she leaned up to press a little kiss to his cheek.
Dakan shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for her, nodded, and then stepped away to make his exit. “I’ll be here to collect you at eight. Wear something sensible and hard to stain.”
CHAPTER FIVE
NIRA STOOD AT the wide bank of windows in the penthouse flat, waiting for Dakan in her favorite fashion: while looking out over the city.
Challenging the Doctor Sheikh Page 5
