by Ella Brooke
“I am Elise DuConte,” she said, directing her assistants to pull in a large rack of clothes and what looked like an industrial sewing machine. “I can see why the sheikh sent for me.”
“I… I’m Danielle,” Danielle managed to get out, but the woman frowned at her. Apparently, Elise wanted to get straight to business, and helplessly, Danielle let herself get swept up in the flow.
In a matter of seconds, she was stripped down to her underwear, being measured and listening as Elise barked directions to her assistants. In a mixture of French and English, Danielle learned several things over the course of the next four hours.
The first was that apparently she had never worn clothes that really fit her.
“You look like a peasant!” Elise sneered. “Clothes like this are for women who are ashamed of themselves, and that is not you.”
Danielle might have argued, but then one of the assistants was pushing a dress toward her, a simple thing but made up in emerald-green silk.
Danielle also learned that she had been wearing the wrong colors, her clothes were shabby, and that apparently, good tailoring could do wonders.
The skilled designer had brought along a rack of clothes that Danielle would have said fit her fairly well, but the magic came when she put them on, Elise pinched them in in a few places, marked those spots with chalk, and then tossed the garment to her assistant.
At first Danielle didn’t understand what they were doing to clothes that already fit, but Elise explained.
“Nothing off the rack fits anyone, you understand? If you are going to be climbing the social ladder, you cannot afford to go about looking as if you are wearing potato sacks. You will see.”
Danielle had her doubts, but then Elise shoved a newly tailored dress toward her. This one was in light blue linen, soft and lovely, and hesitantly, Elise pulled it on.
When she looked in the mirror, she gasped.
Throughout her life, Danielle had always thought that she was plain, with angles and bumps where other girls had curves. Now, though, in a dress that fit her like a comfortable glove, she could see the gentle curve of her breasts, the tuck of her waist and the roundness of her hips. The dress fell down to her ankles, and she couldn’t resist spinning around, letting it twirl around her before settling.
She immediately blushed after doing so, feeling like a child, but when she peeked up, she found Elise smiling at her indulgently.
“Yes, that is the way of it. You are a lovely woman, and now you finally know it, eh? Now give it back. We have many more garments to try on you…”
By the time Elise and her assistants left, Danielle had doubled her meager wardrobe and was left stunned when they told her that there was more to come.
“He wants you fully outfitted,” Elise said with a shrug. “He knows what that means. There are some things that will be easier to make whole cloth. You have enough here to get you through a few weeks, but we should be able to bring you the rest before the week is out.”
“I… I will pay you as soon as I get paid myself,” Danielle said, already quailing at how much this must cost, but Elise only laughed.
“My dear, do you think my assistants and I go anywhere without a deposit? Do not concern yourself, this is all billed directly to the sheikh.”
Danielle supposed that it made sense if he were purchasing a uniform for her. Despite his words, though, she knew that there was kindness in the gesture. It made her smile a little. She had known he was attractive and intelligent, but somehow she hadn’t expected the kindness.
It made her want to do her best for him, and Danielle resolved to get everything off to a good start in the morning. She would be the best translator he had ever laid eyes on, perfectly professional and beyond reproach.
Despite herself, however, she found her eyes lingering on the blue dress in linen. It was, Danielle thought, the precise color of his eyes. There would be no harm in wearing it, would there? It was beautiful but conservative, and he would appreciate getting his money’s worth out of Elise DuConte.
That was what she told herself, but when she lay down in bed that night, she found that she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t wait to find out what the new days was going to bring, and despite feeling a little foolish, she smiled into the darkness.
Chapter Five
“How in the world did you do that to your hair?” Faris asked the next day.
She looked up in surprise. He had asked her to join him in a small dining room for breakfast, and at the moment, Danielle was simply impressed by how good the eggs and toast were.
“What do you mean?” she asked self-consciously. “Is it not appropriate?”
“Not at all, it looks quite good, but how did you do that?”
Danielle had to admit there was something a little disappointing about wearing such a pretty dress and having him merely comment in surprise on her hairstyle.
“It’s really just two braids,” she explained. “I braided my hair, and then I pinned them both around my head like a crown using a bunch of bobby pins. I like it because it keeps my hair out of my face even when I’m bending down over documents and such.”
Faris was still looking at her, his dark brows drawn together. She had been right, though; this dress was a perfect match for his eyes.
“But that must mean that your hair falls down your back…”
“It does,” she said with a slight smile. “It goes down to my waist and a few inches below.”
Faris shook his head as if shocked by the idea. She wondered if he would ask one of the questions she had gotten throughout her life, about whether it was heavy piled up on her head, or whether it took forever to wash.
“Long hair is a sign of great beauty and virtue in Aswar,” he said instead. “It is very common in our legends and our tales.”
Danielle bit her lip.
“Um, are you trying to tell me that it’s old-fashioned and that I should cut it?”
To her relief, he looked shocked at the idea.
“My God, no,” he said. “It’s… well, put it this way. Every great beauty of Aswar legend has hair that trails behind her, down to her knees at the least. It is known to be very… charming, let’s say.”
“Charming… I guess I can live with that,” Danielle said cheerfully, and to her relief, they spoke no more on the matter.
After breakfast, they got right to work, and though Danielle was braced for terror and fear, it was really quite simple once she got into the swing of things.
Faris had a large office with an enormous window that looked toward the city. The secretary, a polite young man with a kind smile, took the front room, where he organized Faris’s schedule and directed his appointments, and for herself, Danielle had a small cozy office that was accessed by two doors, one into the hallway, and one directly into Faris’s office.
Her own office was amply stocked with everything she needed to do her job, and when Faris showed it to her, she smiled at him.
“I love it, and for some reason, I am especially fond of the two doors,” she said with a smile. “It feels like, I don’t know, some kind of secret or something…”
Faris smiled at her words, and for some reason, there was a warmth to them that hadn’t been there before. She couldn’t decide if it made her want to take a step back or if she wanted to warm her hands on it.
“A secret… well, you could call it that.”
She frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Rooms like this are common throughout the region,” he explained. “They are often used just as we are using them now, as a place for people to work together while still having some peace and quiet and for a storage of resources. However, that wasn’t always the case.
“Once upon a time, a powerful man wanted to have access to his favorite women whenever he had the urge for her. Of course, it was inappropriate to have a dancing girl or a courtesan waiting in the wings when the sheikh met with a foreign dignitary.”
“Of cours
e,” Danielle said, vaguely shocked. She supposed it was a mark of her own innocence that this shocked her. She was wise enough to know that this was the way of things all over the world.
“So these rooms, and there’s more than one like this in the manor, was meant to keep the sheikh’s best beloved close and accessible. He would make deals with other sheikhs, plan wars, and decide on matters of state, and when he wished, when he could…”
“What would he do?” she asked, breathless, and then her face turned bright red. She knew what the answer was, and Faris, who had come closer than she had thought he had, stepped back to laugh.
“He would visit his own personal piece of paradise,” he said, and she could have kicked herself for how provincial she probably sounded. Despite everything she had done and everything she had accomplished, some days it really did feel as if she was straight off the farm.
“Get set up,” he said, and it left her to wonder if she had imagined the smokiness of his tone before. “Piet, the secretary you met, will come in here with some work for you shortly.”
In a way, it was a relief to get started setting up her space exactly as she liked it. It made her get her mind off the idea of sitting in this room, her hair flowing free down her back, waiting to see when the sheikh would be done with his business, when he could return to his personal piece of paradise…
*
Faris closed the door behind him and scowled. What the hell was he thinking?
He tried to summon up that picture of Danielle as he had first seen her, her hair pulled back like a schoolteacher’s, and her eyes wide and afraid of everything. Every time he tried, however, it was replaced with a vision in blue.
He had never been interested in smaller women before, especially not ones that looked as frail and breakable as he had thought Danielle was, but he had had to hide his shock when she had appeared for breakfast. The blue dress she wore skimmed her curves gracefully, the fabric moving around her like water, and even if there was no hint of impropriety to the outfit, he had found himself thinking of her small curves, of the utter femininity of her form.
There was something amazingly elegant about her just then, but it was more than him finally seeing her in clothes that fit. Her hair was braided in a crown, making her look like a queen, and on top of that, the style exposed her neck, showing him how slender it was and how pale her skin was there. He carefully kept his mind away from what his instinct had told him to do right there and then at breakfast, because it was indecent.
Perhaps I should have called Semele after all, he thought, frowning out the window. If he was getting interested in his translator, things were getting dire.
The moment he had the thought, however, he pushed it away. Semele was enjoyable in every way that mattered to him, but for some reason, the idea of seeing her made him frown. She hadn’t changed, but in that moment, she seemed too loud, too brash.
It didn’t matter, there were things to take care of today anyway, and being bothered with women was a poor idea. Some things had fallen to the wayside since he had been in Dubai, and now he needed to set them to rights.
Piet looked a little startled when Faris demanded the new figures on the deal with the Kolkatta investors, but brought the information to Faris quickly enough, and Faris was able to lose himself in the affairs of state. It was challenging work, as it always was, and he gave it his full attention.
At least, he tried to.
Whenever the sheikh found his thoughts straying, they inevitably went to the door to the right of his office, the discreet one that was nearly invisible, set into the stone and half-hidden with a wall hanging. He wondered if the sheikhs of old had looked toward the door like that when the meetings went on too long, when an ambassador was demanding trade concessions. How much easier it must have made their day when they knew that right behind that door was a beautiful woman with a welcoming smile, wearing nothing more than silks brought from a foreign land and her dark hair streaming down around her…
Chapter Six
Three weeks later, Danielle knew she was in trouble. What had started out as a crush had turned into a full-blown infatuation, and if she were being entirely honest with herself, she had never been one to handle romantic attraction very well.
When he walked into the room, it was as if the air changed, became charged with a kind of electricity that only she could sense. Suddenly, she was aware of where he was, who he was talking to, what he was saying. That was bad enough, but it would get noticeably worse when he came to speak to her.
Today, Danielle could hear him in the other room, talking on the phone with someone from Dubai. She loved listening to him speak in Arabic, and she paused for a moment from her own work, letting herself drift on the sound of his voice.
Of course, that meant she likely had an utterly ridiculous expression on her face when he opened the door and strode into her office.
“Danielle, I know that you sent me the reports from Asal yesterday, but some secretary in Dubai forgot to send us… Are you all right?”
She blinked at him and sat up straight, aware that she likely looked like a startled jackrabbit.
“I… yes, of course!” she blurted out. “Reports from Asal… I know the ones you are talking about!”
He looked baffled for a moment, and just when she was afraid he was going to dress her down for wool-gathering on the job, he grinned. He came and leaned against her desk at her side, leaning over her, and the smile he gave her was conspiratorial.
“So… did I catch you off guard?” he asked teasingly, and she felt that damnable blush come up on her cheeks.
“No!” she said. “That is… I’m definitely alert and ready to do what needs to be done, sir… Faris…”
He laughed and even when she was blushing fit to kill, she couldn’t help but feel a deep shudder that ran all the way through her at his laugh. It was, she thought, dark like good chocolate, with a sweetness that made her want to sigh longingly.
“Well, you almost managed to say my name without a problem,” he said with a sigh. “How can a woman who translates as beautifully as you do do so poorly when it comes to a simple word?”
“Because words on the page don’t move,” she said after a moment. “Because once they’re there, they are locked into place, and I can look at them and think about what they mean and what they signify. And… also because Faris is your name. It feels… personal.”
There was a long pause after she stopped talking, and when Danielle finally dared to look up, it was to see Faris watching her, his eyes slightly wide with surprise.
“I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting that,” he said, and his voice had lost some of the boisterousness he had before. Somehow, Danielle found herself liking this voice a little more. It felt more serious, a little more like him.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, looking down. “I… I get like this when I can’t plot out everything that I want to say. I start… talking, and then who knows what’s going to come out of my mouth. It’s a real problem most of the time.”
He laughed, and it was a little more rueful.
“It’s not a problem at all,” he said, shaking his head. “Instead, I would think that it’s the exact opposite of a problem in general.”
For a moment, there was a silence between them, and somehow, it wasn’t awkward at all. Instead, it was the warm quiet of two people who understood each other a little better than they had before, and Danielle found it in herself to smile up at him a little. It was Faris who broke the silence, shaking himself a little bit as if he needed to come out from under a spell.
“Well… what I came in here to tell you was that there are going to be some addendum forms added to the packet from Asal. I want you to make them your top priority. Frankly, they don’t deserve it and it’s going to make us a little bit late on some things I don’t want to be late on, but…”
“Wait a minute…”
He stopped immediately, his blue eyes so intense that she needed to nerve h
erself up to speak again.
“Um. The forms from Asal, right? I believe they’re already done.”
At his dubious look, she hurried to explain.
“They came a week after the first forms did. They looked important, so I rolled them with the rest. You should have them in e-format, but I can get you the hard copies as well.”
Faris was still looking at her, and she could feel herself start to get flustered.
“Um… I’m pretty sure they’re what you need. If they’re not, I’m more than happy to put in some extra time and to get the job done, it’s no problem at all…”
“Stay right there,” he said, his voice a deep growl, and before she had any time to ask him where on earth she would go, he headed back toward his own office.
After a short interval, he was back on his phone, his tone irritated and brisk. She winced when she figured out what he was saying; despite having little sympathy for people who couldn’t do their jobs right, she was just happy that she wasn’t on the other end of that tongue-lashing.
There was a brief silence after he hung up the phone, and then Faris was in her office again, shaking his head.
“I probably wouldn’t be so angry if they hadn’t said that it must be our fault,” he growled, but then he shook his head.
“Thank you. You saved me a headache, and you have pushed forward a deal that I have been angling after for quite some time. One more delay, and I might have decided that I was completely uninterested in moving forward at all.”
She smiled at him, a real smile and not one of those tight and frightened things that she wore so often.
“Just doing my job,” she said, “It’s not a big deal.”
Faris laughed a little at her enthusiasm, but he didn’t seem like he was going to leave it there.
“No, good work should be rewarded,” he said. “Tell me, have you been to any restaurants in Aswar?”
Danielle shook her head.
“No, the kitchen here at the manor makes amazing food, so…”
