by Ella Brooke
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Faris had always been a man who was devoted to his country, who understood that his work always came first.
“It has been a while since I have been in France, longer since I have been in London,” he said with a slight smile. “And I have never given you a vacation…”
She laughed a little.
“If you give your staff vacations after less than eight weeks of working for you, you may have larger domestic problems than you thought,” she teased.
“Does the idea please you?” he asked. “I have told you about the deal with Marais, and though I will need to be back in Aswar to finalize some details, there is nothing that will keep me from working abroad…”
“The idea pleases me very much,” Danielle said reassuringly. “Though I do have one demand.”
His dark eyebrows went up.
“For a simple translator on my staff, you are surprisingly domineering,” he teased. “All right, domina, what exactly is that demand?”
“That you take no less than two days to yourself while we are in Paris,” she retorted. “You’ve been working straight through, and there has not been a single day where you are not doing business of one sort or another. That wasn’t a vacation you were talking about, that was just… working in another place.”
He frowned at her, and for a moment, Danielle was certain she had overstepped her bounds, certain he would be angry, and then he broke into a surprised smile.
“Really? That’s your demand?” he asked, and she nodded.
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Well. That’s… all right, then. That is definitely one of the more interesting demands that I’ve come across over the last few years…”
She blushed a little, feeling as awkward as she still could sometimes.
“Did I say something hopelessly provincial?” she asked anxiously. “I mean, is that not something that the women you’ve been with in the past would say?”
Faris gave her a stern look.
“We are not going to discuss the women in my past,” he said reprovingly. “Let us just say that you are not one of them, and leave it at that, yes?”
“Yes… of course,” she stuttered, and to her relief, the conversation moved to other things.
If there was a blot in her happiness, it was that. She had read the gossip magazines, and she remembered the ones she had seen in the office in Dubai. Faris was a playboy, plain and simple, a man who was rumored to have enormous appetites and charm when it came to the beautiful women of his rank and status.
Sometimes, she wondered if he missed them, the women dressed in silk and sequins, the ones who seemed to ooze charm and beauty with every word and gesture. Even in her new French finery and the sharp clothes she wore when she accompanied Faris to his meetings, she knew that she would never compare.
Sometimes, she wondered if he had told them he loved them.
It had slipped out of her lips one night, not long after they slept together in Paris and after that memorable morning after.
He had been relentless that night, stripping her naked in the bathroom and joining her in the enormous tub. Faris had brought her to the brink of climax over and over again until she was nearly wild with it, desperate for him and the pleasure she knew he could bring. She was vibrating with pleasure, needy and nearly mad, and without thinking of it, the words slipped right now.
“I love you,” she had cried, and his hand had gone still on her body.
Before she could truly come out of her haze of pleasure, before she could really be alarmed, he started touching her again. The orgasm that he had drawn out of her that night had shaken her to the core, left her gasping and nearly boneless. He could exhaust her with his passion, and he had that night.
When she thought about it the next day, however, there was something sad about it. He hadn’t said it back, and he hadn’t even acknowledged it. She thought it would have been sensible to speak about it, and she might have, but then the thought occurred to her that that was certainly not what a glamorous woman would have done, was it? A sophisticated woman, one who had lovers like Faris, would never weight him down with that kind of neediness.
So Danielle kept her silence. It wasn’t a terrible thing, or at least she didn’t think it was most of the time. The problem was, it was becoming harder to keep the words in.
Somehow, she kept them from spilling past her lips when they were making love, and then they started appearing at the most random times. She wanted to say them when they were having lunch, when they were on their way to meetings, when she simply spotted him reading or talking on the phone.
No matter how much she reminded herself that Faris didn’t need or want the declarations, no matter how much she told herself that he hadn’t cared when she first said it, she couldn’t stop herself from dreaming and wishing.
The morning after they decided on their vacation together, Faris had to take breakfast with some of the other sheikhs, who were leaving later in the day.
“I hate to leave you,” he said, kissing her, “but this is a good opportunity. We’re really not together that much, and the more we see and know each other, the better. I can also make sure that Marais gets Aswar’s final bid on the real estate project. His office is in the same building, so it’ll be easy to drop it off personally.”
“Oh, I see,” Danielle teasingly. “And will your favorite Seif be there?”
Faris growled at her, but she knew it was in fun. It had been a strange relief when she discovered that he disliked Seif as much as she had.
“No, though I’m not sorry to miss him. It sounds like he’s going to be staying in France as well. Probably going to live it up in a way he can’t at home.”
Danielle couldn’t help but giggle at his censuring tone.
“As if we’re not doing the same thing,” she chuckled. “Go. Have a good meeting. I think I am going to walk up and down to see some of the English-language bookstores one of the other translators was telling me about.”
“That sounds far more engaging than anything else that I had planned,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get out, but expect me when you expect me. These things can drag on.”
She waited until she heard the front door close and lock after him. Then she sprang out of bed and dressed quickly. Danielle hadn’t lied when she spoke to him about the bookstores. She had every intention of going to them, but there was an appointment that she had to get to first.
*
Danielle hadn’t really understood what Faris had done when he had hired Elise DuConte to build a wardrobe for his translator. When she learned more about Elise’s reputation in Parisian fashion circles, she realized it was a little bit like having a Faberge jeweler come to put a little river rock into a setting of gold and platinum.
Elise DuConte’s name was made of gold where the fashionistas and tastemakers of Paris were concerned, but when Danielle called her hesitantly, she was greeted as an old friend.
“I have heard that you were both in Paris,” Elise said when she finally came to the phone. “The sheikh told himself that he was pleased with my work…”
“I’m so sorry that you had to do that,” Danielle said with a wince. “I didn’t know that you usually did things that were much nicer…”
“My dear, I am an artist,” Elise said with a laugh. “Let us call it a challenge. Regardless, he passed my name on to some of his friends, and it looks like I will be able to make inroads into the Middle East. He has opened doors that were once closed to me, and I have you both to thank for it…”
Danielle was relieved that Elise was more amused than anything else about everything, and that made her request a little easier.
“I actually have a favor to ask. I mean, you’ll be paid for it, I swear. I haven’t touched any of the money that Faris gave me, and I’m pretty sure it will be enough, as long as you don’t mind, you know, working with me again…”
Elise made an impatient sound
.
“My dear, you are a woman that one of the richest men in the world has decided should be dressed immaculately. I suggest you tell me what is going on…”
That had started it, and now she was in a taxi heading to Elise’s exclusive boutique on the Rive Gauche. The neighborhood was surprisingly shabby, but there was an elegant shabbiness to it.
“I fell in love with the Old World appeal,” Elise said by way explanation. “Also, socialites who come here end up being titillated by the fact they have to come so far out of their way. It adds to the appeal.”
It made Danielle wonder if that was her appeal for Faris, that she was little and slender and so different from what he had regularly. She pushed the thought of her mind, because it would not serve her well right this moment.
“All right, dear, what can I do for you?”
Danielle took a deep breath, because now she had to say it. She did her best to keep her voice level, and to deliver her piece as practically as she could.
“I want you to make me something that the sophisticated women of Paris might wear,” she said. “I… I’m tired of dressing like an office drone or…or some kind of charity aid worker.”
She took another breath.
“I want to look like a woman who actually is meant to be with a sheikh.
Elise’s elegantly shaped eyebrows sprang high with surprise.
“So those rumors are true,” she said. “You’re Sheikh Faris’s lover.”
Danielle nodded shyly.
“And I look at the magazines and the old interviews and things like that, and I look at the actresses and princesses and countesses that he has been with, and I’m nothing like them, you know?”
She could feel her voice breaking a little on that. Oh God, it sounded even worse when she said it out loud. How could a girl who had sometimes gone hungry hope to be in the same league with women who had had the world on a string since they were born?
“I just… don’t want to be an embarrassment,” she finished lamely. It was true enough. The other, the hope that if she looked like the women that he had been with that he might say he loved her, was too humiliating for her to bring up.
Elise looked at her for a moment and then sighed.
“My dear, I will be the first to tell you that clothes are everything, but at the end of the day, they really are just the dressing for what goes on out of them. But if you want to look like the women you see on the magazine covers, well, that is something that I can help you with.”
Danielle brightened up a little at that.
“You can?”
Elise’s smile was as sharp as winter.
“Darling, do you know what those women have that others do not?”
“I don’t know, confidence? Education?” Danielle hazarded, and Elise’s laugh was sharp.
“Money, dear. It’s money. It takes money to look like that, and nothing else matters. No matter, you will see. All right. You remember this, I think. Strip down to your underwear—it is time to start measuring.”
Danielle stared at her.
“You just took my measurements…”
“This is what you are paying for. Every dress I make is designed to fit perfectly, and this is part of it. Take them off now, please.”
Elise explained, as she and her girls went through the process of measuring Danielle all over again, that what she did wasn’t exactly haute couture. No, she would not be designing a dress for Danielle alone, because it was simply too original.
“Isn’t that what I want?” Danielle asked.
“Not at all. You want to look different from how you looked before, and you want to look slightly different from the world around you. If you go too far out, you will be dismissed as eccentric. That is not something you want if you want to look like the girls on the magazine covers…”
After a while, it all made Danielle’s head spin, and she simply let Elise do her magic. It wasn’t fun to be prodded and pinned into place, to be asked to step in and out of muslin patterns over and over again, but there was something soothing about leaving this all in the capable hands of Elise and her assistants.
By the end of the afternoon, Danielle had more money than she thought possible for a dress, and Elise made her turn away from the mirror as she put on the dress that was handed to her.
“Why do I have to look away from the mirror?” she wondered.
“Because then you will see yourself how Faris sees you for the first time,” Elise promised. “All right, now you are zipped up. Now you can turn around.”
Biting her lip, half certain that it would all be for nothing, she turned around to look into the trifold mirror that was kept for fittings. When she finally realized what she was seeing, she gasped.
At this point, she was convinced that Elise and her assistants were some kind of sartorial magicians. The dress was made of gleaming deep blue silk, a garment with discreet gold fasteners at the shoulders and deep V-neck that dipped low between her breasts. It hung in graceful folds off her body, skimming elegantly over her slight curves before dropping down almost to the floor. It was a surprisingly heavy garment for all that it was so simple, but when Danielle took her first step, it rolled like the waves of the sea.
“Oh my gosh,” Danielle gasped, and Elise laughed.
“You look like a princess,” she said with satisfaction. “You look like a treasure. I might suggest that you allow your hair to flow down your back when you wear it, perhaps held back by a gold wire tiara or something similar, but if you wanted to look how my clients do, you certainly do now.”
For a few more moments, she admired her own reflection in the mirror. Perhaps this would help Faris see her as a woman worthy of his time and his attention?
It was a beautiful dress, but there was a certain sense of relief when she got through taking it off and Elise went to put it in a box for her. Her own lilac dress, one that flowed down to her knees and that hugged her body snugly, felt much more comfortable. What was it about love, she wondered, that could make women do such strange things?
“There you go,” Elise said, handing her the discreet bag with her new purchase in it. “You look wonderful in it, but I do hope that you keep my words in mind. Love has less to do with what your clothes say than you think.”
As she got into the taxi, she thought about Elise’s words. It was true, it didn’t matter what Faris was wearing. The surges of love and lust that she felt for him didn’t care whether he was wearing the traditional robes of his office, an Armani suit, or nothing at all. In fact, the less there was between them, the better, as far as she was concerned.
It’s different for me, though, she told herself. I didn’t come from money or culture. I have to make it up as I go along.
She checked her phone, but aside from a note from Faris about how long sheikhs in company could go on, there was nothing yet. Well, he had warned her that she might be on her own for a good portion of the day. That meant that she had time to go to the bookshops that she was telling him about, and she felt a subdued sense of eagerness well up.
It amused her a little how much more eager she was for the bookshop than she was for the dress appointment with Elise. In some ways, bookshops were her first refuge when she was a girl, and when she walked into the quiet shop that was first on her list, she felt something unwind in her.
Her bag hung over her wrist, she eagerly went to browse, looking for her favorite writers and wondering if she should try someone new. Danielle was so enraptured by the books in front of her that she didn’t notice the large man walking up to her until he was practically at her elbow.
“What a pleasant surprise, Danielle,” said Seif, and she spun around in surprise.
All over again, it struck her that he reminded her of Faris, but somehow, the warm feelings were completely absent. It made her think briefly of what Elise had said, and she could see it a little bit now. The packaging mattered less than what was inside.
“Well, it is certainly a surprise,” s
he said, and instead of taking offense, he laughed instead.
“That was sharp, and I think entirely deserved,” he said, his voice still warm. “I am pleased to see you because it does give me an opportunity that I had been hoping for.”
“And what would that opportunity be?” she asked, her voice tense, and he shook his head.
“Not whatever you fear it might be. Look. When we met, I behaved abominably. I deserved to get bitten for my pains, and worse, which Faris promised me if I ever darkened your doorstep again. I understand that you may not forgive me for the liberties that I took, and I want to apologize.”
She scowled up at him, but despite her memories of how he had behaved, there was nothing deceptive about him. Somehow, against all the odds, he looked sincere and sincerely repentant.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I accept your apology. Forgiveness, we’ll see, but I do accept your apology.”
He looked relieved at that, which made her feel a little more kindly disposed toward him at least.
“I am glad. It had been preying on my mind quite a bit over the last little while. When I saw you standing there, it looked like some kind of benediction.”
She smiled just a little. No matter what her inclinations were, she reminded herself that she should be polite. Her time with Faris had told her very clearly that the UAE was an interdependent web, where each sheikh needed to maintain good relations with the other so they could present a united front to the world. For Faris’s sake at least, she should keep things civil.
“I am glad we met, then,” she said. “I was just looking for something good to read…”
“Oh, that’s what I was here for myself. There’s a biography on Molière that I wanted to pick up, and since I was in Paris, well, that just felt like a spot of serendipity.”
He looked around.
“Would you care to sit for a cup of coffee? We could continue talking literature here, but I have a feeling we would get in the way.”
Just at that moment, another browser edged around them, giving them a glare that Danielle could only classify as Parisian, and she sighed. Something in the back of her mind suggested that it would be better by far to bid Seif a good day and to continue browsing on her own, but her morning with Elise had left her exhausted. A cup of coffee and some time off her feet sounded amazing.
