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“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.
