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Whatever, surely it should be easier to recall exactly how Paolo looked while she attempted to write this postcard? Instead her thoughts were infused with the shadow of a tall, dark-eyed man, brooding and magnetic, emphatic and compulsive. Why did he come to mind so easily when pictures of Paolo were proving so difficult to summon? Why was it so hard to forget about him?
A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. ‘Come in,’ she called without looking up, expecting Azizah to be returning from some errand or advising her that the midday meal was ready.
‘Am I interrupting you?’
Her head snapped up to where he stood inside the door, looking down at her. She shivered. He hadn’t been in her rooms since the day she’d arrived. Somehow the large room seemed shrunken with him in it. He strode closer to the desk, pouncing on the postcard she was toying with. She hadn’t managed to get further than the address and ‘Dear Paolo’. A nerve in his cheek twitched. Her heart jumped wildly in her chest. They’d never discussed Paolo by name so how would Khaled react to seeing her postcard addressed to him? And would he recall their differences as clearly and as vehemently as had Paolo?
‘Missing your boyfriend?’
Her blood formed an icy crust. ‘Who said he was my boyfriend?’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Fair question,’ he said. ‘Maybe “lover” would be more appropriate.’
Her knuckles tightened as she screwed her fingers tighter around her pen. ‘I haven’t finished that.’
‘On the contrary, you haven’t started it. Nothing to say after so long apart?’
She kicked up her chin. She wasn’t going to discuss Paolo and their relationship with anybody, least of all with Khaled. ‘The dress is just about complete,’ she said, switching topics. ‘When are you going to agree to my request for a fitting with the bride?’
He flicked the card back down onto the desk. ‘She knows what you’re doing. There’s no rush.’
‘On the contrary,’ she said, reiterating his own words for emphasis, ‘there’s every reason to rush. You have two weeks until this wedding and if I can complete this gown now, that’s one major thing out of the way and then I can go home. I need just one fitting with the bride and my work is almost done.’
He lunged towards the desk and spread his arms down wide around her, his face dipping closer to hers. ‘Are you in such a hurry to return to your lover? Why so, when he has made no attempt to contact you in all the time you have been here?’
‘How do you know he hasn’t?’
‘Has he?’ he challenged.
She refused to let her gaze fall. She would not be drawn into whatever game Khaled was playing.
‘The dress is almost ready,’ she repeated. ‘When do I get my fitting?’
‘Show me,’ he said.
She was grateful for the opportunity to get up from her desk and burn up some of her nervous tension, if only by walking to the next room. She led the way into the workroom, where the almost completed garment sat on the model set up according to the measurements provided. Even on something as in animate as a headless arrangement of metal and padding the dress was sensational. She felt a surge of pride just looking at it. Together with the team that Khaled had assembled for her, she’d turned a rough sketch into a dress that would turn its wearer into a princess. It would be perfect.
Or it could be, if only she could be guaranteed a fitting before the big day.
‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘Now, when do I get my fitting?’
‘When I say so.’
‘I am the designer here and I say that I need to have a fitting now.’
‘The bride is not ready.’
‘This is crazy. If your bride cannot manage to turn up for a fitting, how can you be so sure she’ll turn up for the wedding?’
‘She’ll be there.’
‘You think so?’ She hesitated, almost afraid to put to voice the thoughts her mind was now throwing around. ‘You know, I thought she must be desperately sick, that’s why the secrecy, that’s why her nonappearance for a fitting and her complete noninvolvement in this wedding. Yet you don’t act like the husband-to-be of an ill woman. Something’s not right. She’s not sick, is she?’
‘I never said she was ill.’
‘You let me believe she was.’ It was an accusation.
He shrugged. ‘What you choose to believe is up to you.’
‘But then, why else would she be so invisible? What other reason can there be for her not wanting to be involved in her own wedding?’
Her mind churned, wheels turning as the fight she’d had with Paolo came into sharp relief. He’d warned her that things weren’t right. The shudder that moved through her chilled her to the bone. She gritted her teeth to prevent them chattering as the knowledge of what he was doing seeped into her consciousness.
