Modern Romance September 2016 Books 5-8. Natalie Anderson

He was stern. ‘If it’s not too much trouble?’ She really was a terrible PA. ‘As I said, I’ll be busy with formal stuff. My portrait needs to be completed. Then there will be a dinner with my family.’

      ‘That will be nice.’

      Kedah gave her nothing—not a roll of the eyes, not even a small smile at her slightly sarcastic comment—but she knew there was trouble between the brothers.

      ‘And then there’s the matter of your wedding.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And will you?’ Felicia asked. ‘Be taking a bride?’

      ‘I might.’ Kedah nodded.

      He was tired of his father using his marital status as an excuse for things not to move along. Perhaps he would call his father’s bluff and tell him to get things underway.

      When he had said that he might be considering marriage, for the first time Felicia’s expression faltered. She fought quickly to right it, but Felicia knew she’d been seen and so moved to cover it.

      ‘I loathe weddings. I hope I shan’t have to arrange that?’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ He shook his head. ‘The palace will take care of all that. You’ll just be arranging a few final wild nights for me, leading up to it.’

      ‘Look out, London.’ Felicia rolled her eyes.

      ‘Look out, world,’ he corrected, for if he were to marry then he intended to use his last weeks of freedom unwisely. Except he hadn’t been. Lately he hadn’t. Last night it hadn’t just been the seating arrangements that had got on his nerves.

      It had been the company.

      He had wanted Felicia beside him, and that might have been the reason he had dropped his date back to her hotel early.

      ‘Then again,’ Kedah said, ‘if I am to choose a bride in a matter of weeks, perhaps it is time for me to be more discreet.’

      She did not meet his gaze. Perhaps she had missed the opening, he thought, for she was signalling the waiter and asking for more water.

      That was bold for here in Dubai. Usually only a male would signal the waiter, but then that was Felicia: bold.

      Tough.

      She was possibly the one woman who would not go losing her head if they were to sleep together.

      ‘Felicia...’ he said, and then, for once unsure how to broach things, he asked another question. ‘Are you enjoying your work?’

      ‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘It’s nothing like I expected. I thought I’d be putting out fires after big Kedah-created scandals.’

      ‘How did you get into all that?’

      She hesitated. Usually there was no way that Felicia would discuss her personal life, and yet if she wanted to know more about him maybe it was time to reveal something of herself. And he was good company.

      Terribly so.

      She might not be thrilled by her job description, but there was no doubt that she enjoyed being with him.

      It was when she wasn’t that her issues arose.

      And so she found herself telling him a little. ‘My father had a prominent job, but as far back as I can remember he got embroiled in scandal. Affairs, prostitutes...’ Felicia coldly stated the facts. ‘My mother and I were regularly schooled in what to say and what not to say. How to react...how to smile. Now I get paid to tell others the same.’

      ‘Did your mother leave him in the end?’ Kedah asked.

      ‘No, after all he’d put her through it was my father who ended the marriage,’ Felicia said. ‘All the times she’d stood by him counted for nothing in the end. He planned how to leave her and did all he could to protect himself and his new girlfriend. The family home went—as did my boarding school. And I found out that my friends weren’t really my friends. By the time he had dragged out the court proceedings I was well out of school. I left at sixteen and got a job in an office to support my mother.’

      ‘Yet you are the PA everyone wants. Why?’

      ‘My first boss. I never even saw him much, apart from setting up a meeting room. Anyway, scandal hit—as it often does—and the PR people he had working for him were seriously clueless. I knocked on his door and told him I could sort it for him.’

      ‘How old were you?’

      ‘I’d have been about nineteen,’ Felicia said.

      ‘He believed you?’

      ‘He had no choice. He was up to his neck in scandal. I spoke to the press. I laughed at their inferences. I dealt with it just as I’d been taught to while I was growing up.’

      ‘How is your mother now?’

      Felicia didn’t answer. She just gave a small shrug.

      He sensed that she was finished talking about it. The subject moved back to work and there it remained, even after their meal had concluded.

      Yet Kedah was curious.

      ‘You’ll need sensible shoes,’ he reminded her as they walked to his car.

      ‘Then you need to buy me some.’

      She attempted humour, but she was still all churned up from thinking about her mother.

      A little while later they stood on a man-made island and Kedah told her his vision for the hotel he was thinking of building there.

      ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

      Usually he cared for no one else’s opinion, yet he was starting to covet hers.

      ‘It sounds a lot like the other one.’

      It was possibly the most offensive thing she could have said, and yet her honesty made him smile.

      ‘That’s why I call them brothers.’

      ‘Can’t they just be siblings?’ Felicia asked. ‘Could this one not be a girl?’

      He thought for a moment and, as terrible an assistant as she was, Felicia gave him pause.

      Perhaps he could consider a gentler version of the other hotel. The Dubai skyline was ultra-modern, and there were some stunning architectural feats. From tall rigid towers to soft golden buildings in feminine curves. Perhaps it was time to try something different.

      ‘See over there...?’ He pointed. ‘That was my first design. Well, along with Hussain.’

      ‘Now, that’s definitely a he!’ Felicia said, because it was a huge phallic tower, rising into the sky.

      ‘You’re getting the idea.’ Kedah smiled. ‘It was my first serious project. Well, my second. I had designed a building for my home, but it was vetoed.’

      ‘Is that a modified version of it?’ Felicia asked.

      ‘No. That design could never have worked here. There was a mural and...’ He shook his head. ‘I worked on this with Hussain. He is from my homeland, and studied architecture with my father, but his hands are tied there too...’ Kedah halted.

      ‘In what way?’

      He thought for a moment and realised there was no harm in telling her, and as they chatted they walked away from the car and towards the water’s edge.

      ‘There are so many regulations back home. No window can overlook the royal beach...no building can be as high as the palace...’

      ‘I’m sure you could work your way around them.’

      They had toyed with each other and, yes, occasionally they had flirted, and of course Kedah had wondered what it would be like to know Felicia in the bedroom.

      Now with