‘I’ve already had my profile done,’ Kedah admitted. ‘Anonymously, of course. But you’ve seen how it is there. Can you imagine me creeping around trying to find a comb?’
‘You can get it from other things,’ Felicia said. ‘One of my other clients...’
His jaw gritted. He loathed thinking of her other clients and their scandalous pasts—and he loathed, more than that, that she had ever been close to them. ‘I don’t need to hear about them.’
‘Maybe you do. With one of them I got a sample from chewing gum.’
‘He’s a king,’ Kedah said.
‘I get that. I’m just saying...’
‘Why don’t I pull on some gloves and offer him a stick of chewing gum or snip off some hair? Do you think no one will notice?’ He lay back and tucked his hand behind his head as he tried to think.
If there was a solution to be had, he would have come up with it by now.
‘I’m thinking of asking her.’
‘Oh, no!’ Felicia shook her head. ‘Kedah, even if she admits to the affair, she’s never going to admit to that. Do you think your father knows about the rumours?’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But he still thinks my mother is perfection personified. He would defend her to the death. But I know that if he does then he could be made to look a fool. I need to know the truth.’
‘Even if the result isn’t the one you want?’
‘I can handle the truth, Felicia.’
She believed him. ‘But...?’
‘I don’t know that my mother could,’ Kedah said. ‘If even so much as the affair were exposed then my father would have no choice but to divorce her.’
‘By the old rules?’ Felicia said, and Kedah looked over to her. ‘Does he love her?’
‘Very much.’ Kedah thought of how his father’s face lit up whenever she came in the room. How he did all he could to shield her from the feud between her sons. ‘I don’t know how he’d be if the truth came out, though.’
He was done with talking about it.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Sleep.’
And this time there was no thought of heading for her case, or making a feeble excuse that she needed to go home to water her plants.
Felicia slept.
CHAPTER NINE
FELICIA HAD NEVER known someone so able to separate the bedroom from work.
Kedah did it with ease.
And it helped.
At restaurants, her computer and her phone on the table served as a little wall between them. To remind her, as often as was necessary, that they were not lovers having lunch.
She was working.
Oh, but the nights!
In the evenings they ate at the best restaurants, without a computer between them, holding hands between courses and doing rude things under the table with their feet before returning home to his bed.
The bedroom was an entirely different thing. Her cases had long since been unpacked by his maids.
Her family and friends were very used to Felicia disappearing for weeks on end as she focused on her clients, so her absence was easily explained—even when she caught up with her mother for lunch.
‘At least tell me who you’re working for,’ Susannah said.
‘I can’t just yet.’ Felicia smiled and then looked at the time. ‘I have to get back.’
Felicia did have to get back. Kedah had a two p.m. meeting with Hussain. But, knowing she needed supplies, after lunch Felicia decided to use lover’s licence and dash back to her own flat.
Poor neglected flat, she thought as she grabbed some make-up wipes and tweezers from her bathroom cupboard. Two things that were sadly lacking at Kedah’s.
Perhaps they should spend some time here...
And then she checked herself. It was easier that their time was spent at his apartment. She did not need constant reminders of him here when they were through.
And soon they would be.
Vadia’s requests for a bridal selection date were almost daily now. The article that had been taken down from the internet was back up again, and there had been several more too.
Things were coming to a head, whether she wanted it or not.
Felicia opened up the cabinet and grabbed a fresh packet of contraceptive pills—the real reason she was there, for she was down to her last.
She went to grab some tampons too, but then remembered she’d already taken some to Kedah’s last week.
She stilled as she realised she was down to her last pill and had nothing to show for it. Her tampons sat languishing in the glitzy mirrored cupboard in his bathroom.
Felicia stood for a very long moment and told herself it was the travel, it was exhaustion, it was being in love with a sexy sheikh who could never consider loving her back that had made her late.