The Sheikh's Baby Scandal(45)

Omar did not respond.

‘Yet nothing got done, and all these years later still there is little progress in Zazinia...’

‘I ensured an improved education system,’ Omar interjected. ‘I pushed for that.’ Yet both men knew that he had pushed for little more. ‘The King did not want change,’ Omar said.

‘What about this King?’ Kedah asked, but again there was no response. ‘Please,’ Kedah said, ‘have a seat.’

He dimmed the lights in the office and took a seat himself as the presentation commenced.

Kedah looked over to his father, but the King gave no comment—though he did, Kedah noted, take a sip of his drink. And, while that was supposed to be the reason they were there, suddenly his father’s reaction to the presentation was more important to Kedah.

Felicia had been right. His father needed to see this.

And there it all played out.

Like golden snakes, roads wove across the screen and bridges did what they were designed to—bridged. Access was given to the remote west, where the poorest people fought to survive, and somehow it all connected.

Schools and hospitals appeared, and within the animation teachers, doctors and nurses walked. There were animated children too, playing in parks. Now, hotels rose, and there were pools. Restaurants and cafés appeared on bustling evening streets.

And the King sat in silence.

Kedah watched as his father took a drink, and another, yet made no comment. An hour later, when an animated sun had set on a very different Zazinia from the one they knew and the presentation had ended, it was Omar who stood and opened up the drapes.

Still he offered no comment. Omar just stared out to the golden desert beyond and it was Kedah who spoke.

‘That is what you deny your people. All this is achievable and yet you do nothing...’

‘No—’

‘Yes,’ Kedah refuted. ‘Turn around and tell me that Mohammed would make the better Crown Prince.’

Omar did not.

‘Turn around and tell me that you don’t want a glittering future for our people.’

‘That is enough, Kedah,’ Omar said, but Kedah had not finished yet.

He picked up the files and held them out for his father. ‘As I said to you when I was eighteen, you shall not force me to take a bride. I will never be pushed into something that is not of my choice. If you want me gone then say so, but let us stop pretending that it has anything to do with my choosing a wife.’

Kedah tossed the files down on the desk in frustration as again his father said nothing. He simply walked out.

He had shown his father his best—the very best of his vision, all that he hoped to achieve—and his father had offered no comment.

* * *

Felicia was startled when the office door opened unexpectedly. She did not receive any greeting from the very angry King who stalked past.

She had been seated at the very desk where years ago Kedah had once hidden, and now she took the same steps that he had at three years old—though she opened the door with greater ease.

‘How was it?’

Kedah shrugged. ‘Hopeless.’

‘He didn’t have a drink?’ Felicia checked, and then Kedah remembered the real reason for the meeting.

He looked over to his father’s glass, which was empty.

‘I meant that the presentation was hopeless. He’s never going to change his mind.’

Felicia pulled on her gloves and popped the glass into a clear bag, and then another, then placed it in her purse. On the desk she saw that there were some photos of dark-haired and dark-eyed beauties. One of them, no doubt, would be his bride.

Kedah was too incensed by his father’s lack of response to notice where her gaze fell. His mind was on other things. ‘What am I fighting for?’ Kedah asked, and for the briefest moment he wavered where he had always been resolute. ‘Am I the only one who wants change?’

‘Your people want it also,’ Felicia said. ‘I heard them cheering you, Kedah.’

She was right—it wasn’t just his ego that insisted he could do things better than his brother. And after his father’s pale reaction to the presentation it was as if she blew the wind back into his sails.

‘I am going to speak again with Mohammed,’ Kedah said.

‘Do so,’ Felicia agreed. ‘I’m going to head back to London.’

She was meeting a courier at Heathrow, who would take the glass to a laboratory where the samples would be analysed.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I get the results.’

And this was it, she realised. It was the very last time she would be in Zazinia—for certainly she would not travel here as his PA once Kedah had chosen his bride.

‘Don’t leave now.’