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Still, with all this flirtation, Laine had to wonder Ae, but that see frorab her passionately whenever he liked in his own country, where interaction between unmarried men and wo But as intense as their passion was, Aziz continued to treat their relationship as one long, ongoing fling Laine hated to be the one getting so invested, while it seeant way to seize the day and take pleasure while they both had life in theestures were sweet, whenever pressed to speak of their relationship on more intimate terms, he tended to try to undress her with rew quiet and left the room on “business” he needed to take care of And it hurt

Laine knew she could open upwhere he stood on these things, and being unable to reliably get him to put away his capricious persona, she found it very hard to spill her soul to hi very important about himself

Hadiya grabbed Laine’s hand just before she duar With a click of her tongue, Hadiya took over the bowl

“You must learn to cook someday,” she chastised

“I can cook,” Laine argued “I made dinner for our fa? Not really in my wheelhouse”

“It is the same,” Hadiya scolded “How can you do one but not the other?”

“Cooking is art Baking is science And I got a C in chemistry”

Hadiya rolled her eyes and pointed to the far counter “How about you just sift ar over there?”

“Yes, ma’am”

After Hadiya’s afternoon tea with her friends, Laine went out to her garden to review her notes With the roses as inspiration, she had focused her research for a few final designs around the concept of the resilient flora that naturally took root in the desert

She’d almost immediately discarded the idea after the first search on her tablet only turned up a variety of cacti Laine wouldn’t have gone with that kind of motif even in the Aood pictures of date palms that she could use for one of the conference rooms, since dates had once been a chief crop for the country She’d spoken to the painter she’d contracted about how to balance the ies in that room with a few lines from a Sumerian poem about Bahrain

Now, she perused pictures that she’d found late last night, biting her lip as she wondered what she could do with the concept A fraht it over, she sensed a presence behind her and turned before Aziz reached her