Challenging The Doctor Sheikh

She could wait.

She’d waited twenty-six years to fill that void, and another few weeks wouldn’t kill her.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a932ae72-b0df-5944-9f29-f5289a904064)

“I HADN’T CONSIDERED designing as we go,” Nira said. It seemed rude to sit with her back to him when she had no real reason to do so, aside from avoiding looking like a sex-crazed royal fan, which her reaction to him was starting to feel like.

He might be a prince, but he was a prince who had not even responded slightly to her geekery. Being attracted to him—while entirely understandable—would be a really stupid idea to entertain.

Keeping her goals in mind? Much more sensible than some overdeveloped Cinderella story. One-sided attraction should always be ignored, especially when the other side was a freaking prince. Stupid. Understandable, but stupid.

There were other aspects of her heritage to explore without adding “Explore Arabic sensuality” to her list. Besides, Mum had already done that, with disastrous effects.

Focus.

“I suppose I could design in stages to an extent, but I’d need to block out the entire footprint first. You know—the general layout, decide the square footage of each department and the best flow of one department to another before I got started. But otherwise I don’t see why we couldn’t go in stages with the proper planning. It’ll be trickier, but designs are always done with specifications and constraints, so not that much trickier.”

And by doing it in stages, she’d actually get to be here for part of the construction! She’d get to see the first building rise that truly came from her ideas. It made the whole job even more exciting for her.

He gestured to a writing tablet lying at her side and Nira slid it over to him with a pen. “Okay, then, you’ll start with the split building we talked about. I’ll get someone else working on selecting good equipment so you’ll have equipment dimensions to work with in your plans.”

Nira leaned slightly to get a glimpse of his writing. Not the chicken scratch she’d expected. “Did you take drafting classes?”

“Drafting?” He stopped, an odd lift to his brows. “That’s not part of a medical curriculum.”

“You write like you’ve done hours of board lettering.”

Silence hung after her words, and suddenly Nira was reminded of the elevator. She’d said something wrong again. It wasn’t a stupid question—lots of people took drafting classes in secondary school. Probably. If they wanted to...draw things.

Light crinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes just before he chuckled. “I have no idea what that means. Board lettering sounds like writing on wood.” Her shoulders relaxed when he laughed, and a dimple appeared in his left cheek that completely wiped the notion of royalty from his persona.

“It’s a way of writing, back to Ye Olde Days of drafting when they tried to make everyone’s writing standardized so it would be universally legible. Most computers have a hackneyed font called Draft-something-or-other now approximating the style. I just meant your writing is very neat and uniform. I thought doctors were all scribblers.”

“My first education was to write from right to left. When I learned English, it was hard to remember at first, so I learned to take care with my...lettering, was it? I want to be understood.”

“Of course. I didn’t think about that. I should’ve, though. My attempts at writing anything in Arabic have been laughable. I drag my hand in the ink and smear it, or I drag my hand on the pencil and smear it. We won’t even talk about calligraphy nibs...” She shrugged and gestured back to the tablet. Stop derailing things. The man might be a doctor when he’s not prince-ing, but right now he was her client, and clients deserved not to be interrupted by nervous women trying not to notice how their dimple contrasts delightfully with their square jaw.

“I need to know patient volumes we’re designing for. Do you want to start small until you get people used to the idea of the hospital?”

He took the redirection with ease, not commenting on her failure not to smear her practice writing. Thank God.

“No. I want to go big. Big enough it’s impossible for people to ignore it. Big and shiny enough to draw attention and bring people in. Starting small just means staying small. It will get the use it needs if we make it important by making it big.”

That was a new tactic. Her career experience wasn’t yet expansive, but everyone she’d worked with had worked within a budget. But when your client ruled a country, he could probably do whatever he wanted with the budget.

“I still need a target number of patients, because my idea of big and yours might be two different things. And I hate to ask this since I know how fast you want me to get started, but it would really be beneficial to me to see what sort of facilities people are currently using.”

He laid the pen down and leaned back in his chair. “You want to go to the hospital? It’s barely functional. I’m not sure what you could get from going there besides tetanus. Though, on the upside, as far as hospital infections go, I doubt you could get MRSA.”

“I’d like to avoid tetanus, so I won’t touch anything. I don’t know what MRSA is, so I’ll just be glad I can’t get it.”

“Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It’s like staph on steroids, resistant to most antibiotics, really hard to get rid of. But since antibiotics so rarely make it to Mamlakat Almas, anyone who has it would likely have caught it from someone coming into the country. So, probably right before they died, or healed it themselves.”

“Right. I’d like to avoid that.”

Maybe going to the current treacherous hospital wasn’t the best idea. Except...

“But we’re leaving the current building and adding on? Blending the old and new?”

That was why Zahir had hired her specifically, even without a CV loaded with practical experience. Also it was why the animation had started with the old building.

Dakan scribbled a few more notes on the pad, then leaned back again. “No. It’s on a large piece of land. As we’re going to do it staged, we’ll leave the old hospital up and functioning—such as it is—and begin construction for the new facility in another area of the property. Maybe right beside it, then tear down the old when the new is up and running.”

Definitely not blending the old with the new that way, not that the current hospital was exactly old—it had been built in the twentieth century if the old blueprints were accurate. He was probably exaggerating. Still, she could work with that. And who wouldn’t want a shiny new facility? But she had a point about visiting the hospital besides seeing what she was adding to.

“It’s nothing to me if the old building is razed after the first unit is completed, but I still need to see the facility or visit a healing center. Zahir—I mean Prince Zahir—said there were a few bigger healing centers within the country. I need to see how the waiting and reception areas function, see what people expect so I can make sure the building feels familiar enough to be welcoming.”

He fixed his gaze on her, and for a moment she thought he might finally yell at her, as she’d been expecting him to do in the lobby. But instead he paused for a considered moment and said calmly, “I know blending the old and the new is what you and Zahir discussed, but I really have no interest in that, Miss Hathaway.”

With her not knowing what to call him, every time he said her name it made her a little more aware of their different positions. She’d address that first. “Please call me Nira. I don’t mind.”

“All right, Nira. I’ve inherited the hospital project, and since I’ve had a few more days to think about it, I’ve decided to go a different route from Zahir’s old plans. I want a thoroughly modern hospital. None of that modern on the outside and quaint and nostalgic on the inside nonsense either. Modern. Something that would look at home if it was plunked in the middle of London, Sydney, or New York.”

“Prince Dakan.” She used his title again, since he’d made no overture that she could go without it. “Your brother was quite adamant the king wouldn’t accept such a facility any of the times he’s presented any plans. He batted back all our proposals already too, before we any got further than conceptuals.”

The only reason she had the job was the years of study—or some might say obsession—with studying ancient Middle Eastern architecture. She’d only been in the country three days. Prior to that, she’d simply been emailing Zahir proposals, which the King had constantly knocked back. She had loads of ideas, doodles, and even a few sheets of paper with what could almost pass for sketches, but no idea if any of it would work.

“Three days, sitting in a fancy flat in your kingdom, isn’t enough to get what I need to design anything properly. All I’ve seen, aside from a fantastic skyline, has been the bazaar today and the airport the other day.”

“My father isn’t here,” Dakan reminded her, then moved to her drafting table, where he began riffling through the dotted newsprint paper sketches she’d used to think on. “He won’t be involved in the design.”

“But isn’t he coming back?”

“I certainly hope so,” he murmured, stopping at the conceptual fountain she was most proud of, and giving it a good look.

“Water makes for a soothing environment. It’s good for waiting areas,” she explained, trying not to sell the idea too hard. She liked it too much to risk so bold an opening maneuver.

“It’s also good at slowing down progress. The objective is to open as soon as possible. Embellishments will come later.”

“The footprint, the basic layout, needs to be present for later, though. And there are structural issues—like plumbing and power—that need to be accounted for in the building stage, or you’ll just end up having to rip up what we’ve already built.”

“Fine, then put what is required for the fountain in the foundation so it can be added in later. Then put a floor over it and make it useful.”

At least he seemed to like it.

“Please don’t take offense at this, but I really need to see what is expected now. I don’t even know if the waiting rooms can be together, or if they need to be segregated by class or gender or some other classifier. You can thank the internet that last week I learned how to tie a scarf and also that henna is amazing but far too hard for me to do on myself no matter how much I like to draw or doodle. I may know Middle Eastern architecture and art back to ancient times, yes, and I’ve been learning Arabic for about eighteen months, but pretty much every other aspect of your culture is still very foreign to me. I don’t want to mess it up, and waste time and money as I struggle to get it right.”

“Aren’t your parents immigrants? Or your mother at least?”