Healing the Sheikh's Heart

by Annie O'Neil

“Singing. If you really want to hear them sing, we can organize it back at the palace after Amira has gone to bed. I don’t want her to be embarrassed.”

  “Why would she be embarrassed?”

  “You, of all people, shouldn’t have to ask that question.” Idris felt his fingers tighten protectively around his daughter’s shoulders.

  “There are some wonderful ways to interpret music,” Robyn protested, quickly kneeling down in front of Amira. “How would you like to hear your daddy sing to you?”

  “You’re just being cruel!” Idris protested in a low voice. “Why ask a question like that so close to the surgery? Of course she’d like to hear my voice. All of our voices, but she can’t.”

  “No.” Robyn looked up, her blond curls already escaping the confines of her scarf. “It’s not cruel. It’s realistic.” She began signing as she spoke. “Your father is going to sing his favorite folk song to you.” Then she fixed him with her eyes, a spark of defiance flaring in them as she did. “Get thinking. We’ve got to tell the musicians what they’re about to play.”

  Enta eih.

  Who was this woman? Powerful goddess or stubborn mule? For a split second Idris was grateful his daughter couldn’t hear when he muttered a word not fit for any ears.

  A bustle of activity ensued as, with Kaisha’s help, Robyn scuttled everyone up to the open-sided tent prepared for the performance. He set off after her, his hand easily encircling her wrist as he pulled her around to face him.

  “What is it you think you are doing? Public humiliation? Is that what you want for Amira?”

  “How dare you!” she shot back. “How dare you think for a single moment I would do that to Amira.”

  “Then why do this? She is deaf!”

  “Not for long if I have anything to do with it, and as such, she needs to be used to the same lives you and I are lucky enough to lead.”

  “What?” He couldn’t keep the sneer from his face. “A life dedicated to nothing but work?”

  She turned away, for just a moment, as if he had slapped her. After scraping her chin along her shoulder, she faced him again, the tiniest of twitches appearing at the corner of her eye. “I meant living a life where it is far too easy to take the most precious of gifts for granted.”

  Idris didn’t have to ask her what she meant. He saw it all in her eyes. The same longing he felt. The same struggle to break free from the locks and chains they’d imprisoned themselves with after grief struck in cruel, body-numbing blows.

  “Sing to your daughter. I’ll interpret.”

  It wasn’t a plea. It was an entreaty to do the right thing.

  Complex emotions poured into his heart, threatening to drown out his ability to think, let alone remember the words to a simple folk tune.

  He’d never sung to Amira. Not once. And the understanding of that simple deprivation struck him hard. He’d been so busy protecting his child from what he thought would harm her, he had denied her the simple connections a parent and child could share. He grimaced and swallowed the strong sting of emotion at the back of his throat. Yet another thing he’d never succumbed to since his wife had died.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, at Robyn’s suggestion, Idris was holding his daughter in his lap. Robyn stood across from him alongside the musicians and the children who had climbed onto a small set of risers.

  “Whenever you’re ready.” Robyn nodded, almost too frightened to breathe. She could barely believe Idris had consented to her idea, let alone taken on board the all-too-real fact that she’d volunteered to stand in front with the performers. But this was important.

  Idris and Amira would have a steep learning curve to climb as the little girl entered the world of the hearing, and the closer the bonds they shared, the easier going forward would be. Her own childhood was woven together by her mother’s lullabies and she couldn’t imagine Amira not knowing the sensation of being sung to.

  Robyn closed her eyes against Idris’s unblinking gaze and imagined herself back in the London theater where she and Amira had first met. She’d signed for her then. This would be no different.

  The moment the music began Robyn knew she’d vastly underestimated how different this scenario was. Her hips began to organically shift and move in time to the music—the handful of unfamiliar instruments transforming the space around them as if they’d taken a magic carpet ride to a different time and place. The collective sound of the children’s voices thickened and swelled into one perfect voice and her eyes locked with Idris’s as he, too, began to sing. His attention was wholly undivided. The words sung in Da’harian by the children, English by Idris, were being sung directly to her.

  The lyrics of the song, while simple, were heartfelt and pure. They told the story of a poor shepherd boy who’d fallen asleep beneath a pomegranate tree, dreaming of the girl he hoped to marry when he made his riches from the flock who grazed around him.

  Robyn signed the words; her body’s movements encapsulated the rhythm and pacing of the music. Idris’s rich baritone would be vibrating from his chest through to his daughter’s back—a sensation every bit as powerful as hearing the song would one day be. It cinched her heart tight to see his daughter pull his arms tight around her as the drama of the story unfolded.

  Translating became more intuitive as the song’s journey through the young shepherd’s imaginings built and unfolded. Robyn’s eyes moved between Idris and Amira, her fingers flying to tell the unchecked dreams of the solitary young man. His hope that he’d one day be brave enough to ask the questions lying in wait upon his lips. It became impossible to separate the lyrics from the man singing before her.

  Her body felt alive with possibility. Was she being serenaded? Was Idris telling her what she was only just realizing she felt for him? Was he telling her he loved her, too?

  A surge of happiness threatened to split her heart in two as Amira, in the midst of a powerful drumming sequence, leaped to her feet, pulling her father up by both hands, and began to dance. Idris willingly complied, singing the chorus at full volume, his head thrown back as he scooped up his daughter and they twirled and spun to the hypnotic beat of the music.

  When the cadence of the music slowed and the children’s voices lifted softly in sync with the instruments, Idris shifted his daughter to his hip, her small hand on his heaving chest, both of their eyes solidly on Robyn as she interpreted the final chorus Idris had now begun.

  The shepherd, Idris sang, was jarred from his sleep when a fruit fell from the tree. The thud of the pomegranate upon the ground woke him from a perfect dreamworld only to discover all of his sheep had gone and he was left with nothing but the sour scent of the broken fruit spoiling in the heat of the burning sun.

  The music dwindled away and Robyn was left standing, her body frozen, as if she herself were caught between the conflicting worlds of hope and reality.

  Amira’s fingers were skating across Idris’s lips and he pressed them to his daughter’s small fingertips, giving them each a small kiss, his eyes still very much linked to Robyn’s, his chest sucking in breath after life-affirming breath.

  She turned abruptly, no longer able to stand in the remains of the words Idris had sung. Was it love he was feeling? Had it been love she’d seen in his eyes?

  Or had he been trying to tell her what was inevitable? That theirs was a relationship never to be realized. Or worse. He could be telling her everything she’d thought had passed between them over the past week had all been in her head and there had never been any love at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “DR. KELLY SHOULD be in the center,” Idris directed the men setting up the nametags on the table, all the while looking over his shoulder to see where on earth she had got to.

  “Are you sure?” Kaisha shot him a worried look and he didn’t blame her.

  They
had spent large chunks of the past two days in the hospital at Robyn’s request as she drilled the details of the surgery into her head.

  He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes until they would be live. Members of the press were already lurking outside the hospital doors. Some, he suspected, may have already wheedled their way in.

  He and the press already had an...understanding. They left Amira out of the limelight, and he didn’t shut down their businesses. He was all for democracy, but he valued privacy much, much more.

  Where on earth was she?

  He rocked back on his heels and worked his way through the past forty-eight hours. His eyebrows lifted in a satisfied arch as the answer came to him.

  Sure enough, a few moments later he caught a glimpse of Robyn’s tangle of blond curls hidden behind the foliage of an untamed succulent in the far corner of the central courtyard—a tiled maze of fountains, flower gardens and palms where patients and their families could escape the more sterile environment inside the hospital.

  “Feeling up to facing your adoring public?” He sat down on the long slab of mahogany she was perching on, a clutch of note cards in her hands.

  Robyn barked out a short laugh. “If I could hide back here and use a secret microphone, it would be much better.”

  He nudged her gently with his elbow. “You know you’re up to it. Even Amira could talk you through the surgery at this point you’ve practiced on her so much.”

  “Would she like to do it? The press conference?”

  He widened his eyes and gave her a very solid, “No.”

  Robyn turned to him, an embarrassed smile playing on her lips. “I’ve been horrible, haven’t I?”

  He lifted up his fingers and left a couple of centimeters between his thumb and index finger. “Just a bit horrible. The rest...” Their eyes clicked and with the connection along came the surge of endorphins he experienced whenever they shared a moment. “The rest of you has been tolerable.”

  Liar.

  She swatted away his hand and laughed, for real this time. “You should be the one who’s nervous.”

  “Why would I be nervous?” he riposted. “I have chosen the best surgeon for the job.” He meant it, too. The more Robyn fine-tuned her explanation of the groundbreaking treatment, turning the complicated medical language into layman’s speak, the more confidence he had in her abilities to give his daughter the gift of hearing.

  He still couldn’t shake the incredible feeling of dancing with Amira in his arms, singing at top volume, his daughter’s hands pressed on his chest as he sang, her eyes glued to his lips, absorbing the story he told as actively as any hearing child might. It was a moment any father and daughter would have been lucky to share. For that alone, he owed Robyn an unpayable debt of gratitude.

  The buzz of her phone broke into the shared silence his comments had brought and she shot him an apologetic smile as she dug, like a sorceress, into the depths of her bag and retrieved her mobile.

  “Message,” she said, her lips tightening as her eyes scanned the note.

  “Everything all right?”

  “No,” she answered tightly. “One of the patients I was hoping wouldn’t need to be readmitted has just been brought in.”

  “Anything I can do?” Idris offered inanely, but seeing the color drain from Robyn’s cheeks showed him just how much she cared and he didn’t like the helpless feeling it elicited.

  “Not unless you’ve got a secret stash of millions you don’t need,” she replied, her thoughts clearly elsewhere.

  She’d obviously meant it as a throwaway comment. Robyn had never asked him for a single thing. She was still trying to offer him money for the clothes they had bought at Amira’s insistence, some of which she was wearing now.

  The ensemble she’d chosen for the press conference was a beautiful sky blue, enhancing the rich coloring of her eyes, the soft pink of her lips and, now, the growing pink flush on her cheekbones as she became aware of the intensity of his gaze.

  He shook his head and gave her knee a perfunctory pat.

  “The best thing you can do for this patient—”

  “Penelope,” Robyn filled in.

  “The best you can do—we can do—for Penelope is get on with this press conference. Bring the publicity you and your team deserve at Paddington’s.”

  Robyn nodded. “I know. I just really can’t bear all the attention. It genuinely terrifies me.”

  “Don’t be scared.” Idris, against his better judgment, took her hands in both of his and held them tight. “You were there for Amira and me yesterday in a way no one has been before. Today we are here for you.”

  The look she gave him in return was so filled with gratitude he had to fight not to pull her to him, holding her close as he had done once before.

  With members of the press lurking everywhere it made things more complicated. The last thing he wanted was photos giving the wrong impression of their relationship taking precedence over the press conference. He could see the headlines now: Royal Scandal! Passion Not Parenting!

  If only they knew how incredible a parent Robyn would be to his little girl. Their instant connection, the smiles, the laughter! Amira would be hard-pressed to find someone else to better fill the space her mother had left in her wake.

  Idris’s chest instantly hollowed as the air swept out of his lungs.

  A mother for Amira.

  She had a mother!

  A mother she’d never known. Never would.

  Robyn offered...possibility.

  He looked down at Robyn’s fingers, nervously tip-tapping against his hands, and swallowed away the conflicting thoughts. With a sharp breath, he placed her hands back in her lap, wishing he’d never taken them up at all. Robyn didn’t need any diversions. Nor did he.

  “Come.” He rose and tipped his head toward the lecture room where everything had been set up for them. “Leave that enormous bag of yours and let’s go dazzle the media.”

  An anxious smile crept onto Robyn’s lips. “You’ll be in the room, right?”

  A simple question, but the look in her eyes was so much more complex. The only thing he could think of in response to the hope alight in those amber eyes of hers was, As long as you need me, I’ll be there.

  * * *

  The words were still ringing in Robyn’s ears as she settled herself into the chair at the center of the table. “As long as you need me, I’ll be there.”

  She was beginning to think forever might be just about long enough, but she would take right now as a starting block. She’d seen something in Idris’s eyes just then. Something she knew a glance in the mirror would reveal in her own.

  Love.

  She loved him. She loved Amira. Heck! She loved Da’har with its varied landscape, the rich culture, the way Idris steered it boldly into the future with a solid understanding of his nation’s past. And knowing all of these things, owning them in her heart, gave her strength to lift her head up from her notes and begin to speak.

  She found herself boldly looking directly into camera lenses, explaining the finer points of the gene therapy they hoped Amira would benefit from. When a reporter would ask her a question, instead of her insides being reduced to a wobbly jangle of nerves, she felt her spine straighten, and clear, concise answers come out of her mouth. At moments, it was almost as though she was looking at herself through the reporters’ lenses, seeing a confident, intelligent, capable woman.

  “And what of Her Highness?” one particularly insistent reporter asked. “How aware is the Sheikha of what will be happening to her?”

  “Very much,” Robyn answered. “I have explained the surgery and gene therapy to her—along with her father’s input, of course—until I was confident she fully understood the process.”

  “Aren’t you just setting her up
for disappointment?” another jumped in.

  “How do you mean?”

  “If it doesn’t work.”

  “That’s always a possibility,” Robyn replied, astonished she wasn’t scooping up all of her paperwork and fleeing. Admitting something she was going to do could be a failure was not normally something she conceded to with confidence. But this time around, it felt as if part of her had been in hiding and had finally come out into the light for a grand reveal. All of the trust and confidence her colleagues had invested in her suddenly had merit. She knew where it had come from. The fire. The newfound strength.

  It came from the enigmatic and utterly engaging Sheikh of Da’har. The dark-haired man sitting alongside her as she spoke, hands folded loosely on top of his knee, nodding, occasionally offering a supportive smile as he invested the most precious thing of all in her abilities: trust.

  He was telling the world loud and clear he was trusting Robyn Kelly with his daughter’s well-being and the swell of pride she felt in that knowledge was all she needed to make the press conference a success.

  She leaned forward, eyes scanning from reporter to reporter, and spoke with a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “There are only a handful of hospitals in the world capable of such cutting-edge surgery. And of that handful, we at Paddington Children’s Hospital are the only ones brave enough to do it.”

  “You mean you’re the only one brave enough to do it?” shouted a reporter with a British accent.

  Robyn shrugged. Wasn’t that apparent? It was hardly her style to jump up and shout, “Yeah! I’m the best in the world!” She turned at the unexpected sound of Idris’s voice.

  “I think you’ll find Dr. Kelly is in a league of her own. There is no one else to whom I would entrust my daughter’s care. And just so we are clear—” Idris leaned forward, forearms pressed on the table, chin cocked to one side, the press mimicking the gesture as if magnetically drawn to him “—Her Royal Highness is living a rich and full life. This is not a win or lose situation. This is all gain.” He shot Robyn a grateful look before continuing. “Dr. Kelly is the only surgeon I would trust to take on such a monumentally important surgery and Paddington Children’s Hospital has the very best of facilities for the intricate surgery. Their long-established record of succeeding where other hospitals have not has earned my complete confidence. If, for whatever reason, her hearing is not restored, my daughter will continue to live a meaningful and well-balanced life—not least of which will include one day taking the reins of leadership in Da’har.”