by Holly Rayner
“And what do you do with these pieces?”
There was still an undercurrent of suspicion in the way she said it. Still that unknown source of hesitation and mistrust that he hadn’t gotten to the bottom of yet, and could feel himself having to fight over the course of the conversation. But he knew that asking her directly had the potential to backfire, and he couldn’t risk that.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you just put them in your home to show women when you need to impress them? Are you the sort of man that buys up beautiful things for the sake of owning them, and showing others that you own them?”
The criticism was implicit, but it wasn’t for him. He wasn’t like that. And he felt that Ophelia knew it. And, if she didn’t, she’d soon figure it out. He trusted her to understand the difference. So, instead of defending himself, he deflected with a joke.
“Oh, you think I need to impress you, do you?”
He said it with a smile, and was rewarded with the laugh he was going for.
“No, none of them are on display at the moment,” he continued. “They are all under the care of a few carefully chosen restorers. When the time comes, I’ll display them all together.”
She leaned forward slightly, and he reveled in the attention in a way he couldn’t remember ever doing before.
“They’re a coherent selection, you see. Or, at least, they will be. It’s unfinished, as of now. But, eventually, one day, I hope and plan to open an art museum in Al-Shyla. We have a small one, and there’s a great history museum down by the corniche, but we could do much better.”
“Corniche?” she asked, and Salim was surprised at himself for using a word she wouldn’t be familiar with. It was part of his standard operating procedure never to do that. He had to be mysterious, but accessibly so, and cultural or language differences didn’t help that. He also noticed, with some confusion, that the slight accent he sometimes developed when talking to his family—but always suppressed when speaking to anyone else—was starting to slip out.
“Sorry, it’s what we call the developed area down along the waterfront of the gulf. It’s a popular area…walking paths and immaculately-kept gardens. Honestly, one day, I’d like to show you that, too.”
He winked at her, and couldn’t help but remember the wink that Nikolai had given him earlier, and the great difference between the two.
Ophelia laughed.
“Do you say this to all the girls?” she asked, though he noted, for the first time tonight, it seemed to be without a trace of suspicion.
Something had broken. Some wall between them that he didn’t know if he had put up, or if she had.
“Sometimes, to the pretty ones,” he said honestly. “But I never mean it the way I do, now, with you.”
Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew that he meant them. He could feel his perspective, and his objectivity, slipping away. What had begun in London was happening again, and he wasn’t afraid anymore to call it what it was.
“You know, I play piano.”
He cocked his head to the side.
“Really? I’m surprised you found the time to learn.”
She smiled.
“I couldn’t, eventually. Eventually, I had to give it up for dancing, the way I’ve sacrificed everything else.”
She said it sadly—much more sadly than he would have expected. There was more there, he could tell; it was as if she didn’t know whether or not to tell him what.
“But before I had to give it up, people told me I was pretty good. Certainly good enough to show you the basics, if you still wanted to learn.”
Salim could feel a trace of a smile forming at the edges of his lips.
“You, a virtuoso ballerina, would sit down at a piano and teach me to play ‘Chopsticks’?”
She recoiled in mock horror.
“What, chopsticks? Why, no! Never ‘Chopsticks’!”
The two laughed together, and Salim was aware of how much louder they had become than the tables around them. He could feel the glances that were being shot their way. He was aware he was breaking all the unwritten rules of etiquette that applied within that establishment. He just didn’t care.
“But, yes,” her delightfully husky voice continued, “I’d be happy to teach you. It’s the least I could do. After all, you’re going to show me your collection, and I know nothing about art. So that will probably be just as frustrating an introduction.”
You’re going to show me your collection.
And just like that, she’d taken him up on the offer. It was a commitment to the future, and, since it was likely to be well after the world tour was over that they would be able to go—and, most likely, after Nikolai had lost interest in the bet—it was a genuine commitment.
It wasn’t tied to anything professional or to any competition. It was just for them. Just because she wanted to. And because he wanted to.
“It’s a date.”
Chapter 18
Ophelia
She had meant to be strong. She’d meant to go to dinner, to see if Salim said anything that revealed his intentions or whatever scheme he and Nikolai may or may not have cooked up. And, for a while, it was easy to do. It was easy to see through his act, once she knew for certain he was putting it on.
Oh, the Sheikh thought he was so smooth. But it was really only because he was so handsome that he got away with it. Sure, if she weren’t so mad at him, and if she didn’t have good reason to believe he was tricking her, she might have laughed at his jokes and believe she was the first woman to hear them. But not tonight.
Then, though, it changed. He began to seem like himself again—the self she thought she had started seeing in London. And again, it all came flooding back to her, and she found her suspicions of the previous hours and days fading to background noise.
She’d strung together a conspiracy from a friendship. Salim hadn’t hidden the fact that he and Nikolai were friends. In fact, he’d volunteered it. And was that such a coincidence? Nikolai was interested in ballet. He’d bought his own company, and it was a company that his family had founded generations before.
Why shouldn’t he take his friend to come see a promising new production? And why shouldn’t his friend develop an interest? Ophelia had fallen in love with dance, as had countless others. Why shouldn’t she take Salim at his word, now?
It might have helped somewhat that the restaurant was unbelievable. Salim had had that right. For a while after dinner, they moved over into the lounge area, so that they could sit and listen to the piano player together. He was, as Salim had said, quite good.
Ophelia ordered a glass of champagne, and Salim asked her what she was celebrating.
“I’m not giving you the answer you want,” she said with a smile.
Was she flirting? It felt like she was flirting.
“Oh, there’s an answer I want? Do tell.”
“You want me to say I’m celebrating us. Or…whatever this is. But I’m just remembering Tomas.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “And you can’t do both?”
He had a sparkle in his eye as told the waitress just to bring the bottle and two flutes. When they arrived, he poured them each a drink and held his aloft.
“To Tomas,” he said. “And to us. Whatever we are. Whatever this is.”
She toasted him and drank, and noticed that his arm was behind her on the bench seat. She didn’t mind.
“Why does champagne remind you of Tomas?” he asked her. She looked back at him reprovingly.
“You know the answer to that. He bought us champagne to celebrate closing nights. You know, like the one you so rudely interrupted.”
He wasn’t satisfied with that answer, the way she thought he should have been.
“But it’s champagne! You must have had it plenty of times other than when Tomas bought it for you.”
Ophelia shrugged. She didn’t know if it was the tiredness from the show or the emotional roller coaster the day h
ad been, but she told him the truth.
“I’ve actually never had it other than when Tomas bought it for us.”
“What?” he said, incredulous. “Never?”
She shook her head, beginning to feel self-conscious and wish she hadn’t started this whole line of conversation. That feeling only multiplied when he spoke again.
“You really are quite sheltered in a way, aren’t you?”
The word struck her like a knife.
If only he knew, she thought. He wouldn’t be sitting here, buying her drinks and taking her to fine restaurants, if he knew how completely unexperienced she was. She felt a rush of nerves flow through her body. If she didn’t watch her mouth, he’d find out soon, and all this would be over before it had begun.
She hadn’t said anything, but he reacted as if she had. Was her nervousness so plainly written on her face?
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I wasn’t insulting you; I was just surprised.”
She didn’t want to tell him the truth, but she didn’t want to lie to him, either. Instead, she changed the subject.
“We came here to listen to music,” she said, leaning into his arm around her back and resting her head on his shoulder. “But how can we listen if you won’t stop talking?”
She could feel his heartbeat racing from here. If she didn’t know better, she would say he was as inexperienced as she was. That is, if she hadn’t seen quite as many pictures with his arms around quite such attractive women, and read quite as many articles about the scandals he’d gotten into.
“Oh, all right, then. I’ll be quiet.” He whispered the words close to her ear, and Ophelia felt another thrill run through her body.
True to his word, he was quiet while they listened, and so was she—with the exception of little asides now and then, like her telling him that she used the piece the pianist was playing for an audition, or him telling her that he had heard this performed once at Carnegie hall, but that he preferred it here and now.
They’d crossed a threshold. Ophelia could feel it. It was that point in any relationship when the information you share is no longer just about itself. You don’t say things because they’re interesting, or because they relate. You say things because they’re about you. And you’re interested in what the other person says, because it’s about them.
They’d begun gathering information about each other. They’d started down the path to knowing everything.
When they’d drunk plenty of the best champagne Ophelia had ever tasted, and had long outlasted any other party in the lounge, they headed outside.
It was a different world now than it had been when they had gone inside. A thin blanket of pristine snow covered the ground, reflecting the light of the street lamps and making the city around them feel fresh and quiet and new.
“The cold followed us here from New York,” she heard Salim say, as he draped his coat around her shoulders.
She smiled. “It did a good job catching up,” she said. “I didn’t know cold fronts could keep up with airplanes.”
They were in that comfortable place of familiarity where they were saying silly things, as though they made perfect sense.
Salim shrugged as they stepped out onto the sidewalk and began to walk back in the direction of the hotel, wordlessly deciding against hailing a cab.
“Well, it skipped London, so I guess it had a head start,” he said.
They were quiet as they began their walk. It felt to Ophelia as if they were remembering together the relative warmth they’d had in London, and what it had led them to do.
“Does it often snow in Spain?” Ophelia asked him, assuming he knew the answer. Somehow, she’d started just assuming he knew everything about the world.
“Not often. You know, I don’t think we brought the cold at all,” he said. “I think it’s more that you’re exceptional, and you bring exceptional weather with you wherever you go.”
Ophelia laughed, and let herself feel the oddness of the way the blanket of snow absorbed the sound and kept it from echoing throughout the street.
“So, it’s my fault, then?”
Salim shrugged beside her.
“Don’t blame me for pointing it out. I’m not the one causing it.”
With an offended scoff, she stepped over to the grass by the side of the sidewalk. A thin layer of snow had collected there, and it gave her enough volume to quickly make a respectable snowball. Before she even knew for certain what she was doing, she had thrown it at Salim.
She hit him dead center, in the middle of his chest. Since he’d given her the coat draped around her shoulders, it was all over his blue silk button-up. For a split second, Ophelia thought to herself that if he were a different kind of person, having potentially ruined her boss’ expensive shirt might not go well for her.
But it was amazing how quickly she felt so sure that she knew Salim was not that kind of man, and how completely unsurprised she was when he ducked down and picked up a snowball of his own.
He got her on the side of her face.
“Not fair! I only got your chest!”
He ducked behind a car as Ophelia set to preparing a new projectile.
“You got me where I was vulnerable and I did the same! Not my fault I’m vulnerable everywhere and you’re all covered up!”
Her snowball was almost complete when his second hit her shoulder.
“Oh, it’s on, now,” she said, and slid around the side of the car to hit him in the side of his head.
They went back and forth, back and forth, until both were covered in snow and Ophelia could see the tracks from their battle spread all over the sidewalk, grass and street.
The tiredness of the day, with its rehearsals and performance and all that came after, was beginning to catch up with her. But she was too caught up in the Sheikh’s newly found playful side to stop. She put together a bigger snowball than the previous ones had been. Salim was further from her now, and she had to lean back to be sure she would get the power she needed to hit him.
But as she leaned back, she must have touched the car beside her. A car alarm—loud and insistent—went off. It startled Ophelia. With a growing sense of horror, she felt herself starting to lose her footing on the icy slush beneath her. She struggled to find her balance, but between the champagne and her exhaustion, she couldn’t.
She was terrified, and then, just as suddenly, she wasn’t. Salim’s strong arms were around her again, and she felt just as safe and supported as she had in London, when he’d carried her to the cab and then to her room.
“That could have been my career,” she said breathlessly. “If I fell and broke my ankle. It happens all the time. It can happen to anyone.”
He spoke to her in his quiet voice again.
“It must be terrifying, to be the holder of such a rare and precious gift.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“You don’t really mean that, do you?”
He shook his head, as though to clear it.
“I do, actually,” he said. And Ophelia noticed, as she had once or twice earlier, that there were moments when he had the slightest trace of an accent. They were few and far between, but this was one of them. “But you’re right,” he continued. “I sound ridiculous, and you’re completely right to laugh at me.”
She smiled.
“I’m not laughing at you,” she said, though she could feel herself about to make that a lie.
He held her more tightly to him.
“Maybe not, but you want to. I can tell.”
They stood like that, together in the snow, for a long moment. Snow fell on their heads and all around them, and the world was temporarily perfect.
“Come on,” Salim said at last, “let’s get you back to the hotel.”
He didn’t carry her this time, but he did walk beside her with his arm around her, and she leaned in close to him. They could have gotten a cab, but Ophelia was glad he didn’t suggest it; after the excitement of the near-
fall, she appreciated the quiet of the street all the more. When they spoke, they did so in hushed tones, and it was only to point out the little details, the tiny beautiful things that they saw in passing.
Ophelia felt as though she were seeing Madrid not only through her own eyes, but through his, as well. As special as this trip would have been, it was all the more so for being able to share it with Salim. There was a part of her that wanted to say that to him, out loud and clearly. But the cheesiness of it held her back.
Besides, she had a feeling that he knew what she was thinking. She even dared to imagine that he felt the same.
Chapter 19
Salim
He was lost. He was totally, utterly lost. Everything he’d tried to distance himself from Ophelia and the way he was feeling about her was hopeless, now. As he walked through Madrid with her beside him, he couldn’t help but feel that he’d never seen the city until now. He’d never seen it covered with snow, sure, but it felt like he’d never seen it at all.
And it struck him that meeting Ophelia was like getting to see the whole world for the first time again. Everywhere he brought her, he’d be able to see as though for the first time. One day in the future, when he felt he could tell her in a way that didn’t sound over the top, he would have to tell her that. But tonight, walking through the streets back to the hotel, he simply enjoyed the quiet night and the company he had for it.
As they neared the hotel, though, his peace began to crack. He hadn’t even kissed her. Not on her lips. Not the way he wanted to. And everything in him wanted very much to kiss her, and invite her to his room, so that the night wouldn’t have to end, and he could get to know every part of her as well as he had already gotten to know her face.
In theory, there was nothing stopping him asking her. With the way she was nestled into him, she would go with him; he was sure of it. At the very least, she would welcome his kiss with an open heart.
And isn’t that what he wanted? So why did the thought set him on edge?
