Sheikh's Command

by Sophia Lynn

  ***

  Makeen hadn't expected the gallery opening to be particularly exciting, but he hadn't expected it to be this boring, either.

  He supposed that the problem had less to do with the gallery than it had to do with him. Everything had felt as if it were covered in a fog of gray.

  When he had gotten back from the mountains, he had ordered David's release and then threw himself into his work. At night, he went out to his favorite clubs, but nothing held the same kind of savor that it had once had.

  He ended up at home, drinking and sleeping before starting the cycle over again. Makeen knew that he had to stop, but at the moment, he couldn't quite see a good reason to do so just yet.

  His harried personal assistant was stretched thin with invitations for him, so he had her pick some at random. That was why he had ended up at the art gallery, something that the local arts papers crowed about. Makeen realized with some amusement that him showing up was likely one of the most prestigious things that had ever happened to them.

  At the very least, it explained the hulking man who had introduced himself as Frederick almost directly after he arrived. He seemed intent on showing Makeen around, pointing out every piece of interesting art and hinting that there were other pieces in the private galleries that might need his attention.

  So far, Makeen had been able to push him off, but he was dreadfully afraid that by the end, he would have to see some of those pieces, if only to make the man shut up.

  ***

  “Please, I need to get in there!” Olivia begged. “Please, I need to talk to the Sheikh.”

  The security guard in front of the musuem gave her an unamused, unfriendly look. In that moment, she felt every inch the grubby street orphan in her thin T-shirt and long calico skirt. She couldn't let that stop her, though, not when Makeen's life was on the line.

  “Sorry,” he said for the second time. “Invitation only. You don't have one, so you're not going in.”

  When she tried to walk past him, he pushed her back with a gentle shove.

  “Get out of here, girlie. I don't want to get rough, but I will.”

  She circled around the building desperately, but there didn't seem to be a way in that wasn't locked or guarded. Olivia was contemplating simply breaking a window when she spotted Makeen through one of the French doors leading to the balcony.

  He looked so close, but so far away. It made her heart ache a little, and she wanted nothing more than to touch him in that moment.

  Then she remembered her violin. She removed it from her case, laying the case carelessly on the sidewalk.

  Olivia said a prayer to any higher power that was listening, and she started to play.

  ***

  He turned his head towards the music with a frown. It fought with the gentle music of the gallery, overriding it with a kind of fervor that was discordant, jarring. Other people were beginning to notice, looking around in confusion.

  “Such a racket,” Frederick said, and Makeen barely stopped himself from snapping at the man.

  “I'm going to go see what it is,” he said, heading to the nearest window. He noted with irritation that the social climber was following him, and resisted the urge to tell the man to go.

  Instead, he came to a pair of French doors that led out onto a small balcony, where he could hear the music more clearly, and right before he opened them, he recognized the music.

  Olivia …

  It was the same wild melody that she had been playing on that terrible night, that same music that had caused his heart to break into a thousand pieces. Now she was playing it wildly on the street in front of the gallery.

  “Olivia? What are you doing?” he shouted.

  The moment she saw him, she raised her head and lowered the violin. Even now, his heart clenched at how beautiful she was, how pure her loveliness was under the street light. Not all the models in the UAE could compare with her.

  “Stavros is sending a man to kill you! Tonight! Your life is in danger!” she shouted frantically.

  He frowned, not understanding what she was saying, but Frederick the social climber certainly did. With a guttural cry, the man exploded into motion, lunging forward with something undeniably sharp in his hand.

  Makeen barely dodged in time, aided in part by Frederick overcommitting to his lunge and nearly bumbling past him. His attacker turned with alarming quickness, and now Makeen had caught his knife hand, trying to force him back.

  The man was enormous, but Makeen was fueled by rage and adrenaline. He smashed the man's hand into the iron railing, causing him to drop the knife to the street below, and then he forced him to his knees.

  The crowd behind him had finally figured out that something was wrong, and now they came bolting out of the room to subdue the man.

  Makeen tried to still his harsh breathing and his racing heart, ignoring the people who wanted to make sure that he was all right. He was dimly aware that he had skinned his knuckles and had somehow wrenched his elbow, but that wasn't important.

  Instead, he twisted on the balcony, his eyes scanning the street for Olivia. Olivia, who had done what she could to save him. Olivia, who he knew had put herself at risk to come here.

  She was gone, and the street below was empty.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The airport was crowded and close. It reminded Olivia of the last time she had flown with Makeen, when his wealth and status won her past these crowds onto a private plane. The memories were still sharp enough to cut, but they came back with a rush, even as she settled herself into the coach seat waiting area.

  The other passengers traveling to Berlin ignored her. She was just one more young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a student, possibly traveling home after some time abroad. Unlike those students, however, the only things she owned were tucked into the backpack between her feet and of course, the violin case on her lap.

  At the last possible moment, Olivia had found the message from the Berlin orchestra. They wanted her. They sent her plane tickets, there was a company apartment she could stay in for a short while, and then she would be on stage. She wouldn't be the first violin, but she would have her part, and she would have her place.

  It was everything that Olivia had been working towards. She should have been elated.

  Instead, she only nodded and began her preparations.

  Her family had gone to ground. David was in hiding from Stavros, and who knew when it would be safe for him to appear again. She felt his loss far more strongly than she felt that of her parents, and sometimes she felt bad for that.

  Instead, she was a woman leaving on her own. If Olivia thought about it for too long, she would start crying. She had loved Zahar, but it was more than that.

  She was also leaving Makeen. She was leaving half her heart behind, and a part of her still couldn't believe that she was doing it of her own free will.

  She stared up at the bright fluorescent lights, willing the tears back. It felt like she had spent the last few weeks crying. She didn't want to do it anymore.

  “Please don't cry, darling.”

  For a moment, Olivia thought she had finally snapped. The man sitting next to her looked too perfect, far too handsome. The last time she had seen Makeen, he had been fighting for his life. The time before that, he had stalked away with a life-ending anger in his heart. This man, dressed casually in a linen suit, watched her with a slight smile on his face. Somehow he had come to be sitting next to her without her awareness.

  “Are … are you real?” she croaked, and he nodded.

  She couldn't help herself. She didn't care why he was here. All that mattered was lunging forward even as she put her violin down, falling into his arms.

  For several long moments, she simply rested in the protection of his embrace, letting the pain and fear of the previous weeks fall away from her. When she finally looked up, she gazed at him with some confusion.

  “What are you doing here, Makeen?”

  “You are an astoni
shingly hard woman to track,” he said, stepping back slightly. They took their seats again, but this time, he held on to her hand. Despite the casual look on his face, she could feel how tightly he was holding on to her.

  “Am I?”

  “After you saved my life, you disappeared.”

  “I was just staying at a hostel,” she said in confusion. “Why were you looking for me?”

  For a moment, she could see the hell he had gone through. His face was a perfect mask of misery and pain, the twin of her own. Then it was smoothed away when he touched her cheek gently.

  “I deserve that, I suppose,” he said. “Olivia, I am looking for you because I love you. I cannot be apart from you. You risked your life to save mine … Getting me that information could have cost you everything.”

  “I couldn't let you die,” she whispered painfully. “Not … no matter what happened between us. I love you.”

  The words came out without her willing them to do so. They were the truest thing she had ever said, the finest, and she could have started crying again.

  Makeen crushed her into a deep embrace. She could feel his heart beating hard.

  “Olivia, little songbird, I love you. I love you to the sky and the sea and back again, and nothing should have convinced me that you did not care for me. I am sorry. I am sorry for everything that we have gone through together, and I am sorry for my part in bringing you so much pain. If you allow me to, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”

  Olivia murmured a protest as he pulled back, but it was only to reach for a velvet box in his pocket. As she stared with disbelief, he opened it to reveal a ring mounted with an enormous pale green pear-shaped diamond.

  “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” he asked, and as the airport erupted into applause, she sobbed out a barely coherent yes.

  They kissed deeply, and to Olivia, it was perfect because it was only the first of many that would come after.

  She pulled back after a moment, looking up at him with concern. “Makeen … I signed a contract for an orchestra in Berlin …”

  With a grin, he held up his own bag. “The country can get by without me for at least a little while. There is a lovely townhouse that my family owns in Berlin, I think you will quite like it.”

  Olivia started to laugh. She felt as light as the bird that he sometimes compared her to. She was in love. She was loved. She knew that it would be perfect no matter where they were.

  EPILOGUE

  Olivia was aware of the audience; in particular, she was aware of the presence of the man in the VIP box. She didn't let herself look towards them. Like the other members of the orchestra, she kept her eyes on her music.

  Finally, the lights dimmed slightly, and the announcer came on.

  “And tonight, in her first solo in Berlin, we have Olivia Majors al-Hamidiya!”

  The applause faded as the first strains of the piece were plucked out of the air. She could hear the music weaving like a beautiful tapestry around her, and even as she started to play with the other violins, it made her think of the last few months.

  The threads of her life were separate and strange. She was born to a family of criminals; she was a violinist who had sometimes gone hungry and begged for food when busking didn't cover the bills. Suddenly she had been plucked out of obscurity to fall in love with one of the most amazing men she had ever known, the one whose eyes she knew were upon her from the box.

  They had come a long way in the four months since their airport reunion. During the days, she worked on her music, and he oversaw his country from afar. When evening fell, they came back together, meeting in a passionate embrace that never seemed to cool.

  They explored the ancient city of Berlin, they found pockets and pieces of it that would always belong to their first years together. They talked. They learned about each other. They comforted each other, they loved, and they grew.

  Olivia reflected that she had never thought much about love. There was nothing for her before Makeen besides her music. If she thought about it at all, she would have thought that love inevitably got in the way of music, but now she realized that that wasn't true.

  The first time she had sat for the orchestra director, he had been wide-eyed. When she finally set down her violin, he shook his head.

  “I was impressed by your tape, Fräulein, but this is something else altogether. Something has happened to you in the months since. You have attained a greater understanding of your instrument. It is showing itself ingeniously.”

  Not her instrument, she could have said. No, it was a better understanding of life, and of love. It was the man who waited for her outside the building, carrying a paper cup of coffee so that she could have it to settle her nerves when she got out. Before Olivia had gone in, Makeen had given her a kiss.

  “You are amazing,” he whispered. “Now show them that you are.”

  Now she played with one of the greatest orchestras in that region of the world. She listened to the other skilled musicians around her, wondering if they had their own passions, and if their love fed into their music as much as hers did.

  She played in that sublime place between knowledge and power, and when she heard the last of the French horn die away, she brought her bow to the strings.

  Her eyes were closed, but she could imagine Makeen's bright eyes, the way he leaned forward in the booth. He had heard her rehearse this piece over and over again at home, but hearing it played in concert would be far different.

  The notes rolled out over her, a bright and glittering cascade that rang through the halls like a woman's voice, perfect and golden.

  When her solo ended, the rest of the orchestra came in, and she rejoined them. She wasn't even fully aware of what she had done until the piece ended and the people began to clap furiously.

  With a gentle hand, the conductor led her to the front, where roses were being tossed up on the stage. For a moment, it was too strange, too much. She was a girl who had busked for spare change. Now she stood on a famous stage, and they threw her roses.

  “Well done, my dear,” the conductor whispered. “You deserve every bit of this.”

  Somehow, the applause ended, and she stumbled backstage. Amidst the congratulatory calls of her fellow orchestra members, she heard her name being called in a voice she would always recognize.

  She turned and saw Makeen beaming at her, his hands full of white roses.

  “Perfection,” he grinned. “And of course, the music was wonderful.”

  She laughed, taking the flowers long enough to set them down alongside her violin.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked, and he took her in his arms. As exhilarating as the stage was, she realized that there was nowhere else she would rather be than with this man, in his arms, looking up into his dark, dark eyes.

  “I did,” he said. “I have never heard a songbird I loved more …”

  As he bent his head down to kiss her, Olivia knew that this was forever. The Sheikh's command had brought her here, and it was perfect.

  THE END

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  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright 2016 Sophia Lynn

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Berry Caine turned the corner of the souk, dodging a man who was laden down with boxes of pastries and skirting a woman who wanted to sell her a beautiful gold necklace, she laid eyes on one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

  It was a brass statue of a camel, and from the designs that she saw on its saddle and its tack, it was well over two hundred years old. Just because something was old, however, didn't mean that it was valuable, and she had more than three years as a Farn
sworth Antiques curator to know that.

  With a look of polite interest on her face, she wandered up to the stand where the brass camel was sitting. There was the common detritus of junk that she had come to associate as standard in an Alamun vendor stall, including small ceramic dancing figures, brass flowers, and vivid blue soapstone carved into balls. However, among the junk were pieces that would perfect for the store in Brooklyn, smaller and not great for the gallery, but perfect for the weekend antiquer with time on their hands and a willingness to pay a great deal for something no one else had.

  However, right now, that camel was the one that Berry decided was absolutely not going to escape her grasp. The older woman working the stall came to meet her with a wide smile, following her glance to the camel easily.

  "Ah, you picked the best of the lot," the woman said in slightly British accented English. "That one, my great-great-grandfather brought out of the desert, and it has been in the family for some time."

  "Oh? And why are you selling it?" Berry asked politely. It was probably best to get the sob story out of the way early, and she was right. The woman spun a truly impressive tale about a granddaughter who wanted to go to school and a sick daughter, and how it would break their heart to part with the camel, but it had to be done.

  Berry looked over the camel, pretending to think, and then nodded.

  "I will give you two hundred for it," she said, and the woman cried with surprise and offense.

  "Oh, two hundred if you wish to melt it down for brass!" she exclaimed. "For a thing that came out of the desert on my very ancestor's back, you should be ashamed to spend less than two thousand!"

  Berry allowed herself to laugh with dismay. "Oh, surely not!" she protested. "When your ancestor brought it out of the desert, I'm sure he was thinking of melting it down himself …"

  "Ah, perhaps I overstated then. Eighteen hundred, then, and break my grand-daughter's heart …"