Sheikh's Command
Authors: Sophia Lynn
Sheikh’s Command
By: Sophia Lynn
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2016 Sophia Lynn
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Sheikh's Possession
CHAPTER ONE
Olivia took a deep breath, scanning the crowd around her. There were no police officers, which was just as well. She wasn't doing anything technically illegal, but her upbringing had taught her to be properly nervous around law enforcement. When she could avoid them, she would.
At the moment, however, in the bright sunny bazaar at Zahar, there was no one like that about. Instead, the bazaar was composed mostly of local vendors and foreign tourists, in other words, with people who were intent on having a good time and who might be more receptive to her than not.
At the moment, Olivia looked like just another tourist, albeit one that was carrying a rather strange pack on her back. She looked younger than her twenty-four years, with a round face and wide coppery eyes surrounded by thick dark lashes. She was small but lush, and most people passing by would only have thought that she was a rather pretty young woman. What she did next was going to change at least some of that perception, or at least she hoped it did.
She found a small patch of bare ground between two stalls. The nut seller on one side didn't look like he cared whether she lived or died, but the woman selling spices on the other gave Olivia an encouraging smile and nod. It was good enough, or at least she decided it would be. For a moment, Olivia wished that she had her brother's gift for charm and talk. He could have gathered an expectant crowd in just a few heartbeats. However, David was occupied these days, and so his little sister had to make her own living.
With a care that others reserved for holy relics, she knelt down to open the ancient rectangular case on her back. The warm afternoon sun glinted on her violin, the old wood polished lovingly until it gleamed. Some might have called it a shabby instrument to look at it, but she knew the truth. This violin had been her constant companion since she was too small to use it. Now it might as well have been a part of her body, and she treated it with the same care.
She stood, fitting the instrument under her chin, and raising her bow, she began to play. The first slow sad notes of the old waltz filled the air, and slowly but surely, heads started to turn. The air was a slow thing, almost dirgelike. She had heard one busker say that he preferred fast songs when he was trying to get attention, but Olivia had never felt that to be true, at least for her.
Instead, when people heard the first wailing notes of the violin, and turned to see the solemn-faced young woman playing it, it always seemed as if she touched something deep inside them, something that made them sympathetic, eager to help her. She could see it working now. The violin wailed, and slowly, people started to gather around.
Even when she was concentrating on playing, there was a part of Olivia that was always watching the crowd, gauging its reaction and learning what it wanted from her. She had had her first violin lessons from her grandfather, but her father had been the one to teach her how to manage a large group of people so that the outcome would be in her favor.
When she finally brought the tune to a halt, a shower of silver coins fell into her open case, as well as several paper bills as well. It was a promising first take for a single song, and she smiled at the audience.
“Play something fast!” someone called from the crowd, and that answered her next question. With a reserved nod towards the voice, she set bow to strings again, and this time, it was a rollicking traditional dance tune from Budapest that came out. She could still remember the old man who had taught her, the one who had found shelter with her and her family at a motel during a hard winter, and how he had showed her how to play the music of his homeland. It had startled her how lively his songs were, when he was so old and frail and tired.
Before she was done, many of the people in the crowd were tapping their feet and smiling. Somewhat cynically, she knew what would happen. They would go home to their safe lives, their lovers and their families, and they might mention the violinist that they met that day, the one who had charmed them with a dance tune. They wouldn't think about where she might be sleeping or what she might be trying to do with her life, or how long it had taken her to learn a piece that they enjoyed for just a few minutes.
She finished the dance song with a flourish, and her case was littered with even more money. It might end up being a good day after all. Olivia was just getting ready to try another fast song when a voice came out from the back of the crowd.
“Do Orfeo and Eurydice!”
Her head snapped up, and she looked around in surprise. This was not the place where she would have expected to find a musical fan, but she supposed that there were more unlikely things. The piece he had shouted was one that she was intimately familiar with, and with a defiant toss of her dark hair, she raised her violin again.
It wasn't a piece she would have picked for the crowd. It was slow, it glided and slipped and moved just outside the range of comfort. In its own shivery and eerie way, it was beautiful, however, and there was a part of her that relished the chance to play it in the warm sun in an ancient souk.
When Olivia brought the piece to a close with a victorious motion of her bow on the strings, there were fewer people watching, but the ones who were appeared spellbound. One old gentleman, who looked like a professor in his tweed suit, blinked tears from his eyes. She wondered if he was the one who had challenged her.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” he said, fumbling in his wallet for money. “You should be on the stage, my dear …”
“That's the idea,” she admitted, grinning at him.
Dressed in a light blue tunic and jeans, Olivia looked like a student who was backpacking the UAE in her gap year. However, the truth was a little different, and it was far stranger than anything most people in the souk could have managed. Right now, though, all she cared about was that she had made enough money for the moment, enough, anyway, to stop and to have some lunch on the docks of the enormous freshwater lake that bordered Zahar. Her stomach was already rumbling at the thought of the fresh fish on toasted bread that was served on the docks, a meal that had become one of her staples as soon as her family had come to Zahar.
She was just closing her violin case away when a dark shadow came over her. For a moment, Olivia was frozen with fear. When she glanced up, her worst terrors were confirmed. The man who stood over her was dressed in the khaki of a member of the Zahar police force, and he regarded her with a kind of boredom that still somehow managed to be menacing.
“Do you have a permit for busking,?” he asked, his voice even, but dark. She could see that he was already reaching for her, and for a moment, her mind went white with fear. She couldn't get arrested. She couldn't. Not for something this simple and small. Not when everything that she wanted was nearly in her grasp …
Olivia opened her mouth to defend herself, to lie, to say that she had it on her earlier, something, anything that would get her out of the situation she was in. At worst, she was willing to offer up all the cash she had made just to get out of the situation …
“She doesn't need one,” said a calm voice.
They both turned, and Olivia looked up into a face that was surely far too handsome to belong to anyone but a movie star. The man was dressed simply in jeans and a white linen shirt that was unbuttoned at the throat. He was dark and slightly hawk-featured, but there was something remarkably sensuous about the curve of his full lips and the faint curl in his slightly shaggy hair.
“She doesn't?” asked the police officer with some skepticism. Despite his words, there was something more guarded about his posture. Olivia knew that it was the difference between dealing with a little foreigner girl and dealing with a local man who looked like he might have money. She would have resented it more if it didn't look like the man who had approached was going to help her.
“She doesn't,” he said with a supremely casual shrug. “She is a musician in the country who is looking to audition for the national orchestra, and as such, she has license to play where she sees fit. I would say that it is a coincidence that people began to drop money into her case, wouldn't you?”
The police officer looked unconvinced, and for a moment, Olivia was certain that the newcomer had pushed it too far. If the police officer didn't believe him, it would have been just as easy for him to haul in two people as one.
However, the police officer finally nodded, giving the man a slightly uncomfortable look before turning back to Olivia.
“Keep yourself out of trouble while you are in Zahar,” he said, his voice deep but now somehow unconvincing. He turned, and, there was no other word for it, he
slunk
into the crowd, and in a moment he was gone, leaving Olivia alone with her unlikely savior.
“Thank you,” she said. “That could have gotten ugly.”
The man looked at her with a slight smile. Despite herself, Olivia felt herself warming to him. She knew that there was a good chance that he was just as dangerous to her as the cop was, though perhaps in a different way. She had learned well enough that a man that saved you might only save you for himself, and that most girls didn't get lucky twice.
“You're very welcome,” he said. “I don't think that I could stand to let someone who played Orfeo and Eurydice so beautifully be ticketed for busking. You know, of course, that you are too good for the street corner.”
She shot him a grin that was more tooth than actually advisable in her tenuous position. “I am,” she said, with a proud tilt of her head. “I won't be busking for the rest of my life.”
“I can see that,” he replied, and she was startled to hear a genuine note of admiration in his tone. Most men who paid her compliments on the street were after one thing, and it wasn't her excellent use of tremolo.
“Come, we can talk more about the violin and what you intend to do with it. There is a sandwich shop right around the corner that should suit us well.”
She started to say that she wasn't hungry, but her stomach growled, making the man break into a startled laugh.
Suddenly, Olivia was tired of it all, tired of hiding, tired of always being careful. This man had just helped her, and now he was offering to take her to dinner. It was almost like a date, something sweet and real and romantic, and suddenly, Olivia wanted that more than anything else.
“I'll come with you if you tell me your name,” she said softly, and his dark eyes glittered. He was, she thought, far too handsome. There was something brutally masculine about his good looks, but around his mouth and his eyes, there was something just sweet enough, just soft enough, that it could tug at her heart.
This man is dangerous,
she tried to remind herself, but for just the moment, she was determined to throw caution to the winds.
“Makeen,” he said, his voice soft and dark, and she nodded. She felt drawn to him, like steel to a magnet, and after one quick check of her violin case, she fell into step beside him.
***
Sheikh Makeen al-Hamidiya of Zahar wondered what in the name of hell he was doing.
On the outside, it looked very simple. He was simply stopping at one of his favorite sandwich shops with a young woman who had captured his attention in a way that it had never been captured before.
He knew, however, that he had saved her from being run in by the police for illegal busking, and from the way that she was eying the fish sandwich that the waitress was bringing out, he might be saving her from starvation as well.
It was typically not Makeen's habit to get involved with starving street musicians, but there was something about this girl that called to him, even aside from her astonishing music.
“You never told me your name,” he said, his voice light and teasing. “What shall I expect to see on the program when I look for the first violin seat at the National Orchestra?”
She looked up, and there was a flash of distrust on her face that broke his heart a little. Had no one ever teased her before? Did she think that he was mocking her with her talent and her skill?