by Holly Rayner
I spotted him in the crowd, not just because of his height, but because he was carrying himself like a king. Even among other powerful people, he stood out, shining like a jewel from the desert.
He always caught me staring at him, and tonight was no different. He looked up across the crowd and met my eyes with a smirk and a wink. I smiled back and blew him a kiss.
“Tonight has been perfect,” said Joel, coming up from behind me. “You must be so proud, mami.”
“I am,” I admitted with a nod. “And I’m proud of Rafiq. He’s come so far, he’s like a whole new man. He makes me so happy.”
“And they love his work!” said Joel with a gesture around. “Everyone has been gushing about it all evening! I think you might have a rival.”
I laughed as I gazed over the gallery walls. This place was ours, Rafiq’s and mine, and our work hung together, side by side. We had even completed a joint piece, the first piece visitors encountered when they entered the gallery. My wildest daydreams had never come close to the reality I was living now. I had a wonderful, passionate man to share not only my life with, but my work, too.
“I’m not sure I would want to be Rafiq’s rival, to be honest. I love his work more than my own most times.”
“That’s how I know you are in love,” said Joel, putting his arm around me for a sweet hug. “And it’s about damn time.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Rafiq was coming up to join us with a glass of champagne in his hand, and a handsome smile on his face. He gave Joel a friendly hug. “Thank you for all your help tonight, Joel, we couldn’t have done this without you.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying to her for years,” said Joel with a teasing glance at me. “But I get to tell everyone that my dearest friend is both a successful artist and a princess, so it works out.”
“A princess?” I laughed.
“Well, more or less,” said Joel with a wink. “Right, I’m going to go talk that gorgeous German gentleman into buying the painting he’s been staring at for ten minutes. Excuse me, you two.” He gave us both a pat on the shoulder before maneuvering his way through the crowd.
Rafiq pulled me into a close embrace. “This evening has been a dream come true for me, my love.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said, grateful that in these heels, I didn’t even have to get on my tip-toes to reach his soft lips for a gentle, sensual kiss. “I’m so lucky to have you, Rafiq. You’ve made so many of my dreams come true.”
“I intend to make them all come true,” he said. “Every last one.”
“Even the one where I have a pet dinosaur that I ride to work?”
Rafiq laughed and nodded. “I already have my top scientists working on the cloning technology.”
I giggled and shook my head at him as he pulled me in for another kiss.
“There’s one more dream I want to make come true tonight,” he said. “A dream of mine… and hopefully, a dream of yours too.” There was a secret sparkle in his eyes.
“Oh?” I said, raising an eyebrow, a playful smirk on my painted lips. “And what dream is that, darling?”
Rafiq stepped away from me, holding my hand, and began to speak loudly—not to me, but to the art lovers perusing the gallery. “May I have your attention, please?”
After a few more seconds of excited buzz, the crowd quieted down, several coming from across the large space to get closer. The group was a well-dressed mass of beautiful people holding glasses of champagne, eyes bright from laughter and cheeks warmed from the alcohol.
Rafiq caressed my hand in his as he spoke. “I want to thank all of you for coming tonight, on the opening night of our gallery. It means the world to us that you would spend your evening in our company, taking in the work—both artistic and otherwise—that we have been pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into for over a year.”
Rafiq was an incredible orator, and ever since the day he had stood up to his father, his confidence had only grown. He was brimming with so much charisma that he had the entire crowd eating every word. When he spoke with passion, there was no ignoring him.
“As many of you will be aware, the work on these walls belongs to myself, and my beautiful partner, the love of my life, Miss Evangeline Pryce.” He held up my hand to make sure everyone could see me, and some of the crowd applauded.
He was speaking to them, but he only looked at me. “Evangeline is the real reason we are all here tonight. Without her love and beauty in my life, I could never have found the courage to live my life honestly and fully, as she does. She has never let the world stop her from being who she is. Even when it threatened her with loneliness and insecurity, she held fast to her vision. She is braver than any single person I’ve ever met, and without her, my life would be in a much different and darker place right now. The truth is, Evie saved me.”
Rafiq’s words melted my heart. Tears ran down my cheeks, and the smile on my face was so big, it hurt.
“She saved me from myself,” said Rafiq, his voice cracking with emotion. “I was numb, and directionless. But then she came and made me feel again, and helped me become a better man. Of all the works in this gallery tonight, or any other night, Evangeline is the most beautiful work of all.”
My heart seized and I gasped when Rafiq dropped to one knee on the hardwood floor. He opened his right hand to show a tiny, velvet box.
He opened the box; inside it was a beautiful, glittering diamond ring. It wasn’t the ring he had used to fool his father during our fake engagement. This one was new, and I could tell immediately from the design of the gems that Rafiq had had this made just for me. Tears filled my eyes.
“Evangeline,” he said. His hand grasped mine tighter, and he held the box up to me. “I had no life, no love, before you came to me. I never want to be without you again. Will you marry me?”
My heart soared. “Yes!” I cried right away, throwing my arms around his neck. “Yes, of course Rafiq. I love you so much.”
Rafiq wrapped his arms around me tightly and held me against him as he stood up, burying his face in my hair. The crowd erupted into cheers and applause, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
“I love you, Evangeline,” he whispered against my ear. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
The End
STEALING FROM THE SHEIKH
By Holly Rayner
Copyright 2016 by Holly Rayner
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Table Of Contents:
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ONE
Riley shifted in the hard, plastic-backed chair and glanced around the crowded room. She guessed that there were maybe forty other women in there, all of them waiting their turn, their faces twisting into a variety of expressions as they quietly went through their prepared readings, reacting to imaginary partners. She took a deep breath and checked the time on her phone; the runners had called in almost a dozen women so far, and even as she sat, waiting for her turn to read, she saw more actresses filing into the waiting room in ones and twos.
She glanced down at the pages on her lap and pressed her lips together, doing a little mental rehearsing herself. The open call was one of the biggest things going on in the city that week, and while Riley didn’t have much information about the project, the
word from her agent was that they were looking for a few beautiful starlets to round out the cast of a mid-level film. It was exactly the sort of audition that Riley had been to a dozen times or more—but unlike when she’d first arrived in LA, she no longer truly believed she stood a chance of standing out.
“When did you get in?”
Riley looked up and turned her head in the direction of the voice that had cut through her thoughts. The girl seated next to her was not quite as tall as Riley, and dressed in a cool, clean sundress, her blonde hair pulled back from her face. Riley smiled. Never any sense in being a bitch to anyone—besides, she’s just being friendly.
“About an hour and a half ago,” Riley replied. “You?”
“I got here early,” the woman said, her delicate features twisting into a grimace. “Fat lot of good it’s done me.”
“Hey—you’ll still probably get to go in a good thirty minutes or more before me; there’s that at least.”
Riley kept the smile on her face but she couldn’t help running through the mental math: it was Friday afternoon, and she had the dinner shift at the restaurant to get to after the audition. Even assuming that she got in to see the casting directors in a reasonable time frame, she would have to rush home to change into her uniform if she wanted to make it on time. Bigger things, Ri. If you get the part, you won’t have to worry about waiting tables for a while.
“What do you suppose the odds are for any of us actually getting the part?” the blonde asked jokingly.
Riley chuckled, looking around at the sea of faces in the room. It was so crowded that the latest arrivals were just taking up positions on the floor, carefully spreading sweaters or whatever else they had in their bags to keep their clothes from getting dirty.
“I heard that there are casting calls going on through the weekend,” Riley said, shrugging again. “So this times at least three—probably not great.”
She took a quick, breath, reminding herself that someone always eventually won the lottery. If you go to enough auditions, you’re bound to get a job. It was a theory that had—so far—steered her mostly well; she’d arrived in the city with a blank CV and bargain-basement headshots from a photography studio in Vegas, and while she still had to hold onto her “day” job to make sure her bills got paid, Riley now had ten or more credits to her name, even if they were minor commercial spots or bit TV parts.
“I heard that they’re not just casting for the main female lead,” another girl commented from Riley’s other side. Riley turned to look at her; she was a petite brunette, with luminous green eyes, and cream-colored skin. She looked to Riley almost like a reinvented Audrey Hepburn. “There are a bunch of bit parts up for grabs, too.”
“My agent told me it’s a mid-level film—one of those between-blockbusters numbers, something to pay the bills for the production company,” Riley said. “There probably aren’t a huge amount of parts going.” She paused, deciding that that sounded a little too negative. “But it could be a really great chance to get something substantial!”
“I’m getting tired of playing the clueless housewife,” the blonde next to her said, shaking her head and sighing. “Something like this would be great, if I could just get it.”
“I know the feeling,” Riley said, sighing. She looked down at the pages on her lap and then back at the blonde. “Good luck, right?”
“Same to you,” the blonde said, smiling politely.
Riley read through the script once more, trying out the lines in her mind. She had never been one for rehearsing out loud in public; she didn’t like to give her competition any ideas, or give them any kind of edge on her performance. As soon as her agent had told her about the open call, she’d found the audition script online and printed it, taking precious time out of her sleep schedule to practice in the tiny bedroom of her tiny apartment. She thought—she hoped—that she had the part more or less memorized; that would at least give her something of an edge on the women who’d come in off the street and grabbed their copies of the script from the basket in the lobby.
Riley read through the part several more times, imaging the lines as she hoped to deliver them. Every time the door to the next room opened, she looked up; one of the frazzled assistants would call a name, and another one of the women would jump up and dart into the room, clutching their scripts tightly in their hands. Riley changed seats as more and more of the aspiring actresses went up, making her way closer to the door as the auditions progressed. She put her bag down in her chair once or twice to grab a bottle of water or to use the restroom, but otherwise she remained in her seat, making polite small talk when the occasion arose, and reviewing the script as many times as she could.
She tried not to watch the time too much; Riley knew that there were plenty of open casting calls where the producers tucked a few moles into the waiting rooms to report on how different prospective actors behaved when they weren’t being watched by anyone obviously in charge. It wouldn’t do to ruin her chances by being rude to anyone, or seeming impatient. Like many of the women in the room, Riley had planned ahead for a long wait; on her way out that morning, she’d packed a quick and unobtrusive lunch: salad greens with a tiny Tupperware container of oil and vinegar, a piece of chicken breast seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper, and a little bit of brown rice. A growling stomach or low blood sugar would doom her—but so would garlic breath or reeking of spices.
Each of the auditioning actresses was supposed to have a five-minute slot, but as the afternoon dragged on, Riley realized that it wouldn’t be possible for the casting team to see all of the applicants that had come in if they kept to five minutes with each; even after they closed the sign-in station in the lobby and ushered the last of the prospects into the waiting room, Riley thought that the production crew looked frazzled at the high number of people waiting for their turn. She wasn’t about to add to their stress by being unmanageable, but she hoped that she might be one of the last ones to get a five-minute chance in the actual audition room.
“Riley Townsend!”
Riley nearly leapt from her seat at the sound of her name. She got up and strode towards the door leading from the waiting room to the audition room, smiling politely at the woman who called her name. After hours of running back and forth, the black-garbed assistant looked blotchy, flushed, and agitated, her hair starting to frizz and her eyes wide with anxiety.
“Right here,” Riley said.
“You have your CV and headshots with you?”
Riley nodded. Well at least they’ve found one way to weed out the worst of the candidates, she thought. The woman gave her a quick up-and-down look, and Riley knew exactly what she was seeing: a tall, slim, slightly leggy twenty-something with wavy, copper-colored hair and wide-set, sea green eyes.
“Come on in,” the woman said impassively. She held the door open and Riley stepped through it.
She hadn’t realized how warm it had been in the waiting room, with all the people sitting around and fidgeting, until the door into the main audition room closed behind her. Riley took a brief moment to take in the people who would decide her fate: two men and a woman were sitting at a little folding card table, in chairs only slightly more comfortable than the ones in the waiting room. One of the men was maybe in his early thirties, with a shaved-bald head and a trimmed dark brown goatee shot through with a few threads of gray. He wore square-framed glasses and a black tee shirt and jeans. The other man was about the same age but with shoulder-length strawberry blond hair and a clean-shaven face. The woman was probably older than either of the two men, with steel-gray hair cut to her jawline. Other members of the casting team were scattered around the room, quiet and almost insignificant in comparison to the three directors.
“Riley Townsend?” The woman had a surprisingly soft voice.
Riley smiled, moving forward to approach the table.
“Pleased to meet you,” Riley said, slipping her headshot and CV free of the script sides she’d brought in with h
er.
“I apologize for how long you’ve been waiting,” the bald man said, meeting her gaze through the frames of his glasses. “We didn’t expect quite such a high turnout.”
“I don’t mind waiting for a good cause,” Riley said, putting her CV down on the table.
“Gives you plenty of chance to study the script, too,” the woman pointed out.
“I actually downloaded the sample from the website last night,” Riley told them. “I wanted to get it as close to memorized as possible.”
“We’ll see how well you did at that,” the strawberry blond man said.
“I have to make you aware that we’re unfortunately going to have to cut your reading short,” the bald man explained, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “With so many talented actors to see, we want to give as many of you as fair a shot as possible.”