by Holly Rayner
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Those Militia people are still out there, aren’t they? And they’ll still come after your family.”
“But now we know,” he said. “The police are on guard, and we can be on guard…” He kissed her forehead, moving aside a lock of hair. “And they’ll never be able to use you against me again.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m never planning to leave your side again,” he said, feeling a grin spread across his face. “So you’d better get used to me.”
Brooke smiled and tipped her face up toward his, and he captured her lips in a kiss. It began gently, but slowly the passion deepened until they were thoroughly entwined and it was almost possible to forget that their lives had been in danger tonight. He forgot about the blood on the floor and the police lights that were still flashing outside and utterly lost himself in Brooke.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” she said, running her hands up and down his arms. “I can’t believe I’m really in Shunayy with you.”
Ali couldn’t believe it either. It seemed like a wild fantasy, dreamed up that night he and Brooke had made love and since then released as an idea that couldn’t possibly come true. And yet it was true. She had come for him, and she was here now, in his arms. They were both alive. They were both safe from harm or threat. And best of all, she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. She had said it herself. She wanted to be with him, chose to be with him, despite the complications and the dangers. In his heart, he had never believed she really would.
He led Brooke out the front door of the hotel, out to where his security staff were waiting. He had anticipated an argument about whether he could be allowed to drive home, but to his surprise, nobody intervened. The car was brought around, and the hotel valet who had taken it shook his hand, clearly impressed by the heroics he’d witnessed. Ali didn’t like to flatter himself too much, but he had probably saved that man’s life tonight, he thought.
By the time they made it to dinner, neither Brooke nor Ali had the capacity to feel any more nervousness. The night had already produced far more tension than they’d expected, and now, by comparison, introducing Brooke to his parents was nothing. She seemed to feel the same way and was calm and at ease as they ate. She told stories about her life in Vermont and her work as a sculptor and asked questions about Shunayy. By the time the dessert plates were cleared, Ali could tell that the dinner had been a success.
He showed Brooke to her suite of rooms and told her where his own suite was in case she needed anything in the night. Exhausted, ready to sleep, he lay down on his bed.
There was a knock at the door.
He opened it. There stood Brooke, wrapped in a silk robe and smiling.
“Did you need something?” he asked her.
She only smiled wider.
Ali took her hand and pulled her inside, closing the door behind them.
23
Brooke
Six Months Later
The Militia for a Free Shunayy had finally given up. In the weeks that followed the assault on the hotel, dozens of arrests were made. It seemed that every night, the Shunayy news featured information about another member who had either turned himself in or been apprehended. Brooke and Ali watched these reports curled up together on the couch, usually with a bottle of wine to split.
Everyone in the royal family began to loosen up as it became clear that the threat was finally ending. Ali’s sister, Saida, it transpired, loved to shop in stores despite the fact that she could have racks of clothing brought to her at the palace, and she was eager to bring Brooke along to her favorite places.
“This is too much,” Brooke had protested when Ali had handed her a charge card linked to his expense account.
“Of course it isn’t,” he’d said. “We’ve got so much more money than we need. Have some fun.”
“Won’t your parents be upset?”
“I gave you twenty percent of my personal spending allotment,” he’d laughed. “Nobody’s even going to miss it, Brooke.”
She’d stared at the figure on the deposit slip he’d handed her again. “This is twenty percent? What on earth do you spend the rest of your money on?”
He’d laughed and drawn her into his arms. “Buy yourself a nice dress today, and tomorrow I’ll show you.”
The following evening, dressed in a flowing, off-the-shoulder blue gown with gold trim, Brooke had accompanied Ali to a charity ball to support the preservation of the Amazon rainforest. The dancing was preceded by an elaborate banquet, and as plate after plate was brought out, Brooke’s guesses at how much the event must have cost mounted. So this was where Ali’s money went. She smiled. Maybe he would agree to add some of her own favorite causes to his list.
When Ali and Brooke weren’t in Shunayy, they were back in Vermont, staying in Brooke’s apartment. It had occurred to Brooke that it was odd to live half the time in a palace and the other half in an apartment in Vermont, but she loved both places so much that it felt impossible to give one up. Ali, as it turned out, felt the same. He loved the time they spent together in Jasperville, where they could just be like any other young couple in love.
Being at home meant Brooke was still able to spend time with her mother, who had been perhaps even more shocked than Brooke herself to learn that the handsome man her daughter had been seeing was really a sheikh. She had fallen all over herself the first time she’d had Ali to dinner at her house after learning the truth. Ali had been very gracious, putting her at her ease and allowing her time to adjust. Now they all got along quite easily, and Brooke and Ali were fond of joining her mother and Ray, who were now dating, for brunch and a stroll through the farmers’ market.
Jasperville was also where Brooke’s studio was. Ali had wasted no time in setting her up with an art space in the palace—it was one of the unused rooms in the suite that was ostensibly hers, although she slept most nights in Ali’s quarters. The new studio was well-appointed and had all the supplies and tools she could want, but Brooke found she still worked best in her old space. There was something about the light and mess of it that made her feel more like herself than she did almost anywhere else. Ali understood. When they stayed in Jasperville, he would sleep in while she got up to work. Then, when he awoke, he would brew a pot of coffee, bring some in for her, and kiss her neck until she ordered him away.
It was a good life.
It had taken Ali’s parents a few weeks to fully welcome Brooke into their lives. Although they had liked her immediately, she hadn’t missed the doubtful looks they had cast her way, as if she was about to let them down at any moment. The question had plagued her: what did she need to do to prove herself? It wasn’t that they expressed any overt unhappiness with anything she did. It was more an unhappiness with her general presence. It weighed on her.
“Why don’t your parents like me?” she asked him one night as they lay in bed. It wasn’t quite the right question, she knew, but she couldn’t think how else to phrase what she wanted to know.
“Don’t be silly,” Ali said. “Of course they like you.”
“Not like my mom likes you,” she countered. “When we’re in Jasperville, my mom begs me to bring you to dinner. She cooks you everything she knows how to make. She spends as much time with us as she can. You’re even close with her boyfriend, for God’s sake.”
“That reminds me, I should look for that Geographic History of Shunayy Ray wanted to borrow.”
“See? You loan him books! And meanwhile, your parents…they’re nice to me, and they’ve opened their home to me—and that really does mean a lot, Ali—but I always feel a little bit like they don’t really want me here. Like they’re just doing this out of some sense of obligation to you.”
“Brooke…”
“And there was that phone call,” she hurried on, before he could interrupt. “The morning you left Jasperville the first time, you had a call from your parents, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he
admitted.
“And when you came back into the bedroom, you were different. You couldn’t look at me. We never talked about it, because so much else happened that day, but I think I know what happened. You told them we were coming, and they said something to you. Something about me, and how you shouldn’t bring me to Shunayy. Isn’t that right?”
“They didn’t want me to bring you because of the Militia,” Ali said. “It was a matter of safety. And they were right, weren’t they? Having you here put you at risk.”
Brooke shook her head. “I don’t think that’s all of it. I think…” She hesitated, then voiced her fear. “I think they don’t want me in your life because I’m a commoner.”
Ali burst out laughing. “A commoner? What is this, the Dark Ages?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nobody thinks you’re a lower class of person just because you aren’t royalty, Brooke. I think my parents are more concerned about my getting involved with an American than with a civilian. Different cultures. They’ve never lived in America, so they don’t really know what to expect from you.
Brooke thought this over. On their next trip to Jasperville, she had busied herself collecting things she felt were representative of her culture as an American and a Vermont native. She returned to Shunayy with bottles of syrup, popcorn, a small watermelon, a couple of CDs of very popular American recording artists, and a home video of herself playing the Statue of Liberty in the second-grade school play. She and Ali made the popcorn and sliced the watermelon, and the whole family watched the tape together on a VCR that had been surprisingly easy for them to procure. By the end of the evening, they were laughing together, and Ali’s mother hugged her before retiring to bed. Brooke knew something had been started tonight. She had done the right thing.
Now that she had the full approval of his family, Brooke and Ali were free to date in the public eye. When they’d attended the rainforest banquet, she had been referred to in the press as “an unknown woman,” but after that night, the public knew her as his girlfriend, Brooke Bailey.
That night’s event was the opening of a public hospital, and the entire royal family was in attendance. By the time she made it through the front door, Brooke had already been mobbed several times by reporters. When they addressed her in English, she stopped to answer every question, not knowing how to break away from the conversation. Even months after they’d officially started dating, she was still getting used to being a public figure, and the attention that came with it.
Ali came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “Let’s get something to drink.” He steered her away, and, grateful, she allowed him to lead her.
The drink of choice that night seemed to be brut champagne with raspberries in it. Brooke accepted a glass from a passing waiter. “I don’t see why they’re so interested in me,” she said.
Ali smiled. “You don’t?”
“I’m no one important.”
“Maybe you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“Do you want to head home?” Ali asked, changing the subject.
“Don’t you have to be here?” Brooke asked. “Isn’t your family being honored?”
“Consider me honored. Come on, let’s go. I’ve had enough champagne and questions from reporters.”
They headed back to the palace. Brooke had now moved all her possessions into Ali’s wing, with his parents’ blessing. Ali’s part of the palace was isolated enough from the rest of the building that they never ran into anyone else, and it had its own entrance from the outside, so for all intents and purposes it was like having a private residence.
He kissed her, pulling her toward the bed. “Thanks for coming tonight.”
She kissed him back but then pulled away. “Hang on.”
“What? Why?”
“I have something for you.”
“I have something for you, too,” he said, saucily.
She swatted his shoulder. “I’m serious, Ali. I want to give you something. Go sit down.”
Ali went and sat on the bed, and Brooke ducked into her studio to make sure everything was ready. Even though nothing would ever surpass her studio back in Vermont, she had to admit that this space was gorgeous. It was more of an atrium than a room, two stories high with a solid glass wall. At the right time of day, the room was bathed in light.
“Okay,” she called, ready. “Come on in.”
Ali entered the room looking bemused but stopped as suddenly as if he had walked into a brick wall. “Brooke!”
He was staring at the sculpture she’d made of him. She’d brought it over on one of their early flights over from Jasperville and completed it in the studio here. Even Brooke had to admit, it looked pretty good. Maybe she should do nudes more often.
“When did you do this?” Ali asked, approaching the sculpture in awe.
“Nights, mostly,” she said, smiling. “You’re a heavy sleeper, you know.”
He lifted a hand to the statue but didn’t touch it, and Brooke smiled. “Thank you,” he said, his voice deep with sincerity. “I love it, Brooke.”
She kissed him, and he held her close and kissed her back, and for a moment they both forgot the giant sculpture that loomed behind them. Then, abruptly, Ali pulled back. “Wait a minute.”
“What is it?” She leaned close to him, unwilling to stop the kissing.
But he took another step away. “The payment, Brooke. I never paid you!”
“Oh my God,” Brooke said, swatting him away. “You gave me my own spending account, Ali. That’s a lot more than you were ever going to pay me for this sculpture. I think we can just call it even.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No. No, we can’t call it even, because I gave you that account to cover your expenses as the girlfriend of the Sheikh. You need to be able to buy lots of pretty things for all the dinners and events we have to go to. It’s a pricey responsibility.”
“Yeah,” Brooke said, rolling her eyes. “Poor me.”
“So, you see, you have to let me pay you.”
“Forget it,” she told him, laughing. “I won’t take a cent, Ali.”
“Well, if you won’t let me pay you…” He paused, and it seemed to Brooke that he was hesitating a bit. “Maybe I can show my appreciation in another way?”
“Let me guess,” she said, giggling and glancing toward the bedroom.
But Ali shook his head. “No. Not…not yet, at least.”
“Ali, what is it?” He looked more nervous than she had ever seen him, even more than when he’d been facing down the Militia members at the hotel. She moved toward him, reaching out, concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” He took her in his arms, embraced her briefly, and then stepped back. “The sun is setting.”
So it was. Brooke turned to watch it through the balcony doors. Sunset was the most beautiful time of day in her Shunayy studio. The window was angled so that the light didn’t come in blindingly but instead refracted and turned the room a beautiful golden color. Brooke felt enchanted when she worked in here in the evenings.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and she thought about how far they had come since the day they’d met in Jasperville. Here she was, now, the girlfriend of the Sheikh. And she was in love with him, more and more every day. She would never have believed in a million years that such a thing could be possible.
“Brooke,” Ali said, his voice soft.
She turned.
He was on one knee, the last light of the sun illuminating his face, gazing up at her with reverence. Brooke gasped. Resting in the palm of his hand was a wooden box, which Ali had opened on its hinge to reveal a solitaire diamond ring.
“Ali,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since before I even left Jasperville. You’re the most amazing, most interesting, funniest woman I’ve ever known. You’re so smart, and you never do what I’m expecting you to do…”
&nbs
p; “Is that a good thing?”
“Be quiet and let me finish,” he said, smiling and taking her hand. “You even interrupt your own marriage proposal.”
Proposal. She had known, the moment she saw him kneeling, but to hear him say it was something else. She felt robbed of breath. Would this make her royalty? What would it mean for her life?
It would mean a life spent with Ali, she realized. What else was there to think about?
“I don’t want to miss a moment with you,” Ali said. “I want us to have adventures together as long as we live. And if you won’t accept payment for this statue, I’m hoping you’ll accept my pledge to love and cherish you every day. Brooke Bailey, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” Brooke managed, overcome.
Ali rose and slipped the ring onto her finger, and they met in a passionate kiss.