The Sheikh's Secret

by Knight, Kylie

  She couldn’t speak for a while, too shell-shocked and shaken. Milo drove until they were well clear of the main road then pulled the car over. He turned and took her in his arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  His lips were at her temple and she sank into his embrace. “I think so…it was just a shock, is all.”

  They sat there for a while, just holding each other then he pulled away, smoothing his hands over her face and brushing her lips with his. “You wanna pull the plug? Just say it.”

  To both of their amazement, she shook her head. “No, actually. I’m having a great time with Rocky. We’ve written a couple of songs which I think could be huge.”

  Milo smiled despite himself. “You’re okay with the press thing?”

  “Not really but you were right, I was stupid to think they wouldn’t find out. Are you sure it was Brandt?”

  “Positive.”

  Ori sighed in confusion. “But I thought…never mind. I just thought you all wanted to do a ‘Beyonce‘, drop the album as if from nowhere.”

  It was Milo’s turn to be confused. “What? No, I just wanted there to be no press for your sake…where did you get the idea…?” He trailed off but Ori could tell he had figured it all out.

  Brandt. Brandt was the one who had persuaded her to go back into the business. Milo’s jaw set and he started the car.

  “Milo?”

  “Sweetheart, we’re going home, we’re going to eat then you’re going to tell me everything.”

  ***

  Brandt, a large latte in one hand and the newspaper in the other, swung into his office the next morning, not seeing Milo already sitting behind his desk. He rocked back when he saw his boss.

  “Hey, guess it got out, huh?”

  He moved towards his chair, expecting Milo to vacate it, but his boss didn’t move and, with growing unease, Brandt settled for the chair opposite. Milo stared at him for a moment before speaking.

  “We’re going to need your hard pass and your company car keys. Your stuff is in that box over there. Security will escort you from the building.”

  Brandt stared at Milo. “Are you kidding?”

  “Does it look like I am?”

  Brandt glanced to his left – a cardboard box was indeed stuffed with crap from his desk.

  “You manipulated her into this,” Milo’s voice trembled with fury. “You told her the company was in trouble and that if she loved me, she’d step up. You had no idea why she left the business, you didn’t care.”

  Brandt smiled. “She told you everything, huh?”

  “You don’t deny it?”

  “No. And, by the way, you can’t fire me for doing what’s best for the company. If you’ve told her that she doesn’t have to do this, then you’re the one who is hurting the company and you’ll have to explain that to the board. Then we’ll see who they back.”

  Milo’s answering smile was wide. “I have. Do you think I’d walk into this office without their backing? And so you know…Ori is still doing this. Not for me, not for the company and certainly not for you, but for herself. She’s sitting down with Rolling Stone right now to tell her side of the story. To say goodbye. The songs she and Rocky have written are amazing…and they’ll be performed by another artist. Astoria Vine is no more, Brandt, but Ori Herd will be remembered as one of the best songwriters of all time. And she gets to keep her life private from now on. Our life. Yours, at least in the music industry, is over.”

  Milo stood up. “You’re finished, Brandt. And it’s entirely your own greed that’s done it. Security will be here soon to show you out.”

  ***

  Ori smiled at her last customer of the day as they thanked her. She was pretty exhausted but something happy had settled inside her. She was a songwriter – not a star, not a commodity – but she was now able to feed that part of her psyche. She hadn’t realized she had missed it that much.

  She switched off the coffee machine and went to lock the door when it was pushed open. Brandt stood in the doorway and immediately Ori’s stomach contracted.

  The raw fury in his eyes was unmistakable.

  “What are you doing here?” She cursed the way her voice shook.

  He smiled but there was no humor in it. “Just taking care of loose ends.”

  And he grabbed her.

  ***

  Milo was pulling up the curb when he saw Yas banging on the door of the bookshop, her face stricken. He jumped from the car, his heart pounding.

  “Yas?”

  She turned, tears running down her face. “I can’t get in. Ori never locks it before I get home. I can hear screams, shouting – I think there’s someone in there, I think someone’s hurting her.”

  Oh god no… Milo, without hesitation, threw himself against the door and broke it down. They both dashed in to find a wild, feral Brandt with his hands around Ori’s throat. She was fighting, clawing at him, but in the split second, before Milo leaped at Brandt, he could see she was hurt, weakening.

  Milo pulled Brandt from his love and knocked him cold with one punch. He grabbed a lamp, tugging the cord around Brandt’s wrists and ankles, hog-tying the unconscious man. Yas rushed to Ori’s side. Ori was sitting up now, trying to get her breath. Milo’s stomach dropped at the sight of her throat, bruised and red, covered with bloody scratches. He took her in his arms while a shaking Yas called the police. Ori was trembling but she held him as tightly as he held her.

  “I’m so sorry, baby…I’m so sorry…”

  Ori kissed him. “I’m okay, it’s okay. It’s over, now….I love you….”

  ***

  A year later….

  They watched the ceremony, of course, blocking out the usual fluff of bad jokes and middling performance by making fun of the most ridiculous acts and cheering the winners they liked.

  Orianthi Herd and Milo Shaw lazed about in his huge bed, naked limbs entwined. Milo kissed her and smiled down at her.

  “You’re a Grammy winner twice over,” he said proudly. It was true – Ori and Rocky’s song Falling had been nominated in three categories, Song of the Year, Best Producers and Record of the Year. They’d swept the first two and Ori and Milo had cheered Rocky on as she headed for the stage in Los Angeles.

  Ori had made it clear she didn’t want any of the spotlight but Rocky had years of experience and was happy to do the honors. Her heartfelt thank-you speech moved Ori to tears, especially when Rocky spoke of her love of her new writing partner. Milo hugged a choked-up Ori and smiled.

  “You rock, baby.”

  She grinned at him and wriggled underneath him. “You rock my world, Shaw.”

  He groaned. “That was the cheesiest line ever.” He chuckled as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “You know something, Miss Herd?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You are the love of my life and I never want to be without you.”

  She pressed her lips to his. “You never will be, my darling, darling man.”

  “You and me forever.”

  As they began to make love, their eyes met and locked and soon they were tumbling and loving and gasping so intensely, they completely missed the announcement of Record of the Year…

  Neither of them cared…least of all the three-time Grammy winner…

  THE END

  Chosen By The Billionaire

  Some days, I would just look at myself in the mirror, and I would sigh. I'd always had this feeling like I, and myself as a whole, were just all around too vanilla to be of any interest to anyone or anything, and that I would never be one of those lucky people who figure out what it is that makes them happy in life. It just seemed beyond what I was capable of, like my indecision and my inability to be what other people wanted me to be would be my ultimate pitfall in life, and like there was no redemption for me because of that.

  To put it simply, I'd always been something of a curvier girl, and this had led to a lot of internal debating with myself as to my worthiness. We live in a time, obv
iously, where people at least attempt to be more accepting of people despite, and even because of their differences, and in some ways that should have been encouraging to me. But it still didn't do a whole hell of a lot for my confidence for some reason, and honestly, that sort of “universal acceptance” stuff could feel patronizing to me in my insecurity. Like, it was more of a consolation than a comfort. A nice enough sentiment, sure, and probably the way that all people should try to live. But when you really step back and cut out the crap, you can't honestly believe that people won't judge you by your appearance. That's just a fantasy, pure and simple, and if you live your life under the impression that things are really like that, you're basically trying to undermine millennia upon millennia of fundamental human nature.

  Being talked down to, and told to accept traits that I didn't like, was the last thing that I felt that I needed, and I knew that all the rationalizing in the world wouldn't do me a lick of good. The question was, then, whether my curves were really the problem, or if the problem with my life was a lack of self-confidence, whether independent of my physical issues or otherwise.

  On self-inspection, it really did seem like my sensitivities with regard to my appearance were something of an exaggeration- I was actually a rather attractive girl, once I could look around the own obstacles I had set up for myself. I had a roundish, beautiful face, with piercing blue eyes, and eyelashes that fluttered back at me from the opposite side of the mirror. Long chestnut hair flowed down from the top of my head to around my shoulders, framing my button nose and small, delicate lips like a photograph, the combined effect looking not altogether unpleasant, not by any means. Moving down, my breasts were large, round, and firm, a perk, I supposed, of being curvaceous, my dark cleavage deeply cut and tantalizing- the effect, I was sure, the same on a man as it currently was on myself. My curves, I decided firmly, and made myself believe without question, were in all the right places, and as my eyes danced down along them, they seemed to follow a certain tantalizing rhythm, zigging and zagging at just the right moments, and nearly making my head spin as I at last landed down at my waist, and I had to take a moment's rest before continuing.

  Finally, I turned around to face the wall, with my butt toward the mirror, and craned my neck around to inspect my booty's reflection as well. It took a bit of standing on tiptoes with the mirror at its current angle for me to be able to see derriere in it, but at last I managed to see exactly what I wanted to, and the fact was confirmed for me, on no uncertain terms- I had a nice ass...

  Guys, or at least pop culture would have one to believe, were all about big and juicy cabooses these days, and by all accounts I seemed to possess such assets in abundance. Physically, at least, there seemed to be no good reason why I couldn't seem to land a boyfriend, judging by my meeting of nearly all criteria by which the opposite sex are said to peruse for a mate.

  This, then, seemed to indicate that the problem lay on a much deeper level than the surface alone, which I'd half come to suspect and fear in my analysis... It wasn't guys being shallow or guys unable to develop an interest in me- it was, quite simply, I concluded, that my own standards were too high. That I'd read too many damn romance novels to settle for any sort of real life relationships, expecting something miraculous in my life that I was sure to never truly experience, and that no woman ever did, really, or at least not in this lifetime.

  The talented and insanely productive (not to mention wealthy) Arthur Benton could be said to be highly responsible for my disillusionment with the dating scene, and had, over the years, largely shaped my delusional impression of what the ideal man should be like. With no relationship experience of my own to my credit, I'd become very bookish over time, devouring the sorts of romance novels one might be wont to scoff at on the bookshelves, the dime paperbacks with smutty-looking covers of shirtless men ravishing the bodies of beautiful women in their tattered dresses, with titles so cheesy that they're impossible not to roll your eyes at them when you see them. And I knew full well, even as I was reading them, that what they were describing as far as true relationships was complete and utter nonsense. And I suspect that all women do as well, when they read those sorts of things. But that didn't stop me from taking those fantastic impressions Benton made to heart, internalizing the romantic, over-the-top gestures carried out by his characters as a sort of ideal for what I should be expecting in a partner myself.

  Irrationally enough, I'd simply become enamored with so many of his shirtless examples of masculine perfection, manly men who, in all likelihood, did note even exist in the fashion in which they were presented in the written word, and who, if they did exist at all outside the realm of fantasy, would surely not be interested in such a woman as myself. Hell, did I really think that any of the shirtless macho men adorning the cover of his novels would even bat an eye if I walked past them completely stark naked, much less harbor any sort of romantic attraction to me in the least?

  And that, I believe, was how Arthur Benton had become a billionaire... By presenting such an amazing and fantastical portrait of the ideal man that emotionally vulnerable women such as myself would become enamored with his depictions, and in fact develop addictions to such tantalizing fantasies, thereby buying into more and more and more of his works, unable to get enough, to satisfy our cravings and make up for the senses of emptiness we must all surely possess within our dull, humdrum lives.

  But, like most addicts, I didn't care whether I was simply feeding my addiction, and making living a real life more difficult for myself by consuming Benton's works. I gobbled them up like candy, never able to get enough, unable to satiate my desires, and in fact, beginning to harbor a rather ridiculous crush on the author himself- I mean hell, could you blame me? I began to think, after a while, that so many of Benton's characters shared so many of the same chivalrous, heroic attributes, that he himself must have come to adopt such traits, or at the very least that he believed they were values that all men should display, and he therefore had come to exude characteristics of his own creations. I'd seen pictures of the man from long, lazy hours of online searching (not to mention fantasizing,) and he was in fact a handsome enough man. I mean, if he hadn't struck it big as a romance author, I can just about guarantee you he had just the kind of face that could easily have established him as an actor. Dark, penetrating eyes that seemed to flash right off the screen into reality, almost burning into the pupils of the gazer, not to mention, at least for my part, making them break into an outright cold sweat... He had luscious, jet black hair, a chiseled face, and, from what I could tell, a rather sculpted physique. Honestly, he was precisely the kind of macho man who could have posed for one of his own book covers, and I began to wish that he would do just that one of these days, for the sake of seeing him shirtless if nothing else...

  So, yeah, overall, Arthur Benton was probably about the nearest picture I could fathom to any sort of ideal boyfriend- a devilishly handsome, good-hearted billionaire, precisely the kind of man who was as much the polar opposite the sort of man who could possibly harbor any interest in a girl like me whatsoever. Any thoughts to the contrary, I felt certain, were nothing more than me deluding the hell out of myself. But you can bet your ass that did little to stop me from fantasizing...

  And yet, things seemed to take a somewhat unexpected turn, outside the simple realm of such fantasies... You see, I was shocked, one evening, while browsing the internet, to discover that my fantastical crush was on his way to a city near me- stopping, as he was, at a point on his book tour.

  I was astounded... The opportunity, of course, was far too wonderful to pass up, but almost the instant I began to consider it I could feel the butterflies in my stomach spiraling out of control, making me seriously queasy with anxiety...

  I was a mess... I knew that, as great as my excitement was at the prospect of meeting him, it would more than likely end up in disappointment in some way or another. Still, though, I marked the date on my calendar, and began to hope for the best while expecting t
he worst.

  It's hard to explain what exactly I'd hoped would happen... I mean, all I had were my fantasies about the event- him arriving shirtless, and me the only one in line to see him somehow despite his massive popularity. When I let my mind wander, it usually ended up in realms of ecstasy where he swept me off my feet and wrapped me immediately in his arms, imagery which I felt certain could never be anything more but delightful hallucinations.

  I was rather stunned, then, when reality turned out to be almost as stunning as fiction itself...

  However, the start of the event was just about as disappointing as I'd feared it would be. I showed up at the address at which the signing was scheduled to take place with a copy of one of my favorite of his novels in hand, only to find that the line to interview this devilishly rich and handsome celebrity spanned an entire city block, and that everyone but me had apparently had the foresight to line up almost a day in advance. I sighed heavily, and for a moment studied my fellow Benton fans. It was hard to pin down a certain profile amongst his varied readers, except, of course, that they were almost exclusively female. Many of them were older than myself, many of them younger, of all different body types and appearances, but, I couldn't help but think, whether justified or not, prettier and more appealing than myself. And yes, I knew even then that I was being ridiculous... Did I really think I had some miraculous chance of snaring this deadly gorgeous catch for myself in the first place? Honestly, no, but in my heart the fantasy persisted, and was dashed and bruised by the sight of so many more sexually appealing and worthwhile women than myself.