Holly Rayner
Thank you for reading my work, I dedicate this story to each and every one of you. As promised, here are the first few chapters of my previous book, The Sheikh’s Make-Believe Fiancée
The weather was typical for fall in Chicago. A little chilly, a little rainy and very windy. Guests milled around the Field Museum in their finest attire as Lily served them drinks from behind the bar. She handed champagne and mojitos out to CEOs and hotel heiresses, wiping her hands on her black apron between rounds.
Lily looked around and took in the beautiful surroundings of the museum. Her eyes lingered on artifacts and artwork that just weeks before she had been responsible for maintaining and cataloging. Her parents had been so proud of her when she had landed the job as Junior Curator at the Field Museum just a year before. They had known when she left their small town in Missouri for college that Lily probably never would return for good.
Lily had always seemed like a child that was destined for bigger things. She had grown up in the cocoon that close families and small towns provide. But even as a young child, she had fought hard to break free and fly on her own. As a freshman in high school, she dove headfirst into college prep courses so that she could earn a scholarship. That was when she discovered her love for history and art. She began searching different scholarship programs and found one for a Bachelor’s in Museum Studies. She soon found that she adored being immersed in a world where history, science and art come together.
Lily was her parents' only child; they always supported her choices and tried to give her everything, but they were a blue collar family. Her mother, Betty, worked at the local dry cleaner’s and her father, Stan, was a truck driver. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t afford to help Lily out financially, and this only caused their daughter to work harder. By the time she was a junior in high school, Lily had completed several dual enrollment courses and had chartered her course. When she graduated from her tiny high school, she did so with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree from the university.
She had left home and moved into the college dorm where she disappeared into her studies. Lily had little time for what college life offers young people – parties, friendships and romance. She worked hard to learn everything she could so that she would be in a position to find a good job upon graduation. She was determined to support herself and move further away from her small town and into a big city, wherever that might be.
After completing an internship at a local museum in Missouri, Lily got the call she had been waiting for. The Art Institute of Chicago was looking for a teaching assistant. She jumped at the opportunity and moved to the big city, falling in love with it immediately. The lights, the sounds and the smells were so different from anything Lily had experienced before. In her usual style, she dove headfirst into her work and within a few short years, had moved up the ranks at the Institute. Her work ethic began to get her noticed by others in her field and soon the renowned Field Museum offered her a position as one of several Junior Curators. Lily loved her job at the Institute, but knew that they couldn’t offer her something similar. So after much deliberation, she bid goodbye to her colleagues and began working at the Field Museum.
At first, the job had been challenging. Lily knew a lot about her industry, but moving from an art institute to a full-fledged museum required a different set of skills. She had to get retrained in several areas, but within a month, she started feeling comfortable in her new position and thought she had finally landed the job that she would have forever. At just twenty-six years old, she was making a comfortable living, had a nice apartment in the West Loop and had made a small, but close-knit group of friends. In all rights, she was happy. Until the cutbacks happened.
They came suddenly and completely out of the blue. One day, Lily was detailing the history of an ancient Mayan artifact in her office, the next she was unemployed searching for jobs online.
“What happened?” her mother had asked, just as confused as Lily.
“I don’t know,” Lily had told her, trying to hold back the tears that threatened. Lily prided herself on being strong. Maybe even too strong. “They just said they had to cut back and that since I was the last junior curator hired, I would be the first to be let go.”
Lily spat the words out as if they hurt her tongue. Betty sighed heavily into the phone. “I’m so sorry dear. But you know your dad and I are here for you. Whatever you need.”
Lily appreciated her mother’s support. But she also knew that it meant she could only have whatever she needed if she came back home to Missouri. Her parents couldn’t help support her financially. And Lily wouldn’t dream of asking.
After letting the news of her redundancy sink in for a few days, Lily got busy looking for another job. But she soon found out that jobs in her field were hard to come by. She had never had to actively seek out employment in the museum and art world and now, looking at the slim prospects, the task was daunting. But Lily tried. She spent weeks filling out online job applications and submitted her resume to the hundreds of museums and institutions. She figured she’d start close to home because she really didn’t want to move. Lily had fallen in love with Chicago.
Before long, Lily had realized that she would have to make a decision. She hadn't gotten any offers from local museums and her savings were dwindling. She knew she had to choose between looking outside of Chicago for work, or find another line of work to tide her over until something in her field opened up.
After a long walk along the Burnham Harbor, Lily had decided she wasn’t ready to give up her life in the city. She went back home, swallowed her pride, and took the only job that she knew she could get. One of her good friends from the gym, Jill, worked part-time for a catering company and had told Lily that she could get her work if she ever needed it. Lily called Jill and the next day, she was wearing a white dress shirt, black pants and black apron and serving canapés to pretentious housewives at a craft party.
Lily hated that she wasn’t doing what she loved, but she was determined to make it. She worked with Jill for several months, banking every penny she made just so that she could stay in her apartment. The event at the Field Museum had come as a complete surprise. She had been looking at her schedule for the week, looking up the addresses of the events and punching them into her phone so she would be ready to arrive in plenty of time. When she had gotten to the address for the ball, her hands had frozen. She knew that address. It was for the Field Museum. The place where she had been working until just months before.
“Jill, I can’t do the ball,” Lily had said in a worried tone.
“What? Why not?”
“I just can’t. I’m busy that day,” Lily had said.
Lily could hear her best friend's sigh through the phone. They had known each other for a few years, and their bond was uncanny. “You liar. You’re just afraid to do the ball because it’s at the Field Museum.”
Lily let out a long sigh. “Jill, I can’t go back there, I can’t. Not as a server. There’s just no way.”
“Listen,” Jill said, in the best firm tone the blond haired, bubbly farm girl could manage. “You are better than them. You don’t have to worry about any one of those stuffy shirts. Because I bet you, if any single one of them got fired, they would go crawling back to their mamas and papas. But you didn’t. You stuck your chin out and did what you had to do to support yourself. You have no reason to be ashamed of that.”
Lily had finally agreed to go to the event. The ball was for dignitaries and wealthy people from a variety of industries. It was not an uncommon event at the Field Museum. Lily remembered the museum hosting Christmas parties, birthday parties and even Bar Mitzvahs for famous people back when she worked there. Rubbing shoulders with people of that stature didn’t intimidate her, but serving them cocktails did. She knew better than to feel less than them, but she was pretty sure they saw her that way. What scared her more, what really intimidated her about the ball, was the chance of running into the people she
used to work with.
Lily reached out and handed a champagne flute to a beautiful woman with honey-blond hair. She extended her long arm to Lily, grabbed the glass with her perfectly manicured fingers and then floated away, her green ball gown trailing behind her. Lily watched her walk across the room to where a tall, dark, handsome man was waiting. Lily guessed he must have been of Middle-Eastern descent. Probably some oil tycoon or rich playboy, she thought.
Khaled took the glass from the woman in the green gown and smiled politely as his brown eyes danced playfully. He looked down at the woman, then his eyes wandered above her head and meandered about the room, stopping briefly on every woman that caught his eye. If the woman in green noticed, she didn’t let on. She slipped her arm through Khaled’s but he pulled away before she could get it all the way through. As if he had done it a million times before, he turned effortlessly and left the woman standing with the three other people they were chatting with. When she turned to look for him, he had disappeared into the crowd.