“Sure. Where do we go?”

“Where they have these shoes.”

“Do you know the name of the store?”

“Her Highness did not tell me.”

“Can you call her and ask?”

Faiza could not have looked more horrified. “Oh, no. That is not what we do. You will take me to find the shoes, please.”

Piper held out her hand for the magazine page. It bore a prominent YSL logo. She pulled out her phone and discovered a Saint Laurent boutique in the Waldorf a couple of blocks away.

“Do you like your work?” she asked the girl as she turned onto Rush.

The question seemed to confuse her. “Work is to work.” And then, as if she’d said the wrong thing, she went on nervously, “Her Highness, Princess Kefaya, never strikes me, and I only have to share my bed with one other servant, so it is very good.”

But she didn’t sound as if it were all that good, and Piper got the message. Speaking about her employment could get Faiza into trouble. Still, Piper couldn’t miss the yearning in those dark, soulful eyes as they gazed out at the young girls striding along the city sidewalks with their trendy backpacks and confident gaits.

She’d planned to circle the Waldorf while Faiza made her purchase, but Faiza begged her to come inside. The struggle between the girl’s natural timidity and her determination to do her job made it impossible to refuse. Piper reluctantly turned the SUV over to one of the Waldorf’s valets and went with her.

The designer boutique with its white marble floors, soaring ceilings, and array of luxury goods bore no resemblance to the DSW where Piper shopped. This place smelled of perfume and privilege. Faiza handed the magazine page back to Piper. “Her Highness needs in every color, please.”

“Every color?” While Piper was processing that, a young, beautifully groomed clerk approached. She was clearly drawn more by Faiza’s traditional garb than by Piper’s chauffeur’s uniform-white blouse, dark slacks, and a black blazer she’d found at Goodwill yesterday. The clerk’s eagerness suggested word had gotten out that the richest of the world’s royals were in Chicago.

But as anxious as the clerk was to help, she could only produce the shoe in two of its five colors, which sent Faiza into so much distress that her hands shook as she opened a zippered pouch and pulled out a thick wad of U.S. currency-a meaty stack of hundred-dollar bills that would be mere pocket change to a family worth more than a trillion dollars.

When the transaction was complete, Faiza returned the leftover cash to her bag, meticulously folding the receipt. She clutched the bag to her chest as they left the boutique, her forehead puckered with worry lines that had no place on such a young face.

Piper got back on her phone and forty-five minutes later helped Faiza purchase a red pair from Barneys. But even that wasn’t good enough. “You do not understand.” Faiza twisted her fingers around the clasp of her bag. “I cannot fail Her Highness. She must have all the shoes.”

Piper blared her horn at an overly aggressive taxi driver. “Don’t you think five pairs is a little piggy?”

Faiza didn’t understand, which was just as well.

Piper’s meeting with Graham wasn’t for three hours, which should give her enough time to drive out to a suburban Nordstrom where she’d located the final two pairs, grab them, get Faiza back to the Peninsula, then make it to Spiral. Piper forced a smile. “Let’s go.”

As they sped west out of the city, Faiza grew less guarded and more like the nineteen-year-old she was. Piper told her a little about her job with Graham and learned Faiza was Pakistani, as well as a devout Muslim who’d gone to the Realm at fourteen to find work and to visit the country’s holy cities so she could pray for the parents and sister she’d lost. Instead, she’d ended up enduring brutally long hours and what Piper regarded as a kind of imprisonment, since her passport had been taken from her when she’d first been employed, and she hadn’t seen it since.

Faiza repeatedly checked her bag for the receipts. Some of the country’s royals had a reputation for abusing their servants, and Piper didn’t like to imagine what might happen if the receipts didn’t reconcile with the cash Faiza carried.

The Nordstrom that carried the shoes was located in Stars territory in the far western suburbs. The clock was ticking, and the clerk took forever to ring up the purchase. But as long as the traffic gods were kind, Piper could still make it back in time for her meeting.

They weren’t. An accident on the Reagan Tollway brought traffic to a standstill, and since Graham had refused to give her his cell number, she couldn’t even call him. She could only stew.

The traffic inched forward, then stopped again. Inched and stopped. Before long, Piper’s shoulders were so tense her muscles screamed. She took a few deep breaths. Nothing she did would make the traffic go faster. She concentrated on her passenger. “If you could do anything you wanted, Faiza, what would it be?”

Seconds ticked past before she replied. “Dreams are foolish for someone like me.”

Piper realized the question had been unintentionally cruel. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Faiza released a long, slow breath of her own. “I would go to Canada and study to be a nurse. One who helps babies born too early, the way my sister was born. But those kinds of dreams are not meant to be.” She spoke matter-of-factly. This was no bid for pity.

“Why Canada?”

“My father’s sister lives there. She is my only family, but I have not seen her since I was a child.”

“Do you stay in contact? Talk to her on the phone?”

“I do not have a telephone. I have not been able to speak with her for almost two years.”

“Would you like to use mine?” Piper said impulsively.

She heard Faiza’s sharp intake of breath. “You would let me do that?”

“Sure.” Piper already had so many money troubles, what did a few more dollars on her cell bill matter? “Do you know her number?”

“Oh, yes. I have memorized it. But if anybody knew…”

“They’re not going to find out from me.” She tossed her cell in the backseat and told Faiza how to use it.

The aunt must have answered, because a joyous, rapid-fire conversation in what Piper assumed was Urdu followed. As the conversation went on, the traffic finally began to move, and by the time Faiza returned her phone, they were back on the Eisenhower.

“My khala has been so worried about me.” Faiza’s voice was choked with tears. “She dreams that I can come to live with her, but I have no money, no way to get there.”

Piper’s cell rang. She wasn’t supposed to take personal calls when she was driving, but she couldn’t ignore this one, and she put it on speaker.

“Interesting,” a familiar male voice said. “Here I am sitting in my office waiting for a meeting that was supposed to start ten minutes ago, yet I’m still alone.”

“I’m stuck in traffic.” Before he could upbraid her, she went on the offensive. “If you hadn’t refused to give me your cell number, I would have called.”

“Stuck in traffic is not an excuse. It’s a sign of bad planning.”

“I’ll send that to Oprah as an inspirational quote.”

“I liked it better when you were pretending to be in love with me.”

“My meds kicked in.”

He snorted.

She gnawed at her bottom lip and looked at the clock on the dashboard. “If I’d had your cell number-”

“I told you. If you need me, call my agent.”

“I thought you were being sarcastic.”

“I’m never sarcastic.”

“Not exactly true, but… I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes.”

“At which time I’ll be at the gym.” The call went dead.

As Piper disconnected, Faiza spoke up, clearly incredulous. “You were talking to your employer, the American football player? So disrespectfully?”

“He annoyed me.”

“But surely you will be punished.”

Almost certainly. But not in the way Faiza meant. “Employers here can’t do anything but fire you.”

“This is a very strange, very wonderful country.” Faiza radiated goodness in a way Piper could only admire, and the wistfulness in her voice was heartwrenching.

They finally reached the hotel. Faiza touched Piper’s shoulder. “Thank you for what you have done, my friend. I shall pray for you every night.”

That seemed a little excessive, but Piper wasn’t one to turn down anyone’s prayers.


***

“When I said I’d be at the gym, it wasn’t an invitation for you to show up.” Coop had to shout over the scream of Norwegian black metal blaring through the speakers. A bead of sweat flew from his jaw as he delivered a violent left-right combination to the punching bag. Piper barely stopped herself from pointing out that it was not only bad form, but also counterproductive, to go after the bag with all that force.

Pro Title Gym was the smelly, windowless, hole-in-the-wall mecca of Chicago’s most elite athletes-a stripped-down space with cinder block walls, dented black rubber mats, and rusty squat racks lining a wall that held an American flag and a yellowed sign with a quote from Fight Club that read listen up, maggots. you are not special. The place reeked of sweat and rubber. No juice bars or trendy workout clothes. Pro Title was hard-core, expensive, and exclusive.

“How did you get in here?” Coop snarled like a Rottweiler.

“I slept with the dude at the front desk,” she retorted over the shrieking, distorted guitars.

“Bull.” An uppercut to the bag.

In fact, all she’d had to do was explain that she worked for Coop. Wearing her chauffeur’s uniform instead of being dressed like a football groupie gave her credibility, and the guy had let her in. “It’s my story, and I’ll tell it how I want.”

He delivered another punishing jab. “Go away.”

That was fine with her. She hadn’t expected to conduct their meeting here, merely to show him that she took her job seriously. But she didn’t immediately move. She couldn’t. Not when the muscles under Coop’s sweat-stained T-shirt rippled like wind over water every time he punched. She had to stop this. Right now. Because if she didn’t, she might start thinking about growing her fricking hair! She spun toward the door.

“Hold it!” Another Rottweiler bark. “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a mortician.”

She calmed herself down enough to tell him who she was driving for. “Only during the daytime,” she shouted over the music. “This is my chauffeur’s uniform.”

“It’s ugly.” Another annihilating punch at the bag.

“So’s your disposition.”

That bounced right off him. “Do you care at all how you look?”

“Not much.”

He stopped punishing the bag and regarded her critically. “You’ve worn the same dress every time you’ve been in the club.”

“Said the man in cowboy boots.”

“It’s my trademark,” he retorted. “Go buy some new clothes. You’re making the place look bad.”

She watched a rivulet of sweat roll down his neck. He smelled like good sweat, the healthy smell of a guy who always wore clean clothes to the gym. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized there was such a thing as a good sweat smell. Now she knew, and she wished she didn’t because thinking about anything that had to do with his body was a distraction she couldn’t afford. “New clothes aren’t in my budget.”

He returned to the bag. “Send me the bill. You need to look like you fit in.”

He had a point, but still… “I’m not buying anything uncomfortable.”

“By that, I assume you mean anything that looks decent? Yeah, that’d be a real deal breaker.”

“Try being female for a while. Then you can talk.”


***

Coop couldn’t get used to it. No conversation was ever straightforward with her. Abandoning the bag, he grabbed a scuffed black iron kettlebell and crouched down, extending the weight in front of him and trying to ignore her. He felt the strain in his delts, the hard pull in his thighs. He’d always liked brutal workouts, but he’d never needed them like he did now, when he was trapped at Spiral night after night.

Not trapped. He loved the energy of the club, the challenge of once again proving himself. He just wasn’t used to spending so many hours inside.

He fought the urge to switch hands by glaring at Sherlock Holmes. She wasn’t so impervious to fashion that she’d done up the top button of her blouse. Too bad she hadn’t opened the next one.

His arm began to spasm. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. He changed hands. “I’m going shopping with you.” He yelled it out, but the music blaring from the speaker over his head abruptly ended so that his voice echoed off the cinder block walls. A White Sox pitcher on the next mat looked over at him. So did Piper, staring at him with those big blue eyes that didn’t miss a thing. Had he really just volunteered to go clothes shopping with a woman?