Chapter 2
At seven-thirty precisely, Farah escorted Chrissy into the private dining room.
I was already seated. Security remained outside the open doors while household staff moved quietly around a breakfast table large enough to feed a delegation.
Calling the meal breakfast was an understatement.
Warm flatbreads sat beside labneh, olives, dates, berries, sliced melon, eggs, smoked salmon, cheeses, honey, preserves, and pastries dusted with sugar. Silver pots held coffee and tea. Three fresh juices waited in cut-crystal pitchers.
It was an ordinary breakfast in my home.
Chrissy stopped for half a second.
Her gaze moved from the table to me, taking in the traditional white Qadiran dress I wore that morning, then lifted to my face.
“Good morning, Tariq.”
One of the senior attendants stiffened.
“That is Your Highness, miss.”
Chrissy’s eyes went enormous.
“Oh! I’m so sorry.” She immediately dipped into an awkward little bow. “My apologies, Your Highness.”
A snort escaped me before I could stop it.
Every member of staff in the room went very still.
“Nonsense.” I looked at Chrissy. “She may call me whatever she pleases.”
Her cheeks turned pink.
“Within reason, I hope.”
I smiled.
“Good morning, Chrissy.”
“Good morning, Tariq.”
She wore a soft peach silk blouse tucked into a cream pencil skirt, with low blush-colored heels. Her strawberry-blonde hair had recovered from the flight and fell in loose waves over her shoulders.
I wanted my hands in it.
A waiter stepped forward and drew out the chair beside mine for her.
Another poured her coffee while a third offered pastries. Chrissy chose one covered in powdered sugar, took a bite, and closed her eyes.
“Oh my God.”
The sound was soft, helpless, and far too close to a moan.
My cock twitched beneath my clothes.
Chrissy opened her eyes and reached for another bite as if nothing unusual had happened.
“This may be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Powdered sugar dusted the tip of her nose.
No one else in the room reacted.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to smile.
“You approve of breakfast, then.”
She looked at the table. “I’m trying to decide whether this is breakfast or a very elaborate attempt to make me incapable of leaving the building.”
“You already live upstairs.”
“I’m only upstairs for five more days.”
I tightened my grip on my coffee cup before setting it down.
Chrissy reached for her coffee.
“You have sugar on your nose.”
Her hand stopped halfway to the cup.
“I do?”
“Yes, you do.”
She wiped the wrong side.
“Try the other side.”
She wiped beneath her nose.
I laughed.
Her eyes narrowed. “You could be more helpful.”
“I’m enjoying this.”
“I noticed.”
She picked up her napkin and scrubbed at both sides of her nose.
“Did I get it?”
“You missed it.”
“Oh, come on.”
She attacked her face again.
One of the attendants made the smallest movement toward her, apparently prepared to intervene in the powdered-sugar emergency.
I lifted one hand.
Chrissy finally caught the sugar and inspected the napkin.
“There. Crisis averted.”
“My household is relieved.”
“I could tell. They were seconds away from assembling a response team.”
She picked up her coffee and glanced around the table again.
“Do you eat like this every morning?”
“I don’t eat all of it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No, but there are always choices.”
“That’s what you call choices?” She looked at enough food to feed twenty people. “At my apartment, having choices means deciding whether the yogurt is expired enough to be dangerous.”
Another laugh escaped me.
Chrissy added eggs, fruit, labneh, and flatbread to her plate. She thanked the waiter each time he offered something and asked another whether the pale green juice contained cucumber before accepting it.
She tasted the labneh with warm bread and made another quiet sound of pleasure.
My breathing deepened.
I reached for my coffee.
If she kept eating like that, the guest-experience workshop was going to become significantly more difficult.
“This is ridiculous,” she said.
“You mean the labneh?”
“I mean the whole table.”
“You disapprove?”
“Absolutely not. I’m trying to figure out how to smuggle that pastry chef back to Nebraska.”
“You’d have to negotiate with Farah.”
Chrissy glanced toward the household manager.
Farah’s expression remained perfectly composed.
“Never mind. I’m not brave enough.”
“I thought you were.”
“I criticized your advertising campaign in front of a room full of executives yesterday. That’s different.”
“How is that different?”
“I knew what I was talking about.”
I leaned back slightly.
“What about now?”
“Now I’m considering pastry theft.”
“Is that an unfamiliar field for you?”
“I have no experience at all.”
She speared a piece of melon with her fork.
It escaped.
The cube shot from the plate, bounced once against the white tablecloth, and landed neatly in the folded napkin beside my coffee cup.
The room went silent.
Chrissy stared at the melon.
Then she looked at me and the attendants.
“Oh no.”
I looked down at the offending fruit.
“This is an escalation.”
“I swear I’m normally allowed to use forks unsupervised.”
The senior attendant who had corrected her earlier took one step forward.
I picked up the melon with my own fork and put it on my plate.
“Evidence removed.”
Chrissy pressed her lips together.
It didn’t work.
A laugh burst out of her.
Mine followed.
The room remained silent around us.
Most people learned very quickly how to behave in my presence.
They waited to be addressed. They chose every word. They watched my face before deciding whether something was amusing.
Chrissy had launched breakfast at me and laughed.
I took a sip of coffee.
“Did you sleep?”
Her laughter faded.
“I did. I woke up at four-thirty convinced it was afternoon, went back to sleep, and woke up again at seven wondering what country I was in.”
“That will improve.”
“Will it improve before my flight home?”
I set my cup down harder than necessary.
“Yes, it will.”
She ate another bite.
“Your guest room is amazing, by the way.”
“I’m pleased you’re comfortable.”
“I think the bathtub is larger than my first apartment.”
“I doubt that.”
“You haven’t seen my first apartment.”
“That’s fair.”
Her blue eyes warmed.
I could have stayed at the table far longer than our schedule allowed.
Meals in my home were usually efficient unless I was entertaining. Even then, the structure was familiar. Business, family obligation, diplomatic courtesy, people waiting for the correct moment to speak.
Chrissy reached for another pastry.
I wanted to know which one she would choose.
Instead, I glanced at the time.
“We have the workshop in forty minutes.”
She sighed at the table.
“I knew there was a flaw in this arrangement.”
“You can continue eating while we work.”
Her face brightened.
“That is exactly the sort of guest-centered innovation I was talking about yesterday.”
***
The workshop began with yesterday’s criticism written across the central screen.
SHOW WHAT THE LUXURY DOES.
Chrissy read it.
“I was jet-lagged when I said that.”
“You’re withdrawing the recommendation?”
“No, I’m not.”
She opened her notebook.
“I just would’ve used more expensive words if I’d known someone was putting it on a wall.”
Several members of the marketing team smiled.
I took my seat at the end of the table.
“Then give us the expensive words.”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I probably am.”
That eased the room more effectively than any formal instruction I could have given.
Chrissy stood beside the screen.
Yesterday she’d looked tired beneath the determined set of her shoulders. This morning she looked rested, polished, and far too distracting in peach silk.
Then she began speaking, and I stopped thinking about the blouse.
“The existing campaign asks people to admire the hotel,” she said. “I think the revised campaign should let them imagine arriving here.”
The screen shifted to a sequence the team had assembled from her notes.
“A family gets in after midnight. We don’t need to show exhausted children screaming in a luxury advertisement.”
A few people laughed.
“But we can show that the connecting rooms are ready, the crib they requested is already there, and someone anticipated that they might need food after the restaurants close.”
One of my marketing executives said, “That risks making the service look domestic rather than aspirational.”
Chrissy nodded.
“It could, if you linger on the service itself. I wouldn’t. I’d linger on the guest realizing she doesn’t have to solve the problem.”
She didn’t look toward me for approval.
“What about accessibility?” I asked.
Her attention came to me.
“What about it?”
“Yesterday, that was one of your strongest observations. If we show every accommodation explicitly, the campaign becomes instructional.”
“It would.”
“So how do you include it?”
Chrissy considered the question.
“I wouldn’t make the accommodation the story.”
I waited.
She stepped toward the screen.
“Show a woman entering a restaurant with her family. She happens to use a wheelchair. The route is open. The table works for her. Nobody turns it into an event. The story is that she’s having dinner with people she loves.”
One of the executives began making notes.
Chrissy continued.
“The point isn’t to announce that the hotel knows disabled guests exist. The point is to show that the hotel already thought about them.”
I leaned forward.
“If you had to cut one of these guest moments, which would go first?”
“The suite beauty shot.”
“Why would you cut that first?”
“Because people already know the room is beautiful. The campaign needs to show what the hotel does for them.”
“And the late-night food?”
She paused.
“I want to check the service data again before I answer that. I don’t want to promise something we can’t consistently deliver.”
By the end of the session, two of her suggestions had been moved into the next creative revision, and the team was discussing how to build the campaign around moments of anticipation instead of objects alone.
Chrissy sat down and reached for her water.