Chapter 4
The cat came out of the carrier like it had been insulted by confinement.
Farah was kneeling beside the open door. A gray blur shot across the pale rug, skidded under a chair, and launched itself at the tassel hanging from a cushion.
Chrissy laughed.
It wasn’t the polite little laugh she used in meetings. This one burst out of her as she dropped to the floor in cream linen trousers and a lightweight sleeveless blouse.
“Oh, look at you.”
The cat attacked the tassel again.
Two days ago, the cat had been thin enough to disappear against Chrissy’s chest. Now her coat was clean, her eyes were bright, and apparently hydration had revealed a criminal personality.
Farah stood with the empty carrier.
“The veterinarian says she may remain in the residence as long as her medication is given with food for the next three days.”
“Of course,” I said.
Chrissy looked over her shoulder at me. “You hear that? You get to stay.”
The animal abandoned the cushion and charged straight for her open tote.
Chrissy caught her around the middle before she could climb inside.
“Oh no, you don’t.”
She twisted in Chrissy’s hands, reached one paw toward the bag, and nearly knocked her notebook onto the floor.
I laughed.
The sound came out harder than I expected.
Chrissy froze.
Then she tipped her face up to me, still sitting on the rug with the cat wriggling against her chest, and her whole face brightened.
“There it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that laugh.”
I shook my head.
The cat seized a loose strand of her hair.
Chrissy yelped, then started laughing again as she tried to pry her paw free.
She stared at the cat.
“Goblin.”
I took in the tassel, her bag, and her hair trapped in one determined paw.
“Yes,” I said. “Goblin.”
Farah’s expression remained composed, although I saw the brief movement at the corner of her mouth.
Chrissy freed her hair and gathered Goblin against her chest.
The cat settled instantly.
Of course she did.
Her small body curved into Chrissy while Chrissy stroked one hand from Goblin’s head to her tail. The sharp line of her spine was less pronounced than it had been two days ago.
“That’s much better,” she murmured. “You don’t feel like three sticks in a fur coat anymore.”
Goblin began to purr.
Chrissy pressed her cheek to the top of her head.
I remembered Chrissy in the courtyard, crouched on the stone while the cat decided whether she trusted Chrissy enough to come closer.
That animal had been dirty, hungry, and frightened.
Now she was clean enough to shed gray hairs onto Chrissy’s blouse, strong enough to attack my furniture, and comfortable enough to fall half asleep in her arms.
Chrissy cradled her with ridiculous satisfaction.
I wanted her to keep sitting there.
“We need to leave soon,” I said.
She tipped her face toward me.
“For the estate?”
“Yes, for the estate.”
Her hand slowed over Goblin’s back. “Does she have to go back downstairs?”
“No. Farah will arrange somewhere appropriate here.”
Chrissy glanced at the household manager.
Farah nodded. “Everything has already been prepared.”
“Of course it has.”
Chrissy grinned at me.
“Your house was ready for a cat before the cat knew she was moving in.”
“My house was ready because I have competent staff.”
“It still counts.”
Goblin opened one eye.
Chrissy kissed her forehead.
“You behave.”
I glanced at the shredded tassel.
“That instruction may have arrived too late.”
She laughed again.
Farah took Goblin carefully, and the cat immediately reached one paw back toward Chrissy.
Her expression softened.
“I’ll see you later.”
Something about the simple promise lodged under my ribs.
Chrissy rose and brushed stray fur from her trousers.
“You have cat hair on your blouse.”
She glanced down.
“So I do.”
“Do you want time to change?”
She glanced at the clock.
“No. It’ll give me credibility.”
“With whom?”
“The cat.”
I held out my hand.
Her gaze dropped to my hand, then rose to me.
Last night she’d slept with that hand resting over her waist.
This morning we’d eaten breakfast privately before showering and dressing for the estate, and neither of us had pretended the night before hadn’t happened.
Chrissy put her hand in mine.
We left Goblin plotting against the furniture.
***
The city changed by degrees outside the car windows.
Glass towers gave way to lower buildings, then longer stretches of road and open land. By the time the desert began to dominate the view, the horizon had widened until there seemed to be more sky than earth.
Chrissy sat beside me in the rear of the car, her sunglasses pushed into her hair.
She watched the landscape for several minutes.
Then she turned.
“So this is where you disappear when owning an entire hotel gets too stressful?”
“I own more than one hotel.”
“That seems unnecessarily complicated.”
“It occasionally is.”
I wore light trousers and a white linen shirt for the estate. Chrissy’s cream trousers were loose enough to move easily, and flat sandals had replaced her heels.
She still had three gray cat hairs clinging stubbornly to her blouse.
I chose not to mention them again.
“What exactly am I supposed to be looking for today?” she asked.
“The same thing you’ve been looking for all week.”
“That is suspiciously vague.”
“I want you to look at the guest experience.”
“You mean at your private estate?”
“I do.”
She turned more fully toward me.
“You’re going to have to give me more than that.”
I turned toward the desert.
“The Al-Hadid Grand is large, public, and impressive by design. The estate is none of those things.”
“You say that like your private desert estate is a studio apartment.”
“It’s smaller than the hotel.”
“That is an extremely low bar.”
I smiled.
“What matters is the difference in how the service feels,” I said. “At the hotel, a guest sees the machinery—reception, restaurants, concierge, cars, public rooms, staff moving everywhere.”
“And here?”
“You shouldn’t notice most of it.”
Chrissy considered that.
“You want the hotel to feel more like a private home.”
“No, I don’t.”
She turned sharply toward me.
I continued before she could argue.
“A hotel shouldn’t pretend to be someone’s home. I want it to give the guest the same certainty that someone has already thought about what they’ll need.”
Her expression changed.
“That’s better.”
“I’m pleased you approve.”
“You should be.”
I laughed softly.
She turned back toward the window.
A few minutes passed before she spoke again.
“You said last night that your family is part of Qadira’s ruling house.”
“I remember.”
“Were you raised there?”
“Yes, I was.”
“What was it like?”
I studied her profile.
“It was structured.”
“That sounds diplomatic.”
“That was diplomatic.”
She waited.
I’d learned quickly that Chrissy could wait through silence when she wanted a better answer.
“There were always people around,” I said. “Family, staff, advisers, security. There were expectations for how things were done and where I was expected to be.”
“Did you hate it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
She glanced at me.
“I knew what my life was. I never found the title itself burdensome.”
“That’s refreshingly non-tortured of you.”
“I’ll try to develop a tragic relationship with privilege before dinner.”
She laughed.
“Please don’t. I’m starting to like you.”
“Only starting?”
She turned back outside.
“What about the company?”
“That wasn’t inherited.”
Her attention returned to me.
“My family had investments in hospitality and property,” I said. “Al-Hadid Hospitality as it exists now is mine. I expanded it, chose the Grand portfolio, and built the operating structure.”
“So the royal part was given to you.”
“That’s right.”
“And the hotel empire was your bad decision.”
“Something like that.”
“Why hotels?”
I thought about it.
“Because hospitality is power used well.”
Chrissy’s brows rose.
“That sounds very sheikh-like.”
“It’s also true.”
“Explain.”
“If someone enters one of my properties, they have placed part of their day in my hands. Sometimes it’s an important part of their life—a wedding, a funeral, a business deal, the first night in a country they’ve never seen before.
If we do our work properly, we remove problems they shouldn’t have to carry. ”
She held my gaze for a long moment.
“You really believe that.”
“I do.”
Her gaze moved back to the view.
“That’s why my complaint about the campaign bothered you.”
“It interested me.”
“It bothered you first.”
“It may have.”
I reached across the seat and took her hand again.
She let me.
The estate appeared beyond a long pale wall, low against the desert rather than rising out of it.
Chrissy straightened as the car turned through the gates.
The main house was built from pale stone and warm wood, with broad shaded terraces and long horizontal lines that seemed to follow the land. A narrow sheet of water ran beside the entrance courtyard, catching white light and breaking it into movement.
No ceremonial line of staff waited for us.
One attendant met the car.
Another opened the door.
Chrissy stepped out and scanned the courtyard.
“This is your version of understated.”
“It is.”
She gave me a look.
“I need to recalibrate.”
We walked through the shaded entrance.
The temperature dropped several degrees beneath the deep overhang.
A glass of cold water waited on a small table near the sitting area.
Chrissy stopped.
She stared at the glass, then at me.
“You didn’t ask for that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Did you tell them when we were arriving?”
“They knew our schedule.”
She picked up the water.
“See? This is exactly what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
She drank.
“The hotel keeps trying to tell people it provides personalized service. This place doesn’t tell me anything. It just has cold water sitting where I want it.”
I glanced at the glass in her hand.
“That seems difficult to build a campaign around.”
“That’s why you flew me here.”
“I thought I brought you because I wanted another excuse to keep you with me.”
Her brows lifted slightly.
Then she grinned.
“Both can be true.”
“Yes, they can.”
We spent the next hour moving through the shaded and indoor parts of the estate.