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.”