First Star I See Tonight

7

Piper opened the back door of the SUV for a beautiful woman in her forties with big designer sunglasses propped on top of a mane of luxurious dark hair. She wore a vibrant purple Chanel jacket, a short black leather skirt, and stilettos that looked like surface-to-air missiles.

They’d barely pulled away before the woman took out her cell and began an intense conversation in Arabic. Piper had a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but she’d been instructed not to address any of the royals, which was a major bummer. The woman didn’t once look at her-not that she projected hostility. Piper was simply invisible.

By the time the motorcade arrived at the Peninsula, Piper’s jaw ached from the effort of keeping her mouth closed. She’d been given the sixth position in the line of limos, an indication that her passenger wasn’t the ranking princess. The woman exited without acknowledging her, but as she disappeared into the hotel, one of the Realm’s grim-faced officials ordered Piper to wait.

She waited. Half an hour passed. An hour. The guard barked at her like a dog when she finally got out to run inside and use the hotel restroom. “I ordered you to wait!”

“Be right back.” As she bolted through the lobby, she remembered that slavery hadn’t been abolished in the Realm until 1962.

When she came out, a servant girl was sitting in the backseat. She was young, with a round face and soulful dark eyes. Unlike the royals, she was traditionally dressed in a plain gray abaya and navy hijab. Piper apologized for keeping her waiting, something that seemed to startle the girl. “Is not a problem.”

Piper was happy to hear her speak English, and since she hadn’t been given orders not to address the servants, she introduced herself. “I’m Piper.”

“I am Faiza,” the girl said shyly. “Her Highness, Princess Kefaya, has sent me to get these shoes.” She held up a page torn from a glossy French fashion magazine that pictured a pair of T-strap leather stiletto sandals. “You will take me to get them, please.”

“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?

“Goody,” she said, with a snide expression he’d make damn sure he never saw on her face once he got her naked. “Let’s get manis and pedis, while we’re at it. And invite our girlfriends.”

She killed him with that mouth of hers, but he roped in a smile and matched her sarcasm with cool. “I don’t trust your judgment.”

“But you trust your own?”

“I know what I like.”

“I’m sure you do, but pasties and a G-string don’t seem all that appropriate for work.”

She was killing him and doing it so gleefully.

He came up with a sneer. “I’m busy until next week. Try to keep it together until then. I’ll meet your wise ass at BellaLana. It’s on Oak Street.”

That got a satisfying rile out of her. “I’m not shopping on Oak Street! Do you have any idea what clothes cost in those stores?”

“Pocket change.”

That made her blood boil, as he’d known it would. He lowered the kettlebell. “Get the hell out of here so I can finish my workout.” And smack himself in the head a couple of times for letting her get to him.

Still, his offer wasn’t entirely irrational. Sherlock had a habit of being everywhere at once when she was in the club, and he liked knowing another set of eyes was looking out for his interests-a set of eyes he could absolutely trust. You could say a lot of negative things about Sherlock-lack of deference to her employer being number one-but that woman was serious about her ethics.

Not that he intended to tell her how valuable she was proving to be. Just as he didn’t intend to tell her what he was going to do to her once he got her in bed.

The next night, Piper spotted Dell, one of the bouncers, near the bar. He was a blond surfer type with a tat of a jaguar running up the side of his neck. He’d had a short-lived career with the Bears and was especially popular with the female customers-so popular that he seemed oblivious to anything else that might be happening in the club.

She couldn’t stand it any longer. She pulled him away from his admirers with the excuse that she wanted to interview him for a Web site profile. Instead, she pointed out a group crowding Coop on the other side of the room. “Those women with Coop are drunk and getting obnoxious. That redhead especially. She’s hanging all over him. Maybe you could go over and distract her so he has some room?”

Dell looked down at her as if she were a gnat to be crushed. “You telling me how to do my job?”

“Yeah, she’s getting good at that.” Jonah had come up behind them, and the two men, all bulging muscle and sour belligerence, formed a wall between her and the rest of the room.

“Look, guys, I’m just suggesting you watch Coop a little more closely.”

Jonah smirked. “And I’m suggesting you mind your own fucking business. What is that, anyway? Sending out cute little tweets and posting pretty pictures?”

The bouncers weren’t her responsibility, and she should have kept her mouth shut, but when had she ever? “Thanks for the reminder. I’ve got a sweet one of you making kissy-faces in the mirror.”

Yep, she knew how to get along with her coworkers, all right.

Over the next few days, she drove the minor princesses and their servants shopping as part of a five-car, sometimes six-car motorcade that included at least two vans to transport their mountain of purchases back to the hotel, everything paid for in cash. But instead of envy, Piper began to feel pity, especially for the teenage miniprincesses. Sometimes she saw the identical yearning in their eyes that she’d seen in Faiza’s, a yearning that couldn’t be satisfied with a dozen trips to the Apple store. A yearning to walk unaccompanied along the sidewalk with the same carefree strides as the American girls they watched through the darkened windows of their SUVs.

On the day of her dreaded dress-shopping appointment, Princess K’s sister took forever at her facialist, which made Piper ten minutes late arriving at BellaLana, where Coop was leaning against a jewelry case and chatting comfortably with the female staff. If Piper had been prone to hives, one look at the racks of expensive clothes on display would have given them to her.

The black, white, and silver decor gave the place an industrial, op art, fin de siècle vibe-both luxurious and somehow condescending, as if daring its customers not to find it chic. Of all the things she didn’t want to be wearing right now, her chauffeur’s uniform was at the top of her list, especially since she’d sweated out the armpits under her suit jacket as she’d run from the parking lot.

Coop looked up. His lips formed a smile, but his eyes told her he’d noted the fact that she’d once again kept him waiting. The saleswomen regarded her with various degrees of incredulity, unable to believe someone so odd-looking could be with Chicago’s most eligible bachelor.

“Ladies, this is Piper,” Coop said. “She’s given up her career as a mortician, but she’s having a hard time breaking old fashion habits.”

Piper reined in a laugh.

“You’ve come to the right place,” an überstylish redhead said. “Working as a mortician must have been super depressing.”

“Not so much as you’d think,” Piper said. “That’s how I met Coop. Burying the ashes of his career.”

Coop snorted. The redheaded saleswoman clearly recognized she was in over her head and hustled Piper toward a dressing room.

“Nothing too crazy,” Coop called out. “She’s got enough of that going on in her head.”

The first dress was a drab forest green, but there was nothing drab about the skintight fit or the hemline, which barely cleared her butt. Thankfully, she’d shaved her legs, but still… “This isn’t exactly my style.”

“No fly?” Coop said from the other side of the dressing room door.

Okay, Piper had to laugh at that.

The saleswoman, whose name was Louise, looked mystified. “It’s really fashion forward.”

Piper winced at her reflection. An eternity stretched between the bottom of the dress and her bare feet. “I think I need to go a few steps fashion backward.” Or take a fast trip to H &M, which was where she really belonged.

“Lemme see,” Coop said.

The saleswoman pushed the dressing room door open. Coop sat on one of the big square silver-and-black ottomans not far from the mirrors. Piper tried to tug down the hem. “I look like a pine tree.”

“With really good legs,” Heath Champion said from the front entrance. He wandered into the store and sprawled on the ottoman next to Coop’s. “I like it.”

“I don’t,” Coop said, his eyes on her thighs. “Too conservative.”

She gaped at him. “In what universe is this conservative?”

He shook his head sadly. “You have to remember you’re not a mortician any longer.”

Heath grinned.

She gestured toward the sports agent. “What’s he doing here, Coop? Not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you, Mr. Champion, but why here?”

“Coop told me to show up, and what could I do? I’ve made millions off the guy.”

“I needed another opinion,” Coop said. “He’s more used to buying women clothes than I am.”

Louise appeared with another armload of dresses and hustled Piper back into the dressing room. In the next half hour, Piper modeled a slinky red number missing a middle, a dark blue number missing a front, and a gold thingy that made her look like a Little League trophy. “I’m an investigator,” she hissed at both men, “not a pitcher for the Peewee Penguins.”

Heath grinned. “I like this woman.”

“No mystery why,” Coop retorted.

It was a mystery to Piper, but she had something more pressing on her mind. “This is clearly not working,” she declared as Louise went off to gather up more dresses Piper didn’t want to wear. “I’d freeze to death in every one of these. Not to mention that I can’t do my job if I’m worrying the whole time about my… my cooter hanging out!”

That cracked them both up, clearly signaling that it was time for Piper to take charge. “Louise, you and I need to talk…”