Page 62 of Bred By the Sheikh

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.”