A huge, multistoried, marble-pillared rotunda served as his entryway. It was decorated with gilt mirrors, antique statues and hand-carved mahogany settees. A painted mural dominated the domed ceiling, while chandeliers, suspended on gold chains, fairly dripped with glowing crystal.

Past a center table that boasted a massive fresh flower arrangement, the tiled mosaic floor opened into a wide hallway. The hallway itself was an oil painting gallery, inviting guests to browse their way through the center of the palace. Doorways to the left and the right revealed a library, several sitting rooms, an office and an arboretum.

Growing up with her widowed father in a Seattle suburb, Julia hadn’t crossed paths with the wealthy. She knew they lived on the lakefront and went to private schools in Bellevue. Other than that, she’d always assumed they were just like her, but with pools and chauffeurs.

Not true.

When she’d started hanging out with the Thoroughbred racing crowd, she’d learned the rich were closed-minded and paranoid. One racehorse owner refused to eat anything that wasn’t from France. Another put an armed guard on his poodle. Yet another was rumored to carry a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills, in case he wanted to make an untraceable purchase.

It seemed to Julia that the richer people were, the stranger they became. Given this house and its furnishings, along with the extensive grounds and security, Harrison was saddled with a lot of eccentricities.

The end of the wide passage opened into a great hall. The room boasted sweeping staircases, along with banks of windows and glass doors that led to a veranda overlooking a lighted, emerald lawn. Scattered palm trees waved their way to a white sand beach that met the rolling azure waters of the Persian Gulf.

“I really need to make a phone call,” Julia told him, feeling more than a little self-conscious in her stained skirt and wrinkled white blouse as the crisply dressed, ubiquitous staff members moved silently through the rooms.