Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (37 page)

“You think he’d play chicken with you.” My voice was too breathy, too shallow. “His anger would get the better of his protectiveness, and it would end up as a showdown. You could end up with nothing at all to show for all your efforts, because he could refuse to play. But you knew I’d be scared. You knew I’d beg him. You want me to do it for you. You want me to work him, because you know I can. You know I will, and you know he’ll give in.”

I got her predator’s smile for that. “Very good. He thinks he’s hard, but he’s got such a soft spot, doesn’t he, if it’s touched just right? You should know, because that’s exactly what you’ve been doing. He’s so determined to play the protector and provider. He knows he failed me. It’s been eating at him for fourteen years. He won’t be able to bear it if he fails you, too. So come on, little Hope. Help me help you. Ten million dollars and it all goes away, and you can be sweet and innocent again, and . . .” She leaned forward, suddenly, put an index finger under my chin, and lifted it. “And nobody will ever have to know. Our secret.”

With that, she leaned forward and
kissed
me. On the mouth.

I scrambled away and stood, shaking with rage, and she gave a faint smile, picked up her bag, and stood.

“Very nice,” she purred. “Very sweet. Pity Hemi doesn’t want to play anymore, really. There are so many things you’ve never done, aren’t there? Five days, darling. After that, it’s twenty million for another five days. And after
that?
I’ll see you both in court.”

Hemi

“That’s what we’ve got,” Henry Delacroix, my marketing director, was telling the group. It was five o’clock in Paris, the show that would launch my most ambitious line was happening tomorrow, and I needed to get out of this meeting and start on the latest round of cocktail parties in and around the Louvre convention center, the epicenter of the earthquake that was Paris Fashion Week. During which the most important action, as always, happened at the bar.

Or maybe I just needed to get out and move. I had myself under control, but the effort was getting harder every day.

You didn’t create buzz by doing the same old thing, I reminded myself, and in the “risk and reward” equation, the risk was the hard part. Most people couldn’t cope with it, but I could. I did. Somebody had said once that life was either a daring adventure or nothing at all, and I reckoned that was about right.

Helen Keller. She’d said that, and she’d been blind and deaf. Nothing left to lose, and everything to dare. Who wanted to live scared? There was no “later.” There was only now.

“Right,” I said. “I want to see the final seating chart after you make those changes, and the final press list as well. Have those to me by morning.”

Henry nodded, but didn’t answer, and neither did Hope’s friend Nathan, in charge of the press for this event. Instead, they were staring into space.

I suppressed a pang of irritation. My temper was all over the shop this week.

I didn’t do mood swings. They were unprofitable. I’d been having them anyway. There was so much riding on all of this. The show. Hope. The baby. The new line. Hope.

I was swiveling in my chair on the thought, following the direction of everybody’s gaze, and there she was. Walking into the room—no,
striding.
Pulling her suitcase behind her and looking fresh, breathless, and absolutely vibrant in a swingy chocolate-brown cashmere cardigan, fawn trousers, and boots, all of which I’d bought her on that day in Auckland. We’d chosen well, too, because she looked fantastic.

She’d come to see my show. She’d come to be with me.

I was standing, opening my mouth to speak, but she got there first. “I need to talk to you,” she said, her body all but quivering. “Right now.”

The electricity was prickling in my arms, the blood roaring in my veins.
Fight or flight.
It was going to be “fight.” It was always “fight.” Especially now. This would be “fight” to the end.

“Meeting’s over,” I told the group, and somehow, my voice was still level.

The group filed out, and I caught the curious look Nathan cast Hope. The curious looks they were
all
casting her. And me, of course. None of which mattered.

I was shutting the door on them, then turning to Hope. “Right, then. Sit down and tell me.” My voice, my body went through the motions while the rest of me tried to separate, tried to escape from this reality, even as I forced them back.

Face it. Deal with it.
I could take anything and come out on top. Hadn’t I proved it, over and over?

Not this. Not Hope. Anybody but Hope. Anything but this.

She didn’t sit down. She pulled her phone out of her purse, slapped it onto the table, and said,
“You
sit down.”

I didn’t. But I listened. No choice. I listened, and the blood left my head.

Anika, then Hope. Anika baiting, taunting. Then my voice, and if the adrenaline had flowed before? Now, it was flooding me. Drowning me. The hot rage was there, impossible to control, and I spun away and said, “No. Like
hell.”

“Shh,” Hope said, and her hand was on my arm, pulling me back. The excitement was still thrumming almost visibly inside her, and she was
smiling
. “Wait.”

Anika asking for ten million dollars. Anika threatening, and Hope sounding cowed. Sounding scared. Sounding beaten.

It ended at last, and Hope allowed the silence to fill the air for a few seconds before she said, “Call Walter and tell him to take that prenuptial agreement I know he’s still yapping at you about and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine, because your future wife just saved you ten million dollars. Twenty million dollars. A
hundred
million dollars. Tell him she just used your credit card on a last-minute first-class plane ticket from New Zealand to Paris, and she isn’t sorry. And that she’s going to be buying new furniture for our apartment, furniture she
likes,
because she’s earned it. And while you’re at it? Tell him to stick a fork in Anika, because she’s done. Her lawsuit is going to be
gone.
She can leak all the tapes she wants, but she’ll be on her way to prison for extortion and revenge porn and burglary and perjury and everything else Walter can think of. She can tell the world about us, and I don’t care. Every man who heard that would be jealous of you, and just about every woman would wish she were me. And
I. Do. Not. Care.
Yes, we had kinky phone sex. Yes, we talked about our fantasies. It was great, and it’s the twenty-first century, and we don’t live in New Zealand. I’m nobody’s innocent little doll, and I’m not going to die whimpering.”

I was still so angry, the top of my skull was ready to blow off. And I was laughing, too. Both of them together. For once, I wasn’t under control. Not one bit. “Sweetheart. Slow down and tell me. How did you do that?’

“If you’re going to attack a naked woman in a locker room,” she said, her smile starting to bloom, “if you’re going to play your illegal recordings for her, you might want to check whether she’s recording
you
when she keeps going to her locker. Of course, to do that, you might have to consider that she could be smarter than you. She could be tougher than you, too, even if she’s little and blonde. Even if she’s a six and you’re a ten. You might have to consider that nice girls can fight. You might even have to believe that nice girls can
win.
And we do. You bet we do. Nice girls kick butt.”

“Kick ass.” I took her in my arms. There was nothing else I could possibly have done. “Nice girls kick ass. Yes, they do.”

The next day, Hope stood in the wings with me. She didn’t touch me, and she didn’t say a word, but I could feel the excitement in her tense body as clearly as I could feel my own.

When the lights dimmed and the haunting notes of a Maori bone flute filled the room, the audience stilled. I’d let the music go seconds longer than normal, and it worked. It was a whisper, not a shout.

You can whisper,
Hope had said. What happened when somebody whispered? People listened harder.

The first model walked out, a tall, full-figured, bronze-skinned woman with her dark hair tied back in its Maori knot. The rich orange dress was caught on one shapely hip, gathered around her lush body, flattering and emphasizing her curves.

There was a murmur from the crowd, but I couldn’t tell. When a model-slim blonde followed, though, her short dress falling to the middle of one thigh defined by muscle and another leg that ended in a prosthesis, the murmur got louder. She turned at the bottom of the catwalk with all the poise and confidence of a fashion veteran—or just a veteran—and revealed the tattoo on her bare left shoulder.

Army Strong.

That was when the applause took on a different quality.

On they came, tall and short, curvy and slim, black and brown and yellow and white. A rainbow of women radiating strength and confidence and feminine pride, all of them lending their beauty to the clothes they wore.

My clothes. My line. Soft fabrics cut to flatter and enhance, to embrace every curve of a woman’s body, in the colors of my homeland. The soft creams and browns of the earth and the beach, the vibrant red of a pohutukawa blossom, the orange of a bird of paradise flower. And running through, around, behind everything, the endless shades of green of the New Zealand bush and the ever-changing, variegated blues of the sea. As subtle and as bold, as shy and as spectacular as a woman.

And the footwear, the funky, rocker-chick shoes and boots Hope had inspired me to add. The hard against the soft, the unexpected punch of a bold statement coming from a gentle woman. The courage to give when it was hardest, the strength to bend without breaking.

The clapping turned to whistles, and I could feel the energy pulsing back from the barely-seen crowd as clearly as if I could measure it. It was new. It was different. It was working.

It wasn’t just me, either. Not anymore. It was everybody standing in the wings behind me, and everybody who wasn’t here today. The entire entity that was Te Mana.

He waka eke noa.
A canoe we are all in with no exception. The canoe we were all paddling together.

Our show, which had taken so many months and person-hours and thinking and changing and arguing, all the late nights and moments of despair, and the renewed determination that kept you going when you wanted to give up—it passed in a flash. In a heartbeat. It seemed like five minutes later when the petite blonde, her curves as subtle as Hope’s, came on stage wearing the final piece, and the crowd fell silent again for one glorious moment.

The wedding gown was unlike anything I’d ever designed. Unabashedly romantic and undeniably fragile, from the form-fitting, barely-there underdress to the white-on-white flowers embroidered onto the fabric of the sheer gauze overskirt that clung to below the waist, then billowed out below. The delicate fabric that embraced the model’s arms and bodice spoke of softness and tenderness, and that full overskirt promised a bride who would dance in your arms and make you want to hold her forever. It was a dress to make a woman feel treasured and precious and perfect, a dress that was special enough for the most important commitment two people could make.