Indiscretions (18 page)

Morgan was waiting for her at their favorite table in the bar, next to the cheery glow of the fire, drinking whiskey and soda. He noticed the heads turn as she paused at the entrance, smiling as she caught his eye. He’d be willing to bet that she didn’t even know that every male in the room had turned to admire her. That was one of the nicest things about Vennie, she was so unaware of her own beauty. Tonight she looked different; she was walking a little more slowly, a little more self-consciously, and her glance was not her usual frank gaze. She looked tempting, damn it! It hadn’t been easy resisting his natural impulses all week and now here she was looking as lovely as a wild violet and smelling of summer meadows with that sexy Lolita look. Jesus, what was she trying to do to him—?

Vennie kissed his cheek as he stood to greet her, sliding into the seat next to him in a gale of bluebells.

“I like it,” said Morgan, coughing as it engulfed him. “That scent you’re wearing, I mean.”

Venetia gave him her best sexy glance. “Do you?” she murmured, wishing it were called something like Passion Flower instead of Bluebell.

Morgan stared at her in amazement. What had got into her? “Do you feel all right?” he asked solicitously. “You’re not too tired, are you?”

Oh, God, I’m obviously not doing this right, worried Venetia, he thinks I’m
tired
and I thought I was looking
sexy!

“Of course I’m not tired—I’m not tired
all
the time, you know, Morgan!”

“No. No, of course not. Well, then, how about a drink? Your usual champagne cocktail?”

Venetia sipped her cocktail, wishing she were sophisticated enough to drink martinis or vodka gimlets, or some
other exotic drink that she knew would only make her feel sick, but might have made her seem older and more glamorous.
Worldly wise
was the right term, she thought. God, she wished she were more like Paris, she would be able to handle this scene perfectly. Why hadn’t Jenny sent
her
to the Swiss school instead of the English one! But Paris can’t cook, she told herself defensively—and Paris doesn’t need to, she replied, she probably gets taken out to grand restaurants every single night by wonderful, sophisticated men!

“Are you bored?”

“What?” Venetia dropped her pose and took his hand. “Oh, no, of course I’m not, whatever made you think that?”

“Well, you were just sort of staring around and not saying anything, and that’s not at all like you.”

Venetia grinned. “You’re quite right,” she agreed, “it’s not! Anyway, I’m starving, aren’t you? I’m going to have the snails again tonight.”

“I thought we might have some caviar to start,” said Morgan. “I’ve ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon to be put on ice.”

“Wonderful, I’ll have the snails after.”

Morgan laughed. “Come on, then, finish up your drink.”

The caviar was delicious, the champagne bliss, and the strawberries and cream the ultimate luxury a snowbound winter landscape could provide. Morgan was Morgan, thought Vennie as they danced the night away in a comprehensive tour of every disco in town, and she was Venetia—they were two people who really liked each other, they enjoyed each other’s company. It was probably love.
This
was how it should feel, it should be fun and laughter, holding hands and slow-dancing. Maybe they were too young for all that high passion stuff. Romance was all you needed, romance and laughter.

Morgan was longing to wrap his arms around her, to tell her that he wanted her, that he loved her, but it was too soon. She was such a kid; look at the way she was enjoying herself. He’d spent evenings like this with many other girls, and by this time they’d been wrapped around him, as ready as he was for what was to come; but with Vennie it couldn’t be like that, he’d cool it, play the gentle lover until she was ready. That was the way to win her, he was sure.

7

The entire floor of the atelier was covered in clean white sheets. Paris, barefooted, in black jeans and sweatshirt, knelt in the center pinning silvery ruffles down the long, steel-colored satin skirt the model was wearing. The girl, who was naked from the waist up, shivered slightly, noticing the goosebumps on her bare arm as she raised it to check her watch.

“Paris, it’s freezing in here,” she complained. “I’m gonna catch pneumonia if you don’t hurry up.”

Her thick Texan twang rang through the room, and Paris sighed. In her opinion all models should keep their
mouths firmly shut before they put their very large feet in them. All Finola had to do today was stand there while she pinned the garments on her, and even then she was twitchy as hell.

“I’ll do the jacket next,” she told her. “I’m just waiting for Berthe to finish the lapels.”

Berthe Mercier, the special fine seamstress, sat at a long table in the corner, painstakingly hand-stitching the long curving lapels of a satin jacket. Another, younger, woman sat beside her, hemming a wide linen skirt.

“It’s already half past four,” grumbled Finola, “and I’m supposed to be at … somewhere else by six.”

“Where else?” demanded Paris. “You didn’t get here until three and I thought you had the whole day free.”

“Yes … well, I did. But six is the evening, isn’t it?”

Paris finished pinning the line of ruffles on the thigh-high slit at the back of the skirt. “Okay. What time will you be here tomorrow?” She stood back to examine the effect.

“I’m not sure. I’ll call you and let you know.”

Paris eyed the model speculatively. Something was up, she felt it. Finola was playing some kind of game—but what?

“Look, Finola,” she said, adjusting the ruffle just a touch on the left, “I’ve created all the evening dresses on
you
. I only need another couple of days and we’ll be finished. Now, what time will you be coming?”

Berthe Mercier brought over the satin jacket. “It’s finished, mademoiselle.”

Paris examined the lapels carefully. “That looks wonderful, Berthe—as usual.”

Berthe Mercier had worked for all the best Paris houses since she was fifteen and she was moonlighting now to help pay her daughter’s fees at ballet school. The training seemed endless and there were so many extra classes, but still, it was worth it—Naomi would be a star
one day. As would Paris Haven; she had the confident touch of a master and her cutting was impeccable.

Finola shrugged the jacket over her thin shoulders, fastening it below the waist with the steel lozenge that was its single button. Its fluid lines skimmed her supple body, touching at exactly the right places. The satin fabric and the exaggerated curve of the lapels were a delicious contrast to the masculinity of the color and the cut, as was the surprising flirt of ruffles at the back. Finola inspected her reflection in the big mirror on the wall opposite. The jacket left a great deal of her front exposed and she pulled at it petulantly.

“It looks terrific, Paris,” she said, moving around in it experimentally, “but I’m afraid if I move too much my tits’ll fall out.”

“Finola, if you had any tits they still wouldn’t fall out, not the way that jacket’s cut.”

Despite herself Finola laughed.

“Touché, as they say here,” she replied. “And now can I go?”

“Where? To get a boob job?” Didier de Maubert slammed the door behind him, laughing as he caught Finola’s glare. “Sorry, sorry,
chérie
, I didn’t mean it. I just heard the end of the conversation, that’s all.”

Didier de Maubert, nattily attired in the white suit that was his uniform summer and winter, was Paris’s colleague, assistant, and general dogsbody. Which meant that he took care of the “business end,” leaving Paris to get on with creating the line. Didier wrote the checks and kept an eye on their finances; he found contacts for buttons, threads, suedes, and satin and got the best prices. He hounded suppliers, fought with the models, he praised the seamstresses, fixed the coffee, made sure Paris ate dinner every night, and dried her tears when she cried from fatigue and the pressure.

Didier had known Paris since she was seventeen and
studying design at art school. He had been twenty-three then and had just started a little ready-to-wear line of summer pants and shirts. The clothes had had a jaunty nautical look that had caught on with the summer holiday-wear trade and he’d found himself suddenly successful in his first venture. Since then “Didi’s Designs” had had its ups and downs; some seasons he was successful, others less so, but he had managed to keep his head above water in a fickle business, and the friendship with Paris that had started in a sidewalk café patronized by them both had held firm.

It had, of course, remained only a friendship because Didi was, as the gossip columnists phrased it, “a confirmed bachelor.” He told Paris long ago that it was probably because his sexual interests were of the alternative sort that their friendship had lasted. “With a woman as beautiful as you,” he’d told her, “any other man would have become your lover before now.”

Didi had watched Paris’s progress—or lack of it—from the time she emerged from the safe cocoon of art college and the frustrations of the couture houses to try to make it on her own. He’d listened to her worries about money and he’d offered to put in a word for her at any of the big ready-to-wear houses that were always on the lookout for innovative new designers, but she’d been afraid of being swallowed up in that vast, impersonal world, of losing her touch and her individuality by giving it too soon to someone else.

Had Didier ever had sufficient capital to spare he would have financed Paris’s couture line himself, but there had never been enough to capitalize a second business. When Paris had returned from Hollywood with her story and her sisters’ ten thousand dollars and her ambitions, Didi had offered to help.

Didi slung onto a rail the plastic-swathed garments he’d just picked up from the specialist outworkers.

“Here’s something to cheer you up,” he called.

Paris pulled off the plastic covers and examined them.

“Didi, they look wonderful.”

The row of long linen skirts—oyster sashed with peach suede, frosty-blue with violet, gray with amber—hung next to toning silk blouses cut like wide-cuffed sweatshirts. Pants in the same heavy linen, cropped at the calf, were to be worn with the oversized suede jackets. Even on the rail the clothes looked young and exuberant, and Paris’s spirits began to lift.

“That’s the first lot completely finished,” she commented. “Thank God. I was beginning to think nothing ever would be.”

“I told you it would all work out.” Didi grinned, looking at his watch. “Paris, we must check on the accessories, and then we have to make a final decision on the location for the show. We just can’t leave it any longer.”

They had whittled down the choice of venue for showing the collection to two places—one an uninspired salon in a modern hotel that had the advantage of being close to the nerve center of Paris fashion, and the other an extraordinary old Art Nouveau hotel she’d discovered just behind Les Halles, the old wholesale food market of Paris that had been transformed into a lively area filled with little boutiques, bars, and cafés. The decision would be an important one, as would the final details of the accessories, and Paris was tired of making decisions. Each outfit needed the right shoes, hats, or hair ornaments, special belts, “jeweled” pins, necklaces, bracelets, earrings—many of which she had designed herself and were being made up in tiny ateliers scattered throughout Paris. The overall design plan that Paris had carried in her head from the beginning would begin to emerge as a reality with the addition of each separate detail, and as the time grew nearer her nervousness increased. And now Finola was being difficult too! Flinging on Jenny’s
Fende fur coat she followed Didi down the stairs and into his white 450 Mercedes, double parked with a ticket on it at the curb.

“Merde,”
said Didi, cheerfully shoving the ticket to join the others in the glove compartment. Tickets were one of the necessary pains of city living. The alternative of actually finding a parking lot or even searching for a legal space to park never crossed his mind—it would have meant walking in this filthy weather, and Didi would never do that.

Didi was the Frenchest-looking Frenchman Paris knew. He had the long pale face and sad dark eyes of a medieval saint combined with the strong curved nose and underlip of a de Gaulle. But he was attractive, always immaculately turned out in his smart white suits—worn in summer with dark blue T-shirts and in winter with pastel blue or pink shirt and tie. From Didi’s stories she knew his lovelife as intimately as her own—or the lack of it. Who had the time for love affairs? There was only work, and more work. And that’s all she wanted. Didi was the only person in the world she’d told about Amadeo Vitrazzi.

“Wait,
chérie
, just wait,” he’d told her comfortingly. “When you’re a star we’ll buy our silks from Derome and you can tell Signor Vitrazzi—when he asks smilingly for your order—that his fabrics are not good enough. Then you’ll send him back to Olympe Avallon.”

“Where first?” she asked as Didi threaded his way through the ferocious early-evening traffic.