Pearl (The Pearl Series) (22 page)

“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked, not even wanting to know what strings she’d pulled.

“A little birdy told me so,” she said enigmatically. “You’re looking good, Alexandre Chevalier. Truly, you must be one of the most handsome men I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, including my co-stars. Your eyes—what is it about them? They almost rival mine.”

I chuckled. Indira was always good for a laugh.
To work with?
“Well, if you consider the charity work, I guess—”

“Not the charity. You signed that oh, so lucrative piece of paper giving me power of attorney in India with all things HookedUp,” she said coolly, smoothing her braid. I stared at her. She was very composed, very
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth
. Her eyes were wide with innocence. Where was this leading?

I sat down next to her, my blood rising, my mind shuffling through possible scenarios with utmost confusion. “No, Indira, I never signed anything of the sort. What are you on about?”

“Oh, but you did. HookedUp is already making waves there and I’m the director.”

The flight attendant came by with some hors d’oeuvres and champagne, breaking up our conversation.
What the fuck was Indira playing at?

“Indira, the only thing you have power of attorney of concerning me, is our charity. A charity which is a
non-profit
organization. A charity which, I hope to God, you will not exploit for your own coffers.”

She leaned towards me and, putting her hand on my knee, uncomfortably close to my crotch, whispered, “It’s so easy to forge a signature. All you have to do is press the original document against a window with your own on top, and trace over it. Easy peasy pudding and pie. I swear, nobody can tell the two apart. It’s even been signed by a notaire, ‘witnessed’ by two lawyers. I have contacts in high places, as you can imagine. And it’s too late now for you to turn the clock back. Of course, if you and I were
real
partners in the true sense of the word, you’d be in on it fifty/fifty.”

I laughed. “You’re just pulling my leg. Trying to get a reaction out of me.”
The woman was nuts. Why did I attract crazy women into my life?

She arched a dark eyebrow and smirked.

“Indira, Sophie and I sold our India rights of HookedUp to your cousin. I’m out. You, yourself, invested your own money into the HookedUp franchise in India. You wouldn’t cut your nose off to spite your own pretty face. You wouldn’t jeopardize it. I don’t know why you’re playing this silly game. I
got
my payment,” and I lowered my voice, “I got the gems. That was my deal. Even if you did forge my signature, which I doubt very much, it isn’t going to help you.”

“Oh, but it will. You watch. My fat little cousin doesn’t have full proof of purchase. I do. The company is mine.”

“Indira, you’re playing with fire. He’s not a man to cross.”
She wouldn’t be so crazy….would she?
My head told me she was spurting a load of nonsense just to rile me, but then I sat up. That cousin could really cause trouble.
Fuck, maybe I do need my bodyguard, after all!
“Really, Indira, if you did what you say you did, you will have gotten yourself into a big, tangled web of a mess.”

She adjusted the folds of her sari. “My cousin loves me. In fact, he’s
in
love with me. Always has been. I’m family. He’ll believe me when I say I was unaware of your gem deal. Because it’s true. I wasn’t there. I can play dumb. He’ll think you double-crossed him.”

I closed my eyes in disbelief.
She must be lying.
Whatever, I had no idea what the repercussions would be, but somehow I knew I could end up embroiled in one, big, spicy, tandoori, Bollywood-style banquet of disaster.

Laura. Indira. Who knew? Maybe Claudine would be waiting for my plane to land in London.

I thanked the Lord that Pearl, at least, was normal.

But then a niggling doubt crept into my mind. I’d never had a relationship in my entire life with any woman who was ‘normal’—not even my mother was normal. Especially not my mother. And certainly not Sophie.

Why, I asked myself, would Pearl be any different?

Luckily, Indira had a screen test to go to at Shepperton Studios, so we parted ways as soon as we landed. As crazy as my sister drove me, I was glad that she’d be able (I hoped) to come up with some sort of solution for Indira and deal with the cousin. Indira’s story was implausible, ridiculous…

But a woman spurned is capable of revenge….history books told us so.

I had a vision of that greasy cousin of hers sending out a sniper to shoot me down, planted on a rooftop somewhere as I went out for an innocent stroll in the park. That part I believed…that he was in love with her. Those large families with cousins and aunts and great uncles and weddings that went on for a whole week, often had incestuous blood snaking through their veins.

I’d have to be alert and on the ball.

18

T
he purpose of my London visit was to meet an up-and-coming, twenty-three-year-old video game designer, and talk business. I was getting into the video games market, where budgets were bigger than blockbuster feature films and big money could be made. I was a secret player, had been since I was a young boy, although I kept that side of things under wraps. Now, at least, I could use my vice as an excuse. ‘Research,’ I could say. Boys will be boys. Or rather, men will be boys. When it comes to toys, no man’s a grown-up, no matter how hard he pretends.

I also had a meeting with the Minister of Finance from the British government, some of his aides and Sophie. We needed more leeway in Britain. As much as I had threatened Sophie with getting out of HookedUp, I decided to hold off—give her another chance. She’d been making amends with Pearl and her effort seemed genuine. The wedding gown gift proved it. And she’d promised not to let shits like that Russian arms dealer anywhere near our business, so for the moment, I was cool with things.

But I also had other stuff to attend to in England. Of a more personal nature.

Over the last few weeks, I’d listened to several frantic messages from Laura on my voicemail. At first, I ignored them, but as time went on, I decided that I had to deal with the situation. She was threatening to come to New York and I needed to nip that possibility in the bud. She was desperate to see me face-to-face, said she needed to discuss something that couldn’t be resolved by phone. She’d been on holiday to my house in Provence, expecting the whole time for me to show up. When I didn’t, she really started hounding me.

Poor Laura was obviously hurting. Rationally, my brain told me that it wasn’t my problem. Laura was the one who split up with me, dumped me for James—left me to nurse my broken heart. It had been years ago so I was completely over it, but she had no right to play the underdog now. Yet the sympathetic side of me was whispering a different story in my ear: reminding me that she was disabled, only just recently out of a wheelchair. She’d suffered immeasurably and she needed a friend. Since I’d met Pearl, I’d been distant; Laura rarely crossed my mind, but inexplicably I still felt a sense of guilt. So I agreed to meet up. She was going to come and see me at The Connaught where I was staying.

As I was mulling all this over, taking a shortcut through St. James’s Park on my way back to the hotel, like a bolt of lightening, I remembered my niece. I’d been so wrapped up in Pearl, and Sophie’s dodgy business antics over the past couple of months that I’d forgotten to check up on Elodie. I’d seen her around the office building in Manhattan but we hadn’t had a chance to talk. She’d asked for security so I’d provided my bodyguard to be on call for her whenever she wanted him. I’d never actually used him for myself but had him on my payroll just for good measure. Maybe, I’d be asking for his help now, though, after Indira’s shenanigans.

I called and waited for Elodie to pick up. My walk was a welcome relief, away from the city’s traffic and noise. As I looked around, I noted that there was a difference between the parks in London and Paris, a clue to the discrepancy in nature between both countries. Paris was so formal; people were forbidden to loll about the grass in the parks of central Paris—but in London you saw kids play football, dogs chasing ducks and geese, and people sprawled out sunbathing, or enjoying a picnic.

It was lunch hour and office workers were eating sandwiches and basking in the crisp autumnal sunshine, away from the confines of their stuffy offices, the tyranny of their computers and petty internal politics—the perils of a nine-to-five job. As I was listening to Elodie’s ring tone, I people-watched and dog-watched. Why wasn’t she picking up?

She finally answered. “Elodie,” I said, relieved that she hadn’t changed her number. “What took you so long? And why haven’t you called to check in?”

“I’m sorry,” she replied in a bored drawl, “just put the roses over there, would you? I’ve been busy with stuff.”

“Roses?”

“Just a delivery,” and she added quickly, “for my roommate.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay now. Things are better.”

“You’re not still scared? Not worried about being followed?”

“No, no,” and then she said with a faint giggle, “I was imagining things. Everything’s fine.”

My eye caught the view of the London Eye in the distance, peeking out above the golden and russet-colored trees. “You’re sure?” I checked again. There was something in her tone that I found disarming. A beat of silence at her end of the line was muffled by cries of geese near the park’s small lake. I thought about the position of where I stood in that moment; Buckingham Palace at one side, and at the other, the Foreign Office and 10 Downing Street where the British Prime Minister lived. I imagined several M15 spies had their meetings right here, away from bugs and walls with ears—spyware everywhere. They, too, were spying on others for a living. And I wondered, once again, if I should do my own share of espionage; have Elodie followed for her own safety, or if that was breaching her privacy too much.

Because something made me suspect that when she said that everything was okay, she was lying.

I relaxed back into the sofa of my penthouse at The Connaught, described by the hotel as, ‘London’s most luxurious home.’ I was enjoying a power nap. I have always been a fan of the nanosecond siesta—it can do wonders. There was a knock at the door. Odd, the concierge always called first and room service had already passed by that morning. I hadn’t ordered anything, hadn’t summoned the butler. I looked at my watch. Laura wasn’t due for another forty minutes. I had specifically arranged for us to meet downstairs—I didn’t want the intimacy of her being in my living quarters. I knew Laura, her persuasiveness, her doggedness. When she wanted something, she usually got it, and right now, I sensed she wanted me.

My heart started racing.
Fuck—Indira’s cousins—the London lot—Indians always have relatives in London. Perhaps a clan of them are waiting outside my door with crowbars, ready to top me off.

I called reception. “Hello, Mr. Chevalier here. Did anyone ask to come up and see me?”

“No, sir,” the concierge replied.