Satin Doll (18 page)

Sam didn’t notice. She was watching Chip’s tall figure coming up the last of the stairs. He was wearing the trousers to a blue business suit and a shirt and tie; the tie was loosened. His long fingers worked to close the buttons of a shirt that had the tails hanging out over his belt in back.
 

Sam was finding that the sight of that bold, chiseled face with its sardonic mouth had become engraved in her consciousness. She’d gone wild in this man’s arms. She’d responded to him sexually as she never had with Jack, and she was so rattled at that moment that she felt as though she couldn’t drag enough air into her lungs to breathe.
 

She saw him tucking his shirt in, straightening the collar of his shirt. What had they been doing down there, anyway? Solange Doumer’s sleek red hair was faintly mussed. Big, sleazy Chip was straightening his tie. Good lord, they’d been making out in the office downstairs!
 

Sam stepped away from the wall, furious with herself for panicking. Chip was a damned menace. It just wasn’t her job to see that they got what they deserved; she’d have to leave that up to New York, but fooling around during working hours? They probably couldn’t keep their hands off each other!
 

“It isn’t Sophie’s fault,” Sam announced loudly. “I’m the one who called the locksmith.”
 

The directrice whirled, dark eyes glittering. Sophie turned to Sam pleadingly. “Maman says no open,” she wailed.
 

Sam looked past them into Chip’s dark, arrogant gaze. “You tell her what I said. At least get Sophie off the hook.”
 

He let his black eyes run the length of her long legs in faded jeans, taking in the tattersall shirt. Then he looked back up at her face, scrubbed and without makeup, her pale hair pulled back and secured with a rubber band at the nape of her neck. The enigmatic look lingered. “Solange says you don’t have any authority to open up the storeroom.”
 

Solange,
was it? “I’m Jackson Storm’s personal representative,” Sam said evenly, “sent here to look over his new property. That includes the storeroom.”
 

“
Ça n’existe pas, votre autorité!
” the other woman interrupted. A torrent of French appealed directly to Chip.
 

The locksmith was easing his large tool case toward the elevator. “Hey, say something to him,” Sam cried. “Don’t let him go, I need him!”
 

“Are you talking to me?” Chip’s dark eyebrow shot up. “I don’t have anything to do with this.”
 

Sam knew she was making a mistake by taking on Solange Doumer’s dear friend, but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes went pointedly to his loosened necktie. “Just what the hell
do
you have to do with around here?”
 

He lifted his hand very calmly to straighten the tie. “I’m a salesman, love. Louvel’s is one of my accounts.”
 

“A salesman? No kidding!” She put her arm out quickly to block the locksmith’s exit from the elevator, but the little man ducked under it. “Great! I’d like to have a conference with you sometime and find out just what it is you’re selling around here!”
 

Chip gave her a look that was wickedly explicit. “Any time, love, any time. You just name the place.”
 

Sam sucked in her breath. She wanted to punch Sleazy Cheap right in the mouth; he had it coming. On the other hand, under the impact of those eyes, that husky voice, she felt a rush of something so inexplicable that she actually trembled. And it wasn’t fear.
 

He saw it, too. “You don’t need a locksmith, love.” The dark eyes raked her meaningfully. “If you need something opened up, I’m sure I can take care of it.”
 

Sophie was watching the exchange, her startled expression showing that she was catching a word or two. Madame Doumer had gone after the locksmith, flapping her hands at him angrily to shoo him back down the stairs.
 

“I can handle it,” Sam gritted. She was fed up to the teeth with both of them. They’d made a big mistake, ganging up on her. “Believe me, I’ll take care of this myself!”
 

“You’ll never get that lock off without a hacksaw.” Chip lifted his black brows again wickedly and grinned.
 

“Then dammit, I’ll get a hacksaw!” She turned to go back downstairs to the design room. She tried to think of some parting shot. “And don’t forget to tell your girlfriend what I said, will you?” she shouted.
 

It would be worth hanging around Louvel’s for a while just to see those two get what was coming to them.

Chapter Ten

“Naughty shows,” Alain des Baux announced as he held the door of the taxi for Sam. “Take your pick.”
 

They had left the Lamborghini valet-parked at Maxim’s and taken a taxicab to Montmartre, and now Sam could see why. No one in their right mind would leave a $150,000 sports car on the street in the Place Pigalle even if one could find a parking place. Paris’s nightclub area was just as garish and neon-filled, just as tough-looking as New York’s Forty-second Street and Times Square.
 

The sidewalks were full of milling crowds on a hot spring night and, she noticed as Alain took her by the arm and steered her across the street, there were plenty of loitering night people watching the tourists from the doorways. Pigalle’s thoroughfare was jammed with Americans. From the way heads turned, Sam had the uncomfortable feeling she and Alain were a little too conspicuously dressed, especially since the man with her was wearing an impeccable Caraceni charcoal silk suit and a massive Cartier gold wristwatch. She wore the After Dark Sam Laredo coordinates again and under the satin rancher’s jacket she was wearing a silver sequined tank top that had been appropriate for Maxim’s but suddenly seemed a little too bare in Pigalle. Samantha ducked her head, hurrying along, wishing they were off the streets.
 

Alain didn’t seem to be bothered by Pigalle’s raucous street scenes. He pressed her arm to his side reassuringly. “Are you afraid of being recognized?” he smiled.
 

“I’m not a celebrity, you know that.” She lengthened her stride, wanting to get away from the jostling tourists. “Most of these people have never seen Sam Laredo jeans commercials, thank God.”
 

“Umm, perhaps.” Alain turned his head to look down at her. “Nevertheless, you are attracting stares just because you are beautiful. Just as they stared at Maxim’s.”
 

It was true—they
had
turned heads even in blasé Maxim’s. The procession they’d made through the restaurant’s front area, led by yet another obsequious maître d’hôtel, had been nothing short of a sensation but Sam had assumed the fanfare was mainly for the man she was with. Alain des Baux seemed to generate more respectful excitement, especially from headwaiters and doormen, than visiting royalty. If she hadn’t believed Brooksie when she’d said Alain des Baux was a French duke, one of Paris’s leading socialites, she did now. It was a relief when they’d taken dinner in a private dining room upstairs on Maxim’s third floor, where Sam, at least, didn’t have to endure more craning heads and audible comments.
 

Sam shot a sidewise glance at the man beside her as he guided her at a fast pace down the Place Pigalle. She was learning a few things about Alain des Baux. On the restaurant boat they’d dined in luxurious isolation, surrounded by screens. At Maxim’s they’d been whisked upstairs and out of sight to a fabulous, candlelit dining room of their own. This was a man, obviously, who valued his privacy. That was even more impressive than all the attention Jack Storm demanded in public places.
 

“You have a choice,” he was saying now. “Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bérgères have spectacular floor shows, tremendous costumes and lots of showgirls with naked breasts. Which are not,” he added, dodging a souvenir seller offering a tray of gilt metal replicas of the Eiffel Tower, “that much of a novelty—the naked breasts, that is. Considering today’s films and what is offered on television.”
 

Sam hung on to his arm as he plowed through the crowds, trying to keep up with him. “What other choices have we got? Besides bare breasts and floor shows?”
 

“This,” he said, pulling her to a stop. They were in front of a tiny theater that had no poster displays or show cards but only the name, Theatre Adonis, on the marquee. A line of American tourists was being steered through the entrance by a tour guide.
 

Alain’s hands turned her so that he could look down into her face. “You chose the orchids,” he murmured softly, “so here we are. The category for sightseeing tonight is naughty shows, do you remember?” His beautiful gold-flecked eyes had a familiar mischievous expression. “But you have them in New York,” he reminded her.
 

Sam looked through glass doors and saw the tiny, rather innocuous lobby. “Yes, but I’ve never seen one.” Two years in New York, even as Jackson Storm’s Sam Laredo, didn’t cover everything. She licked her lips a little nervously. “Ah, I’m really not into chains and whips, that sort of thing. I mean, nothing—” She swallowed. “Ah, violent or kinky.”
 

He laughed. “Good God, what do you expect of me, beautiful lady? I said naughty shows, not Madame Tussaud’s.”
 

He turned her face up to him, tipping her chin with his finger. As he looked down into Sam’s flushed face, her hesitant look partly concealed by a brush of heavily mascaraed lashes, he gave her one of his charming smiles. “I’ll take care of you.” He ignored the crowds pushing around them to brush her lower lip softly with a feather touch of his thumb. “You are unbelievably enchanting,” he murmured. “That beautiful, glittering—
vital
—face, it haunts me.”
 

She melted when he looked at her like that. But Sam was also remembering how he had pulled back from her that night in his car. Alain des Baux gave out mixed signals; he kept her totally confused. “Naughty shows, remember?” she murmured.
 

He sighed. “Yes, of course. Naughty shows, no whips and chains, nothing kinky.” He took her arm.
 

They stood in line to get their tickets and received no special treatment other than the avid stare of the ticket seller. The theater was even tinier than Sam expected. The tiers of seats rose steeply and were crammed together. Some of the audience were even sitting on the steps in the aisles.
 

“Do you understand much French?” When Sam shook her head Alain said, “It will be in French, it usually is. However, I will translate for you.”
 

She turned her head to stare at him. How many times had he been to sex shows, anyway? He didn’t look the type, but looks were deceiving.
 

As though he had read her mind, he said in a low voice, “I came here as a kid. It was sort of a rite of adolescence to see one of these things. Now I take friends from Stamford when they are in Paris.”
 

The audience was mixed, mostly Americans. But directly in front of them were two rows of Indian men, and farther down was a crowd of Japanese, also male. Sam slid down a little in her seat. The tiny theater was so crowded that even if she wanted to get up and go out later, she knew she couldn’t; they were there for the whole show, kinky or not.
 

Alain took her hand firmly in his and tucked it under his elbow. “Don’t be nervous. If there are chains and whips, I’ll drag you out of here, I promise. Even if I have to fight the entire sex-crazed tourist population of Pigalle.”
 

The theater lights went down and threadbare pink velvet curtains jerked back to show the dilapidated set of a bedroom.
 

At first it was only embarrassing.
 

A young woman strolled on in a tight sweater and skirt and stood center stage, delivering a rather long speech in rapid, slangy Parisian as she looked over the footlights. The audience sat tensely, most of them, like Sam, not understanding French.
 

“She is saying,” Alain whispered in her ear, “that she lives with a lesbian girlfriend, but she is bored with their sex life and has begun to fantasize about having a love affair with a man.”
 

The girl strolled to a cabinet against one wall and dragged out a life-sized rag doll dressed in men’s clothes and propped it in a chair. She unzipped the doll’s trousers and an awkward-looking plastic representation of male sex organs popped into view. Sam slid down a little farther in her seat. The girl took off her skirt, revealing that she wore no underwear, and positioned her lower body over the rag man’s plastic apparatus. She lowered herself rather gingerly onto it. Sam closed her eyes.
 

“She is saying,” Alain whispered, “that she has to make do with this fantasy lover she’s made out of men’s clothes in place of the real—”
 

“Never mind,” Sam moaned, covering her eyes with one hand. After a few seconds she peeked through her fingers.
 

Suddenly a tall blonde woman strode onto the stage. The girl jumped up guiltily, and the blonde stared at the effigy, obviously angry, her hands propped on her hips. She was a better actress than the girl—at least her rage was fairly believable. Both women began screaming in French.