Satin Doll (20 page)

She saw him and stopped dead at the curb on the far side of the street.
Bells ringing,
he thought.
Now come on across at the light like a good girl
. He sat back down in the seat and slid his long legs under the table, trying to look relaxed.
 

She was supposed to approach him as though they were lovers, as though he’d been waiting there under the café awning for her to show up. At that hour there were several couples at other tables twined around each other with that enthusiasm for necking in public that was typically French and that, as an Englishman, he always found slightly annoying.
 

She wended her way toward the back of the café and slid into the seat beside him. She immediately twisted, wrapping one arm around his neck, murmuring something he didn’t catch. Then her mouth on his was cool and wet, and not at all unpleasant.
 

For a moment Chip wondered if the lovely redhead in his arms even knew whom she was kissing. Her tongue ran along his upper lip sweetly and she pressed that beautiful, too-thin body of hers against him almost reflexively. Without thinking, his arms tightened around her. The next moment her hand slid between their bodies, against his shirt.
 

Chip shifted slightly and stroked down her shoulder, then across her front as if cupping her breast. As the tips of his fingers touched hers, she rather shakily passed several glassine packages from her palm into his.
 

“Good girl,” he said against her mouth. He murmured a few endearments in French to make it look honest. “Now hold still while I pass you the money.”
 

Sophie tilted her head back to look at him with sultry, dreamy eyes. “Cheap?” she whispered doubtfully.
 

Jesus, he’d lost her, he thought, staring down at her beautiful pale face. Frankly, it was a miracle she’d made it to the café. They were stupid as hell to use her to deal, but this time she was doing it as a special favor to him. He fought back the guilt and the knowledge that she was the one who would suffer if he screwed up. He had to try to help her keep her mind on what she was doing.
 

“
Ma bien aimée
,” he said into her lips. But he was telling her silently, Pay attention so I can give you the money, love. Because they sure as hell don’t want you back without it. “
Ne veux-tu pas l’argent?
” he prodded her.
 

The roll of francs was in his shirt pocket. He was getting it out, only she wouldn’t keep her hand open between them to take it. Instead, the woman in his arms was stroking the front of his shirt lovingly. Then her fingers were at the warm skin of his throat, finally lifting to wind around the back of his head. Christ, she wanted him to kiss her again. Like mother, like daughter, he thought sourly. The whole transaction was blocked unless he could get her to stop it.
 

He lifted his head and looked over Sophie’s shoulder, hoping to pry her slightly away from him without the outward signs of a struggle. He saw a cab waiting for the traffic light. A woman’s face at the window looked back at him, unerringly picking him out from the rest of the tables under the awning.
 

That damned beautiful face—this would have to happen. But how could you forget that forthright look, the slightly tilted nose, the mouth he’d kissed that night, the woman he’d made love to with more passion than he’d ever intended?
 

And she’d recognized him.
 

He saw the silvery eyes widen just as the taxi pulled away from the light. Since the redhead he was holding was nuzzling his neck blissfully, her profile turned to that side, naturally she’d recognized Sophie, too.
 

Chapter Eleven

Sam put a fresh sheet of paper into the publicity office’s ancient typewriter and sat back in her chair to rub her aching eyes.
 

She didn’t like working downstairs in the Maison Louvel’s empty, echoing building at night, but she had called New York and told Mindy Ferragamo’s office that an important report was on the way, express mail. Now she had to keep to the schedule she’d promised no matter how long she had to sit there. It was, she saw, glancing at her wristwatch, already a little past one a.m.
 

She blinked her weary eyes and focused them on the words she’d just written. She was probably crazy to think she could get anybody’s attention at Jackson Storm headquarters now, but this was her last attempt to do something other than sit in Paris and wait for something to happen. But if she were honest with herself, Sam supposed she had to admit the prospects for getting a report through to Mindy and eventually to Jack were almost zero.
 

She’d telephoned Mindy Ferragamo’s office several times the past two days just to try to talk to Mindy and each time she’d failed to reach her. Instead, she’d been connected with either Julie Helms, Mindy’s assistant, or Doris, the executive office receptionist.
 

Both Julie and Doris had been polite, even friendly, and they talked to Sam as long as Sam wanted to stay on the line from Paris, but her requests to be put through to Mindy were virtually ignored. Everyone was busy in New York, they reminded her, with the big manufacturers’ fashion showings of fall clothes that came up in July; schedules sped up in June with the sort of frantic hysteria in the rag trade that always accompanied the biannual event.
 

There were plenty of valid excuses for not being able to reach Mindy. That Jack was out of town with a swing of the Far East subcontractors and Mindy had her hands full with problems in the sportswear divisions, that Mindy was representing Jack at an important meeting of the New York Apparel Manufacturers Association downtown at the Trade Center—the brush-offs were regretful, even convincing, but solid as a stone wall. They pretty well indicated Sam’s position with Jackson Storm Enterprises. She was a onetime Jackson Storm “discovery” who hadn’t panned out either professionally or in her relationship with the boss.
 

She’d already made up her mind that she wasn’t going to talk to Eugenia Kleinberg or anyone else at Junior Lone Star, the division now handling Sam Laredo. It was bad enough to be sitting in Paris with nobody paying any attention to you; she wasn’t quite ready for Genie Kleinberg to give her the brush-off, too.
 

When you came right down to it, Sam thought, looking down at the page she’d just finished typing, she was just too stubborn to give up.
Bad move,
she could almost hear Jack warning her.
When you’re smart, you know when it’s time to quit
.
 

Sam stuck out her lower lip as she always did when she was feeling mulish. Jack Storm didn’t give her advice anymore—he was no longer a part of her life. He’d made that clear when he’d left New York with his wife and family and ordered Mindy Ferragamo to break the bad news. A free trip to Paris—that had been Jack’s good-bye present. And the message was: When you figure it out, Sammy, you’ll give up and throw in the towel.
 

Sam pulled the last page out of the typewriter and laid it on top of the stack with the others. If she’d ever been in love with him, he’d killed that by the way he was acting now, sending her to Paris without having the courage to face her himself. Well, she wasn’t going to leave it at that, not by a long shot.
 

The proposal she’d worked on all week, that Jackson Storm Enterprises move into the Paris couture market using the old Maison Louvel as a vehicle, was a fantastic idea, even if she knew she owed a large part of it to Brooksie Goodman. And if it was her swan song for Jackson Storm, for the whole mass-market fashion trade, well then, that was all right, too, Sam told herself.
 

In fact, sitting now in Paris in the early hours of the morning, she admitted that she wanted to make a last, perhaps defiant gesture to prove that even with all that had happened to her, she’d been worth having in the Jackson Storm structure. Sammy Whitfield was at least one—maybe the only one—of the great Jackson Storm’s protégées who’d fought back. She knew she still had talent, even if that seemed to have been sidetracked, somehow, into the hands of other people.
 

Sam put her elbows on the typing table and rubbed her eyes again, thinking, with a burst of good Western honesty, that maybe when you came right down to it, she’d learned the biggest lesson of all. That you got over one man fast enough when another, better one came on the scene. Fate had been watching over her that morning in the Maison Louvel when she’d found Alain des Baux there with his sister.
 

A couple of nights ago in a taxi with Alain des Baux she’d wondered what she would do if Alain asked her to marry him. It was a totally off-the-wall idea, but nevertheless she’d wondered. She was still wondering.
 

Of course, the whole thing had just blown apart when the taxi had stopped for a red light and she’d seen Sophie climbing all over Chip in a sidewalk café. That nasty incident had hit her harder than she’d expected. Good God, first the mother, then the daughter! She’d felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach.
 

Her second reaction in the taxi as she had stared at them had been that this was no more than you could expect from Sleazy Cheap and poor spaced-out Sophie. Still, seeing them wound around each other in a sidewalk café had ruined the rest of her evening. After a quick drink at the Crillon, Alain had taken her home.
 

It was ridiculous to be so shaken up by something like that, she’d told herself afterward, because after all, Chip meant nothing to her. What had happened with Madame Doumer’s boyfriend that night in the apartment was just a stupid accident. Chip was a good-looking, brainless stud available to any woman who had the time.
 

Still, she hadn’t been able to get the picture of Chip pawing Sophie out of her mind. She’d actually stayed up most of the night telling herself that something had to be done about Chip, that she had to issue some sort of order to keep him out of the Maison Louvel, even when she knew that wasn’t going to work. Chip was a salesman, he had a right to come and go as he pleased, and as long as Solange Doumer was in charge, the Jackson Storm representative from New York had no business interfering. What she was feeling, Sam had told herself finally, was guilt. She’d made too many stupid mistakes. Jack Storm was one, and sleazy Chip was another.
 

She picked up the stack of papers and slipped a rubber band around them. The manila envelope with its label addressed to Mindy Ferragamo, executive vice president, Jackson Storm, Inc., N.Y. was ready. All she had to do was carry it to the Paris post office in the morning.
 

The proposal had been more work than she’d counted on, especially since this kind of corporate projection was hardly her field, and she’d been hampered by not having the marketing researchers at Jackson Storm headquarters help her put it together. It was rough, it was even thin, but the idea was there, bold, a little breathtaking, exciting.
 

It began with an unavoidably sketchy review of the current Paris couture scene, citing what everybody in the fashion industry knew or guessed: that the big Paris couture houses made their money from boutiques and fashion franchises and carried their haute couture houses at a considerable loss for the prestige and signature identification involved.
 

The proposal also went back over old history, that American mass-market fashion kings like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Oscar de la Renta had been rumored to have had their eyes on Paris for the last few years, but there hadn’t been an opening. That is, there was no opening for less than several billion dollars.
 

Her proposal pointed out that what was needed for an American manufacturer was a way to get inside Paris haute couture to establish an American-owned couture house. The basic idea was that the old, forgotten Maison Louvel could be the vehicle for Jack Storm. With the right creative staff brought in from New York, a couple of topflight designers, and savvy American organizational techniques, it might fly. And of course with the right amount of money to invest. Jackson Storm had, or could get, all three.
 

It wasn’t too crazy was it? Sam worried, sliding the typed sheets into the large envelope and sealing it. Once it got to New York, she supposed she would find out. The most important thing was that it reach Jack as soon as he got back.
 

Sam put the plastic cover back on the typewriter, gathered up her pencils, discarded sheets and the considerable mess she’d made in the publicity office and emptied the paper into the trash basket to carry out to the landing. She was leaning over the desk to turn out the lamp over the typewriter when she thought she heard a noise. It was enough of a noise, a faint rustling sound like footsteps outside in the empty building, to make her put the trash basket back down again and stop to listen.
 

The lighted office gave a comforting sense of safety in the vast blackness of the Maison Louvel’s empty building. It probably wasn’t anything—most buildings at night were always full of creaks and little noises. And when you were tired, she told herself, they seemed to get louder. After a few seconds, when there weren’t any more noises, she told herself to forget it.
 

She lifted the waste basket again, but she stood with it in her arms, suddenly remembering the person who could be in the building at night. Chip.