Spring Collection (29 page)

Thank God he’d gotten rid of Janine, that middle-aged workhorse, Marco thought, as his keen graphic senses worked rapidly on the image Tinker presented. Just looking at a new girl made him realize that Janine had become so much of a habit that he had stopped seeing her, Janine with her dun-colored, elegant chignon, her sallow complexion that not even her expert makeup could conceal and her predictably impeccable stance.

Every designer’s ideas must come from hundreds of sources, no one designs in a vacuum—who could possibly say, Marco asked himself, how much of his recent difficulties stemmed from sheer boredom with Janine, a boredom that had been confused in his mind with a lack of faith in his ideas?

Now this one, with the freshness of contrast created by her hair and her skin, her youth that needed little makeup, and her utter lack of sophistication, her
body that, in every one of its lines, was unfamiliar to him, from her ridiculous way of holding her shoulders back like a soldier, so strictly that she was standing unnaturally straight, to the tautness of her rib cage—now this one … yes, this one gave him new ideas.

The very ignorance that maddened him nevertheless made her utterly different from Janine. He’d often asked himself how much a model invested a design with her own individuality or whether the design could totally transform a model. Sometimes one dynamic took over, sometimes the other, but a couturier never truly knew what to expect until he saw his sketched ideas worked out on a human body.

As he continued to study Tinker, it occurred suddenly to Marco that there was no lace in his collection. Lace had seemed a matronly medium to him this spring—at least lace combined with Janine—but something about this girl called for lace, something told him that she could make lace young again, he thought, quickly unwrapping bolts of black Chantilly lace folded around oblongs of cardboard. The elaborate yet dainty floral design was widely spaced on the fine webbing and each silken bolt was so light that precious meters of it weighed very little.

Marco draped two lengths of lace over his arms. He placed the center of one full length over each of Tinker’s shoulders, totally veiling her in a soft, light cloud that drifted into pools on the floor. He stepped back and looked at her in detached appraisal. It was a shame, he thought, that he couldn’t send her out on the runway like that, emphasizing nothing but the beauty of the fabric; no construction, no lining, no seams, no decoration, her height and her leanness making a gesture, a suggestion of grace through the design—yes, the black and white contrast of an almost colorless face, the plume of red hair and superb black lace trailing, scrolling, fanning out behind her—but what rich woman would pay for something she could buy in a fabric store and play with for her own amusement?

Rapidly Marco attacked the fabric. He pinched and
bunched the material here and there, using pins exactly to create shoulders, indicate the line of the sleeves, and suggest a high neckline. He pinned the lace wide open at the back, from shoulders to waist, and adroitly tied the two lengths together into an enormous bow at Tinker’s waist, its ends long enough to make a short train. He studied the effect in the mirror, approving of the way in which the fabric now stretched backward in an illusion of flight, away from the body. But the hair would never do, he decided. There was too much of it, it fought the sweeping line of the lace.

“Your hair must be up,” Marco said. “Did you bring hairpins with you?”

“No.”

“You should be better prepared,” he said curtly. “Don’t move.” In a minute Marco discovered the box of hairpins that Janine had forgotten, in its usual place on the accessory table. Taking several of them in his hand he faced Tinker and began to lift the hair that fell on one side of her face. Only then did he glance at the face and notice that it reflected no emotion at all. She had made herself as neutral as the blankest canvas, and he found neutrality in a model even more deadening than a show of temperament. Damn the creature! If he wanted the negative vibrations of an inexpressive face and a pair of lifeless eyes he might as well have kept Janine. But now he
needed
this particular little cunt. He had to have unlimited use of her, he’d realized that from the instant she’d made him feel like working in lace.

“Has no one ever created a dress on you before?” he asked her.

Tinker made a short negative sound.

This fool still had the presumption to be angry at him, Marco realized. She should be thanking the lucky stars that had put her in this position at this moment, but no, she was giving herself airs and graces, as if she had a right to be hurt because he hadn’t greeted her with delight. She showed a total lack of professionalism but there was nothing to be done but charm her.

“I find that surprising,” Marco said, his voice deepening into warmth. “Admittedly you can’t strut, but when you stand still you’re an inspiration. It’s not an ordinary role. After all, anyone can learn to walk, and I haven’t forgotten that I promised to teach you, but how many models can say they’ve inspired an artist?”

Tinker stared silently ahead, past his left ear.

“You look tired,” Marco said sympathetically, lifting a few tendrils of her hair. She made not the slightest response, not a twitch of an eyelash.

Attention, he thought, she has the nerve to insist on attention before she will consent to come alive again. Marco plunged both his hands deeply into the roots of Tinker’s hair and softly massaged her scalp with his fingertips. “You need to relax,” he murmured, as his fingers continued their light, intimate, unmistakable caress, “even if I can’t let you sit down yet.” He worked his fingers slowly all the way from her hairline to the nape of her neck in a way that he knew had to feel irresistibly delicious. “Any better?” he asked as he quickly pinned up her hair.

“I said I was okay,” Tinker said with no change of tone, holding her head motionless, as if he hadn’t touched her. A river of anger rising from her gut made her clench her fists until her nails bit half-moons into her palms.

She was stubborn, Marco thought, turning away to unwrap more lace to fill in the wide gap in the front of the dress, where the fabric had been pulled apart to form the bow in the back. She was hostile, sullen, unforgiving. Normally, if she were this unpleasant he would have thrown her out by now. However something entirely unexpected, something deeply important had just happened to him.

As Marco touched Tinker’s scalp and felt its warmth he had released a fragrance that was natural to her, a fragrance that acted on his imagination as a powerful stimulus. Suddenly ideas, unbidden, were leaping in his mind, fresh, thrilling ideas, so vivid and complete that he knew absolutely that there was no need to stop
and note them in his sketchbook because he would never forget them. And Tinker was the source of these ideas.

This girl had a quality! He could have never guessed it until this minute, but now he knew that he would design
from
her. A full day’s work with her would yield an entire group of sketches that would complement and elevate the best designs in his entire spring collection. Far more important, they would give the entire collection that extra leap into true originality that he’d known, and fought admitting, had been missing all along.

Marco Lombardi’s anxiety left him entirely, he felt possessed of the full mastery for which he had worked so many years, the strong foundation of craftsmanship that had been obscured, for terrible months, by the need to perform. Now he was standing firmly astride the welling center of his talent, through some magic that mysteriously had been unleashed by a particular girl.

He turned back to her as she stood motionless, her naked body exposed yet framed by lace, her shoulders, neck and arms covered, her torso bare and white except for her bra. He must construct the top of the dress over bare skin. Nothing could do the ball gown justice on the runway unless it had the drama of the girl’s body naked from the waist up.

Deftly Marco unhooked Tinker’s bra and slipped it out from the half-finished construction. “I was wrong, no bra under lace.” She made no sign that she noticed her breasts springing free as Marco pinned a long piece of lace at her neckline, again covering her to the floor. “Flat to the body in front, the drama of the bow at the back … yes, but it still lacks shape.”

Quickly Marco used pins to outline the shape of her body from her underarms to her knees where he let the fabric spring out into ripples. Impersonally he ran his hands along the sides of her body and used more pins to mold the lace so that it lost its last wrinkle.

He stepped back again, judging the result of his work as pure line, pure drama. Suddenly, startlingly,
his focus changed and Marco saw Tinker as a man sees a woman. He stepped forward and deliberately put his hands on her breasts, lingering on their delicate upward curves, weighing their light and luscious mass, without any pretense of fitting.

Tinker fought successfully to stand as stolidly as before, too molten with fury to trust herself to move. She thought clearly through her emotion. She could let him paw her and get what she wanted or she could tell him to go to hell, rip off the dress and get out of here, out of Paris, out of the competition. There were no other options.
Win
, Tinker told herself, I choose to win. At that moment Marco brushed his thumbs over each of her nipples with a deliberate contact that was so delicate that it was almost imperceptible.

Without thinking, Tinker stepped slightly backward with a single controlled and dignified motion.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, pretending to misunderstand. “No one else will see them clearly, you can be sure of that … so very pale a pink … only I know exactly where they are … they are bigger … and more sensitive … than I saw the other day, but they will be almost invisible … that quality of mystery will add an immense allure! Those pigs of photographers will go crazy for you in this gown … and just as crazy about the other splendid designs I’m going to create just for you. You’ll set off a stampede with those gentlemen of the press, Tinker, you’re going to be the star of the show, I intend to make sure of that.”

“How much is your intention worth?” Tinker asked, each word iced with hard suspicion. She had suddenly realized that she had gained the upper hand with Marco Lombardi. The impatient quiver of his voice, the raw sincerity that emanated from him when he spoke of designing for her—it all added up to truth, at least the kind of truth he was capable of.

“How can you wonder? It’s totally within my power. I make those decisions, no one else.”

“You promised to teach me how to walk. You
haven’t done even that, and now you say I’ll be the star of the show. You insulted me when I arrived and now you promise me the moon. You change from minute to minute. Why should I count on you?”

“I was in the foulest of moods before you came. I admit that I took it out on you,” he said, annoyed at the need to apologize to a model. “You might try to understand what I’ve been going through.”

Tinker continued to glare at him with unblinking challenge, her eyes as deeply silver as if they were reflecting stars.

Reluctantly looking for a way to prove his sincerity, Marco realized that in his excitement of finding his abilities fresh and alive and intact, he still hadn’t shown her the dress he’d just pinned.
That
would bring her around! He rummaged quickly in the trays of costume jewelry on the accessory table until he found a pair of long glittering pendants. “Let me show you.” Marco approached Tinker and clasped an earring on each of her ears. “Now, turn carefully, very carefully, and look at yourself in the mirror, and tell me what you see.”

Tinker gazed with growing amazement at her reflection, a self she had never imagined, a creature who had slipped through time from another century, a gracious era of infinite possibility and grandeur, a creature who was not a girl but a polished woman who had been born to carry precious lace and wear magnificent jewels, a woman whose skin gleamed through the elaborate material with an authority of whiteness she had never known it possessed, a polished, glowing, reigning woman whose flowering skirts showed only a tantalizing hint of legs through their shadows, a woman whose eyes outshone her earrings, whose hair was more becomingly arranged than she had ever managed to make it herself.

As Tinker stood, falling in love with her image, Marco stood behind her and found the soft skin behind her earlobes and stroked it as he whispered, “See how
beautiful you are,
cara
, is that not the proof? Could I possibly not use you when you
are
a star already, a natural star? How often do you think I’ve had this possibility?”

Tinker shook off his fingers impatiently. She met his eyes sharply in the mirror and saw that they were unfocused with pleasure, as if he were unaware that he had been touching her.

Yes, he mused, yes, in spite of the great glamour he would bestow on her, she was still basically unspoiled, she still possessed all the vulnerability and ineptness that had caused him to volunteer to work with her in the first place. The day the three girls had first come to be inspected, he had promised himself a delicious interlude with Tinker. As much as he appreciated accomplished models, it was always an ungainly girl who had the power to arouse him. Jordan and April, charming though they were, already knew far too much for his particular tastes.

But when Tinker had walked toward him, mortified, unable to hide her embarrassment, his cock had twitched and filled and risen quickly under his trousers. As clearly as if it were taking place, he imagined her falling to her knees on the floor in front of him. She would perhaps be unwilling—oh, yes, most certainly unwilling—but too flustered, too intimidated to protest. He would inform her of his needs and watch her as she opened his belt and his zipper with tremulous fingers. As slowly as she dared she would force herself to bend her head toward his cock, still not fully hard, and take him awkwardly into her dry, quivering mouth. She would work on him with an intoxicating, uncertain clumsiness, gauche and disconcerted, not knowing whether to lick or suck or even how to touch him properly with her fingers, fumbling, painfully reluctant in her lack of experience, as he grew thicker and longer, spurred by the rare delight of innocence, that spice to which he was addicted. He could prolong her innocence, give her no help at all, mock her for her
attempts, hold back his orgasm almost indefinitely until he finally chose to give her a few words of such explicit instruction that he could lose himself and come in her mouth. Of all the methods he had devised to break a girl in, making her suck him dry was by far the most direct and effective. Then, taking his time, lingering over details, he would spend weeks until he trained her to please him perfectly, to learn each one of his exacting ways. When she was expert, when she was no longer new or innocent, he would pass her along to a friend. To Dart Benedict perhaps, in return for a special favor.…