Against All Odds

by Danielle Steel

  Kate waited a long moment before she answered. “You have my blessing, but I really think you should wait, and not rush into marriage. What’s your hurry? He won’t run away.”

  “Obviously. But why wait? I’m thirty-two years old, I’m old enough to know what I’m doing and who I want to marry.” She wouldn’t listen to reason, and other than forbid her, which Kate didn’t want to do, and lose her relationship with her daughter, maybe permanently, she didn’t know what to say.

  “I think you and Zach should discuss it again. Why not be engaged for a year?” She hoped that by then Izzie would be fed up with him, or come to her senses. Kate had the strong suspicion that they were on a sexual high, and Izzie wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “We don’t need to discuss it, and we’re not waiting a year,” she said firmly. “We’re getting married in May. You don’t have to give the wedding,” she said with tears in her eyes. She was angry at her mother for the position she was taking.

  “Of course I want to give the wedding. I just want you to have the best possible chance for it to work.”

  “It will. He’s a wonderful person. He just had a lousy family and some bad breaks. He needs the stability of marriage, and so do I. I want that for both of us.” But Kate knew all too clearly that Izzie had picked the wrong man, Zach would never be stable. He didn’t have it in him.

  They walked out of the office together then, in silence. The decision had been made. Izzie was getting married. And Kate had no voice in it whatsoever, not one Izzie was willing to hear. “We can talk about the wedding later,” she told her mother. “I just wanted you to know our plans.” Kate nodded miserably and kissed her daughter before she left the store. And then Kate went back to her office and cried. After Justin’s shocking announcement that they were using a surrogate and having a baby, Izzie marrying Zach, and throwing all caution and reason to the winds, was one blow too many.

  —

  “How did it go?” Zach asked her when Izzie got back to the apartment. Izzie looked nervous and irritated, and he saw it as soon as she walked in.

  “All right, I guess. Typical of my mother, all she ever sees is what could go wrong, not what’s right. She’s always on some kind of witch hunt.”

  “And I’m the witch?” He looked worried.

  “No, I am. But I should have expected it, I guess. She thinks we’re rushing into it, getting married in May.”

  “Would she prefer June?” He was willing to wait another month if it would mollify her mother, but Izzie knew it wouldn’t. A month’s delay wouldn’t satisfy Kate.

  “She suggested we wait a year. I’m not going to do that, and she has no right to ask it of us. What difference would that make? We’re practically married now. We might as well do it right and make it official.” He looked pleased by what she said. “I don’t want to wait any longer than we have to.” A year sounded too long to him too. He saw no reason to delay, and neither did she. “She gave us her blessing, so it’s a done deal. And I’m not going to argue with her about the date. I think she got that message loud and clear.” He looked pleased by what she said, and that she was standing up for him. And after she unpacked, she climbed into bed with him, and he held her close. He loved the way she fought for what she wanted. And he loved knowing that she wanted him. He felt like a little boy who had finally found a home, and she was it.

  Chapter 8

  Kate called Liam the next day, and he came to the store to see her. She had sounded upset, and he wanted to know what was going on. She told him about Izzie, and he was dismayed.

  “Can’t you refuse to do it? You can tell her you’ll only give her a wedding in a year.” It sounded simple to him, but he hadn’t been there yet with his own daughters, and didn’t know how stubborn Izzie could be.

  “She doesn’t care. They’ll get married anyway, and then not speak to me for ten years. I don’t want to lose all communication with her. She’s going to need me when it falls apart,” Kate said pessimistically.

  “Is he really that bad?” Liam asked her, and she nodded.

  “He’s probably not an evil person, and I’m sure he loves her. He’s just spoiled and irresponsible. He’s never had a job, and she admits he has no money. She’ll have to support him until he goes to work, if he does.”

  “How does he live now?” Liam was as worried as she was, and he didn’t understand why Kate didn’t just forbid it. He was sure Izzie would wait then.

  “There’s some kind of trust fund, and I think he gets a pittance from the trustees, when they’re willing.”

  “They must know he can’t be relied on with money, if they do that at his age. By thirty-five, they ought to be able to trust him.”

  “Apparently not,” Kate said unhappily. “They must know him better. I just can’t see her married to someone like him. He’s covered with tattoos. His hair is longer than mine. Everything about him is counterculture. That’s not Izzie. And she has no idea how unromantic it is to carry a guy as dead weight, who doesn’t contribute his share. And he has nothing to add to her life. He has no education, and no career. For a woman like Izzie, that just doesn’t fit.”

  “What’s the attraction?” Liam was puzzled. Izzie was a smart girl. It was unlike her to make such a foolish decision.

  “What do I know? Sex probably, at this early stage. He’s very good-looking and he’s crazy about her. She was very hurt when Andrew broke the engagement, and she’s been lonely for two years. And now Mr. Wonderful comes along and sweeps her off her feet, until it all comes down like a house of cards. But she doesn’t see that yet. Love really is blind, I guess. But I hate to see her do this to herself. I don’t see how it can work. She’s trying to make it up to him for a bad childhood. He’s a poor little rich boy with indifferent parents. This has all the makings of a bad movie,” she said miserably. And a bad marriage.

  “Do you think there’s any chance it could work?” he asked, trying to be objective. Kate was very emotional about it, so perhaps not the best judge.

  “None.”

  “Then she’ll get divorced later, if you can’t stop her now,” he said, practically fatalistic about it.

  “After three kids and ten years of a bad marriage. I hate to see her throw her life away, and you don’t get those years back after you waste them. One day you wake up and you’re forty-five or fifty, and you wonder where your life went.”

  “There’s nothing you can do to change it,” he said as he looked at his friend. “You can tell her what you think, and what you’re afraid of happening to her. But no one listens to those warnings. If they did, there would be fewer divorces. And who listens to their parents? I didn’t. Did you?”

  “No,” Kate admitted. “My parents had a fit when I dropped out of college to marry Tom. They wanted me to wait too and I didn’t.” Liam remembered, and he had thought it was a bad idea too at the time, but she hadn’t listened to him either. “But at least we were happy, he wasn’t a deadbeat, and he was a great guy. I took the chance—they wanted me to play it safe. No one knew he would die and leave me a widow with four kids at twenty-nine. That wasn’t a character defect on his part. It was shit luck.”

  “True,” Liam agreed. “But it doesn’t sound like Izzie’s going to listen to you, Kate. Maybe you just have to bite the bullet and watch her do it.” He couldn’t think of any other solution.

  “It’s like watching her go over a cliff.”

  “Some people have to do that, and you can’t spare them, if that’s what they want to do.”

  “I hate having kids these ages,” she said with a pained expression. “They don’t realize the consequences of their actions, or how high the stakes are. You can’t win against the odds.”

  “She’ll have to figure that out for herself,” he said sympathetically. He put an arm around Kate’s shoulders as she walked him out of the store, and he hugged her on the sidewalk. “Don’t let it drive you crazy, if there’s nothing you can do.” She nodded, but it was already doing that. It h
ad made her feel better to vent to Liam, but it didn’t change anything. Izzie was still willing to take an enormous risk. And Kate was certain she wasn’t going to win. Every fiber of her being told her that was the truth.

  Kate was sitting in her office, staring into space after Liam left, thinking about what he had said, when Jessica stuck her head in the door and told her a man with a French accent was on the phone and wanted to talk to her. She had no idea who it was and took the call, out of curiosity if nothing else.

  The Frenchman on the phone said his name was Bernard Michel, and he wanted to come to see her with a proposition he would like to make to her, and he was in New York for two days. She thought it sounded odd, and she wondered if he wanted to buy the store or her inventory. She wasn’t in the mood to see him. She was too upset about Izzie, but he sounded pleasant and intelligent, and serious about whatever he wanted to propose to her, and she decided it might be a distraction from her anxieties about Izzie. Whenever Kate was unhappy, she took refuge in her work. It had served her well. They made an appointment for four o’clock the next day.

  When he showed up at the store, he was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a good-looking tie, and she noticed that he was wearing John Lobb shoes by Hermès. He looked prosperous and businesslike, in a heavy cashmere coat, and carrying a black alligator briefcase. He was tall and attractive, impeccably dressed, had salt-and-pepper hair, and looked about sixty years of age. He told her that an associate in New York had told him about her store. He asked some questions about the shop, what she sold, and how she found it, and looked around. She showed him into her office, and they sat down. Her office was very small, since she didn’t want to take space away from the store. They needed every inch they could get for the clothes. And she told him they had three apartments in the building that they rented as stockrooms, and they were full as well. She was curious about why he was there.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Michel?” she asked politely. She still had no idea what he wanted. He had given her his business card, but all it told her was the name of the company, which meant nothing to her.

  “What kind of business do you do on the Internet?” he asked her.

  “Some, but not a lot. I have clients who email me to tell me what they’re looking for, but if they’re in New York, they generally prefer to come into the store and see the item in person before they buy it.”

  “Do you have your inventory online?” She shook her head.

  “Some of what we sell moves too quickly to put it up.”

  “And the rest?”

  “I don’t have time.” She was not computer savvy and had never developed her business online. It wasn’t a big feature when she started, and she was doing well without it, well enough. They had a website, but only sold at the store.

  He explained what he wanted to do for her then. He wanted to set up an Internet component to her business, an online shop.

  “That’s the business that I’m in,” he said quietly. “I help people like you set up their business online. It could increase your sales considerably within a few months.” But she knew it would take a large initial investment to photograph everything, set up a website, and pay for a system and someone to run it. But Bernard Michel told her how it could work. What he said was intriguing, but a little over her head. They talked about it for a while, and she said she’d like to discuss it with her son. It was right up Willie’s alley, and she wanted to know what he thought of the idea.

  “I’m staying a day longer than I originally planned. Why don’t you talk to your son, and we’ll meet again tomorrow?” She asked him then why he had singled her out. “A woman friend of mine in Paris told me about your store and raved about it. And my associate here brought it to my attention after that. I wanted to come and see it for myself. I think this could be a very lucrative project for us both, and you could see very rapid results.” Kate was fascinated by what he said. And as soon as he left, she called Willie to ask what he thought.

  He was quiet for a minute, absorbing what she had said. “Honestly, I think it’s brilliant, Mom. And he’s right, it could double your business, almost overnight. As soon as you improve your website, photograph what you want to put online, and set up a payment system, you’re good to go. I think it’s a fantastic idea. Who’s the guy?” She told him, and he Googled him immediately, and reported what he found to his mother. “He owns a huge company, from the sound of it, and he seems to have some fairly large holdings in the States as well.”

  “Do you want to come to a meeting with him tomorrow?”

  “I can’t, Mom. I wish I could. I have to work. Just find out what he has in mind, and we can talk about it tomorrow night over the phone. You don’t have to rush into it.”

  She had the meeting with Bernard Michel the next day, and told him honestly that her son thought it was a great idea.

  “Of course it is.” He smiled seductively at her. But he didn’t need to do that to convince her. She was already interested in the project. It was enormously appealing. “Let me send you a formal proposal when I get back to Paris. You can show it to your business advisors, and your son.” He smiled at her. She walked him through the store again, and then he turned to her before he walked out. “Would you like to have dinner to talk about it some more tonight?”

  “I’m not very good with the Internet,” she confessed with a smile.

  “I’m sure you’d understand. The concept is really very simple. And once you’re set up to sell online, your sales will increase exponentially. It’s the best way to do business today.” She liked talking to him and she wanted to hear more about it, so she agreed to meet him at La Grenouille uptown, which was one of the best restaurants in New York. He said he was staying at the Hotel Pierre nearby.

  Kate arrived promptly, wearing a very chic black Chanel suit and high heels, with a black sable coat over it that she had gotten at the store and looked brand-new.

  They were led to one of the best tables by a headwaiter who spoke to Bernard in French and seemed to know him. They concentrated on the menu at first. And once they had ordered, Bernard explained his idea to her in greater detail. The more she heard about it, the more she liked it, and he had a simple way of explaining it to her that made sense. Once she was set up to do business online, his company would take a percentage, and would monitor sales and handle the technical details for her. The percentage wasn’t huge and sounded reasonable to Kate. She realized selling online could increase the volume of her business and turn it into a giant moneymaker.

  Bernard talked about his children then, and said he had a son who was an attorney, and a daughter in medical school. She told him about her children, leaving out her worries about Izzie and Justin. He seemed to be close to his children from the way he spoke about them, and was very proud of them. And in the course of conversation, it came out that she’d been widowed since her children were very young and she had brought them up alone.

  “You never remarried?” He seemed surprised.

  “I was too busy, with them, and the store,” she said, smiling at him. She told him about the history of Still Fabulous, and how it worked, and he was visibly impressed that she had built it from nothing and made it a success. He said it was ventures like hers that excited him, because turning it into an online store as well would take it so much further than she was able to do now. And everything he said sounded exciting to her. He offered tremendous growth potential with his plan to take Still Fabulous to a whole other level.

  They had a very pleasant dinner in elegant surroundings, with wonderful food and a great bottle of wine. And when he put her in a cab to go back downtown, he promised to be in touch with her soon with his proposal, she was anxious to see it. He waved as the cab pulled away and he walked back to his hotel. It was a cold night, but he said he loved walking in New York.

  The next day she called Liam and told him about it, and it sounded interesting to him too.

  “How did you get to this guy?” Liam as
ked her with interest.

  “He called me at the store.” Liam Googled him and was impressed as well. He ran a major business in France, and had set up similar ventures to hers in England and other countries in Europe, and several in the States, all of them currently very successful.

  Two weeks later, Bernard Michel sent her the proposal he had promised, and she emailed a copy of it to Liam and another to Willie. She printed hers out, and spent the night poring over it. It sounded brilliant and exciting, was relatively easy to set up, and had potentially impressive results. It was hard to find a reason not to do it, and Liam suggested she meet with him again when he was in New York, and he would come along. She wrote to Bernard, and he responded almost immediately that he would be back at the end of the month and welcomed the prospect of exploring the idea with her further. They made an appointment two weeks later. Kate was very excited about it, and told Justin about it when he called her to see how she was. It sounded appealing to him too. And Willie was as enthusiastic as she was. He thought it was a fantastic opportunity.

  “How’s the baby doing?” she asked Justin, sounding subdued. She still wasn’t thrilled about it. She had to get used to the idea.

  “Everything is fine so far. She’ll have another sonogram in four weeks, and we’ll see a lot more then.” They talked about Izzie too. “I wish she wouldn’t rush into this marriage,” Justin said unhappily. “I just can’t see them together long-term. Why doesn’t she just have an affair with him and forget about marrying him?” Justin was not a fan of marriage, straight or gay, and he had been shocked when his sister called to announce her engagement.