by Avery Scott
“Just a minute! I’m zipping up my bag now,” Abby lied in a panic.
“Listen, I need to go,” Gabrielle said.
“Don’t you dare.”
“I’ll give you a call when we get to Mexico.”
“Gabrielle! Don’t!”
“Love you. Gotta go!”
The phone went dead. Abby stared at it. Then, the bedroom door swung open.
“Jesus Christ! You haven’t even changed clothes.”
Abby shoved the phone into her back pocket and watched in shock as Hudson Quinn started ripping open her drawers and tossing clothing onto her bed.
“Where’s your luggage?”
Abby blinked. Her mouth moved, but no words came out until he wrenched open her closet and spied the ancient hard-sided suitcase she had been using since she was a little girl. He flung it onto the bed, opened the latches and started tossing things inside.
“These are awful,” he said, as he flipped through her wardrobe. “Where are the things I bought for you?”
“I don’t know-I mean…This is everything that’s clean,” Abby stammered. She knew her clothes weren’t new or trendy, but the comment stung just the same.
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. We’ll go shopping when we get there. Put this on for now.” He ripped a form-fitting black knit dress off its hanger and tossed it to Gabrielle, along with a pair of sensible black pumps. “And don’t forget your passport.”
Abby carried the outfit into the hallway bathroom and closed the door, grateful for the brief escape, still wondering what she was going to do. She didn’t know how to tell Hudson the truth and keep her sister’s job at the same time, but she couldn’t keep up this charade much longer…or could she?
Abby bit her lip as she contemplated the question. It was a ridiculous idea…and yet, she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Although it felt disloyal to acknowledge, any job Gabrielle could do, Abby could do better. There was no question about that. They both spoke French like natives. Abby wasn’t certain what personal assistants did on a day-to-day basis, but it couldn’t be much if her sister had lasted a month. It wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. Businesses weren’t exactly clamoring to hire her right now. She needed the money. Hudson already thought she was Gabrielle. There wasn’t really any harm in letting him believe what he wanted, was there? After all, they would both benefit. He would have an assistant for his trip to France, and she would save Gabrielle’s job. It was a win-win…if it didn’t blow up in her face.
Chapter Five
Hudson should have fired her.
He would have fired her but showing up in France without his much-touted French-speaking personal assistant would have been evidence of yet another fuck up. He couldn’t bear to give his father the satisfaction of seeing that, or the pain of knowing that Colin probably would have closed the Marché d’Été deal weeks ago.
Of course, there was an easy way to avoid situations like this. Hudson supposed that he ought to start advertising on job boards and reviewing resumes like a responsible employer. That would probably lead to much more qualified employees and much fewer lectures from Human Resources about the dangers of sleeping with his staff, but the candidates sent up from staffing tended not to have a body like Gabrielle Levesque’s. He spent plenty of time around beautiful women, but the new assistant was in a class of her own. Even though he was still furious, he couldn’t stop himself from stealing an appreciative glance when she finally emerged from the bathroom clad in the dress that he had selected. He hustled her out to the waiting car, admiring the sway of her pert little bottom as she walked in front of him.
He knew he was acting like a caveman, but Ms. Levesque was, objectively, a stone-cold fox and he was genetically programmed to respond. That was his excuse, anyhow. She was a teenage fantasy come to life: A head shorter than him, even in heels, but mostly leg. She had white-blonde hair, baby blue eyes and delicate features that reminded him of a china doll, and her body…Hudson’s thoughts quickly circled back to his favorite feature. Suffice it to say, it was rare for curves like that to come along in nature. When they did, they were a work of art. It wasn’t fair to expect any red-blooded man, much less one chained to his desk for fifteen hours a day, not to appreciate a woman like that when she fell into his lap.
Strictly speaking, Gabrielle hadn’t been in his lap yet, but he had a feeling it was only a matter of time. For the past three weeks, her skirts had become progressively tighter and shorter, and she had promised “private French lessons” when they got to Paris. The most tantalizing hint was their sleeping arrangements. Ms. Levesque had reserved the single-bedroom Penthouse Suite at their hotel with a rollaway bed. She had pitched the ludicrous arrangement as a nod toward frugality, and to ensure that she was nearby if he needed her “in the middle of the night”. The look in her eye as she handed over the travel folder heavily implied that they wouldn’t need the second bed.
Then again, maybe he had misread her?
Hudson looked across the leather bench seat of the limousine toward his companion. She was unusually subdued, looking through the stack of papers he had carried from the office with an uncharacteristic intensity as they moved through the dark city streets to the private airport at Teterboro to catch their plane. Maybe “forgetting” a trip that she’d been planning for nearly a month was meant to send a signal that French lessons were no longer on offer? Then again, she could just be playing hard to get. With women, it was impossible to tell.
The limo pulled onto the tarmac next to the Quinn’s plane and came to a stop. Hudson lingered in his seat and waited for the driver to open the door before climbing out.
“We’re flying in this?”
Hudson turned toward his assistant with a bemused smirk. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one who set this up.”
“I did?” His female companion looked briefly disoriented but quickly recovered. “I mean, of course I did. I hope it meets with your approval.”
“Something is strange about you tonight, Gabrielle,” Hudson said, squinting his eyes as he tried to work out why she seemed so different than the woman he had come to know over the past few weeks. It wasn’t just her unusual silence and studious nature. She was even moving with a new gait. She wobbled on her heels and seemed self-conscious in her relatively modest dress. He wondered if she was under the influence. Maybe she took something to calm her nerves? She had mentioned once in passing that there hadn’t been a lot of opportunities for travel when she was a little girl. Maybe she was afraid of flying?
They handed their passports over to the flight attendant as they boarded the plane and into a pair of plush seats.
“May I get you a drink, sir?” the stewardess asked as soon as they were situated.
“Bourbon, neat,” Hudson responded. “What about you, Gabrielle? The usual?”
“I…uhm…may I just have a glass of wine, please?”
“Getting in the spirit?” Hudson returned his attention to the attendant. “I think I’ll join her. Cancel the bourbon. Bring us a bottle of the 2009 Montrose?”
“Yes, sir.”
The young woman scurried away as the pilots went through their final preparation for takeoff. Beside him, Ms. Levesque pulled the seatbelt across her lap, buckled it, and then pulled it tight before staring anxiously out of the window.
“Nervous?”
“I’ve never been on a plane before.”
“What?” he frowned. “Yes, you have. We were in Chicago last Tuesday.”
“I…er…mean I’ve never flown across the ocean before.”
“Really? Then how have you been to…?” His voice trailed off as he decided not to question her now about the “hitchhiking-across-Europe” story she had told him the week before. Instead, he shrugged. “There’s no difference between water and land if you hit it from 30,000 feet.”
The look on his companion’s face made him regret the remark. He reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “We’re going to be fine. I promise
. Peter’s been flying our family across the pond for decades without so much as a bumpy landing. Let’s just sit back and enjoy, okay?”
She relaxed, but only slightly. It wasn’t until they were deep into their second glass of wine and well over the Atlantic before he tried to engage the woman in conversation again.
“So, what time are we meeting the Fougeres tomorrow?”
“I…uhm,” came the sputtering reply. “I need to check the schedule.”
“Okay,” Hudson stared, waiting for her to pull up the information on her tablet. “Aren’t you going to check it?”
She gamely picked up the tablet and typed in a series of numbers, then frowned when the screen remained black. “Someone must have changed the password.”
“It’s been in the car since you left it.”
“Maybe it’s a malfunction?”
He groaned. “Just tell me the parts you remember.”
“Uhm…well…we’re going to meet with the…Fougeres,” she gave the word an odd, uncertain emphasis, “…in Paris for the next few days to talk about the…uhm…their…markets….and…”
She sputtered for a few more minutes before Hudson was willing to admit she had no idea what she was talking about.
“Fuck, Gabrielle!” Hudson slammed his wineglass onto the table, causing a few stray drops of the ruby liquid to splatter onto the spotless white leather upholstery of his chair. He hoped that her utter confusion was just a misguided attempt at humor. He was well and truly screwed if her cluelessness was legitimate. “You cannot fuck this up for me.”
“I won’t!”
“I cannot overemphasize how important this deal is. Dad has been working on it for more than a year, and I will not let you ruin it now. We’re talking about half a billion dollars here. Billion. With a B. Do you have any concept of how much money that is?”
“No.”
“No shit, you don’t!”
He caught the way she flinched out of the corner of his eye, making him conscious of the fact that he was ranting like an asshole. Gabrielle’s not the person you’re really angry with. A voice that sounded an awful lot like his mother floated through his head, reproaching him.
“Just…try to concentrate, okay?” he said, intentionally softening his voice.
“I will.”
She sounded like she was about to cry.
“It’s late,” Hudson said, still using the soothing tone. “Let’s try to get some sleep.” He signaled for the stewardess to dim the lights and convert the cabin for sleeping.
“I promise that tomorrow I’ll do better.” The tiny voice that pierced the darkness made Hudson feel about two inches tall.
“I know you will…now, sleep.”
Chapter Six
Abby closed her eyes obediently but snapped them open again as soon as she heard her companion’s breath move into the shallow, even rhythm of slumber. She knew that she was going to be dead on her feet when they finally arrived in Paris, but she was far too nervous to relax. She was in a steel tube, almost seven miles above the ocean, hurtling through space at six hundred miles an hour, and they expected her to sleep?
Even if she wasn’t experiencing the novel sensation of flight for the first time ever, she couldn’t forget that she had just impulsively made what was, quite probably, the stupidest decision of her entire life.
What was she thinking, pretending to be Gabrielle? They might look identical, but their mannerisms and their habits were as different as night and day. Hudson Quinn was already suspicious. She was certain of it. She saw the way he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes when she was unable to log onto the tablet. It was probably only her sister’s well-known tendency toward sloppiness that had prevented him from interrogating her about the lapse. She had to be more careful.
Abby wished that she could call Gabrielle and beg for more information. Before turning in for the night, Hudson told the cabin attendant to wake him if he got a call from his father, so Abby assumed that there was a telephone system on the plane, but it didn’t make much of a difference. Unless she wanted to hide in the airplane lavatory, there was no place on the aircraft that would afford her much privacy. Besides, she doubted that her twin would answer the phone, even if she begged. She was on her own.
Abby moved as quietly as she could and picked up the tablet again. She pulled up the lock screen and began typing in various sets of four-digit numbers. She tried their birthday, their grand-mère’s birthday, the last four digits of their social security numbers and Gabrielle’s ATM PIN without success. Fresh out of ideas, she resorted to random digits, growing more desperate with every attempt.
She couldn’t bear the thought of facing Hudson the next morning without the information that he had asked for. As handsome as he was, something about him frightened her. He reminded Abby a bit of her erstwhile stepfather, the man that their mother married when the twins were five years old, the man her mother had followed to the West Coast before walking out of their lives without a second glance.
The two men looked nothing alike. Hudson was all dark, East Coast sophistication, while Abby’s stepfather was more of a cowboy type. She remembered him with sun-bleached hair, tobacco-brown skin, and eyes that crinkled in the corners from squinting into the sun. The resemblance between the two men was all in their attitudes. They shared an air of haughty self-sufficiency that made Abby want to run the other way.
Some women liked arrogant men. “Confident” was the term Mama used when she spoke about her husband. Unlucky at love and lonely since the high school pregnancy that resulted in the twins, Evie Levesque had been crazy about Bill Darvin. She didn’t think twice before quitting her job at the pre-school near their house in Brooklyn and dragging the girls out of school to drive cross-country to California in Bill’s wake. Abby still remembered the hot plastic smell of her mother’s beaten up Pontiac, and the way that the vinyl seats stuck to the back of her legs when the air conditioning went out somewhere around Indianapolis. Most of all, she remembered the terrifying feeling of hurtling away from home and security. She missed her school and her friends. She missed her own bed at night and Grand-mère’s lilting voice, singing her to sleep in French. As a child, she hadn’t understood what her mother saw in Bill. She still didn’t understand it. Even now, as a grown woman, she couldn’t make sense of the dark magnetism some men had or how it drove smart women to make staggeringly stupid decisions.
At least Abby wasn’t in any danger of falling in love with Hudson Quinn. She would complete the business, collect Gabrielle’s paycheck and then move on with her life…if she could ever get the damned tablet unlocked.
Abby punched in every four-digit code she could think of. She added to her prior attempts: their home phone number in the second grade, the last four digits of Gabrielle’s locker combination in middle school and the numbers for the bus routes that they took into the city. After nearly half an hour of trying, she had failed to discover the answer. At last, in despair, she decided to begin at the beginning.
0000.
Nothing happened.
1111.
Abby sighed with equal parts frustration and relief when the screen suddenly came to life. She had given her sister too much credit. Of course, the default code was the one that worked. Gabrielle had never bothered to change it.
Once Abby was able to operate the tablet, finding the details of the trip was a relatively simple affair. The device was nearly new, and there weren’t many files to choose from. Abby reviewed the schedule, carefully noting that the first meeting would be held at the Marché d’Été offices and was not until the morning after their arrival in the city. After she had a general idea of Hudson’s appointments, she began to sort through the other documents.
Abby looked at the hotel arrangements first. She had never been to Paris but knew of the hotel George V through its many appearances in movies and fashion spreads. Her mouth fell open when she read the confirmation e-mail and noted the price of the room. Even without any idea of ho
w to figure the exchange from dollars to Euros, she could tell it was a kingly fee. Clearly, her sister had booked it. Gabrielle was known for her expensive taste and she loved spending someone else’s money.
After pulling up a photo gallery of the suite and gawking at their hotel, Abby looked over a list of restaurant bookings and details about the car and driver that would be waiting for them in France. She wondered if Gabrielle received help in making the arrangements, or if she was simply more motivated to put together a quality body of work when she got to experience the benefits herself. It didn’t escape Abby’s notice that all of the dinner reservations, even those without the client, were noted as “+1”, with the name “Mlle. Levesque” penciled into the margins.
The last information on the tablet was about Marché d’Été, the grocery store chain at the heart of the deal. Abby skipped over the financial statements and business projections to read the glossy brochure that explained the company’s background, beginning with their humble origins as a co-op of local farmers selling their wares to the citizens of a small village near Dijon, France. From that tiny beginning, the store grew to open locations in other towns, transitioning into a privately held corporation when the Fougere family bought out the original partners. Abby was impressed by their continuing focus on quality and their dedication to helping talented artisans bring their wares to market. She recognized the names of some of the products the company carried, like exquisite leather goods that she had seen featured in the pages of glossy fashion magazines and limited-edition perfumes that were crafted from oils hand-pressed from French wildflowers. Even everyday products like honey and soap were presented with extra attention to craftsmanship.
Abby reread the packet, again and again, internalizing as many of the details as possible. Eventually, however, her eyes grew heavy and she fell asleep.
“Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle, we’re arriving…”
Abby’s eyes snapped open with a start when someone jostled her shoulder. She stared up into a pair of wide, unfamiliar green eyes and was seized with a moment of panic until she remembered where she was.