'Are you sure?' he asked. 'I can stick around for—'
Allegra shook her head. 'No, Jason,' she said, 'go on home. I really want to be alone now. There's nothing to stick around for. Maybe we'll talk later. Okay?'
'Whatever you say, Ally,' he replied with a sigh. He reluctantly rose to his feet and took his apron off, shaking it over the large suede catchall suspended beneath his work area, then draped it neatly over the back of his chair. At the door he took his jacket off the coat hook and put it on, then shouldered the backpack that hung on a hook next to it.
Opening the door, he turned to Allegra. 'See you tomorrow,' he said.
' 'Night, Jason,' she said. 'And I'm sorry to be so gloomy.'
'Ally,' he replied, 'I just know it's going to get better. Some—'
'Later, Jason,' she said in a determined voice.
'Okay,' he said, finally acceding to her wishes. He quietly closed the door behind him as he left.
When he was gone, Allegra turned her gaze back to the window, but all of her attention was focused inward, on the storm of emotions that the telephone call had stirred up. She realized that she had reached a point in her career where she had to make a tough decision.
Should she try somehow to weather yet another financial crisis and continue to work? Or should she admit defeat and find a nine-to-five job to support herself, working on her jewelry in her spare time?
The thought almost made her physically ill, as it had so often in the past. Why do I have this need to prove myself ? she wondered. Why is it I can't be content with a job designing for a brand-name jewelry house? Why is it I can't be happy designing jewelry that can easily be mass- produced?
Over the past few years she'd had several opportunities to sign on with one major jewelry manufacturer or another, but she had always turned down these offers, regardless of how lucrative they were or how desperately she needed the money. She preferred being able to control the production of her own designs and was protective of her independence.
In the past, she'd also been told by more than a few cooing department store buyers who loved her designs—buyers like Fiona Bennett—that they would order huge quantities of her work. But Allegra had long since resigned herself to the impossibility of filling such orders; her designs were virtually impossible to reproduce inexpensively. And damned if she was going to let factories in China or elsewhere make cheap facsimiles of her jewelry, substituting inexpensive metal for gold or platinum and man- made stones for real gems. She'd seen other jewelry designers do it, and their work had become unrecognizable.
Ideally, she had hoped to land at a big-name jeweler like Buccellati or Bulgari or Verdura with her own label, much as Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso had done at Tiffany. She had envisioned ads in fashion magazines and newspapers many times: Allegra Sheridan for Verdura. Or Bulgari. Or whatever. But that simply hadn't happened. She had come to New York with a lot of talent and ambition, but she didn't have a grand family name or the kind of connections that might make her a shoo-in at a topflight jeweler. That was not to denigrate the work of Paloma Picasso or Elsa Peretti. She appreciated their designs and applauded their success, but she wondered if they would've been able to succeed on the level they had without their names and who they knew.
So here I am, she thought as her gaze shifted northward, toward the West Village, a victim of my own standards. Going broke so nobody can see or wear my jewelry.
What she needed was a retail outlet, a very expensive proposition in New York City. When people saw her jewelry used in magazine fashion spreads, they should be able to hop in a taxi and go to the shop where the jewels came from. In her case that was impossible. They had to call a telephone number and make an appointment—a practice, she had long since discovered, that eliminated a vast majority of the buying public. Forget those who made impulse purchases. There was no shop to feed their habit. But she had spent a small fortune on assembling the necessary tools of her trade, and the first few years paying off those purchases. Opening a shop had been an impossibility.
She was so lost in thought that when Todd quietly crept up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, she was startled. 'Oh, jeez, Todd,' she said, jerking out of her reverie. Without turning around, she instantly recognized the feel of those big hands on her shoulders and the distinctly masculine aroma. 'I didn't hear you come in. You scared the daylights out of me.'
'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to.' He gently massaged her shoulders and planted a kiss atop her head. 'I have an idea,' he said, looking out at the lights of the city twinkling in the quickly descending winter darkness.
'What's that?' she asked, enjoying his attentions to her weary shoulders and back.
'Let me treat you to an extravagant dinner,' he said, his voice a seductive whisper. 'Just the two of us. Hell, Ally, that'll make us both feel a whole lot better.'
Allegra's ears perked up, and she turned to him and looked up into his lively green eyes. 'You saw Jason on your way up, didn't you?'
He nodded. 'Yep,' he said. 'Told me the news. I'm sorry.'
'I don't want to talk about it now,' she replied.
He shrugged and smiled. 'Fine. You won't hear another word about it from me if that's what you want.'
'Good,' she said. 'Anyway, you can't afford to take us to an extravagant dinner, and you know it. But it was sweet of you to offer.'
'I'll put it on my card,' he offered.
'You mean it's not maxed out?'
'Not yet,' he said.
'No, Todd,' she said, shaking her head. 'I won't let you do this. I don't want to feel guilty about using up the last little bit of credit you've got left. You might need it.'
Todd grinned mischievously. 'Aw, so what? Come on, Ally,' he cajoled, holding her arms in his big hands. 'Where's that daredevil I used to know, huh? Where's that beautiful girl who was never afraid to take chances?'
'She's a woman now,' Allegra said. 'Nearly a spinster, in fact. With hardly a sou to her name.'
'More the reason to go out and paint the town,' he said. 'With the straits we're in, what difference is a few dollars on a credit card going to make? Besides, I've got some money coming in soon.'
Allegra laughed helplessly. 'That's great logic, Todd,' she said, reaching up and ruffling his raven black hair.
'Then you'll do it,' he said, the smile widening on his face, exposing perfect white teeth.
She nodded. 'I shouldn't, but... I will.'
'That's my girl,' he said, tapping her playfully on the butt. 'We'll have a blast. We'll both forget about work tonight. No worries. No cares. Just the night and the food and the drinks and the dancing.'
'Oh, dancing, too?'
'Why not?' he asked. 'What say we dance all night long? We'll club hop.'
She laughed again. 'You're crazy, Todd Hall, and I guess that's why I love you so much.' She reached up and kissed the tip of his nose. 'Sometimes, anyway.'
His radiant smile didn't change, but Todd felt his heart leap into his throat. As long as he'd loved her, it still gave him a thrill to hear her say those words. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her against him. They kissed long and deeply, his hands stroking her back tenderly.
'I love you, too, Ally,' he said when their lips parted. 'And not just sometimes.'
Their relationship had been long and fraught with trouble—battles, separations, and dramatic reconciliations—principally because of his wandering eye. But he was trying to convince her that he had that under control now. His insatiable sexual appetite was all in the past, he'd sworn. He wanted her more than ever.
Allegra was a creative designer, gemologist, jewelry maker, and salesperson all rolled up into one strikingly beautiful and very sexy package. Todd, on the other hand, had no interest in gemology as such, and none whatsoever in the rarefied world of custom jewelry making that she thrived in. He found most of her customers unbearable, as he did many of his father's architecture clients and his mother's painting aficionados.
After do
ing time in army intelligence, he had taken a job as an investigative reporter. While he excelled at his work, he quickly grew weary of the newspaper bureaucracy and politics. He found that he had stories 'killed' on a political basis or, on the other hand, given unmerited feature space because his subject happened to be a pet target of a high-echelon editor at the paper.
Finally, he had settled into something he loved. He had become a developer in downtown New York, turning old industrial buildings into luxurious loft apartments. He'd fallen into it almost by accident. When he'd discovered that rents in the downtown neighborhoods like Soho and the East Village were skyrocketing to astronomical proportions, he'd borrowed the money from his parents to buy a small, derelict building. Then, armed with architectural plans drawn up by his father, he'd overseen the conversion of the building into loft apartments. As money began to come in, he invested it in others, repeating the process until he'd acquired a considerable fortune in downtown real estate. While he had to some degree rejected the elite environment of his parents' world, the exposure to arts and crafts that he had grown up with served him well now. He had developed an eye for quality and that which intrigued. He was happy overseeing the rebuilding of the properties, although the work was all-consuming and had its headaches. There were times when he had cash flow problems, as he did right now, because of the heavy commitments, but he knew that in the long run his efforts would pay off handsomely.
Over the years, he'd made quite a reputation for himself as a hip, young developer with devastatingly handsome looks, and his work garnered its share of publicity in the newspapers and magazines. While he'd always been sought after by the opposite sex, he quickly became a major babe magnet in New York City, attracting beautiful, sexy, and sometimes rich young women who threw themselves at him as if they were offerings to some pagan god. And Todd had succumbed. More than once or twice. He'd sown wild oats far and wide.
These meaningless flirtations, one-night stands, and brief affairs had taken a toll on his relationship with Allegra. Besides which, he freely admitted, he'd been commitment-phobic. He had no ambition or desire to harness himself to the kind of tempestuous relationship he'd seen in his parents' marriage. However, as the years rolled by, he had grown weary of brief, meaningless affairs.
'What do you say I go home and shower and change, then meet you back here?' he said.
'Good plan, my man,' she replied, poking his chest with a fingertip.
'Be back in, say, an hour. Hour and a half. Okay?'
'I'll be ready.'
'Okay,' Todd said. He took the gloves out of the pockets of his old, worn leather jacket and put them on. 'Ciao,' he said. 'Be back tout de suite.' He kissed her again.
'Ciao.'
Allegra watched as he left the workroom and disappeared down the hallway to the front door. She locked the door behind him, then turned and stood glancing around the workroom. Its floor-to-ceiling shelves were stacked chockablock with see-through plastic boxes containing lengths of gold, silver, and platinum wire; sheets of platinum, silver, and gold; casting grain; semiprecious beads and stones; handmade molds; rubber and plaster for molding; and countless tools—all the trappings of a highly organized jewelry maker. And near the German-made worktable, there were many different kinds of pliers, hammers, and measuring rings. The various machines and tools used in the work drew her attention: rolling mills, flex shaft drills with foot pedals to polish and grind, gravers with different blades, stone-setting burrs, beading tools, a vulcanizer, wax injection equipment, and polishing lathes. It amounted to quite an inventory and an expensive one.
On bookshelves, there were catalogues from the various purveyors of metals and gemstones she dealt with, as well as those from the machinery manufacturers and toolmakers. Her treasured drawing books, many of them expensively hardbound, made a neat row along the shelves in their own bookcase. They contained the countless detailed drawings she'd made of the jewelry she had designed and wanted to see brought to life. In some cases the drawings had become reality.
On the walls hung the drawings of a few of her favorite pieces of jewelry, alongside photographs of the finished products. Over the years several customers had thought her drawings were works of art in and of themselves and had wanted to purchase them, but Allegra had always refused, preferring that no one else saw what she considered rudimentary work in the process of producing an exquisite final product.
What hubris, she thought now as she looked around. But I never imagined then that I would need money as much as I do now.
Jason's worktable caught her eye, and she frowned, then crossed to it quickly. 'Damn it,' she swore aloud, before realizing that it was her fault that he'd left his work area in such a mess. Had she not ordered him to leave, she would be very angry with him and justifiably so. Shimmering atop the wooden bench pin of his worktable was a small fortune in cabochon rubies, thousands of dollars' worth of small stones that could easily vanish.
She peered down closer at the pin to see if she could detect any metal shavings or stone chips, but there were none. She scooped the rubies up and put them in a suede pouch, which she placed in the ugly old safe that sat in a corner in plain view.
She kept a store of her most valuable semiprecious and precious stones in it, knowing that with its old combination lock it was no more than a deterrent to an enterprising thief. The rubies tucked away, she shut the safe's heavy door, then twirled the brass lock around several times.
Rising from her crouch and stretching her arms ceilingward, she decided that tomorrow she would have to remind Jason about their rules, despite her having caused today's distraction. Rule number one in the atelier was that at the end of the day each of them had to stow any valuable gemstones in the safe, then vacuum up any precious-metal shavings from his or her worktable. The contents of the vacuum were regularly emptied into containers for each of the metals. The metals, whether gold, platinum, or even relatively inexpensive silver, were eventually returned to the refineries from which they'd come. The refineries bought them by weight. It might seem a miserly practice, but it wasn't: at hundreds of dollars an ounce for platinum and gold, this waste had added up to a substantial amount of money over the years. Behind the polishing lathe, there were even fans that sucked up the dust and metals produced by polishing. This so-called waste was sent to the refinery.
She took a final glance around and caught sight of a catalogue from Dufour, the auction house in Paris, that she'd placed atop a stack of magazines and catalogues to go through. Magnificent Jewels, the catalogue was titled. She picked it up, deciding that she would flip through it while having a bath. Taking a final glance about the workroom, she was satisfied that everything was in order. She turned off the lights and went through the doorway into her living quarters. In the tiny kitchen, she stopped at the 1950s vintage refrigerator and took a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka out of the freezer. She poured three fingers into a glass and took it to the small bedroom with her.
She put the vodka on a bedside table, then went to the closet, where she began riffling through her dresses, sliding hanger after hanger back across the rod, slamming one against the other, hoping that she would see something—anything—that would be appropriate for tonight and lift her spirits at the same time. Black, black, black, she thought. My closet is awash in black. Like so many of New York's most fashionable wardrobes, hers had an elegant, if somewhat funereal, air about it.
Then she saw it. The dress. She'd forgotten she had it, but it was perfect for tonight. A long-sleeved, Empire-waisted baby-doll dress by Gucci, with a see-through panel at the bodice and cut up to there. So right with her long, slender legs. And black.
Oh, well, she thought. Nobody's seen me in it yet, and it's sexy and looks great on me . . . and with my jewelry.
She took it out of the closet and hung it on the door, then reached up to the shelf and took down the box that held her Christian Louboutin stiletto-heeled shoes in black velvet with wide satin ribbons that tied in a big bow at the ankle. From o
ne of the jewelry boxes on her dresser, she took out black diamond earrings and their matching necklace and bracelet. She'd chosen the stones herself and designed the pieces; then Jason had made them. They weren't her favorite stones, by any means, but they were enjoying popularity right now, and she reasoned that they were a good advertisement for her work.
She held the necklace against her chest and looked in the dresser mirror. Perfect, she thought. It had a pear-shaped pendant that she would let rest behind, rather than atop, the sheer panel of her bodice, rendering it mysterious and hopefully capturing attention. The combination of the stone's dark glitter and her own ample cleavage should do the trick.
After a hot soak in Kiehl's foaming muscle relaxant—one of her favorite indulgences—she toweled off, carefully applied makeup, then brushed out her long hair before dressing and putting on her jewelry. Twirling in front of the full-length mirror on the bedroom door, she decided that she looked great in the outfit, and she felt refreshed after the bath. She had about fifteen minutes before Todd was due, so she stretched out on the bed and sipped the vodka.
Glancing around the room, she knew that, despite the bad news today, she was lucky to have this wonderful, if eccentric, apartment, with its small high-ceilinged rooms. She'd furnished it primarily with her somewhat wacky flea market finds and castoffs from friends, with a few choice pieces Todd found in buildings he bought. It offered a refuge from the noise and breakneck pace of New York City and her workroom next door.
The only problem with her cozy retreat was that there was no one to share it with. Well, actually there was, she reminded herself, but she still had mixed feelings about Todd.
If only I knew that he's really ready to grow up and pass up the constant temptations that are being thrown at him.
She took another sip of the vodka. She knew that her problems weren't exclusive to Todd's philandering. Over the years, both before and after she'd met Todd, there had been quite a few men in her life. She'd always had a boyfriend; then when she'd found out about Todd's affairs, she'd extracted her revenge by rushing headlong into short-lived and sometimes self-destructive relationships with other men.
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