by Anne Calhoun
The showroom was busy but Lorrie seemed to have things under control. The bike messenger who had delivered Ryan’s outrageous tip stood in the doorway, dressed in his helmet, blade shades, cargo shorts over tights, and a skin-tight bike jersey. Blond scruff glinted against tanned skin. He wore a messenger bag slung across his body and cradled a plant in his arm.
Not just any plant. An enormous, lush arrangement of orchids drooped and trembled in the messenger’s arms.
“Oh, pauvre petite plante,” Simone said as she approached him. “You didn’t put that poor thing in your bag, did you?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. His smile was quick to arrive and just as quick to disappear. “The florist was only a couple blocks away. I walked this pretty thing on over.”
While he held the plant, Simone gently touched the velvety flowers, admiring the intricate shape of the petals. Five stems surrounded by green leaves and white rocks arced from a white bowl. Each stem bowed under the weight of flowers the color of twilight, more than Simone could easily count. There was no personal card tucked into a plastic holder or the ribbon wrapped around the pot, just one from the florist explaining that another arrangement would arrive every four weeks for the next five years. She mentally revised her estimate from “expensive” to “the height of extravagance.”
“Who sent it?” she asked, her brain alternating between displaying it on the showroom counter and covetously keeping it in her apartment.
“I’m just the messenger, ma’am,” he said. “The florist might be able to tell you that. Sign here.”
Simone signed for the plant and took it from the bike messenger. He shifted his shoulders, rolling them back, a movement that seemed automatic to Simone, the kind of thing people did to ease an ache that was never actually going away. She did the same thing with her hands, massaging her palms and wrists in slow, steady motions, the way Ryan did when he told her about Jade.
Ryan, who now stood in Simone’s workroom with an actress that stole this year’s Best Actress Oscar as a dark horse in a field of thoroughbreds. Ryan, who had taken her hand in his and massaged the aches away, following them up her forearms to her elbows, where the tendons and muscles had tightened into intricate knots.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked the bike messenger. “Water, or a pain reliever?”
He jerked as if she’d poked him hard in the ribs. His hand fell away from his shoulder and he straightened. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“Thank you,” she said again, but he was already through the door and taking the stairs to the street two at a time.
She carried the orchid into the workroom and set it on the table closest to the three-way mirror. Daria was still behind the screen. Ryan leaned against the table, legs crossed at the ankle, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone. He glanced at the orchid. “Nice,” he said.
He lived in a world where a monthly delivery of four hundred dollars worth of orchids was nice. “It is,” she agreed.
“Who’s it from?” he said absently.
“No idea,” she said, but she had an idea, and it was as bad as if Ryan had sent it to her.
Daria emerged to stand in front of the three-way in a strapless gown of rich cream brocade that set off her flawless skin and eyes to perfection. The gown hung open, baring her slender back to her tailbone. Tucking his phone in his front pocket as he walked, Ryan stopped behind her and zipped up the gown. As the zipper went up, his fingers grazed her spine. Standing slightly behind them, Simone watched Daria’s eyelids flutter as a frisson chased up her spine.
Chemistry. It couldn’t be manufactured or bought. Two people had it or they didn’t. Ryan and Daria had it.
“A beautiful choice,” Simone said as she studied the cut of the dress’s back and bodice. “Allow me to bring you some items that may suit.”
“Oh, please do,” Daria said with a smile. “Thirty-two B, probably.”
Simone made a whirlwind tour through the showroom, selecting structured bras with lines that would suit the dress, and matching panties. Lorrie seemed to have the showroom under control, so she brought the selections back to Daria. “That one,” Daria said after they retreated behind the folding screen again. She pointed at a bra made of cream silk charmeuse. “You’re French,” she said as Simone helped her into the bra then into the gown. She wore white cotton bikini underpants, a practical choice that made Simone smile. No artifice here.
“Yes,” Simone said. “I began my career in Paris and moved to America about a year ago.”
“Which houses were you with in Paris?” Daria said as she studied her reflection in the three-way.
“I was with Demarchelier,” Simone said. “Perhaps something with more lift?”
“Agreed,” Daria said. They made the exchange, and returned to stand in front of the mirror. “Demarchelier designed my gown for the BAFTAs last year.”
Simone did not remember that, partially because she never worked in the evening-wear division of her family’s house, and partially because last year they designed gowns for two actresses far more recognizable than Daria. “Did you work with Julian, or with Genevieve?”
“Julian,” Daria said as she studied herself in the mirror. “Do you know him?”
“He’s my brother.”
“That certainly explains the showroom,” Daria said. “You have a similar eye for fabrics and structure. He knew how to design for a woman’s body so she made something beautiful out of the dress as much as the dress made something beautiful out of the woman.”
“Thank you,” Simone said, genuinely pleased. “Our father taught us as his father taught him, and his father taught him.”
Daria turned from side to side, studying her reflection in the mirror as she hunched her shoulders and stretched to check for gaps. “That’s perfect. Are there matching panties? I don’t wear thongs unless I absolutely have to. No wardrobe malfunctions.”
Ryan chuckled, reminding the women of his presence on the sectional behind them. They both turned to look at him. He gave Daria an amused, bad-boy grin, then looked down. Daria turned back to the mirrors, but Simone kept her gaze on Ryan. When he lifted his eyes to hers again there was a very subtle question in them. She gave him her most professional smile.
“Which do you prefer?” Simone said as she showed Daria the bikini underpants and high-waisted version that were her salute to the styles worn by the pinup girls in the fifties. She noted that Daria didn’t turn to Ryan for his approval. Instead she pointed at the high-waisted version and said, “I’ll take those.”
It would be a striking ensemble when Ryan removed the gown. Simone felt her smile falter, and covered it by saying, “I would be happy to take your card and ring you up while you wait here.”
“Bill me,” Ryan said distantly from the opposite side of the workroom. He was studying the bolts of fabric and half-finished pieces waiting on worktables and mannequins.
Daria’s eyebrows rose, but she seemed to take it in stride. She changed back into her simple sundress, and waited while Simone folded her selection into tissue and then into a shopping bag. “Do you have a stylist I could contact when I bring out new collections?” Simone said.
“I should, but I haven’t been somebody long enough to get organized about these appearances. What I do have is a publicist who suggested it might be a good idea to be seen with Ryan Hamilton,” she said, flicking a glance at Ryan, still occupied with fabric at the opposite end of the room. “He seems nice enough. Does he come here often?”
“Not often,” Simone said. It wouldn’t do for Daria to think she was the latest in a long line of conquests Ryan had brought to his favorite lingerie shop. And she wasn’t. She was only the second. But it was typical of the trouble with Ryan, who would bring woman after woman to her atelier.
“You have an admirer,” Daria said, lifting her hand to the petals. �
��It’s gorgeous. Matches your eyes.”
“Thank you,” Simone said.
The workroom door swung open to admit Lorrie, the cordless phone in her hand. “For you,” she said.
It was unusual for Lorrie to not recognize a priority client. “Take a message, please,” Simone said.
“It’s Stéphane.”
But the call’s timing confirmed her suspicions about who sent the orchid—Stéphane Roussel, a fellow émigré from France’s unfriendly entrepreneurial business environment, her brother’s school friend, her on-again, off-again lover. He’d helped arrange financing for Irresistible, and they were currently off-again as lovers, but always on as friends. “Bonjour,” she said, automatically switching to French.
“Bonjour,” he replied, his voice lazy, amused.
“Thank you very much for the orchid,” she said, still in French. “It’s gorgeous.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, chérie,” he replied.
That was Stéphane to a T, playing the superficial game of love. “Stéphane, may I call you back? I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“Of course. Look at your calendar first. We’re overdue for dinner,” he said. His lazy, rich voice managed to convey dinner and all the after-dinner possibilities they’d enjoyed previously.
“I will. Au revoir,” she said, then disconnected the call and set the phone down. Irritation flashed along her nerves. She was tired of hints and subtlety, at guessing games and secrets and stories. “My apologies,” she said to Daria.
“A friend from home?” The question came not from Daria but from Ryan, whose smile didn’t quite mask the razor-sharp look in his eyes.
“Yes,” she said. Humming under the question was the one he’d asked her the last time they saw each other. What do I have to do to get you to speak French to me? Ryan would have heard the general tone of the conversation, the male voice, the casual familiarity in the language he didn’t speak. But he didn’t need to be fluent in French to hear all the layers in Stéphane’s invitation. Men the world over spoke the same language of possession and intimacy with voices and looks and touches. Stéphane was tactile, loved to touch and stroke and caress. God help her if Ryan saw them together, even when they weren’t on-again.
Daria was watching the two of them in the drawn-out silence. “Ryan, I need to call my agent about an interview tonight. I’ll meet you downstairs?”
“If you’d like you can take the side door leading to the street and avoid the showroom. Please do come back and see me again,” Simone said. In her peripheral vision she watched Ryan stroll towards her, his jaw set.
“I will,” Daria said. “Thanks so much. Say hello to your brother for me.”
She waited until the door closed behind Daria before rounding on Ryan. “Possessively inquiring into my personal conversations is rather curious, given that you just bought six hundred dollars of lingerie for her.”
He gave a dismissive snort, as if the money, and the relationship, were no object at all. Simone felt a flare of indignation for a fellow woman. “So you just won’t for me?” Ryan said.
“Why would I? It’s not your native language, or your second language. I’m here to sell you intimate apparel, not seduce you, or be seduced by you. You never come here alone. You come with other women.” She should have sounded indignant, but instead she sounded pained. Hurt. She had no right to sound that way, either.
“I came alone last time,” he said.
She was having none of his sophistry. “To brag of your conquest.”
“You think that’s why I came?” he said, after a long, tense moment.
“I can’t answer that question,” she said, clinging to her temper. “From minute to minute, you’re two different men, one who appears in my showroom with women to dress for his pleasure, and another who shows up afterward, to tell me a story,” she said, choosing to ignore the flashes of another man, quiet, honest, self-deprecating.
In deference to the busy showroom on the other side of the swinging red door, they were speaking in hushed undertones, the hard lines of consonants and the occasional sharp word for emphasis. Ryan stepped close, his breath raising the hairs on her cheek. “Maybe you’ll have a story to tell next time.”
Her redhead’s temper flared, breathing hot earth lust into her core. “We could take turns. Would you like that? We’ll meet on the stoop. I’ll touch you. Tease you. Perhaps . . . here,” she said, and slipped her hand under his untucked shirt. Her hand came to rest on his hip bone, and she stroked her thumb along the crest of his hip, just above his waistband. Forbidden territory, an impulse she should deny, but she and Ryan didn’t just have chemistry. Their responses were more along the lines of nuclear fusion.
His body tensed, his abdominals quivering under her touch. “He’s a very good lover. I’d tell you a story to fever your dreams. In French. Would you like that?”
“No.”
Blunt. The shark, wolf, predator was back. “Two can play your game,” she murmured, and traced the arc of his hip bone one more time. Satisfied, Simone stepped back, smoothed down her skirt. “Think carefully before you show up on my doorstep again. May I carry this downstairs for you, sir?”
“I’ve got it,” Ryan said.
Simone held the bag out to him as she would with any other customer, steeling herself not to react when his fingers brushed against hers during the exchange. The touch, laden with longing, weighed far more than the bag of lingerie.
Chapter Four
First there was the gala at MoMA: Gowns, tuxedoes, some patrons dressed in white waistcoats and white tie, paparazzi leaning over the barricades calling names, begging for a shot. There was dinner, drinking, networking. He had Daria Russell on his arm, so everyone wanted to talk to him, take his picture. Perfect. Adopt the lips-parted, vacant-eyed, zombie-pleasant smile of the famous actor preceding them up the red carpet.
Then there was the after-gala party, more drinking, recreational drugs done in the club’s bathrooms.
Now they were at the after-after-party. His head pounding, his stomach churning, Ryan looked around while two thoughts warred in his brain: he wished he could pinpoint the moment when his pursuit of success turned into a skid down a slippery slope to the bottom, and how much Simone would hate the current scene.
Daria, however, seemed remarkably sanguine about it, the drugs, the music, the noise, studying the people in the room with a private, amused smile playing about her lips. Ryan straightened his shoulders. Time to set his harebrained, stupid-ass plan in motion and do what the SEC and the FBI hadn’t been able to do for a decade: prove MacCarren was a shell for a massive Ponzi scheme.
He didn’t know more than a quarter of the people crammed into Charles MacCarren’s apartment in Battery Park City. One of the second-year associates at MacCarren had taken over the sound system and had massive headphones on as he nodded to the beat and curated a steady stream of angry rap that sent bile crawling up Ryan’s throat. He pulled the antacids from his pocket and chewed two. His stomach, filled with only a few bites of pan-seared Arctic char and a chocolate mousse that was sure-as-shit a mistake, settled a little, but the Tums wouldn’t do anything to slow his racing heart.
Looking out over the living room from the kitchen, he revised his estimate downward. He didn’t know a tenth of them. The MacCarren employees not yet able to buy a table at the Met gala wore button-downs over jeans and covetous expressions as they eyed Ryan in his tux with his “date.” They masked their awe by looking around the apartment to see what the standard was for apartment, furniture, view, and decorating, not understanding that Charles came from family money, the kind of wealth managers protected for future generations. Charles had Degas on the wall, a couple of Picasso’s sketches, the obligatory hand-me-down painting of the great-great-great-grandfather MacCarren, who started the family on the road to superwealth, an Audi R8 and a motorcyc
le in the garage downstairs, and he’d just bought the house next to his family’s home in the Hamptons for twenty million dollars. Rumor was he intended to tear it down and build a temple to modern architecture. That was the standard these days. Forget that bullshit about buying a piece of history. Flaunt your wealth by bulldozing history to the fucking ground and building a monument to yourself.
Ryan’s mother was a teacher. His father sold plumbing supplies before he died. If his dad could see this party, he’d be speechless with shock. There were the requisite women, some from the firm, some girlfriends who’d brought their friends, and another set who were quite clearly “hired” to “entertain.” Because this was an equal opportunity era, there were also some men from the same occupational class, some chatting up the women, others chatting up men.
Daria stopped beside him, and sipped from her glass of champagne. “This is interesting,” she said. She’d raised her voice to be heard over the music, but her tone, similar to the one his mother used when one of the kids in her class had done something completely outside the social order, came through loud and clear.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, it’s fine,” she said without taking her gaze from the crowd. “If I’m asked to be in the sequel to the Wolf of Wall Street, I’ll be set for research.”
He laughed. “Are they making one?”
“It made over three hundred million dollars,” she said pragmatically. “I’m sure the studio’s considering it.”
“Greed never gets old, never goes out of style,” he said.
The crowd parted for a moment as Charles, the managing director of MacCarren, his father’s right-hand man and enforcer, made his way through the crowd, heading straight for Ryan. Charles extended his hand, most people too cowed to actually say hello or strike up a conversation. He held out his hand to Ryan, giving him a hearty handshake, but Ryan knew better than to think Charles had crossed the room for him. Charles didn’t cross a room for anyone, but Ryan was here with Daria Russell, still in the gown from the gala, and looking every inch the movie star. The way Charles transformed from an arrogant investment shark into a starstruck, posturing teenager was almost enough to make him laugh.