Masters for Hire

by Ginger Voight

  His eyes darkened before his lips met mine, and we forgot all about the decadent breakfast sitting a mere foot away.

  We made it to Darcy’s townhouse around two in the afternoon. By that time, I had already developed a marketing plan for an experimental line of clothes created for young women of all sizes to enjoy couture designed for their specific body types, no matter what those types happened to be. I wanted to call it our ‘Incomparable Couture’ line, unique styles customized for the fashionista typically overlooked by Fifth Avenue.

  Truthfully, I had always had this plan, just no designer to bring it to fruition. It took a serendipitous meeting with Devlin to open that door at last, someone who helped me in more ways than one.

  Fate was a quirky, quirky thing.

  I knew by this point that I hadn’t paid for mere sex all week. I had paid to feel like I had always wanted to feel, ways I never thought I deserved to feel. I wanted to feel beautiful and important and in charge, able to choose for myself what dreams I might chase and the ability to make it happen, no permission, no excuse. And that had value to me. So I knew it would have value to our customers, who would reward us with their loyalty if we made each and every forgotten fashionista feel like they mattered.

  “This way we make standing out, not fitting in with all the off the rack stuff a good thing,” I had told him when I shared my plan. “Instead of someone feeling like they aren’t welcome or wanted at certain stores, we’ll court them directly, and make them feel as beautiful and valued as you’ve made me feel all week. Every girl should feel that, and she doesn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on an escort to do it.”

  Though any references to his professional generally landed like conversational land mines, he grinned at me. “You’re determined to put me out of business, aren’t you?”

  I chuckled. “Whatever happens, happens,” I quipped.

  But yes, that was my diabolical plan.

  #MineAllMine

  We brought lunch, all of her favorite dishes from a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, and she once again had to clean off a spot for us to sit at her table. She stared at me, blinking in confusion, when I presented my plan. “I don’t understand.”

  I swiped through my tablet to show her my crude drawings of different styles I wanted to present in the store. “I’d like you to design a collection aiming for a younger market of defiant divas who don’t give a crap about fitting into a size 0. Something sophisticated and sexy, a little va-va-va-voom,” I added as I showed her ideas that enhanced cleavage and curves and color, “to give all the women who are made to feel like they should stay invisible permission to be seen. You can design your own tops and bottoms, dresses, including casual, club and formal wear, even bridal wear, in addition to your own line of accessories, hats and shoes and jewelry. Anything. Everything. Something we could pitch to our customers, sized 2-32, as a line created especially for them, tailor-made to fit and flatter all sorts of body types. I just need one collection, preferably ready by the fall, that I can present to my father to include at our store right here in Vegas. You wouldn’t even have to move,” I added, since I knew that was impossible as long as their mother was alive.

  She shook her head. “I really couldn’t. I don’t have time. It’s just me, and I’m booked solid till September.”

  I nodded. “I know. That’s why you need a staff, and start-up capital.” I reached into my purse and withdrew the cashier’s check for $100,000. It wasn’t really a lot, considering what I wanted her to do, but her eyes bugged when I handed it to her anyway.

  “Are you serious?” she breathed.

  I nodded again. “Consider it an initial investment from a vested partner. I’ve wanted to expand this department in my store for years, I just never found the right designer to make it happen. Nothing was ever the right fit, until I came here and tried on your clothes. Because of this, I truly think you could revolutionize the industry, and I really want to be in on the ground floor. So you design your collection for me, and I will present it to my company as an exclusive partnership. I should let you know going in that this probably won’t be an easy sell for my father, who has a very traditional idea of what kind of fashion he wants to sell and clientele he wants to court. So it’s entirely possible that, at the end of the summer, you may have a complete collection of clothes that I wouldn’t be able to sell at Cabot’s no matter how much I might want to. If that’s the case, then you are free to take it elsewhere and make yourself a huge success, just to prove to my father than you could.”

  She shook her head as she slid the check back across the table. “I can’t take your money, Coralie.”

  “It’s not charity,” I clarified. “I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s an investment, like I said. I invest the initial $100K, and you pay me 15% of the profit until the investment is returned, no matter how long it takes and no matter where you sell your clothes, even if it’s independently.” I showed her my plan for an Internet start-up if we couldn’t get her designs in a store. I wasn’t about to leave her hanging, no matter what Father did or said. I knew she could be a huge success, she just needed the exposure. Thanks to my education and experience, I knew how to do that with or without Father, or Cabot’s itself.

  If we became the ‘competition,’ then so be it. Father had first dibs on the both of us. What he did with that was on him.

  “I can have all the contracts written and delivered by the first of next week,” I said before I sat back and waited for her answer.

  She looked at Devlin, who gave her a slight nod. “This isn’t like last time, Darcy.”

  “I don’t know,” she said as she shook her head. “I really wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “Yeah, you do,” I told her. “You’ve been dreaming of this for five years. I know it. And you know it.”

  Her gaze drifted down to the check, and her voice quivered as she asked, “But what if I fail?”

  Devlin reached for her hand and squeezed it gently, for support. I decided to take the other one into mine and do the same. “Then you learn what not to do for the next attempt. All success really means is that you didn’t give up until you got there. And you are talented, Darcy. What you do is special, and it could help a lot of people. It can’t fail.”

  She sighed. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course,” I said as I handed her an envelope. I had printed out my business proposal at the hotel, so she could have a hard copy.

  Devlin and I were quiet as we drove back to the hotel. “Sorry that wasn’t an easy sell,” he finally said. “She’s been burned before.”

  “I get it. And I wasn’t expecting any of this to come easy, anyway. The next step is pitching the idea to Father, who will go down fighting. But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to make this happen. With Cabot’s, or without.”

  “You rebel, you,” he grinned and I laughed.

  “I don’t want an ill-fitting life anymore, Devlin. I only get the one. I might as well alter it to fit me, rather than the other way around.”

  He took my hand into his and kissed my fingers. “If there’s anyone who can make it happen, it’s you, Coralie.”

  I chuckled. “You sound so sure.”

  He nodded. “I am.”

  “It would be a lot easier to believe you if we hadn’t just met a couple of weeks ago.” It hit me hard how new our relationship was, though it totally didn’t feel like it. Maybe it was because we put the sex and intimacy first, rather than last, but it felt like we’d lived through so much already. It made us profess our love and make our plans when we were really nothing more than virtual strangers. I didn’t know Devlin Masters beyond what he had shown me, which had been crafted for effect thanks to the nature of his business.

  When I said as much to him, he nodded. “I think I know how to fix that,” he murmured, and said nothing further about it until we got back to the room.

  He pulled me to the sofa and presented an envelope. “What’s this?”

&n
bsp; “I got it from Gus yesterday,” he said. “It’s the list of 36 questions that Mattie had given to them. They did the experiment the night before the wedding, and he said it made them feel even closer and more connected than before. I figured if it can work for a couple who has been together for four years then maybe it was a good idea for a couple who was just starting out.”

  I wasn’t sure which part of that sentence I liked more, the ‘just starting out’ part… or the word ‘couple.’ Suddenly it was my favorite word in the entire world. It meant we weren’t just a business arrangement anymore. “Isn’t this against your rules?” I asked with a teasing grin.

  “Seems I break all my rules with you, Coralie,” he murmured with that smirk I’d grown to love. I promptly pulled the list from the envelope and we turned to face each other, so we could give each other our full focus.

  I read the first question, which was pretty benign. “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

  He leaned back against the couch as he thought about it. “My mother from four years ago,” he answered at last. “I’d like to know why she made the decisions she did, to stay with the man who abused her, who abused us, who hurt Darcy,” he added with a pained grimace. “She can’t answer those questions anymore, and yet that’s all I can think about. Everything would be so different if she had just left. Why would she stay?”

  “Maybe she didn’t feel like she could leave,” I offered. I didn’t know much about abuse first hand, but I’d read the articles to understand the topic as best as I could. It was a puzzling question why abused women simply didn’t leave, but the fact was that the issue was a lot more complicated than that. “I’ve read articles that say abusers isolate their victims, keeping them emotionally and economically dependent upon them, so that they don’t feel like they have any choices. And these narcissist personality types always turn it around on their victims anyway, like it’s somehow their fault they’re being abused.”

  He nodded. That made sense to him. “What about you?” he asked.

  “I think I’d like to talk to my mother, too,” I answered finally. “She died when I was thirteen, when everything was changing and so confusing. It would have been nice to know how she felt about femininity and womanhood. She was beautiful,” I explained. “Like Aunt Margot. Tall and brunette, perfect figure, perfect face. I often wonder if I would have been as big a disappointment to her as I am to Father.”

  I had never voiced that fear out loud before, not even to Lucy. He squeezed my hand gently, as if he understood.

  “Would you like to be famous?” I asked, moving along down the list. “And if so, why?”

  He pondered that for a moment. “I used to think I did. I did some modeling work here and there, started when I was about twenty or so. I kept thinking one day I’d get discovered and hit the big time. When you’re a kid who comes from nothing, it’s easy to daydream about life in the fast lane, dating all the beautiful women, having all the clothes, the cars, the money. The respect,” he added. “Needless to say that’s the one thing I don’t really get with my job, though it does provide all the rest. So I guess I had to forfeit notoriety for security, since fame isn’t really an option anymore.”

  “Are you ashamed of what you do, Devlin?” I asked. The question wasn’t on the list, but I wanted to hear the answer to it anyway.

  He shook his head. “I make people happy. There’s no shame in that. It’s straightforward. I know what’s expected of me, I know what I can deliver. I’ve been able to provide for my family and no one really gets hurt, unless it’s by the stigma attached to what I do, and that’s usually from the baggage other people carry anyway. I’ve always filed that under ‘not my problem,’ and moved on. I never cared what anyone thought of what I do.” His eyes met mine. “At least until two weeks ago, when I fell hard for someone who has quite a bit to lose being associated with someone like me.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. I guess the fame question really doesn’t apply to me, since I was born to a prominent family. I never had any say-so whether I was famous or not, whatever the hell fame even means anyway.”

  “You have a say now,” he pointed out. “If this thing with Darcy takes off, it could put you in the spotlight, particularly if you have to break away from Cabot’s to do it. That may bring you a ton of attention you don’t want.”

  “I don’t care about that. It’s not about me. It’s about all women, everywhere, who deserve to feel like they matter.” He nodded. That was what his business was truly about, not the sex, and we both knew it. I looked back down at the list. “Before you make a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you’re going to say, and why?”

  He chuckled. “Tricky territory here. Giving away a few tools of the trade. Yes,” he finally answered, “but not for the reasons you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most of my business is built upon fantasy, not reality. I have to figure out what my clients want and then give it to them, and each one is different. There’s no room for awkward first dates. If I get it wrong, there’s no second date, which means there’s no income.”

  I knew as much already. “So you lie.”

  “I pretend,” he amended. “It’s not much better than a lie, but it’s not as malicious.” I nodded. “What about you?”

  “Yes, and for probably the same reasons. I know what is expected of me, and it’s just easier to be that person, even when I don’t feel like it, even if that person doesn’t even remotely resemble me. The good daughter, for instance. The devoted employee who is expected to work twice as hard as everyone else because I got the job virtue of my last name.”

  “The grateful girlfriend,” he supplied. “Because you’ve been supplied with a perfect potential spouse picked solely because he fit into your father’s plan for you.”

  “Bingo,” I said before moving on to the next question. The less we talked about Oliver the better. “What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

  He exhaled deeply before raking his fingers through his hair. “God, I’ve spent so many years answering that question for everyone else, I don’t know if I know how to answer it for me anymore. You better go first while I think about it.”

  I laughed. “Well, it sounds silly, so don’t laugh, but I think I’ve already used up my perfect day. It happened when I was six years old.” His eyebrow arched as he listened. “I told you about our chateau in France, and how we used to go there every summer. One of the best days I ever had was my sixth birthday, which I celebrated there, because my birthday is during the summer, August ninth. I woke up practically at dawn, because you know how kids are on their birthdays.” He mirrored my smile as I went on. “I was out of bed and down the hall in a flash, pouncing on my parents’ bed to wake them up. And of course they held me down and cuddled me with lots of kisses and tickles and laughter. Dad wasn’t always like he is now,” I trailed off wistfully as I reminisced. “We ate breakfast together in bed as a family. We spent the entire day together, biking into the village, and having a picnic by the river. We played games. We sang songs. And then, at the end of the day, when they tucked me in that night, Father gave me a charm bracelet, which perfectly matched the one my mother wore, the one that told their love story one trinket at a time. I’d heard the story many times, but I demanded they tell me again, and of course they indulged me because it was my birthday. ‘One day,’ Father said, ‘you will meet a man who will write your own special love story, and you’ll come here to celebrate the birthdays of your children, and you will give your daughter a bracelet much like this one.’ He showed me the interlocking chain and said, ‘And you will tell her, ‘Though we our stories different, we are links on the very same chain, one made stronger together, that will endure for all time.’’” I couldn’t stop the tears if I wanted to. I hadn’t shared that story in a long time, either. “I daydreamed about that perfect day from then on, especially on every birthday I celebrated there until the summer I turned th
irteen. I didn’t have a special birthday celebration that year. My mother died August 1.”

  He pulled me into his arms and kissed my hair as I wept.

  “I was so angry at God,” I admitted at last. “I took a hammer to my charm bracelet and smashed every last one. Every single time one of them broke, it drove the truth home. No matter how strong something is, it could be destroyed in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t fix. I gave up on perfection that very day,” I sniffed at last.

  He gathered me tight into those strong arms. “I figured out my answer,” he said softly against my hair. I stared up at him expectantly. “To give you back your perfect day,” he answered before his lips met mine in a gentle kiss that broke the dam and I sobbed in his arms.

  Though there were only 36 questions, it took hours for us to finish the quiz. We opened up and shared quite a bit as a result. In fact, it was easy to overshare. On the question that required we tell each other as much of our life story as we could, neither one of us got past the age of six. He had already left Ireland for New York, and I had just met Lucy, when the four-minute time limit demanded we move along to the next question.

  Night had fallen outside our window by the time we reached the final challenge, where we had to stare into each other’s eyes for two to four minutes without speaking. This was, by far, the most difficult part of the quiz. There was nothing more intimate, and Devlin’s potent stare was lethal to me on a good day. So it started out awkward and uncomfortable. I felt vulnerable, though I couldn’t say why, given the lengthy question-and-answer session that shared more of my thoughts and my fears with Devlin than I had ever shared with anyone… even Lucy.

  But the longer we stared, the more powerful the moment became. I memorized every single fleck in those dazzling green eyes, ultimately stepping inside of his gaze just like a warm embrace. There was no judgment there, and no pretense. Inexplicably, more tears fell. Copious tears. Tears shed without really crying. It was though I was being cleansed, or baptized. When the alarm finally went off on his phone, letting us know that the four minutes had ended, he bent towards me for a tender kiss. I looped my arms around his neck as he swept me into his arms, to carry me to our room for our final night in our private suite.