Satin Doll

by Davis, Maggie;

  “I explained everything to her.” Sam stayed where she was at the top of the storeroom stairs. “She understood, all right.”

  In spite of the terrible burning energy of the last two days, she felt suddenly exhausted. The weight of fifteen or twenty pounds of dresses in her arms was becoming unbearable. She wished he would go away.

  He put one hand on the iron railing and looked up at her. “If it’s what she thinks you’re talking about, she wants you to understand it’s not a good idea right now.”

  Sam felt light-headed. She’d lost so much sleep the last few nights planning that she was almost giddy.

  “You can’t tell her you’re going to have some important event here and then just walk away. She’s the director here, after all. She doesn’t understand what’s going on, and she says you won’t even explain.”

  Sam pulled her attention back with an effort. Chip’s low, huskily insistent voice had been telling her something and she hadn’t been listening. Chip the button salesman was never bothered with anything. What sort of problems could you have with buttons, after all?

  He took a step up the stairs toward her. “What’s the matter with you?” His voice was guarded. “Are you feeling all right?”

  Oh, yes, she was feeling all right, she thought, staring at him. If everything worked out, Paris would never forget her. Neither would Jack Storm. And she didn’t need Chip. Because she had Alain des Baux.

  “I never felt better in my life,” Sam said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Lamborghini was stopped at a red light exiting the Périphérique beltway. Alain turned his head to her, smiling. “You mean I’m your knight in shining armor?”

  “Well, in a shining black sports car, anyway,” Samantha said. “And you did rescue me. I was getting burned out putting this show together. I suppose I needed a break.”

  “You are working too hard,” he told her, not for the first time. “There is no way you can give it up? Tell this man in New York that it is too much, that you can’t do it?”

  She shook her head. The sunstreaks in Alain’s hair were more pronounced now that summer was deepening his tan. Against his darker skin his eyes appeared even more golden. He wore a blue knit shirt and casual slacks that defined his elegant body and long legs in virile, graceful lines. He was beautiful. Sam grinned, knowing her eyes were telling him so.

  “When you look at me like that,” he said on an indrawn breath, “there’s only one thing I can do.” His right hand lifted from the steering wheel, curled itself around the back of her neck and drew her to him quickly. Then his mouth closed over hers.

  It was a brief, ardent kiss, full of warm sexuality. Good lord, Sam thought happily, we’re necking in public, just as French lovers do! She enthusiastically returned the probing of tongue against lips. Nothing could have been more typically Parisian—kissing each other madly at a stoplight. Nothing could have delighted her more.

  The light changed and the drivers behind them promptly leaned on their horns.

  “Are you feeling better?” Alain reluctantly put the Lamborghini into gear.

  “When we do this, yes,” Sam sighed.

  She stayed pressed against him, snuggling her head comfortably against his arm as the racing car picked up speed, turning into highway N 10 at the signs that pointed to Versailles.

  “A few hours in the country will work wonders.” He took his eyes from the road for only a second to look down at her tenderly. “Did you bring your swimsuit?”

  Samantha nodded again. The last ten days had been nonstop work and Alain had remarked on the circles under her eyes when she’d stepped into the car. A few moments later he’d asked her if she’d had a good night’s sleep for a change, and then, because he knew she hadn’t, he’d lectured her on the foolishness of attempting to take the whole project of the Maison Louvel retrospective on her shoulders, trying to do everything herself. His real concern touched her, even though, to put it mildly, Alain thought the whole idea of a retrospective show of Claude Louvel’s clothes would be a disaster. He had tried to talk her out of it so many times, so vehemently, that Sam tried to avoid the subject.

  For that matter, she thought, sighing, the retrospective seemed to be wildly unpopular with just about everybody. Madame Doumer swept through the halls of the Maison Louvel in a cold, unyielding fury, taking out her anger on Sophie, who seemed to be permanently in a state of confused misery. The women in the atelier, Nannette and Sylvie, were sullenly uncooperative. Brooksie Goodman seemed to be buckling under all the problems that still kept multiplying the more they tried to deal with them, and even though they fought it, the accumulative tiredness was gaining on them both.

  Sam turned her face into the sleeve of Alain’s shirt, smelling cotton fabric, the faint scent of expensive cologne and the reassurance of his clean, silky male skin. Except for Alain, she had no one to cling to. When she was with him, the world righted itself and came back to normal and turned again into a wonderful place to live.

  “Do you want to curl up and sleep?” he murmured softly. “It’s not far to Versailles, only twenty minutes to the part we are going to, but perhaps time enough for a small nap.”

  What was sleep? Sam wondered. She hardly knew it anymore. She spent the hours between midnight and five a.m. in bed in the apartment at the top of the Maison Louvel staring into the dark, organizing and reorganizing the show in her head, worrying at her tangled problems with a sort of manic desperation until she finally dropped into exhausted blankness for a few hours before dawn came up. The one big problem was still the date for the Maison Louvel showing. She and Brooksie had finally picked ten a.m., Tuesday, July 22nd because the Syndicale schedule had listed no showings that day until one o’clock. But then Albert Nippon had moved his slot to Wednesday and, like a game of musical chairs, most of the larger couture houses had shifted, too. The retrospective had ended up on the same day, at the same time as the gala Rudi Mortessier show, advertised to be Paris’s biggest, since it featured with Gilles Vasse’s new collection. The conflict was a major disaster; it wasn’t exactly a mystery as to which showing the press would attend. With their invitations already printed and ready to mail, she and Brooksie had yet to figure a way out.

  “Are you comfortable?” Alain looked down at her. “You will like my cousin Marie-Louise. Did I tell you they call her Marilou?”

  Sam sat up and put her hands behind her head and yawned, shaking her head. When Alain looked at her again, she gave him a sultry smile.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said softly, his eyes caressing her. “And I adore you—do you know that?” He turned his eyes back to the road and said briskly, “Everyone will be at the pool since it is Saturday afternoon. You will get to meet my cousin and her husband, Jean-Yves de Bergerac, who is an air force liaison for French aerospace programs; their friends, who are usually engineers; their wives; and of course all the kids. The kids are very noisy. French children are notoriously spoiled, so be prepared.”

  It sounded heavenly. The prospect of a big family pool party was just the way to spend a beautiful day, Sam thought. The exact opposite of the hectic way she’d been living, cooped up in the Maison Louvel.

  She knew Alain des Baux came from a wealthy, titled family, was himself a duke of some ancient French line, but it still didn’t prepare Sam for the first sight of his brother-in-law’s estate just outside Versailles. The green sweep of lawns, as the Lamborghini purred through the gates, seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, as perfectly manicured as a golf course. The de Bergeracs’ sixteenth-century gray stone manor house was nestled in a stand of ancient beech trees that overlooked a small lake. Alain parked his car in the circular drive and a maid let them into the cool, echoing vastness of a house with high-ceilinged rooms, masses of fresh flowers and rather meticulously arranged antique furniture.

  “Pool this way,” Alain told her, taking Sam’s arm and steering her first through a sunlit kitchen and then out into a small cobblestoned courtyard
. They could hear the screams of small children just ahead.

  But Sam was not prepared for the scene she stepped into when they reached the end of the path that led to the open garden area.

  The estate’s swimming pool was stunningly modern, an aquamarine splash of color in the bright sunshine, flanked by lounge chairs and an open air bar, a row of tile-roofed dressing rooms, umbrella tables and, beyond, the vivid emerald sweep of French countryside. A young bartender in a white coat was serving drinks.

  There were, as Alain had predicted, at least a dozen children running around, jumping off the edge of the pool into the brilliantly blue water and monopolizing the diving board. Two handsome, tanned men in their thirties in ultra-abbreviated European swim trunks that looked like nothing more than brightly colored jockstraps were standing, drinks in hand, at the poolside watching the children. Sam thought, startled, that their outsize sunglasses looked larger than what they were wearing below. Until she saw the beautifully tanned, exquisitely slender bodies of the women.

  All the women were bare-breasted.

  A lithe brunette with sparkling blue eyes came up quickly, grabbed Alain’s arm and kissed him on the cheek, murmuring a quick greeting in French.

  “My cousin Marilou,” Alain said, turning to Sam. He spread his hand affectionately against the young woman’s bare back.

  Sam couldn’t help staring at the woman’s small, brown breasts tightly budded from the swimming pool’s cool water. It was only after several long seconds that she managed to lift stunned eyes to her hostess’s impish, attractive young face. All the women around the pool were wearing only the bottoms of string bikinis.

  The pretty brunette shot her tall cousin a sudden, reproving look. “My God, Alain, you are a beast.” Then, under her breath, “Idiot, elle est très embarrassée!” She quickly took Sam’s hand. “Come, I want you to meet my husband and make him stop talking business with Henri Duvernet. When they see how lovely you are, they will be willing to quit. They are both engineers—what they talk about is impossible. And very dreary.” She gave Sam a small, ingenuous smile. “Then you can change into your swimsuit. The little cabanas there on the other side of the pool are for changing. You can leave your clothes inside until you are ready to go.”

  Marilou de Bergerac was small, deeply tanned, with the impervious, vivacious charm of the upper-class Frenchwoman. As they approached the two handsome men at the edge of the pool, she said to them, “This is Alain’s beautiful American friend. I told her she must make you stop talking business. But before she changes for the pool, I think I will show her the house, which I know she will like. And you must speak English.”

  The two men turned to Sam. With the introductions, the one who was not Marilou’s husband gallantly lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, his eyes taking in her rather dressy beige silk dress that, in the light breeze that floated up to them from the gardens, swirled about Sam’s long legs and pressed against her hips.

  The hand kissing again, Sam thought, the corners of her mouth quirking a little. It was very formal, considering that the good-looking, brown young man pressing the back of her fingers to his lips was wearing a clinging scrap of jersey that allowed her to look him over as thoroughly as he was looking her over.

  The house, when Alain’s cousin took her through it, reflected the charm and breeding of generations of French aristocracy.

  “It is only a country house, not very grand for the time it was built,” Marilou explained. “You have not been to the palaces at Versailles yet? They are unbelievable. You must get Alain to take you.”

  Tall windows let an abundance of light into elegant rooms in the back of the house, where the family spent most of its time. A sitting room was a blend of contemporary and antique furnishings, with woven fiber matting from the Philippines on the walls, a lovely faded red and white Aubusson carpet and comfortable modular chairs and sofa. Faïence jars on the seventeenth-century marble mantelpiece flanked the brightly colored geometrics of a twentieth-century Braque oil. And everywhere there were the huge bouquets of fresh flowers from the estate gardens so typical of upper-class French houses. The study’s original mahogany paneling had been stripped of old varnish and hand-rubbed to a lighter, grayer hue to brighten the large room, enclosed on all four sides with book shelves. The wall panels, the top of the desk and several tables were filled with framed family photographs.

  “Yes, Jean-Yves and I, our wedding, all the children,” Marilou said, dismissing the framed photos with a gesture.

  “And Alain,” Sam said. She started to pick up a photograph, but Marilou abruptly covered it with her hand.

  “Yes, Alain. There is another, better one of him on the wall,” his cousin said quickly.

  Samantha lifted her eyes and for a moment they stood simply looking at each other.

  “Merde,” Marilou de Bergerac said under her breath. She gave a quick, good-humored shrug that said she liked her, and that she would be honest. She held out the photograph in its gold frame to Sam. “They are betrothed,” she said simply. “She is still in school.”

  Yes, she would be still in school, Sam thought, looking down at the impossibly handsome figure of Alain des Baux in polo clothes, his helmet under one arm and the other around the somewhat childish figure with dark, windblown hair who looked up at him with adoration written in her pretty face.

  “This is the way these things are done, the old families,” his cousin murmured. “Since they were children, you know.”

  Yes, she knew, Sam was thinking with a curious lack of feeling. A good marriage was everything for European aristocrats—she’d learned that the day she’d arrived in Paris. Alain looked to be a good twelve or even fifteen years older than the girl in the picture, and she would undoubtedly be a virgin when he claimed her, a bride already in love with the man their families had selected for her. She would become, after a few years, a chic young wife and mother who would swim in her swimming pool in the garden of her elegant house somewhere near Paris. With her beautiful naked little breasts deeply tanned by the sun.

  It all made sense, Sam was thinking with a terrible clarity. She was remembering Laure’s boutique and the knowing air of the proprietress, the implication that Alain had been there before with other women, and not just his sister, to buy clothes. Who else but his girlfriends? If she asked his cousin, she supposed Marilou would say yes, that was probably true.

  Samantha put the gold-framed photograph carefully back in its place with the other family portraits on the table.

  “But he is mad about you,” Marilou said quickly. “Surely you can see that. He wanted to bring you here today, because he was so eager for me to meet you. ‘She is the most exciting, enchanting woman I have ever met,’ that’s what he said to me. I have never known him to be this way about someone before.”

  It didn’t make it any better, but Sam managed a smile for the other woman’s kindness. She was surprised that she wasn’t feeling more; there was only a rather stunned, hollow place where anguish should have been. She stared down at the framed photograph. At least now she knew a bit more about where she stood. If that was any consolation.

  “I think I’m ready to go swimming now,” Samantha said. “Where do you want me to change?”

  The black bikini she had brought with her was as scandalously skimpy as any she’d been able to find in New York, little more than three thin scraps of nylon parachute cloth attached to woven silver and black strings. But it did have a top.

  Sam undressed carefully in a little tile-roofed cabana, where she could hear the grown-ups romping with the children in the pool and the shrieks and noisy splashing. She slipped into the bikini bottom and tied the strings and then held the bra against her breasts with one hand and pulled the ties over her shoulder. Then she stopped.

  She was going to fight, she told herself, looking down at the two pieces of black nylon that covered her skin. Fight for Alain, fight for what she wanted. Fight for everything these days, she thought a little wearily
.

  Carefully, she peeled away the top of the bikini and laid it on the shelf with her neatly folded dress, her high-heeled sandals and her underwear. It was the first time she’d ever even given a thought about appearing half-naked in front of other people. If it felt like anything at all, it was sort of like taking a running jump off a diving board, arching your back for the dive and hoping you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself in front of the whole world with a tremendous belly whopper.

  She stepped out into the bright sunshine and closed the door to the cabana behind her. Was it her imagination or did the shouting in the pool fade away a little? Along with the conversations of the lovely young Frenchwomen stretched out on the lounges in the sun watching their husbands and children in the bright blue water?

  She kept her head up, looking straight ahead, hoping there was nothing in her way to trip over. Across the pool she caught Marilou’s eyes widening briefly, then the smooth expression which replaced it. God, it was quiet.

  As Sam stepped to the edge of the pool, grabbed the handrail and started down the first concrete step into the clear aquamarine water, she was realizing somewhat too late that her breasts weren’t tanned, and they were probably standing out like headlights. Her body was long and willowy—she was a head taller than the bare-breasted young Frenchwomen around the pool—and her bosom was small, hardly voluptuous. Even so, she was well-endowed by comparison, and she was wishing she’d thought about the fact that her breasts were several shades whiter.

  As she slid up to her shoulders in the water, the normal noises in the pool resumed. The young husbands no longer seemed to be looking at her fascinated but were busy again with a game of water polo with the screaming kids. Out of the corner of her eye, Sam saw Marilou flash her a quiet grin.

  Well, I did it, she thought. She leaned back, letting the cool water and the heat of the hot summer sun soak into her shoulders and face. For whatever it proved, she was part of the crowd. At least it was better than standing out awkwardly with her breasts trussed up in a bra when everyone else was bare.