Beach Colors

by Shelley Noble

“Go get her.”

  “Right.” Nick moved toward the driver’s side but Brianna stepped in front of him. She had to be close to five-ten, but hell, she seemed about seven feet tall as she scowled at him, almost eye-to-eye.

  He slipped past her, she punched him in the arm as he passed. “Goddammit.”

  Nick turned on her. “Why? Why would she come back? What can I offer her that New York can’t?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe yourself and Connor?”

  “That wasn’t enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jake’s question needled at him. “Did you tell her you loved her and wanted to marry her?” He’d come close, but it had stuck in his throat . . . because he knew what her answer would be.

  “She was sure,” he said, but he began to wonder if he’d been a coward. “Hell, she didn’t even stick around for this store, and it was way more important to her than we were.”

  Brianna rolled her eyes at him; he cut her off before she could say something painful.

  “She threw it all away. For her old life.”

  “Jeez. You can’t be as dense as you sound. She got scared. Haven’t you ever been scared, Nick? Forget I asked. I can see it; sense it on you. You’re scared now.”

  “I’m—”

  “She went back to what was familiar, where she knew the rules.”

  “It’s what she wants.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she just needed to go back to make sure she was doing the right thing by staying here. Did you ever think about that? Did you do anything to convince her she had a life here?”

  He flushed. He could feel it and he couldn’t stop it. “I thought I did.” But he could hardly get the words out.

  “You know, sometimes it’s easier when you don’t have a choice. Take me, there was no going back, I had to make a new life for myself. She’s torn, afraid of making the wrong decision, taking the chance of losing it all again.”

  He heard her words, but he was having a hard time focusing. He’d been so besotted, so . . . happy, that he’d forgotten she was still reeling from losing everything she had cared about. “They’re the same here, make a dress, sell a dress.”

  “Oh sure, she’s got that part down, it’s the you-and-Connor part she doesn’t know what to do with.”

  “Exactly. At least now you get it.” He moved her aside, opened the truck door, and climbed in.

  She held the door open. “You forced her hand.”

  “How so?”

  “She asked you to come to New York.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? What about Connor? His life has been about loss. I can’t pick him up and go to a city that’s frightening, where he has no friends, I have no job, and what about my mother, should I just leave her here?

  “Jesus, Bri, what does she want from me?”

  “Oh, please. Connor has more sense than you do and he’s supposed to be the child.”

  “She didn’t want us.” Nick started the truck. “Everything was fine until she came back.”

  “Call her, butthead.” Brianna slammed the door.

  Nick revved the engine and drove away. He wouldn’t call her. She’d called him. And left a message. “Hi. Just wanted to see how Connor is doing. I just . . . just hope things are okay. Okay. Bye.”

  Hardly the words of someone who wanted to come back, to be a part of his life, to love him till death did them part.

  Margaux threw herself into her new designs. By Wednesday afternoon, she had a stack of false starts and four or five designs that would pass muster. She spent a good amount of time staring out the kitchen window to the brick wall of the apartment building next door. Found herself sketching the brick pattern, pulled over the latest rejected design, went into the bedroom, rummaged for her pastels, and brought them back to the kitchen table.

  Black with a hint of brick red. Nothing too extreme, just a pop of color. But after several attempts, she had to admit defeat. Brick red was not doing it for her. She longed for ocean sunsets and marsh grasses. Her fingers itched to pick up her pastels and just doodle something . . . just for fun. But she wouldn’t have time for fun once she went back to work.

  Already the colors were fading, the sunsets, the salt marshes, the midnight sky turning to grays. She could recapture them. She had once. She could do it again. After her first season, maybe her second. Once she was back on top.

  But how long would that take? It had taken her twelve years to find the style that established her in the business. It had only taken three months to find her voice in color.

  Wednesday night she carefully packed her portfolio. Deliberated about what to wear, and at nine Thursday morning, she was riding up the elevator to S and B.

  She didn’t have to give her name to the receptionist this time. She was greeted with a “Good morning, Ms. Sullivan. Mr. Breed is expecting you.”

  Margaux nodded, smiled, read the woman’s name tag. Doris. For a brief second she thought about her own secretary and wondered if she could steal her back from the competition.

  “So can I show you to your new office?” Sam said once they’d gone through the obligatory air kiss.

  “We’ve put you in a large office back here.” He led her through a sea of desks, piled high with swatches, daily books, spreadsheets. Phones rang; staff hurried through the maze of aisles, heads down, energetic, tense, determined.

  She didn’t see any completed designs, not one draped dressmaker’s form. Because all that work was done on another floor, another building, city, or country.

  She slowed as she recognized Lisa Raul, a young designer who had been a bright star on the horizon for several years before she fizzled. She was back on the floor, designing as part of the pack. Margaux smiled slightly and Lisa turned quickly away. Margaux could feel her humiliation across the room.

  “I’ve appointed Joey Carlin as your assistant,” Sam said as he led her through the room. “He helped us on the Paris show. We stole him from Lagerfeld. But if you have someone else in mind, no problem.”

  “Joey’s perfect.”

  “Here we are.”

  Sam showed her into a freshly painted and carpeted office where Joey was standing by a large desk and smiling. He pumped her hand. “So glad to have the opportunity to work with you.”

  “Well, I’ll let you get settled. Then we’ll take a look at your new line.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” she said, trying to sound more at home than she felt.

  “Uh, Mr. Breed, Production said they wanted to have the new Atelier drawings by noon.” He turned to Margaux. “If you’ve got something finished.”

  Sam looked a question at her.

  “Of course.” She placed her portfolio on the desk and spread several of her latest designs out on the desktop. Sam leaned over, studying them closely, pushed two out of the way. Chose two others. “What else do you have?”

  Margaux showed him two more.

  “Okay this one, and . . .”

  He pulled the next one across the desk and turned it around. Margaux had included a design of one of her ochre and ecru Driftwood sarongs . . . Just as an experiment.

  Sam nodded, reached over to snag a pencil out of the pencil caddy, and scribbled something across the page and a huge arrow pointing to the dress.

  “Love it. Joey, call over to the warehouse and see if there’s more of that black shantung. Perfect for this cut, don’t you think?” He glanced at Margaux.

  “Perfect,” she said. And it was. For New York, for the runway, for the fashion industry.

  “And Joey, I want full mock-ups by tomorrow’s meeting. Margaux, these are dynamite. I’m wondering if we could bump the production schedule up? I’d love to see at least a couple of these in the fall show.

  “Joey, check with Cynthia on what spots we can lose. If we can get these constructed, I’ll pull a co
uple of pieces from the fall show, put these in their place. It’ll be tight, but I think we can get it done.”

  Joey’s mouth opened. “But—”

  “Get going.”

  Joey left the office.

  “Yell if you need anything. Welcome back.”

  Alone, Margaux looked around her new office. A steel and glass desk, drafting table in the corner. Natural light as well as work lights.

  She set up her supplies and got to work.

  It was after seven when she left that night. As she walked across the main room, lights shone from at least half the cubbies. They were gearing up for Fashion Week. And with a little luck, M Atelier would be part of it.

  She picked up takeout Chinese and went back to the apartment to continue work. Suddenly the kitchen table seemed too small, the air too hot and still, the brick wall outside the window too claustrophobic. She’d have to start looking for her own place. A studio, possibly a small one-bedroom, but she’d have to wait to get paid first.

  The next week passed in a blur. Margaux arrived early, stayed late. Everyone was working overtime and on overload. Tempers flared, diva attacks were the norm. It was intense, exciting. Exhausting. And relentless.

  She’d turned in several designs that had gone to assembly. She’d okayed fabrics even though she knew it was more of a nod to her reputation and she had no doubt that they would change the fabric in a flash if the costs went too high. Or dozens of other reasons.

  At the end of the week, she ran into Lisa Raul as she was coming out of the ladies’ room. Lisa stumbled past her, she was crying.

  Déjà vu. Margaux’s stomach burned in sympathy as Lisa rushed into a stall and retched. Margaux tiptoed away, leaving her to break down without an audience. It was a cutthroat business, Margaux just hoped the girl was having a stress meltdown and hadn’t just gotten fired.

  Joey was waiting in her office, with fabric swatches for her to okay.

  Sam stuck his head in the door. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He stepped inside. “You’re in the fall show, you need to sign off on these right away.”

  “Great,” Margaux said. Then she remembered Lisa Raul. Had she been dumped to make room for Margaux? Her stomach turned.

  “Sam, I just saw Lisa Raul. She seemed pretty upset. Do you know what happened?”

  Sam waved a dismissive hand. “A big disappointment. She just couldn’t compete, flat designs, no imagination. She showed such promise three years ago. We paid big bucks for her, and she just wimped out.”

  “Did she get bumped from the fall show to make room for me?”

  “Hell, I was going to have to do it anyway. I would have had to scramble to get something else, so if you want a full line in the fall show it’s yours. But we’ll need more. What do you have?”

  Lisa’s career had been deep-sixed with a shrug—to make room for Margaux. It was the way things worked. Had always been that way. Would always be that way. No one’s fault and Margaux’s chance.

  She mentally reviewed the things she’d worked on that week. They all just melded into one big gray area, nothing stuck out. She reached for her portfolio. Pulled out the top design. Handed it to Sam.

  “Mmm, don’t love it,” Sam said.

  She handed him another.

  “That’s more like it. We’ll place it up front. Dynamite.” He held out his hand for more.

  Trying to remember what else she had to show, she reached for the rest of the sketches.

  As she pulled them out of her portfolio another paper floated to the desktop.

  A crumpled piece of blue paper and Connor’s Day-Glo stars.

  Her breath caught and she gripped the edge of her desk.

  “Margaux? Is something wrong?”

  Here was her chance to be back in the game. To make a success of her life. To set the runways ablaze with her designs—her black designs. She wanted to say she was fine, but she couldn’t get the words out.

  He was willing to move mountains to get her. Screw the scheduled designers to keep her. But she didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s failure. That’s not how she wanted to live her life. Not her designs at the expense of another’s.

  Something was wrong. Terribly wrong, she thought as she gazed down at that crumpled sky with Connor’s stars. The Milky Way. For her dress. The dress she hadn’t designed yet. And the one, she finally realized, she needed to make.

  She closed her portfolio, looked up, smiled. “Thanks, Sam. This is such a great opportunity, but before this goes any further, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull out.”

  Sam’s face didn’t change. “I see. What if we sweeten the —”

  “No. It’s a wonderful offer and opportunity. But to be fair to S and B, I’m really committed to what I’m doing now. Put Lisa back in the show. She’s got talent, she just burned out for a minute. I’ve done that. We all have. But she’s talented, she’s got a great future ahead of her. Take a chance on her.”

  “Margaux. What will it take? You want to do a few pastels, I understand. But pastels just aren’t in this season. Maybe next year.”

  This season. Maybe next year. Pastels. He didn’t get it. But Margaux did at last. The colors she saw weren’t on the design palette, the clothing she made was whimsical, wearable, and maybe, just maybe, affordable without being shoddy. They weren’t haute couture. Maybe never could be. Maybe that’s not where she belonged.

  Actually she knew it wasn’t where she belonged. It was sad to admit, but it set her free.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. I’ve made my decision. Keep the designs I made for you. I don’t have use for them. I wish you all the best for the fall show. Goodbye.”

  She turned and left. No air kiss, no one-armed hug that wouldn’t wrinkle suits or mess makeup or hair. Just two impeccably dressed men, staring in disbelief as she packed up her portfolio and grabbed her purse.

  She made her way back through the chaos, smiled at everyone, nodded at the receptionist, and took the elevator downstairs.

  She was hit by a blast of heat and the pungent smell of truck exhaust. There had been a time when she craved the energy of the city, of the industry. But she was a different person now.

  Or at least she was the person she was meant to be. It may have taken a taciturn policeman and a silent little boy for her to get it. But she got it now. She just hoped she hadn’t waited too long.

  She began to walk faster. If she hurried, she could beat rush-hour traffic and be home before dark.

  Twenty-nine

  Margaux drove straight through Crescent Cove and stopped in front of Le Coif.

  “Moved out the day after you left,” Linda said.

  “You’re pissed,” Margaux said. “You have a right to be. Raise my rent to take care of what you’re losing without Nick.”

  “You think that’s gonna fix things?”

  “Do you want me to find another place for the boutique?”

  “Do you want me to slap you upside the head? Brianna and Grace and Jude have been playing round-robin keeping this place open so you’d have something to come back to when you woke up and realized what a horse’s ass you were. Now I suggest you start working on an ad campaign. Put an ad in the paper for some retail help. And get your butt over to Adelaide’s and beg her to come back to work.”

  “I can do the first two, but I don’t think Adelaide will be so easy.”

  “Won’t know until you try.”

  “Is Nick staying with her?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know where he’s staying?”

  “Nope.”

  A week went by. Margaux made her peace with Bri, Grace, Linda, Dottie. Everyone welcomed her back, though it took some longer than others. She went back to work . . . on her beach designs.

  And she was almost happy.<
br />
  “So I’m a slow learner. I just had to make sure,” Margaux told Bri and Grace over a batch of watermelon martinis. “Now I know for sure. This is where I belong.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it. Have you seen Nick?”

  Margaux shook her head. “He knows I’m back. If he wanted to see me, all he has to do is come to the store.”

  “Ask Adelaide.”

  “I can’t. What if Connor sees me? Nick won’t let me spend time with him. It will be awful.”

  “Oh hell, Margaux. He’s not some kind of ogre. He’s just a guy who went out on a limb for you, probably a first in his controlled, organized life. And you cut it out from under him.”

  “This from his worst critic,” Grace said, and poured another round of martinis.

  “God, I’ve messed up everything.”

  “Yeah, but you can fix it,” said Bri, and raised her glass. “Now go talk to Adelaide. We need her.”

  We. They were we again. Margaux felt a shred of hope that she might be able to rectify things with Nick and Connor. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  It wasn’t easy. Adelaide wasn’t at home the two times Margaux tried to visit. She even considered marching into the police station and demanding that Nick see her. But she didn’t. She hoped he’d come around, forgive her and take her back, but she didn’t hold out much hope. She’d hurt him, harmed Connor, and disappointed Adelaide. She had a lot to answer for, if they would even listen.

  She’d given up a future for one she thought she wanted, and by the time she’d discovered her mistake, she had lost both.

  She was sitting at the counter of Margaux when the “Toreador Song” let her know that a customer was on the way. She dragged herself up from the stool and pasted on a smile.

  Jude and Roger came into the store. They had that look. The look of promise, of happiness. Her stomach flipped over.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” said Jude. “Roger and I have something to tell you.”

  “I know. Congratulations.”

  “You don’t mind?” asked Roger. “If you feel—”

  “Not at all. Welcome to the family.” Family, the word echoed through her mind and settled in her heart.