Flirting With the Forbidden (3 page)

‘I’ll take the Alexandrite, the tourmaline and both garnets.’ Morgan scanned the cloth holding the jewels again. ‘The fifteen-carat F marquise-cut yellow diamond and I’ll let you know about the emeralds. Thanks, Derek.’

Derek nodded and stepped forward to help Morgan replace the jewels in their separate bags. She signed an order form as Derek spoke.

‘I have some apparently amazing Clinohumite coming in from a new mine in Siberia. Interested?’

Interested in the rare burnt orange gems that she could never get enough of?
Duh
. ‘Of course! I’ll owe you if you can sneak a couple of the nicer ones to me before you offer them to Carl.’

Carl was Head Craftsman for MI’s flagship jewellery store which was on the ground floor of the building. A rival to Tiffany and Cartier, Moreau’s made up the third of the ‘big three’ jewellery stores in New York City. Carl had his clients and so did Morgan, and they shared one or two others. They happily waged a silent war, competing for the best of the Moreau gems that were on offer. And for the clients with the deepest pockets.

‘I’ll offer you two per cent above whatever Carl offers for the Clinohumites. Don’t let me down, Derek, I want those stones.’ She might be a Moreau, but her business was separate to the jewellery store and the gemstones. She had to buy her stones at the going rate and sell at a profit...and that was the way she liked it.

‘Of course. I owe you for designing Gail’s engagement ring. She still thinks I’m a god.’

Morgan laughed. ‘I’m glad she loves it.’

Even though he had a hugely responsible job at Moreau’s, he would never have been able to afford the usual prices Morgan commanded. Sometimes she thought that the money she charged for her designs was insane but, as her mother kept insisting, exclusivity had its price, and the Moreau price was stratospheric.

Morgan heard the door to her studio click closed behind Derek and his guard and sat down on a stool, next to her workbench. She twisted a tanzanite and diamond ring on her finger before resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

Morgan Moreau Designs. She couldn’t deny that being a Moreau had opened doors that would have been a lot harder to break down if she hadn’t possessed a charmed name associated with gemstones. But having a name wasn’t enough; no socialite worth her salt was going to drop squillions on a piece of jewellery that wasn’t out of the very top drawer. Morgan understood that they wanted statement pieces that would stand out from the exceptional, and she provided that time and time again.

It was the one thing—probably the only thing—she’d ever truly excelled at. She adored her job; it made her heart sing. So why, then, exactly, wasn’t she happy? Morgan twisted her lips, thinking that she wasn’t precisely unhappy either. She was just...feeling ‘blah’ about her life.

Which was utterly ridiculous and she wanted to slap herself at the thought. She was a Moreau—wealthy, reasonably attractive, popular. She ran her own business and had, if she said so herself, a great body which didn’t need high maintenance. Okay, she was still single, and had been for a while—her soul mate was taking a long time to make an appearance—but she dated. Had the occasional very discreet affair if she thought the man nice enough and attractive enough to bother with.

She had a life that millions of girls would sell their souls for and she was feeling sorry for herself?
Yuck
.

‘Earth to Morgan?’

Morgan looked up and saw her best friend standing in the doorway of her studio, her pixie face alight with laughter. Friends since they were children, they’d lived together, travelled together and now they worked together...sort of. Riley was contracted to design and maintain the window displays of the jewellery store downstairs. She was simply another member of the Moreau family.

‘Hey. I’m about to have coffee—want some?’

Riley shook her head. ‘No time. Your mother sent me up here to drag you out of your nest. She wants you to come down and join the charity ball planning meeting.’

‘Why? She’s never included me before.’

‘You know that’s not true. Every year she asks if you want to be involved, and every year you wrinkle your pretty nose and say no.’

‘You’d think she would’ve got the message by now,’ Morgan grumbled. Organising an event on such a scale was a mammoth undertaking and
so
not up her alley. She’d just make an idiot of herself and that wasn’t an option. Ever.

She’d felt enough of an idiot far too many times before.

‘Well, she said that I have to bring you down even if I have to drag you by your hair.’

‘Good grief.’

Morgan stood up and stretched. She took stock of her outfit: a white T-shirt with a slate jacket, skinny stone-coloured pants tucked into black, knee-high laceup boots. It wasn’t the Moreau corporate look, but she’d do.

Morgan walked towards the door and allowed it to close behind her; like all of the other rooms in the building, entrance was by finger-scan. Keys weren’t needed at Moreau’s.

‘Did you get your dress for Merri’s wedding?’ Riley asked as they headed for the stairs.

‘Mmm. I can’t wait. We’re hitching a lift with James on the company jet, by the way. He’s flying out on the Thursday evening.’

‘Perfect.’

And it was... Their friend Merri was getting married in her and Riley’s hometown of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Morgan couldn’t wait to go home. She desperately missed her home country; she’d love to return to the vineyards and the mountains, the crisp Cape air and the friendly people. But if she wanted to cement her reputation for being one of the best jewellery designers in the world—like her grandfather before her—then she needed to be in fast-paced NYC. She needed clients with big money who weren’t afraid to spend it...

And talking of exceptional, she thought as they stepped out of the lift onto the fifth floor, where Hannah and the New York-based directors of MI had their offices, she had to start work on the piece Moreau International had commissioned her to design and manufacture that would be sold as part of the silent auction at the charity ball. Maybe that was why Hannah wanted her at the meeting...

TWO

Morgan watched
as her glamorous, sophisticated mother stepped out of her office in a lemon suit, nude heels and with a perfectly straight platinum chin-length bob.

‘I need a decision about the jewellery for the auction,’ Morgan announced as Hannah approached them. ‘Do you have any gemstones in stock that you want me to use? What do you want me to design? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Classic or contemporary? Is that why you want me at this meeting?’

‘Hello to you too, darling,’ Hannah said in her driest tone. ‘How are you?’

Morgan waved an elegant hand in the air. ‘Mum, we had coffee together this morning; you didn’t say anything then about me having to come downstairs.’

‘It’s a conference room, not a torture chamber, Morgan,’ Hannah replied, her tone as dry as the martinis she loved to drink. ‘Nice photo of you in the
Post
, by the way.’

Since she hadn’t been out recently, Morgan wasn’t sure where she’d been photographed. ‘Uh...where was I?’

‘At the opening night of that new gallery in Soho.’

Her friend Kendall’s new gallery; she’d popped in for five minutes, literally, and it couldn’t go undocumented?
Sheez!
But she was, very reluctantly, a part of the NYC social scene, and because she was a Moreau whenever she made an appearance she was photographed extensively. Many of those photographs ended up in the social columns and online.

Hannah folded her arms and tapped her foot. Good grief, she recognised that look.

‘Morgan, it’s time we talked about you joining Moreau International in an official position.’

Morgan sighed. ‘Has six months passed so quickly?’

They had an agreement: Hannah was allowed to nag her about joining the company every six months. For the last twelve years they’d had the same conversation over and over again.

‘I’ve decided that I want you to be MI’s Public Relations and Brand Director.’

Run me over with a bus,
Morgan thought. PR and Brand Director? That was a new title. ‘Mum, I’m happy doing what I’m doing—designing jewellery. You and James are doing a fabulous job with MI. You don’t need me.’

And she was damned if she was going to take a job away from a loyal MI employee who was way more qualified for the position than she’d ever be. And—funny, this—she actually wanted to get paid for what she
did
, not who she was.

But she had to give Hannah points for being persistent. She’d been trying to get her to work for MI since she was sixteen—shortly after they’d received the happy news that Morgan was just chronically dyslexic and not selectively stupid.

It had only taken her mother and a slew of medics, educational psychologists and shrinks to work that out. Everyone had been so pleased that they’d found the root cause of her failing marks at school, her frustration and her anger.

The years of sheer hell she’d lived through between the time she’d started school and her diagnosis had been conveniently forgotten by everybody except herself.

Water under the bridge, Morgan reminded herself. And she knew her mum felt guilty for the part she’d played in the disaster that had been her education.

Morgan knew that it hadn’t been easy for her either. She’d been thrust into running MI in her mid-thirties, when her adventure-seeking husband had decided that he didn’t like the corporate life and wanted to be MI’s chief geologist, discovering new mines. Hannah, with her MBA in business and economics, had taken over the role of MI’s CEO, juggling its huge responsibilities with two children, one of whom had made her life a great deal more difficult by her inability to meet her mother’s and teachers’ expectations.

How often had she heard variations on the theme of, ‘She’s such a bright child; if only she would try harder.’

Nobody had ever realised how hard she’d always been trying, how incredibly frustrating it had been not to meet her goals and everybody else’s. Had they honestly believed that she didn’t want to learn to read and write properly? That she’d enjoyed being the class freak?

Ages eight to sixteen had been a suck-fest of epic proportions. Finally being diagnosed as being chronically dyslexic had freed her, a little, from the shame and guilt she’d felt for years. She’d started to believe that her learning disabilities weren’t her fault and her relationship with her family—well, mostly with her mother—had rapidly improved. Her mum was still a controlling corporate queen, and she still marched to the beat of her own drum, but they’d found a way back to each other—even if they did have to have this conversation every six months.

Morgan knew that she wasn’t stupid, but she also knew that working for MI would require computers and reading and writing reports. While she
could
do all of that, she just took longer than most—okay, a lot longer—and the corporate world couldn’t and wouldn’t wait that long. And shouldn’t...

Until she was the best person for a job, she wouldn’t take it. Not to mention that her dyslexia would become an open secret; she wouldn’t be able to keep it under wraps. Wouldn’t that be fun? She could just see the headlines:
The ultimate dumb blonde... Gorgeous but thick... With her looks and money, who needs brains anyway?

She’d heard them all before—even from someone she’d loved...

Morgan shuddered.
No, thank you.
Call her stubborn, call her proud, but she wasn’t going to expose herself to that much ridicule again.

Besides, designing jewellery was her solace and her joy—her dream job. If only Hannah would see that and get off her back about working for MI her relationship with her mum would be pretty much perfect.

Morgan took her mum’s hand and squeezed. ‘I love you for the fact that you believe I should play a bigger part in MI, but I am neither qualified nor suited for the corporate world, Mum. I don’t
want
to be part of that world. I’m happy being on the fringes of MI.’

‘I will wear you down someday.’ Hannah sighed loudly. ‘On another subject, I want you to haul out your designer dresses and start creating hype around the ball at social events.’

Morgan gagged. ‘
Ugh
. Don’t I do enough already?’

‘Hardly.’ Hannah sniffed. ‘One function every two weeks and cutting out early isn’t good enough to promote your business, and not nearly good enough to promote the ball. You need to charm more people than you’re currently doing. Darling, you are a social disgrace. How many invitations did you turn down this week alone?’

Morgan shrugged. ‘Ten...twelve?’

‘Helen, my personal publicist, said that you were invited to at least twenty-five, maybe more. Soirées, charity dinners, afternoon teas, breakfasts...’

Morgan tipped her head and counted to ten, then thirty, before attempting to speak rationally. ‘Mum, I have a business to run, designs to get out the door. I work, just like you do. Okay, I don’t oversee a multinational company but I work. Hard.’

‘You’re a Moreau; you should be out more. Can you start going to some more formal parties? The benefits, the political fundraisers, the balls? That is where the money is, darling—the people who can actually afford the price of the ball tickets. We need to target the people who have the
real
money, and they are at the more sedate functions.’

Sedate
meaning deadly dull. ‘Don’t nag me, Mother. You know I hate those stuffy functions where the conversation is so...intense. The situation in Syria, the economy, the plight of the rainforests.’

‘Because, you know, those issues
aren’t
important...’ Riley said, her tongue in her cheek.

Morgan glared at her. ‘I feel...’ She wanted to say
stupid
but instead said, ‘I feel out of place there.’

Like all the other issues related to her dyslexia, it had taken her many years to conquer her social awkwardness and to decode social cues. She still battled with new situations, and she knew that many people took her occasional lapses of concentration and her social shyness as self-absorption and disinterest. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She generally loved people, but she could never tell if they loved her back.

When she added that to her ‘I wonder if he sees me or just the family money’ concerns, dating was a bit of a nightmare...

And, really, she would rather have a beer in a pub in jeans and a T-shirt than be in a ballroom in shoes that hurt her feet.

Riley smiled at her and Morgan recognised the mischievous glint in her eyes.

‘You poor child...being forced to dress up, drink the best champagne in the world and eat the finest food at functions that are by invitation only. It’s almost abuse—really, it is.’

Morgan’s searing look promised retribution for Riley’s teasing and her encouragement of her mother’s campaign to get her to be the reigning young socialite of New York City.

Morgan wrinkled her nose at her mother. ‘You and James just do it so much better than me. You’re suave and sophisticated and far more charming than I’ll ever be—with or without the big D. Look, we’ve discussed my contribution to the ball so can I go now?’ Morgan asked hopefully.

‘No, I’d still like you to attend this first planning meeting with Riley, Jack—our PR director—and the new consultant James has appointed to assess security,’ Hannah said as they walked down the carpeted passage to the boardroom.

On the walls either side were framed photographs of the Moreau collection of jewels.

‘Why can’t Moreau’s own Chief of Security handle it? He always has,’ Morgan said, because she felt she should show
some
interest.

‘Since the last Moreau ball there have been a number of armed robberies on jewellery exhibitions.’ Hannah rapped her fist against the frame that held a picture of the Moreau Diamond—a gem Morgan’s three times great-grandfather Moreau had bought from a broke Russian aristocrat and which had once been owned by Elizabeth of Russia. ‘Fifty-three carats, D-colour, flawless. Worth more than five million dollars. You want to risk it getting stolen?’

When she put it like that...

‘Our jewellery collection is priceless, Morgan, so James has contracted Auterlochie Consulting to look at every security hole we have and to plug it. Their best operative will be in charge...’

Auterlochie...Auterlochie... Why did she know that name?

‘In you go, darling, and smile!’

Hannah placed a hand on her back and she bared her teeth at her mother as she stepped into the conference centre. Her hand still on the doorknob, she looked around—and her head jerked back as dazzling blue eyes connected with hers.

Deep brown hair... Auterlochie... A deep Sean Connery voice explaining that it was a town in the Scottish Highlands, situated on a loch, and he’d once visited it with a friend. Two young boys had fished and explored the icy banks there, and he’d told her when he opened his business it would be called Auterlochie something.

It was the one of the longest sentences he’d strung together, and Morgan had been enthralled by his Scottish accent and the light of determination in those fantastic cobalt eyes... Noah Fraser.

Morgan’s heart splattered as it hit the floor.
Bats on a broomstick.

She stepped back behind the door and squeezed her eyes shut. Eight years and she still wished she could acid-wash the memory out of her brain.

‘Excuse me. I really need to go to the bathroom.’

‘Oh, Morgan? Right now? The meeting...’

Hannah’s voice followed her down the hall.

In the upscale visitors’ bathroom where she’d fled after Hannah had dropped her verbal meteor strike, Morgan sat on the lid of a toilet and stared at her hands. She knew she had to get moving, get to the meeting, or her mum would hunt her down like a rabid fox but she didn’t know if she could face Noah Fraser again.

She’d rather flush herself down the toilet bowl.

‘Morgs?’ A fist rapped on the door. ‘You in there? Your mum is
not
a happy camper.’

Morgan leaned forward and flipped the lock to open. Riley pulled the door open and frowned. She sent her a pointed look. ‘Why are you hiding out in the bathroom?’

Morgan bit the inside of her cheek. ‘Did you meet Noah Fraser?’

‘The security guy? Yes. Very intense, very hot.’

Morgan swore and dropped her face to her hands.

‘And the problem is...?’

Morgan briefly explained her history with Noah and Riley lifted her hands in confusion. ‘So you made a move on the guy and he said no? It was a long time ago, Morgan.’

Morgan knew that if there was anyone who would understand what she was about to say Riley was it. They’d been friends forever and she had witnessed Morgan’s constant struggles with the system. Shortly after the incident with Noah she’d moved in as Morgan’s flatmate. Riley had watched her struggle through college to get her diploma in Gemology and Jewellery Design—it had taken her double the time to get as anyone else, even with a scribe—and she knew the challenges she faced on a daily basis and had supported her through the hard times.

‘Okay, I need more details. So tell me about Mr Melt-My-Panties. And hurry up—your mother is going to have both our hides soon.’

‘When I was nineteen the parents had some kidnapping threats made against them by some weird group and Noah was assigned as my bodyguard.’

‘Uh-huh...’

‘After a week of hanging with him I threw myself at him—actually, I threw my
naked
self at him.’ Morgan nodded at Riley’s wince. ‘He kissed me, discovered I was a virgin, and then he declined the offer. I was so humiliated. I liked him—felt so at ease with him despite the fact that he hardly spoke—and his rejection felt like—’

‘Like what, hon?’

‘I can’t explain it, and I don’t know why, but his rejection made me feel swamped with shame. Every emotion I’d ever experienced with my dyslexia—the lack of self-belief, the fear of judgement—dropped on me like a ton of bricks. It was horrible. He made me feel worthless again. And now is not the time to tell me that nobody can make me
feel
worthless!’

‘Okay. No lectures. Did he know that you were dyslexic?’