Legacy of Lies (18 page)

W
ith “Blue Bayou” on hiatus and Eleanor's optimistic and energetic plan to launch the retail line in a mere six months, Alex turned all her attention to creating her retail designs.

She was not working in a vacuum. In order to work with Alex on the design concept—and to observe her closely— Eleanor began to spend more and more time in Los Angeles, staying at her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Worried that perhaps she'd bitten off a bit more than she could comfortably chew, Alex found the canny retailer's assistance invaluable.

As the first television product licensing venture ever aimed at upper-middle-class adults, the Alexandra Lyons Blue Bayou collection was staking out new retailing territory. The trick was adapting Alex's ultraglamorous costumes into equally alluring, reasonably affordable clothing.

Remembering what Debord had said about knowing exactly who you were designing for before she put pencil to sketch pad, Alex spent hours staking out Lord's stores to get a true fix on her clientele. The quintessential Lord's
woman, she determined, was a woman with charm and sophistication and beauty. She was intelligent and successful and as a rule preferred sensual, rather than overtly sexy, clothing.

It was decided from the start that Alex's clothes would not bear any outer labels linking them with the popular television program. After all, Eleanor pointed out succinctly, a Lord's customer was independent and self-confident. She would never purchase anything that might label her as a fashion victim.

“As you can see, I modified certain outfits,” Alex explained during a meeting with Eleanor in Zach's vast corner office. She'd been relieved to learn Zach wouldn't be sitting in on the design portion of the meeting. “What works on television doesn't always translate into real life.”

Eleanor nodded thoughtfully, comparing the actual still photographs of the actresses wearing the various dresses and suits during taping and the colorful sketches depicting Alex's adaptations.

“That's true,” she agreed with a regretful little sigh that suggested her retail marketing sense was warring with her feminine side. “Most women aren't going to put on big, veiled hats to go to the market or the office. More's the pity,” she murmured as her gaze lingered a long time on an ultraglamorous, but oh, so huge red hat draped in black flowered lace.

“Oh, I like this.” She held up a sketch of a pastel pink gingham dress with a full, gathered skirt. The model in the drawing was holding a prim little handbag and sporting a beribboned straw boater. “It reminds me of Leslie Caron in
Gigi,
with a touch of Brigitte Bardot in
Babette Goes to War
.”

“That's the idea,” Alex admitted with a quick, only slightly sheepish grin. “Those films were on late-night ca
ble back-to-back the night I was trying to come up with a design for Tiffany to wear back home to the bayou for her sister's wedding.”

Sophie had devised that plot twist after Alex, needing to talk about Zach with someone, had told her about that long ago day.

“The day she got pregnant with her old high-school sweetheart's baby,” Eleanor remembered. “Gracious, that was a hot scene! The night Clara and I watched that episode, I half expected their lovemaking to set off the smoke detector.”

She grinned and fanned herself dramatically with the sketch; for not the first time since they'd begun working together, Alex found it difficult to believe that Eleanor was actually in her seventies. Her appearance, along with her unwavering zest for life, made her seem decades younger.

“The contrast between that sexy scene and that sweet fifties-style dress was brilliant,” Eleanor said, unstinting as always with her praise.

Alex returned the warm smile. “Thanks.”

At the time, Sophie had worried that the dress wasn't as blatantly obvious as the rest of Tiffany's wardrobe. But Alex had argued that the exaggeratedly innocent gingham would work. And it had, better than she could have hoped.

“The Tiffany wardrobe is certainly different from what we usually feature at Lord's,” Eleanor mused, flipping through the sketches for the umpteenth time.

Eleanor's careful study of the sketches reminded Alex of the time Debord had first examined her portfolio. Back then, she'd felt certain she would die from anxiety. Now she had more confidence, and while she admittedly worried that the older woman might reject her suggested designs, she knew such a rejection was not the end of the world.

“It is a slightly younger look,” Alex said carefully.

She'd been worried about that ever since Zach's demographics had revealed the average Lord's charge-card customer was nearly a decade older than the Bourbon Street stripper character. But conversely, letters from younger viewers made up a large proportion of “Blue Bayou's” fan mail.

And although she'd never claim to be a retailer, from a purely practical viewpoint, Alex thought it foolish to ignore such sales potential.

“Definitely younger,” Eleanor agreed. Her gaze lingered on a blue-and-green plaid pleated skirt and white blouse reminiscent of a Catholic school uniform. The only difference was that the skirt was scandalously short and shot with gleaming gold threads, and the blouse was created from diaphanous silk organza.
Schoolgirl sex
.

“What you've done is wonderful, Alex. It's about time Lord's had an infusion of new blood.”

As she dug into her portfolio for the lingerie collection, Alex released a breath she'd been unaware of holding.

“I realize that marketing really isn't my field,” Alex said, distracted momentarily by Zach's arrival. Knowing he kept a very close eye—and an equally tight fist—on the Lord's bankbook, Alex had been expecting him.

Today they were going to discuss factories, and she had a very good idea that she and Zachary Deveraux were about to have their first serious disagreement.

“But,” she continued, returning her attention to Eleanor, “an idea occurred to me I want to share with you.”

“What idea is that?”

“I thought you might want to consider having actual customers appear in some of the print advertising.”

“Like those mink ads?”

“Exactly. Except they always use famous faces. I
thought it might be fun to show that any woman can be a star wearing clothing from the Blue Bayou collection.”

A curtain of silence settled over the room. Alex could practically see the wheels turning inside Eleanor's head.

“I love it.” She clapped her hands together and gave Alex a look that reminded her of the gold stars teachers used to put on her papers. “You definitely have a flair for retailing.”

A genetic flare, Eleanor decided, exchanging a brief, I-told-you-so look with Zach.

Alex grinned, enjoying the praise and the moment. She'd been admittedly nervous about working with Eleanor. And not only because the job would entail seeing Zach on a regular basis. Stories regarding the elderly retailer's impatient, often curt tongue and short temper were legion; independently minded herself, Alex had worried that she and Eleanor Lord might clash on a regular basis.

But instead, they worked flawlessly together. For two women of different generations, raised in such disparate life-styles, she and Eleanor were, Alex had discovered to her surprise, remarkably alike.

As much as Alex enjoyed her work for Lord's, she quickly discovered she'd been right to worry about working so closely with Zach. The truth, as much as she tried to deny it to Sophie, as much as she wished it otherwise, was that she possessed a burning passion for a man she was forced to work with, a man she could only see in public, a man she didn't dare permit herself to be alone with anywhere but in his office.

And even there they tended to keep the door open by mutual unspoken agreement, making Marge, his secretary, or better yet, Eleanor, their chaperone. And on the rare occasion they did find themselves alone, they maintained
an inviolate border between personal and business conversations.

“The important thing is to find a factory that will give us low labor costs and efficient delivery,” Zach began without preamble when Eleanor turned the meeting over to him. “And right now, from a cost-per-unit criteria, we can get the biggest bang for our bucks in Korea.”

Alex had been expecting this. She was also ready for it. “I won't allow the Alexandra Lyons collection to be manufactured by miserably underpaid women in some horrid Seoul workshop.”

“
You
won't allow?” He reined in a burst of irritation that was threatening to ignite a temper he thought he'd put away when he'd donned his expensive Brooks Brothers suits.

“That's right.”

Alex folded her arms and turned her gaze to the oil painting on the wall depicting Zach with his parents, sisters and grandmother working the family sugarcane farm. She remembered him telling her how it reminded him of his roots.

“And quite honestly, knowing your background,” she added, “I'm amazed that you'd consider exploiting the less fortunate.”

Eleanor, watching the exchange with interest, made a slight sound that could have been a cough. Or a smothered laugh.

“I fail to see where giving impoverished citizens honest employment is exploiting the less fortunate.”

“Did you actually visit any of those so-called factories?”

Zach had the grace to flush. Alex watched the color rise from his white shirt collar and felt a flicker of hope.

“They're not that bad,” he argued. But his voice lacked conviction.

“Not that bad?” She raised her voice, realizing imme
diately she'd taken the wrong tack when his ebony brows came crashing down toward those midnight dark eyes. “Zach.” She lowered her voice.
Patience
. “They're horrible.”

“I suppose you've been there?” His normally mild tone was edged with a sarcasm she was unaccustomed to hearing from this man.

“Actually, I have. When I was working on Seventh Avenue, one of the foreign reps had a heart attack, so I was sent in his place.”

A cloud moved across her face at the memory of those vile, dark workrooms redolent with the stench of sweat and
kimchi,
where half-naked laborers toiled eighty or more hours a week for a miserly wage.

“The first one I saw had some unpronounceable name, but like all the others I visited, it should have been called Pandemonium.”

The capital of Hell in
Paradise Lost
. It was, Zach admitted reluctantly, a deadly accurate description. He'd found the shops as unpalatable as Alex had. But despite his moral misgivings, his first loyalty was, as always, to Lord's.

“Look, Alex, I'll agree that in a perfect world, everyone would live in nice little houses with picket fences surrounding lush green lawns and spreading elm trees. But we're talking about the real world. Where life isn't always fair.”

Her exquisite face, which haunted too many of both his sleeping and waking hours, had closed up. Realizing that she wasn't buying this argument, Zach decided to try another tack.

“I don't know if you're aware that The Lord's Group gives a very generous amount of its corporate profits to charity each year,” he began slowly, shifting into the same lecturing mode he used when delivering the annual report to the stockholders.

“Which in turn generates a very healthy tax write-off,” she countered.

“That's beside the point, dammit! Would you just let me finish?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Fine.” He gave her a warning look. “My point is, Lord's contributions assist a great many needy people. What moral victory would be achieved if the company went bankrupt and that money stopped flowing into charitable coffers?”

“Lord, talk about false justification,” Alex muttered. “If you truly believe that, Zachary, I'm amazed you get any sleep at night. But since you seem to only understand the bottom line, Mr. President, let me spell things out for you in black and white. In case you've forgotten, my contract with Lord's gives me manufacturing approval.”

“I recall that clause.” All too well. He'd argued against it, but Eleanor, damn her, had been immovable.

“Fine. Then I'm only going to say this once. Any clothing line with my name on it will not be manufactured in South Korea. Or Taiwan, or Indonesia or Mexico. The clothing will be made here, in the United States, by American workers.”

“You sound like a campaign speech,” he muttered.

“And you sound like an apologist for Big Business. That's my bottom line, Zach. Take it or leave it. But let me warn you, if you don't agree, I'll take my designs and go home.”

“Oh, we wouldn't want you to do that,” Eleanor insisted quickly, finally entering into the argument. “Surely we can come up with some compromise.”

“There's a garment factory in Brooklyn,” Alex said, reaching into her portfolio and taking out a business card, which she held out to Zach. “I've done business with them
before. They're efficient, relatively inexpensive, and they don't treat their workers like indentured servants.”

There was no point in arguing any longer, Zach decided. He'd investigate Alex's damn factory, and if it wasn't competitive, he was just going to have to make her see the light.

After all, she wasn't designing clothes for her dolls any longer. Or her mother. This was business. Pure and simple.

He plucked the card from her fingers. “I'll check it out.”

She gave him a sweet smile that was only slightly tinged with sarcasm. “Thank you. I'd appreciate that.”

“So, have you decided where you're going to debut the collection?” Zach asked Eleanor.

Eleanor frowned. She'd been worrying about that exact question for weeks. “I suppose the Rodeo Drive store would be the most obvious.”

“But you've never been one to settle for the obvious,” Zach said with a slow, intimate smile that, although focused on Eleanor, managed to warm Alex, who was seated across the small round table from him, to the core.