Satin Dreams (12 page)

Alix sat down on the edge of a straight-backed chair filled with toiles. She was tired; she’d endured enough emotional turmoil for one week. “Is Jackson Storm really going to make you famous? Gilles, are there any guarantees?”
 

Gilles’s hard, young face contracted. “I am not a fool,
cherie.
I have guarantees, yes. I admire Jackson Storm. When he talks about publicity, the coverage in the media, millions spent on advertising on American television—” He stopped, scowling. “Believe me, Mr. Jackson Storm’s couture house will not be like these French operations that run badly, with a lot of screaming and confusion.”
 

“But Gilles, Rudi gave you your breath. You design more than half of his collection now!”
 

“I will design
all
of them with Jackson Storm,” he shot back. “Besides, Rudi takes credit for classical couture, trousseaus, the stuff for the wife of the premier of France and the ladies of San Francisco, but
I
am the one who does it.” He lowered his voice. “You know I have to do it. I have to leave. My wife is expecting a baby.”
 

“Money is important,” Alix agreed. It was an open secret that Rudi adored Gilles. But Rudi was notoriously tightfisted.
 

“You should make the break, too.” Gilles looked at her sideways. “What is keeping you here?”
 

“Gilles, I just got this job.” She felt a ripple of inexplicable fear. She wasn’t ready to be thrown back into the world of challenge.
 

“Jackson Storm will pay more. For any top Paris model,” Gilles added hastily. He didn’t want Alix to know Jackson Storm wanted her, exclusively. “You are associated with my clothes, you wear them the way no one else can,” he coaxed. “Alix, consider!” He couldn’t repress his excitement any longer. “I’m going to design the most fabulous collection in Paris! Jackson Storm will give me complete artistic freedom.
Mon Dieu,
I am going to be famous!”
 

Alix looked uncertain. Gilles was so enthusiastic, she hoped everything he’d been promised would come true. But in a few weeks she was going to show the clothes Gilles had designed in Rudi’s spring collection. She looked forward to it. She’d worked hard to become Mortessier’s top model.
 

“You don’t need me,” she said, softly. “Jackson Storm isn’t going to do a spring collection. And it will be weeks before you even start to do any cutting for fall clothes. Hire a model then.”
 

Gilles had been so sure he could persuade her to come with him. Now, he could see, he’d waited too long. When he started to explain, to press his need for Alix without telling her it was Jackson Storm who really wanted her, he was surprised at her reaction.
 

“No, no, I really can’t make another move for a while.” Alix looked around, distracted. “Gilles, can’t you understand? I want to stay out of trouble if I can.”
 

“Trouble? What trouble?” Gilles couldn’t conceive of her not coming with him. She would ruin his arrangement with Jackson Storm!
 

“Let’s talk some other time.” She started toward the door. “I’ll get Iris. We need to get back to work.”
 

Gilles listened to the clatter of Alix’s heels as she descended the stairs to the employees’ lounge. He hadn’t made the Jackson Storm offer strong enough. He’d been so affected by what had happened yesterday, and now trying to get Rudi’s spring collection finished before he left, that he’d bungled this all-important business with Alix. A shiver of apprehension ran down Gilles’s spine.
 

It absolutely was not true, of course, that Alix sold his clothes. That
couldn’t
be the reason Jackson Storm wanted her. The couture business was always full of nasty, suspicious gossip. Gilles told himself his creative work stood on its own merit; he didn’t need Alix to enhance his designs.
 

On the other hand it would do no harm to have her with him, especially when she modeled his fashions as few others could. Especially when, for whatever reason, Jackson Storm insisted on it.
 

Gilles was already missing Rudi’s guiding hand. He needed advice. He reached across his drawing board to the telephone. He had a new employer now. There was one way to find out.
 

In the rue des Benedictines, Jackson Storm was not having a good day. His executive vice-president, Mindy Ferragamo, was delayed in New York just when he needed her, and his own secretary, Trini Fogel, had flown back that morning with some work that was overdue at headquarters. The president and chairman of the board of Jackson Storm, Inc. had been suddenly left to cope.
Alone.
It didn’t exactly make him happy.
 

Jack glowered at the group gathered in his office on the second floor of the Maison Louvel. It seemed as if the whole Storm King corporate structure was on a flight somewhere, about to arrive or depart at an airport, at any given time of the week. It was driving him nuts. And it was no way to run a business.
 

Jack had made his displeasure known to Peter Frank, his head of overseas corporate development, at lunch at
La Coupole,
one of Jack’s favorite places in Montmartre. Peter was quick to say he couldn’t take on transportation schedules; his own work day had been filled up with negotiations with lawyers from Poseidon-Palliades, Ltd., the holding company for all Palliades shipping lines. What
was
important, Peter pointed out, was the appointment he wanted Jack to keep with one Ms. Brooksie Goodman, an American with her own Paris-based public relations agency, who had something hot to propose.
 

“Hot?” Jack had growled. “Screw hot propositions. What we need is more people in the damned office!”
 

An hour later he’d begun to nurture a suspicion of Americans who lived abroad and inserted themselves in foreign cultures well enough to speak the language like a native. He could hear Ms. Goodman as she climbed over the boards and buckets in what was to be the Maison Louvel new lobby, calling out to the carpenters in slangy Parisian French. In person, Ms. Brooksie Goodman reminded Jack of some of his daughters’ brittle, aggressive girl friends from Scarsdale. Only older.
 

Brooksie Goodman, a slightly overweight young woman in her late twenties was, Jack knew, hustling something. “We got a top designer,” he said, wanting to get the meeting over with, “from right here in Paris. We’ll announce it shortly.”
 

“This is not about designers, Jack,” Peter Frank said, “we wouldn’t cut into your time for something like that.”
 

As it turned out, Ms. Goodman represented the account of Prince Alessio Medivani of the famous pocket-sized kingdom in the Adriatic, noted primarily for its gambling casino and spacious mooring basin for millionaires’ yachts.
 

Jack raised his eyebrow inquiringly at Peter Frank.
What the hell does this have to do with us?
 

“You’re probably wondering what the Jackson Storm connection is,” the Paris PR woman said quickly. “Okay, we all know Princess Stephanie of Monaco spent a few months over at Christian Dior as a designer apprentice.”
 

“It was a flop,” Jack said tersely. “She was in and out of Dior like a yo-yo.”
 

Ms. Goodman’s round face under a coif of braids was unperturbed. “I’m only establishing that as a point of reference.” She opened a Hermes alligator purse and, using two middle fingers, delicately drew out a folded paper. “I have a letter here from Prince Alessio Medivani, who also has a teenage daughter. Only the Prince’s daughter is Princess Jacqueline Emilia Marguerita Medivani, a very talented art student.”
 

Jack looked at his director of overseas development with an expression of disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
 

“Mr. Storm,” she said.
 

“Jack,” Peter Frank put in, “just listen.”
 

It seemed the princess was bored with art school in Nantes, where her concepts were simply too advanced for routine academic work such as line drawing and sketches of still life. Princess Jacqueline wanted to get out into the commercial working world. As a fashion designer.
 

Jackson Storm narrowed his famous blue eyes. Don’t touch it, Jake, he warned himself, it’s pure schlock, even if they’re giving kings and queens away. He glared at the clone of his daughters’ friends who, he thought sourly, should be married to a nice Jewish dentist and raising kids, instead of being there in Paris, promoting dreck. “I don’t think you heard me,” he told her. “We’ve got a designer.”
 

Even as he said it, Jack remembered Monaco’s Princess Stephanie had commanded every headline, every feature from the
New York Times
on down to the
National Enquirer.
And not only once. Every week while she was with Dior.
 

“Actually,” Brooksie Goodman was saying, “there are a lot of pluses to hiring the princess, especially in a start-up operation like yours. A touch of in-the-know publicity establishes a connection with some of the best local names, a good referencing network from the top, and instant marketing chips.”
 

Jack leaned back in his chair. “Do you know what the hell she’s talking about?”
 

Ms. Goodman paused. “Listen,” she said in an entirely different voice. “Let me ask you something. What has Jackson Storm got coming down for it here at the Maison Louvel? You’re going to have to hit Paris, New York—the whole world—
hard,
and not with just couture. A big fancy press party at the Plaza Athenee isn’t going to do it all.”
 

“We know that,” Candace Dobbs put in quickly. “Jackson Storm has extensive—”
 

“You got a coupla’ options,” Ms. Goodman went on. “Like, you can do what every other couture house does. Market a new perfume.”
 

Peter Frank sat up. “Yes, we plan a perfume in—”
 

“But unless you can get Elizabeth Taylor to promote it,” she was talking now only to Jack, “a perfume is going to bomb. You could go with a new fabric like ultra-suede. But who’s got a new ultra-suede?” She shrugged. “A top-rated Paris designer? So, you already got one. Gilles Vasse is a possible great.”
 

Jack lifted his fingers and made a steeple of them, resting them against his lips. She’s better than she looks, he thought. A little meshugga hustler.
 

Peter Frank said quickly, “How did you know about Gilles Vasse?”
 

But Jack motioned Peter to keep quiet. “The deal’s not closed yet.”
 

Maybe the Medivani kid really was an art student. But did he need her? His stateside operations were hurting; Junior Lonestar, Sam Laredo Jeans, his men’s wear divisions were all being drained for the Paris venture. It didn’t make sense, princess publicity for them. But sometimes a crazy thing like this was a shot in the arm.
 

“Interesting,” Jack said neutrally. “But maybe too complicated.”
 

Ms. Goodman tensed. For a moment he saw uncertainty. “The prince will send his friends over to buy.” She looked him straight in the eye. “The prince’s influential friends are currently buying from St. Laurent and Givenchy, but Prince Alessio will get them to bring their trade over to the Maison Louvel.” She lowered her eyes discreetly. “They all gamble in the prince’s casino.”
 

Jack held back a smile. The prince’s offer was worthy of the best Seventh Avenue games. He let her dangle for a long, stressful moment.
 

“You push too hard,” he said finally.
 

Brooksie Goodman flopped back in her chair. “Apprentice designer,” she said a little hoarsely. “It’s what Princess Stephanie was at Dior, we wouldn’t take anything less. But Princess Jacqueline wants to learn the business. She’s not going to screw around.”
 

“Base numbers,” Peter Frank murmured.
 

“Yeah.” Her small brown eyes were pinned on Jackson Storm. “In addition to the subsidies, publicity. It goes with the Medivani name. You get in
Vogue, Vanity Fair, Women’s Wear Daily,
the
Wall Street Journal—
”
 

“Stop, you’re killing me.” Jack pointed to the paper she’d taken from her purse. “What’s that?”
 

She handed it to him. “Suggested contract, subject to your lawyers’ approval. Prince Medivani will underwrite Princess Jacqueline’s salary thirty to forty percent, negotiable. A car will bring her to work and pick her up every day. She has her own bodyguard. There’s no problem with security, or insurance.”
 

At that moment the telephone rang.
 

Jack continued to stare at Ms. Goodman. For the price of a subsidized salary and no doubt a large headache, they could have a real live princess on the premises. Jake, he told himself wryly, you should be so lucky.
 

Peter Frank held out the telephone. “It’s Gilles.”
 

Jack took the receiver. “Excuse me,” he said, flashing his famous smile. “The way my luck’s been going today, I’m about due for a major screw-up.”