Satin Dreams (37 page)

For the first time in many years, probably since his awkward adolescence, Jackson Storm was not at all sure of himself. His suave persona faltered. Before he could stop, he had grinned and pointed to himself, deprecatingly.
Who, me? You mean me?
 

Christ—she nodded yes!
 

He felt like a total ass. A schoolboy. But he knew what he wanted. This was a woman at a ball in Paris, but it was also the woman of his dreams. It took him only seconds to scramble out of the close-packed tables in the VIP section and start after her. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer. He hadn’t done anything so romantically
nuts
in years. Chasing a woman across a dance floor like a twenty-year-old stud with the hots! He was amazed at himself—and wildly euphoric.
 

His progress was impeded by the sudden lowering of lights that was the cue for the
fantaisie
show to begin. A few yards ahead, that wonderful glittering figure swept past the security guards and headed for the opera’s main doors and the street.
 

She was going outside.
 

Peter Frank loomed up in the dimness to grab at him. “Jack, where are you going?” the vice president whispered. “Hey, the big show’s just beginning!”
 

Jack shook him off, leaving Peter staring after him.
 

Someone else stepped toward him, the opera’s hard-working assistant manager. “Monsieur Storm,” the shadowy figure said politely in English, “congratulations, it is a marv—”
 

Jack shook him off, too. Through the opera’s glass doors he could see that the shimmering, mythical beauty with her dark hair and provocative hawk mask had paused on the steps, waiting for him.
 

It had been a disastrous day. Palliades’s lightninglike take-over of the European division. The lunch with the Italian boutique promoter who’d copped out. This goddamned
fantaisie
show. Jack hadn’t known how much, until that moment, he’d wanted to run away from it all. Toward his destiny, if that was what it was.
 

He didn’t even pause for his coat.
 

At the top of the opera’s grand staircase, Alix stood poised in the rustling dark.
 

A moment before the lights had gone down, she’d caught a glimpse of the great foyer below with its costumed crowds. Nicholas Palliades was seated at Prince Alessio Medivani’s table, talking animatedly to a regal-looking blond woman she guessed was the prince’s oldest daughter, Princess Catherine.
 

The sight had wrenched her with an unexpected, violent feeling. Alix tried to put everything in perspective. Nicholas Palliades was an arrogant, utterly ruthless man, involved in obsessive power games, such as taking over Jackson Storm’s corporation, without regard to the suffering it caused. Alix, Nannette, Sylvie—even Gilles—had no idea who they were working for now, or even if they would have jobs after tonight. But this wasn’t important to Nicholas Palliades.
 

Still, Alix couldn’t bear to watch the blond whispering and smiling at the dark, impassive face of the man who, like it or not, was her lover.
Had
been her lover, she corrected herself angrily. She was sure he wasn’t any longer, not after the terrible thing she’d said to him a few minutes ago.
 

“Alix—stand still,” Nannette whispered to her as the stairs went dark. “Or you will fall.”
 

Their cue was spears of laser lights that imitated lightning, rushing across the opera’s vaulted mural ceiling three stories above. Then the spotlights would focus on Alix in Princess Jackie’s flamingo costume. With Stravinsky’s
Firebird
music in the background, she would slowly descend the marble expanse of the grand stairs, turning at the dance floor to start back up again.
 

Then, with bursts of light and synchronized electronic noises enhancing Stravinsky’s score, Gilles Vasse’s owls, egrets and cranes would begin their dancelike movements, until they filled up the giant staircase in a silent tableau. Alix would appear again at the finale, having changed to Gilles’s magnificent
pièce de résistance:
a strange, alien bird creature from a distant star who had come to reign supreme over all other birds. Or so the program explained.
 

Alix found Princess Jackie’s flamingo costume difficult to manage. She’d tried it out on the stairs at the Maison Louvel and could hardly walk in the abbreviated skirt. Some last-minute help from Gilles, without the princess’s knowledge, had straightened out the major glitches.
 

Laser lightning roared across the mural on the dome of the opera, and then the first light cue came up. A spreading glow picked out Alix at the top of the stairs. She started slowly down.
 

Stravinsky’s
Firebird
music jumped and dazzled. Alix lifted her shell-pink flamingo wings.
 

From the beginning, the problem with the costumes was that they all had to utilize a certain amount of Heavenly Lace. Princess Jackie had designed a long train that spread in back from Alix’s tight, hip-length skirt and, in front, left her long legs bare. Unfortunately, the lacy train had a tendency to slither ahead of her on the stairs. Alix had to hurry to keep ahead of it. She realized she was moving too fast.
 

There was no way
not
to try to outrun the train. It was either that or have it overtake her. Almost at a run, Alix reached the bottom of the stairs before the train did, and turned before the dinner tables with weak-kneed relief.
 

Going back up was not so simple. For some reason, the yards of laminated lace in the dragging train felt unusually heavy. Not for the first time, Alix regretted the secrecy that had prevented them from having a real dress rehearsal.
 

She lifted her head, pink and white feathers waving solemnly, to see Gilles’s great white
fantaisie
birds coming slowly into position on the stairs above her. The
Firebird
suite filled the grand foyer with artful dissonance accompanied by truly impressive
lighting
effects.
 

Applause from the distinguished audience built like a storm. Although the reception for Princess Jackie’s flamingo had been lukewarm, Alix had still seen, when she made her turn on the dance floor,
Vogue
photographers grabbing shots of the grinning, preening princess at her table. However, there was no mistaking the enthusiasm for Gilles’s designs that followed.
 

A crane turned as Alix passed and said in a mask-muffled voice, “Mademoiselle Alix?” The crane tried to peer at her. “Look,” it said plaintively, “
c’est impossible,
but I think I’m losing my front!”
 

Alix pondered the crane’s message as she reached the top of the stairs. Nannette shoved her toward the dressing area while the hairdressers took off her headdress and began fluffing her hair for Gilles’s space bird costume. Gilles himself brought over his
fantaisie
creation carefully cradled in his arms.
 

Outside the applause was thunderous and almost non-stop. It nearly drowned out the
Firebird
music and the electronic sizzles and futuristic zaps of the light show.
 

Alix gasped as Nannette yanked the zipper of the bodice up, squeezing her rib cage and thrusting her breasts against the lacy fabric.
 

“Gilles, something is happening out there.” She had to bend forward as Gilles adjusted her lacy wings covered with seed pearls and fiery silver sequins. She looked around as Sylvie knelt to slip on her white satin shoes. “Are you listening?”
 

Plainly, they weren’t.
 

“A crane going down,” Alix persisted, “was holding the front of her bodice together. And she still had to turn and come back and stand on the—” She flinched as the hair stylist yanked a handful of her hair and sprayed it to stand out around her face. “—stairs,” she finished hurriedly. “You know, I think there are pieces of that lace all over the landing.”
 

“Aaaah,” Nannette said appreciatively as the hairdresser finished.
 

It was the first time that Alix had been fitted in the entire space bird costume. Her body was covered in tight, almost transparent gauzy lace from the tips of her half-naked, out-thrust breasts to her hips. Long slivers of laminated lace wafted around her long legs that were encased in sheer, silver-threaded tights. She wore no mask, only a sprinkling of silver-white sparkle applied with the tip of a paintbrush, covering her cheekbones, enhancing her violet eyes. An almost invisible wire net anchored to her spray-stiffened hair held clear plastic rods from which dangled glittering, shimmering Mylar strands in an unearthly halo. Above it all, attached to Alix’s shoulders and back by a plastic harness, rose gigantic space bird wings of delicate, exquisitely white-on-white patterned Heavenly Lace.
 

Now that the owls, egrets, and cranes were in place outside on the stairs, Alix would begin the finale by entering, coming down the stairs and, after circling the dance floor once, ascending to take her place as their space-bird queen in the center of the Y-shaped staircase. The space bird was the last, the most dazzling and inspired of Gilles’s costumes.
 

Gilles and Nannette pushed her gently to the door at the top of the stairs.
 

“Wait a minute,” Alix said, twisting to see. “You won’t believe this, but I think one of those slivers of my skirt just came off.”
 

But there was no time to stop.
 

As Alix appeared at the top of the stairs as the queen of the space birds, the applause became a continuous thunder of approval. Alix could see better now, without the flamingo’s helmetlike mask. She held up her arms to support her wings and looked straight ahead in the classic model’s hauteur that deliberately disdains to watch where the feet are going, even on a staircase. But something told her she was on more than just the smooth surface of marble.
 

Bits of Heavenly Lace littered the opera’s grand staircase from top to bottom. It was to the everlasting credit of the other models, professionals all, that they had held their positions on the stairs for at least a quarter of an hour while the
light
show flashed around them and the
Firebird
music segued into the last movement of Richardson’s
The Planets.
And even as they stood there, portions of the laminated lace in their costumes were slowly giving way.
 

Halfway down Alix realized her beautiful lacy wings were coming apart. By the time she reached the bottom, shreds were floating around her in the air like cosmic debris. With a sinking heart she knew that there would probably be almost nothing left by the time she turned and started for the center of the staircase. Worse, she was feeling an ominous breeze around, of all places, the area where the seam on her backside should be.
 

Alix made a quick turn and saw that Jackson Storm wasn’t at his table. Nearby, Nicholas Palliades, looking more like a leopard than ever, sat with one elbow propped on the tablecloth beside Princess Catherine. Alix saw his wooden expression change as his gaze dropped to the vicinity of her derrie. It was at that exact moment Alix also felt the slight passage of warm air across her breasts.
 

Alix looked down.
 

Gilles’s great space bird
fantaisie
was practically dissolving against her skin! Nicholas Palliades, shock and determination written all over his face, was practically climbing over chairs to get to her.
 

No you don’t
, Alix thought frantically. She didn’t need his help—or his outrage.
 

Alix put one hand tentatively across her breasts and her little finger encountered a bare nipple. She whirled, sending microscopic bits of fabric floating on the air. That strange sound growing around her, she knew dimly, was the audience’s uproarious laughter.
 

The light show soared to a marvelously bright, bursting finale, illuminating the opera’s foyer, the murals, the molting models, in every detail. The staircase was littered with remnants of Heavenly Lace. Passing the owls, cranes, and egrets lining both sides of the stair, Alix saw some were crying in sheer exasperation, some merely held their hands in strategic places with stoic resignation. But heroically, no one had budged.
 

At the top, Alix forced herself to turn around and face the crowd. The finale had only a few more moments to go.
 

She could hardly do it. The
Vogue
photographers had rushed to the bottom of the stairs and flashbulbs were popping furiously. Much of the laughing audience was on its feet. It was not so much that Alix was sensitive about working nudity, but she was coming apart! Virtually all that remained of Gilles’s maillot was a beltlike strip around her waist.
 

Even as she stood there wondering if she should break the ridiculous tableau of near-naked models and start for the dressing area, there was a disturbance taking place among the tables in the vicinity of Prince Medivani’s party. It seemed to be a fight or a small riot. Abruptly, at the far entrance doors to the opera, a phalanx of Paris gendarmerie came pouring in, and there was the distant sound of police sirens.