Satin Doll (10 page)

The redwood and chrome lounger was not quite large enough to accommodate his entire six-foot-four length. The evening breeze from Waikiki Beach was soggy with moisture and not all that cool, but he preferred the terrace to the icy air-conditioning of their suite. And the damned dew is falling, he told himself sourly. He was not uncomfortable enough to get up and take the elevator downstairs for another boring walk on the artificially junglelike paths of the hotel, knowing that if he did, he’d have to change. He was wearing a white and orange Polynesian pareu that his beautiful wife had bought him the day before in another, even more fabulous boutique she’d found on the island. The gaudy scrap of cloth around his loins failed completely to put him in the proper spirit of Honolulu. But Marianna had murmured, as she wrapped the length of cotton around him after dinner, that the pareu made him, especially with his platinum hair and deeply tanned body, look like an ancient Tahitian war god. As usual, Jack had given in.
 

He had even felt for a few brief seconds, as his wife’s arms went around him, that familiar response to Marianna’s beauty. It was an urge that came all too infrequently after seventeen years of marriage, and it was usually dispelled—as it was again—when Marianna gave him a quick, consoling pat and reminded him their teenage daughters were in the next room.
 

Jack opened one eye and squinted at the reflection of his half-naked body in the glass doors of the suite. There he was, brown as a bagel—
croissant,
Jake, he reminded himself with a flash of his usual humor—lying there with his
tookus
wrapped in orange and white printed flowers. He might look like a Polynesian god to his wife, but the reason his body was fit and deeply tanned was that he did his sunbathing the civilized way: under the lamps at the New York Athletic Club. Broiling his ass off in Oahu listening to the screams of the kids around the Hilton swimming pool and the monotonous roll of surf combined with the heavy traffic going toward Diamond Head was for the birds.
 

For the same thousand-dollar-a-day price, he thought, staring up at the stars, they could have stayed on the big island of Maui at the Colin Cameron’s exclusive 700-acre Kapalua Bay Hotel in a private bungalow, with a private beach if you wanted to swim and sunbathe in the buff. At least at the Kapalua Bay resort you weren’t within spitting distance of a constant parade of tourists wearing comical Wakiki Beach souvenir straw hats and lining up for the next tour bus. But his wife and daughters wouldn’t set foot on Maui. They didn’t want to get that far away from Honolulu and the shopping that brought them on trips with him in the first place.
 

Always shopping, Jack told himself, taking a sip from the glass of Evian water. He didn’t begrudge his wife and daughters their fun, but the stuff they bought and that had to be packed and freighted back to the States only joined tons of native art, collector’s items, can’t-do-without fashions, furniture and everything else purchased on previous trips to Paris, London, Cairo, Singapore, Sydney, and last year, Rio de Janeiro. It was all over the house in Connecticut, and some of it had overflowed into the Manhattan condominium in spite of his pleas. The shopping loot was beginning to trickle down to their winter place in St. Croix.
 

On this trip, God help him, there was still Hong Kong and mainland China to go. Marianna had been looking forward to China for months.
 

As he lifted his drink again, Jack heard the suite’s front door slam and his daughters’ clear, penetrating voices calling out, wanting to know where he was.
 

The telephone extension on the patio rang at the same time. He grabbed the telephone before Marianna could pick it up inside. “Yeah,” he grunted into the mouthpiece.
 

The tall, slender figure of his wife came to the patio glass doors, the light behind her. Marianna looked coolly beautiful, her dark hair drawn smoothly to the back of her head to reveal those exquisitely sculpted features that had made her New York’s top-flight photographic model in the 1970s. She wore a wrapped Polynesian sarong that bared her shoulders and showed an enticing swell of her small breasts, orange high-heeled sandals, and a white hibiscus bloom behind one ear. He saw her quick frown when he picked up the telephone.
 

“Jack?” The voice of Mindy Ferragamo in New York was somewhat fuzzy. “Jack, are you there? We’ve got a lousy connection. I can hardly hear you.”
 

“Jack,” Marianna said, opening the glass doors.
 

“Hi, baby,” he murmured amiably to his wife. He covered the receiver with his hand. “Where were you? Doing some more shopping?” He’d meant no sarcasm, but he saw her silhouetted figure stiffen.
 

“Are you tied up, Jack?” Mindy’s voice wanted to know. “I can give you a ring back in an hour, okay?”
 

“God, tell her this is
Hawaii,
will you?” Marianna said from the door. “Jack, we’re on a damned
vacation!
”
 

He only smiled. “Okay, so the loft burned down,” he said to Mindy in New York. “So what else is new?” It was their old joke when Mindy called when he was out of town, their way of saying hello. Once, in the old days on Seventh Avenue, the loft really had burned. Now that he ran a multimillion-dollar fashion empire, they still made jokes.
 

He watched his wife’s incomparable bottom undulate beneath the orange flowers as she walked back through the glass doors. This was something new, the business about telephone calls. She had tried to get him to promise the Hawaiian leg of the trip would not be interrupted by business. He hadn’t promised her that; she knew it was impossible. He didn’t know what was the matter with her.
 

“Sammy Laredo called me from Paris earlier today. I told her, Jack. She wanted to come back to New York right away. I told her to stay, to take her time. But, Jack, you can’t leave it this way.”
 

“Mindy, don’t bug me.” He finished the last of his drink and put it back on the floor beside the lounger. He was in no mood to think about the Paris problem or Sam Laredo. “Leave it,” he said, watching his wife, through the glass doors of their suite, opening a large pile of packages she’d thrown on the bed. “Leave it for when I get back.”
 

“No, Jack, will you listen to me? She wants to talk to you Monday.”
 

“No.” He watched Marianna and his youngest daughter unfolding the tissue-paper wrappings around a pair of muumuus in violent pink.
 

“Look, Jack.” The warning voice had turned strident. “Would I be calling you in Honolulu if I didn’t think we have a problem? Sammy is a hard-times kid from some rural slum out West. She’s a diehard, Jack, a tough Westerner. She won’t just sit there in Paris.”
 

His wife had slipped the tentlike muumuu over her head and was standing in a deliciously skimpy lace bra and provocative G-string panties. He recognized them as part of the shopping trip from yesterday. God, he thought as his youngest daughter stripped, even Jennifer had on a pair of the damned things!
 

“Jack, I can’t believe you’re doing this. Listen, have I ever bothered you with nothing? This kid’s in Paris and I’m worried about where we go from here.”
 

There was the click of the extension being picked up in the bedroom and Marianna’s voice came on the line. His wife’s usually soft voice was a metallic purr. “This is a vacation, dammit, Mindy. I don’t want you calling here.”
 

“Baby,” Jack said automatically. He waggled his head no at his wife inside the glass doors.
 

Mindy’s voice in New York said, “This is important, Marianna. I want to talk to Jack.”
 

“I
know
it’s important, Mindy. But this is Hawaii, remember?” Marianna’s tone was bantering, steely. “And you’re not supposed to start this crap until we get to Hong Kong. I’m in Hawaii with Jack, and for just once I want to forget you’re on the damned long-distance telephone. Hang up, Mindy.” She had turned to look at Jack defiantly, the extension phone clamped to her ear. “Hang up, Mindy, hang up,” she chanted. “
Hang up! Hang up!
”
 

Scowling at her through the glass to show her he was not pleased, Jack Storm said hurriedly, “Hell, you see I can’t talk now, Mindy. I’ll call you later.” He could hardly hear his own words, his wife was still chanting for Mindy to hang up. “No, wait,” he said, raising his voice, “better make it tomorrow.”
 

As he put the telephone back into the cradle, his beautiful wife came to the glass door and yanked it open, her wide, turquoise eyes glittering. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment.
 

“Okay, okay,” he muttered. He spread his hands, resigned but unrepentant. “You’re getting what you wanted. I’m getting rid of her.” They both knew what he meant—he didn’t have to name names. “I’m telling you, Marianna, no problem.”
 

In the room beyond, his daughters were listening, he could tell by the too-casual way they were standing, their heads inclined to the open doors. They knew what he was talking about. He just didn’t want a damned scene over it. In the past, scenes never happened, and he didn’t know why things had changed. He barked, “Jesus, Marianna, will you get off my back? It’s over. Just like I told you—it’s over!”
 

For the first time he realized he wasn’t all that damned sorry. Not about Sammy Whitfield, anyway. And, he told himself, he didn’t have to make up his mind. He was holding back, just as Mindy had accused him of doing.
 

And he was going to take his own sweet time doing it. His wife was standing in the doorway regarding him with an expression that was totally new. A first time for everything, this one, including the look on his wife’s face.
 

“You shit,” Marianna Storm said in a perfectly calm voice.
 

She turned and went back into the room.
 

Chapter Six

“How wonderful that you called me. That you saved my card with the telephone number from the other morning, and that you were thinking of me.”
 

Alain des Baux was dressed in a dark continental-style business suit and a white silk shirt with an elegant blue and gray tie, and he looked so devastatingly attractive it penetrated even Sam’s numb misery. He was really very nice, she thought, staring. He probably even thought he had a real date with her. She wondered if she had even dressed right to go out for dinner. It was stupid, but she’d been so wiped out since she’d talked to Mindy Ferragamo she couldn’t remember.
 

In the past hour she’d gone from shock to a yelling rage, then tears and finally a throbbing headache. She knew she had to get out of the Maison Louvel before she started climbing the walls. She’d called Alain des Baux’s number, the only one she knew in Paris.
 

And he’d come.
 

He followed her eyes as she quickly looked down at herself. “You look magnificent,” he assured her. “The jeans commercials, just as I remembered you.”
 

Somehow, she’d managed to get dressed in the black silk shirt and black satin stretch jeans from the Sam Laredo After Dark collection. After months of wearing the evening Sam Laredo outfit, she’d forgotten its rather esoteric impact. Skintight pants that molded her long legs and hips almost indecently and the low-cut tailored shirt that showed she wore no bra were perfect for an evening in Spago’s in Beverly Hills or New York’s Third Avenue nightclubs. But Paris?
 

“Is it all right?” she asked as Alain held open the door of the sleek black Lamborghini sports car.
 

“Only fantastically beautiful, that is all,” he said softly.
 

Sam sneaked a look at herself in the rearview mirror as Alain went around to the driver’s side. Somewhere in the misery of the past hour or so she’d managed to put on heavy eye makeup to cover her eyes that were slightly swollen from crying, and lots of dark red lipstick that carefully outlined her wide, generous mouth. Chandelier earrings made of Czechoslovakian rhinestones especially designed for the After Dark collection by Alexis Kirk dangled at her ears below her pale cloud of Raggedy Ann hair. She was still Jackson Storm’s creation, still Sam Laredo. She supposed she would pass.
 

The inside of the Lamborghini Countach smelled richly of ebony leather and black velvet upholstery. Sam sank down into her bucket seat, telling herself that maybe in the morning, when she’d had a good night’s sleep, she could think more clearly. At the moment, she felt as though she’d been run over by a train.
 

In the morning, she thought groaning inwardly, she had an appointment to meet with the Maison Louvel directrice, Madame Doumer. God, there was no way out of this mess.
 

“Shall we start with the Tuileries?” the man beside her was asking. “In the twilight we will miss some details, but on the other hand, Paris on an evening in springtime has been called”—he turned his head to her and gave her a slow, charming smile—”sublime. How do you feel about that?”
 

It was all well and good, she was thinking, to tell yourself to put the whole thing out of your head for a few hours, but how do you turn off the pain? After all this time, after being blissfully happy with Jack and her job, she’d just never thought it would end. This could happen to other women in the past that Jack had been interested in, yes, but never to
her
.