Satin Doll (25 page)

Sam slid her long legs under the seat in front of her so that she could slouch even more in her seat. From what she’d heard the whole Paris fashion world seemed to adore Rudi Mortessier; only the great Yves St. Laurent seemed to inspire the same sort of affectionate loyalty. Rudi Mortessier, according to Brooksie, was a doll, a perfect gentleman. But he was also in love with Gilles Vasse, which made things rather complicated. If Gilles was Paris’s hottest new fashion talent, then the gossip that swirled around Gilles, Rudi and the luscious Lisianne was even hotter. Supposedly some of the ateliers in the big houses in the avenue Montaigne were making bets on it: Rudi-Gilles or Gilles-Lisianne, and the odds were even.
 

“What do you think?” Brooksie said out of the side of her mouth.
 

Samantha came out of her reverie. “I think somebody is going to recognize me,” she muttered back. “The vendeuse up front keeps looking our way.”
 

She was wearing a silk scarf over her head and hiding her face behind a gigantic pair of oversized sunglasses, trying to make her five feet nine inches as unobtrusive as she could in one of Mortessier’s chic chrome and brown-velvet tube chairs. But she was afraid there was no hiding her denim ranch jacket and Sam Laredo jeans. Brooksie, even in a punk rocker outfit of tight red skirt and frayed pink satin blouse loaded down with odd assortments of second-hand jewelry, hadn’t attracted as much attention when they’d come in. The receptionist at Mortessier’s avenue Montaigne salon had taken one look at Brooksie’s Paris press card and had waved her in rather indifferently. But the vendeuse, the salon saleswoman, had reserved a long, thoughtful glance for Sam, as she rather furtively slid her way in behind Brooksie.
 

“I mean the
clothes
,” Brooksie hissed. “The collection—what we came here to see, remember?”
 

Well, the clothes, Sam had to admit, were fabulous. While the rest of Paris haute couture seemed to be beating the 1940s look to death in an excess of padded shoulders, tight skirts and dressmaker drapes, Gilles Vasse was pursuing a totally individual approach that was an impeccable line combined with extraordinary fabrics. And Sam couldn’t resist fine textiles.
 

At the beginning of the showing the Mortessier mannequins had danced onto a floor made of reflecting gold-colored Plexiglas to the ear-splitting beat of “Walk of Life,” wearing young, vibrant clothes that were breathtaking. The suit line, which had come first, was lavender and deep purple tweed, number after number in bulky woolens, some with skirts split in front, a few almost ankle-length A-lines. Then came day dresses in stunning geometrics—hard, slashing contours that made a severely high-tech statement, the models carrying long paper ribbons of computer printouts and wearing headphones.
 

As a designer, young Gilles Vasse had the bit between his teeth, Sam thought with awe. And lord, how she envied him! There he stood, glowering at the Mortessier clients from behind one of the smoky glass panels, a cigarette dangling from his beautifully grim mouth. If she, Sammy Whitfield, had been in his place, showing her own designs at famed Mortessier, she’d have been on cloud nine.
 

She squinted thoughtfully at the scowling young man lighting yet another cigarette in his hiding place behind glass and glittering lights. Gilles Vasse’s cloud nine was a little crowded, Sam couldn’t help thinking. If Gilles Vasse was in love with his exquisite Lisianne, that left Rudi Mortessier out in the cold. Unless, of course, the young designer was in love with
both
of them. Looking at the slender figure in his skintight black clothes, she couldn’t make up her mind. She wasn’t good at judging these things, but the idea was intriguing—that sort of love triangle wasn’t exactly unknown in New York fashion circles. And this, after all, was Paris.
 

“The vendeuse is watching you,” Brooksie said from behind her hand, “just in case you want to buy something. You said you wanted to see a big couture house, didn’t you? Just relax.”
 

As the Mortessier mannequins danced out modeling the last of the dress collection, Samantha looked around furtively. She appreciated the opportunity to see a Mortessier showing and she wouldn’t be there without Brooksie’s help; getting into a big haute couture salon was a major event for someone whose only training had been in a small design school in Denver, and she’d wanted to see at least one famous collection before she left Paris. But she knew she also had to be careful and not be recognized as a member of Jack Storm’s American fashion empire. The fashion industry was so sensitive, especially in haute couture, that if she were discovered, it would cause more problems and stir up more speculation than sneaking into a showing was worth.
 

The vendeuse was announcing in a discreet whisper that the coats, designed by Gilles Vasse for Rudi Mortessier, were next.
 

Coats, Sam thought absently. She’d forgotten to bring one with her, and some of the Paris spring nights had been chilly. “I’ve got to do something about my clothes,” Sam murmured, looking down the list of the Mortessier order card she’d been given. The Sam Laredo coordinates she’d packed, assuming she was only going to be in Paris a week at the most, were not only limited, they were becoming something of a liability since they stamped her with an undeniable New York-Jackson Storm signature. She was finding out just how much today, feeling like some sort of Martian in her jeans and Western boots.
 

Two models, one a lanky Swedish beauty and the other a beautifully linear black girl, came prancing out wearing the first of the coats. The big, layered arrangements in brilliantly colored wool vaguely resembled the designs from Paris’s wilder-than-wild Japanese couturiers Kenzo and Tohji Yammamoto, who wrapped their mannequins in swathes of material.
 

Forgetting herself, Sam sat upright in her seat to stare. Gilles Vasse’s coats were crazy but beautiful. You had to be six feet tall and skinny as a rail to carry all that color and bulk, but she couldn’t help picturing herself in a blood-red wraparound felt with a stand-up collar that looked as though it wouldn’t work but did. Magnificently.
 

“See something you like?” Brooksie muttered.
 

Like?
At the moment Sam was in seventh heaven. As a designer, her head was reeling with ideas already generated by Gilles Vasse’s beautiful creations. She knew she had to make some sketches of her own as soon as she got back to Louvel’s. But as a woman she was thinking it was too bad she couldn’t afford to buy anything at Mortessier’s, where the designs started at five thousand dollars and went out of sight.
 

The parade of beautiful coats ended and the salon lights dimmed with sudden drama as the spotlights came up and the recorded music segued into a lavishly orchestrated recording of a French singer rendering “Love in the Shadows.” The first evening gowns were off the shoulder, clinging sheaths in flaming orange and red sequins and glass beads that caught the revolving lights like columns of fire. The models wore headdresses of gold wires and multicolored gems that sprouted in shivering fountains of glitter from matching beaded helmets. The customers in the salon breathed a small ripple of appreciative
aaahs
.
 

But Sam had felt an unpleasant cold draft of foreboding creep down her spine. Perhaps it was the sultry song, “Love in the Shadows,” the theme song from the movie of a few years ago,
Thief of Hearts,
or remembering the menacing, sexy burglar Steven Bauer had played in the film. Whatever it was, the moment the music had changed to the haunting love music Sam had been overwhelmed by a vivid picture of another face, another macho body she wanted to forget.
 

Put Chip out of your mind, she told herself quickly. This is no place to think of that problem. Sam gnawed at her underlip as the throbbing music beat in her ears. It wouldn’t happen with Chip again; she had promised herself it wouldn’t. Clothes, she thought desperately. She tried to concentrate on another pair of mannequins wearing high-necked, long-sleeved evening gowns shimmering with appliquéd black sequins, holding black satin masks to their faces with one hand. When they took the masks away, the models’ faces underneath were painted with yet another mask, eyes outlined with black paint and more sparkling black glitter glued to their cheekbones and lips.
 

She had a little money saved up. Her paychecks were being direct-deposited by Jackson Storm Enterprises in the Bank of Paris along with a respectable expense account, and she’d hardly touched them. Now, while she was waiting to hear from Jack about her proposal, she could do something more than just hang around Louvel’s as an observer trying to stay out of the way. She could take advantage of what was, after all, the chance of a lifetime and buy some clothes in Paris.
 

It was tempting, Sam thought, watching the models in black leave the floor to be replaced by even more bizarre figures all in glittering white. But if she did it at all, she had to do it carefully, because she didn’t have that much money to spend—at least not in Paris where clothes were fabulously expensive. In New York it would be easy enough with her connections in fashion retailing. In Paris, trying to maintain a low profile and not be discovered as a Jackson Storm representative, it was going to be complicated.
 

Looking at the young woman beside her, Sam thought that Brooksie could help by steering her to some of the quieter boutiques. But she needed someone who could speak French, who knew the way around Paris, who had a car.
 

Fortunately, she knew just the person.
 

Alain des Baux was driving an elegant gold-tone Mercedes sedan when he picked her up. “Company car,” he explained. “Also larger than the Lamborghini, for carrying packages. There will be,” he asked with his teasing grin, “lots of packages?”
 

“Only a Frenchman would volunteer to go on a shopping trip with a woman to buy clothes,” she teased back. “That’s why I called you. I’m glad you got my message on your answering machine. When did you get back in town?”
 

“This morning.” His expression, as he turned to look at her was warm, intimately caressing. “Have you missed me?” he asked softly.
 

That golden look rendered her suddenly breathless. “Look, am I taking you away from work? You sure you shouldn’t be doing something else?”
 

“Do you think I would spend my time doing something else when I could be with you?” he said quietly.
 

Her heart was doing flip-flops. “Well, I haven’t got all that much to spend. They tell me even the prêt-à-porter places are expensive.”
 

“Trust me,” he said confidently. “Going on shopping trips to buy clothes with beautiful women is a Frenchman’s second most important obligation in life.”
 

“What’s the first?” Sam said, without thinking.
 

Alain des Baux grinned even more broadly as he put the car into gear. “Are you kidding?”
 

Brooksie had given Sam a list of Paris ready-to-wear boutiques that included Pluck in Les Halles, the two Place Victoire shops—Joseph Tricot and Victoires—and a couple of small, unadvertised places in the 16th arrondissement adored by the BCBG’s, Paris’s elite
bon chic, bon genre
.
 

“Those are good,” Alain agreed, “but I have another place in mind. Very French, very reasonable, a little out of the way. They copy from the big haute couture houses and the boutiques in Les Halles at prices true bargain-hunting Parisiennes can afford. Are you feeling adventurous?”
 

She was, Sam decided. Even when the shop turned out to be the less than exotic basement level in a turn-of-the-century building in the middle-class residential section of Ranelagh. The proprietress, a tall woman in black, looked Sam over with a subtle expression and then greeted Alain des Baux with a broad smile.
 

From their rapid conversation in French, Sam gathered the proprietress knew Alain very well. No matter what Alain was telling her, the sleek, black-haired woman had her own ideas about what was going on. Her dark eyes swept over Sam.
 

His sister must shop here, Sam convinced herself, looking around. That’s why Alain knows places like this, and not because of what the saleswoman is obviously thinking.
 

She was still turning it over in her mind when they took their seats on little wire chairs across from a bank of mirrors. The boutique was carpeted in imitation fur, the walls were painted pink and the mirrors reflected the light from one massive crystal chandelier with yellowed prisms that needed cleaning. A salesgirl, hastily summoned from the back, brought out a selection of clothes on their hangers.
 

The shop’s dresses, Sam saw, a little dismayed, featured a lot of dresses that had jackets with puffed sleeves, plunging necklines and flaring peplums over rather long skirts. An evening sheath in black crepe, meant to be daring, rather predictably bared one shoulder. A beige silk jersey afternoon dress in a multitude of tiny drapes that defined the breasts and swirled to a full skirt, looked to Sam vaguely like the clothes Givenchy used to design for Audrey Hepburn in her heyday. The fifties look was coming back, the boutique was very current as far as that went, but there were no slacks, no sportswear, no jeans. The designs were very pretty, and rather fussily tasteful.