At Alix’s uncomprehending look, Rudi sighed.
“Cherie, you do not have to make love if you do not want to,” he told her. “One can merely say no. Just so you are not accused of being unreasonable.” He paused, leaning forward to pull out a straight pin he’d missed. “But diplomatically, please. The Palliades are good customers.”
Rudi Mortessier was being very sweet. The green gown was one of the best in his winter collection. But the contempt in Gilles Vasse’s eyes had been for her, Alix knew. Gilles knew where she was going tonight. And with whom.
“Tous comprenez bien, cherie?”
“Yes, I understand. He—will take me to dinner.” She tried to look assured, more confident than she felt. “The rest is up to me.”
She was less confident a few moments later when she realized what Rudi had actually said about the Greek shipping tycoons. It was true, their lives were as lurid as soap operas. Their extravagances, their yachts with priceless paintings in every stateroom, the private islands in the Aegean upon which they lavished millions of dollars, even the women they married were like something out of the Arabian Nights.
Rudi had mentioned that Jacqueline Kennedy had barely survived the censure and disapproval when she’d married Aristotle Onassis. And the American automobile heiress Charlotte Ford, who’d married Stavros Niarchos after his quick divorce, had had his baby and then rapidly divorced him so that he could remarry his first wife. Elissa McElvaney Palliades, the beautiful Irish beer heiress Costa Palliades had left as his widow, was a shattered wreck, a lonely alcoholic living in seclusion.
For a moment Alix felt as though she had run headlong into a stone wall. Declaring that she was going to take a lover had been one thing. Did she really want Nicholas Palliades to be that man?
In the next instant she realized with something of a shock that all these drawbacks might actually be an advantage. He was totally unacceptable—a skirt-chasing Greek playboy. This news would get back to New York in record time.
“Rudi?” Her thoughts were racing. “I need—would you do me a favor?”
The Mortessier night porter appeared in the doorway. “M’sieur, a big car is waiting outside.”
“Merde, he is here!” Rudi snatched the heavy green satin coat from a chair and threw it around her shoulders. “Remember,” he said, shoving Alix toward the door, “if you must say no to him, be discreet.” They were in the hallway, the porter scrambling ahead of them to get the outside door. “Consider Mortessier’s business, I implore you.”
Alix gathered the folds of the green satin coat around her. “You need to lend me some money, Rudi.” She hated to ask for it, but she was down to her last fifty francs. “Just for taxi fare. Just in case.”
He dug into his pockets, pressed some franc notes into her hand, and pushed her past the porter, who was holding open the door of the employees’ exit. “He is handsome,” he hissed in her ear, “he is rich. Don’t disgrace me!”
It was still snowing heavily. Against the black night the flakes were invisible until they entered the sphere of light beneath the lamps over Mortessier’s rear door, then they turned into dancing bits of cold, airy lace. A hugh black Mercedes-Daimler stretch limousine was pulled up at the curb. Before the uniformed chauffeur in the front seat could do it, a figure in a tuxedo threw open the rear door and jumped out.
With the blowing snow and the uncertain light, Alix got only the briefest glimpse of curling black hair sprinkled with snowflakes, black eyes, silky black tuxedo, the pristine white of his shirt. Nicholas Palliades held the Daimler’s door open for her with a particularly assured, muscular grace.
A sudden gust of wind caught the satin evening coat and blew it away from her body. The blast of raw cold took her breath away. So did, she realized with a nervous thrill, the man holding the door of the limousine.
Until that moment it had never occurred to Alix that what she was doing might be dangerous. She saw Nicholas Palliades’s eyes widen slightly as she stepped into the street light. Under the opened coat her beaded evening dress shot shards of icy-green light into the night. The blustering arctic wind shook out the coppery mane of her hair and whipped it around her face.
The man in the evening clothes holding open the limousine door waited, correct and attentive. But the look in his eyes made Alix hesitate for a long moment. For there was no mistaking the devouring hunger in Nicholas Palliades’s black, blazing eyes.
Four
The interior of Nicholas Palliades’s custom-built Mercedes-Daimler was dove gray with the muted gleam of silver accessories. Two silver telephones, one for communicating with the chauffeur and one for outside calls, hung side by side above a beautifully appointed Art Deco ebony and silver wet bar. A silver-trimmed television set, its screen dark, was recessed in the bulkhead of the front seat, and a plush silver-gray chinchilla carriage rug was tucked over a silver rod within easy reach. Alix settled in her seat, choking back a nervous desire to laugh. She’d heard about limousines like this, but she’d never ridden in one.
The Daimler turned from the avenue Montaigne into the traffic circle of the Rond-Point des Champs, the sound of its massive tires muffled in falling snow. When it pulled to a stop at the first traffic light, Alix started slightly as the man in the seat beside her leaned forward. Lifting a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne from a silver bucket in the bar, he poured some of it into a crystal flute and offered her the glass, his hard face intent, unsmiling.
Alix took the champagne gingerly, holding it away from her borrowed clothes. Out of the corner of her eye she was very much aware that the leopardlike figure of Nicholas Palliades was watching her, openly appreciating the picture she made in her shimmering green beaded dress and satin coat. After a long, calculated pause, he said, “You look very lovely.”
Alix said nothing. She was still so keyed up with the excitement of what she was about to do that her hands shook. She found it difficult to look at this man whose black eyes were appraising her like something he’d just purchased. She swallowed hard, and felt the champagne go down the wrong way.
There are women, she tried to tell herself as she struggled not to choke, Paris couture models, who do this all the time. She fought back a cough. If I can’t get my nerves under control, I’m going to ruin the whole evening before it even gets started.
It was too warm inside the car, the heaters going full blast, but there was music, a stereophonic tape playing French hard rock. Alix detected a faint scent. A man’s cologne, surprisingly tasteful, not overdone.
Her skin prickled. In the close space of the limousine there was no denying her companion’s disturbingly virile presence. He sat with one long leg crossed over the other, the crease of his tuxedo trousers sharp as a knife. In spite of his hard-edged elegance, he exuded a peculiarly raw animal magnetism.
What should she do now? she wondered, gripping the flute of champagne tightly. She’d never played this role before. Should she be flirtatious? Animated? A little mysterious? She had so much at stake. And for the first time in her life, she had to appear alluring, irresistible, unmistakably available—everything, Alix thought a little wildly, she really wasn’t. But how could she determine the rules when she wasn’t sure what game they were playing?
Furtively, she glanced at him. A well-manicured hand rested on his knee, long-fingered, with polished nails, and a few sprigs of black hair below the knuckle of each finger. She was attacked by a sudden breathlessness. This was not the time to think about this man’s hand touching her, undressing her, making love to her. They would come to that soon enough. She noticed something just below his thumb, and her heart stood still.
Nicholas Palliades had a small, crude-looking blue tattoo of an anchor on the base of his thumb near the wrist. Alix remembered Rudi Mortessier saying the Palliades grandsons had served with Greek sailors on the family oil tankers.
It can’t be true. Champagne dripped from the bottom of her glass, but she sat frozen, unable to move. If you can’t go through
with this, say so. Just make him stop the car and get out.
“Are you cold?” Nicholas Palliades’s husky voice had a pronounced American accent. He lifted the chinchilla blanket hanging in front of them. “Would you like this?”
Alix shook her head. Her neck and breasts were already damp with perspiration; she hardly needed a fur robe.
She wasn’t going to ask him to stop the car. She was going to see this through. This was real, grimly real, as everything had been since she’d escaped.
Alix twisted to look out the rear window. She hoped those men who were following her were taking everything down. She would never have the nerve to do this again.
The long boulevard of the Champs Elysées glided past. Gold Christmas lights were strung through the trees, and tinsel garlands looped overhead. It was nearly nine o’clock, a little past dinner hour; the sidewalks in front of the shops and jewelry stores for which the Champs was famous were filled with homebound Parisians and holiday tourists. The sugary coating of snow that glazed the sidewalks and windows seemed artificial, like a stage set for a Walt Disney movie.
Life in Paris, Alix knew, was anything but a charming Disney film. She slumped back in her seat, watching the city spin by. For people like her, Paris was tough, merciless, and crushingly expensive. Competition at every level was stiff and cutthroat, as she’d learned first at music school, and again at Mortessier’s. Couture-house models didn’t make enough in wages to keep themselves alive, yet there were plenty of beautiful young women in line for their jobs.
Alix wiped a place on the limousine’s window with her finger, wondering where they were headed. Nicholas Palliades picked up the telephone and said something to the chauffeur in Greek.
Alix bit her lip. It was hard to connect snow and winter with Paris; somehow winter always reminded her of her childhood in New England, those endlessly snowy Vermont winters when she was eight—and nine—and ten—were preserved in her memory. School, where she’d spent each night, year after year, crying herself to sleep. Drearily lining up at dawn with the other girls for showers. For breakfast. For chapel. For classes. Institutionalized living had dimmed the spirit of a young girl whose only wish was to be with her mother. Alix still couldn’t remember her childhood without a feeling of terrible loss.
They’d told her that school would make her capable and independent, that it would give her all the necessary social graces. But Alix knew that was just an excuse. Most of the students were in the same situation. Their parents had married again, and had new families who wanted the older children out of the way; they all knew that was the real reason they were in boarding school.
On Sundays, when Alix sat in the visitor’s parlor hoping for someone to come, it was always Rob. Only Rob, arriving in a taxi from the depot and looking as Rob always looked: self-important, chilly-faced, a young-old man with his three-piece gray suit and too large fedora hat. Frowning and serious, even at sixteen.
Without warning, the Daimler braked. Nicholas Palliades grabbed the chauffeur’s telephone and barked something into it. An ambulance went by, sirens squealing, lights flashing.
Alix was half out of the seat. He had thrown out his arm to keep her from falling. Now he turned to her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“That dress becomes you.” He regarded her with a dark stare. “It goes very well with your hair.” He paused for a long moment, assessingly. “Is that its natural color?”
Alix opened her mouth and then closed it again. She reminded herself that she was a poor couture-house model, and this man taking her to dinner was the heir to a worldwide shipping fortune.
“Yes, it’s red.” That was no lie. She was tempted to tell him not to worry, he was going to get his money’s worth. “The color’s just been—enhanced—a little.” To her disgust, Alix felt her face turning pink.
His dark eyes narrowed, noting her blush. “You have very lovely breasts,” he said finally. “Have they been ‘enhanced,’ too?”
Alix could hardly believe her ears. First her hair, now her breasts? “I—I don’t understand.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” His cynical eyes were fixed on the strip of white skin beneath the rhinestone lacings of her gown. “Your breasts are big for someone so slender. Models are usually not so well endowed.”
Alix stared at him incredulously. To say that he was crass, suspicious, and unbelievably crude was sheer flattery. The Palliades name alone was probably enough, considering the family’s reputation, but he was so arrogant, success was practically guaranteed!
Up close he really wasn’t all that startlingly good-looking, she decided. She watched him, openly now, as he helped himself to more champagne. His nose was decidedly crooked, as though it had been broken years ago. His eyes were lidded, withdrawn, secretive. Alix didn’t like them at all. And his mouth...
At that moment he looked up. It was unfortunate that their eyes met in that instant, his smouldering black, hers startled, wide. A jolt of electricity seemed to leap between them. In that stunned second, she knew Nicholas Palliades was just as shocked, just as surprised, as she.
They both looked away.
Alix was suddenly frightened. This was her plot, her daring plan, but nothing was going as she’d expected. Nicholas Palliades wasn’t what she’d expected. A person just didn’t look up and meet someone’s eyes and find themselves suddenly burning with hot, demanding desire.
Alix hastily turned to the window. This afternoon, in an impulsive moment, she’d decided to take a lover. Now she wondered what she’d had in mind. She was beginning to feel she was in the wrong place, trapped in the wrong scenario with this hard-eyed man who definitely wasn’t what she’d counted on.
Through the glass she saw they had gone east on the rue de Rivoli to where the street became the rue de Fauborg, near the “little Bohemia” around the Bastille. Although the area was becoming more fashionable, it certainly was not in the same class as that of the Tour d’Argent, or Maxim’s, where Rudi Mortessier had assumed they would go.
“Shall I refill your glass?” Nicholas Palliades held the bottle of champagne out to her.
At that moment the Daimler slowed to a stop in front of a flashing blue and magenta neon sign that said LA VEILLE RUSSE. They seemed to be on a side street. Not a place one would look for photographers, the bon chic-bon genre, tout Paris, or anyone interested in high fashion.
“Never mind,” he said, putting the bottle back in its bucket at the bar. “We’re here.”
The name of the nightclub was La Veille Russe. That alone should have been a clue. The head waiter greeted them in a white, wolfskin hat and cossack uniform that matched the club’s decor of neon tube lighting, white plastic, and tufted magenta satin.
The head waiter—he could hardly be graced with the title of maitre d’—seemed to know Nicholas Palliades well. He guided them quickly to a table just off the dance floor. Alix looked around skeptically. La Veille Russe hardly resembled Old Russia, and it was a far cry from Paris’s authentic White Russian bistros like Dominique in the rue Brea, or the Pavilion Russe in Francois Premier. But to judge from the expensively dressed, mostly Middle European tourists loudly enjoying themselves, no one cared.
A magnum of champagne waited for them in a huge silver bucket, along with an enormous opened tin of Beluga caviar on a bed of crushed ice that was unaccountably tinted pink to match the tablecloth. From the way they were gathered around Nicholas’s table, it was obvious the staff of La Veille Russe was following a familiar routine. Alix suddenly knew why Nicholas hadn’t taken her to Maxim’s or any other fashionable place where they might be seen.
A balalaika band wearing the uniforms of the czar’s guard scurried over. The band members lifted their instruments, bowing and smiling as they launched into a Russian love song.
Alix stared at the pink ice and caviar centerpiece. La Veille Russe was obviously the place to go when you didn’t want to be seen by your circle of friends. When you were with a
questionable date.
She wasn’t angry. But she wasn’t all that amused, either. Caught in my own plot, she thought. It was a strange feeling.
The cossack-costumed waiter yanked the Moet & Chandon Imperial Brut out of its ice bucket to open it. A large group of Swedish tourists in evening dress arrived at the next table carrying balloons for a birthday party. And a line of waiters paraded toward Nicholas’s table, ceremoniously bearing the first course of dinner: silver and crystal bowls of borscht.
Nicholas Palliades picked up his spoon. “It’s too bad couture-house models work so hard,” he said. His expression was impassive, slightly bored. “And make so little money.”
Alix glared at him. Nicholas Palliades’s sympathy for underpaid couture-house models tore at her heart. He probably thought a night out in a sleazy nightclub near the Bastille was going to fulfill all her dreams. She stared at the tattoo on his hand as he picked up his glass.
Unexpectedly, a vivid picture jumped into her head of a naked, lean, virile body. Alix was astounded. She had no idea why her imagination would pull such a trick. She took a large gulp of fizzy wine.
Something hard bumped against her lips, then rattled against the sides of the glass. She looked down into the crystal champagne flute.
There had been moments in her life when events had come into sudden, extraordinarily clear focus. Over the Atlantic, on her way to Paris, she’d looked down to see the unending gray ocean that led to France and it was almost as if her whole existence had come together in a burst of wonder; it was the end of everything old, all she was running from, and the beginning of everything new. There, at thirty-thousand feet in the sky, she’d known she would remember that moment all of her life.
Now, as she probed the champagne glass with her finger and pulled out a piece of diamond-studded platinum, she was feeling the same exhilarating sense of focus, but for different reasons.
Alix laid the earring on the pink satin tablecloth beside her plate. She wasn’t surprised; gifts like the one she’d just fished out of her glass went perfectly with the tawdry nightclub, the tin of Beluga caviar, and the rivers of champagne Nicholas Palliades had been trying to pour into her all night.
Satin Dreams Page 5
