“Georg retired since you came west,” Melanie began ticking them off on her fingers. “He owns a fishing boat down in Florida. Kenalla and Perrin would kill each other in a week. It turns out that the reason Perrin got the ad placement she did was because your third suggestion is now in jail for embezzlement. He was caught trying to board a plane for Argentina. The company isn’t even bankrupt, it was a shell that he gutted and now it is simply gone.”
“And why do I want one of these people?” Perrin was back. Leaning forward, thinking. It was right. This was her business after all.
“You don’t,” Joshua cut off Melanie’s reply.
Melanie turned to him. “Yes she does, Joshua. She can’t do this herself.”
“No. She doesn’t want one of those people.”
“I do know more about this than—”
He held up a hand to silence her. It was a commanding, peremptory gesture she’d never expect from him.
“Can we talk in private for a moment?”
Talk? He wanted to talk when he was obviously so wrong. When… No. Maybe he was trying to take their first fight out of the room.
She almost told him to go jump.
“Please?” His whisper was a soft caress. She didn’t like that he had that much power over her, to change her mood with so simple an action. But she couldn’t deny the sincerity of his request.
“No!” Perrin called out as Melanie started to rise. “Look. This is family. Cassidy and I, we did our thing in front of everybody. So just do it here. We’re all family.”
Melanie would have flinched, but it used to give her mother too much satisfaction; Melanie had trained herself out of it. Family? Apparently not. She’d begun to think there was a way for her and Joshua to be family, but maybe she needed to step back and make sure she really understood his story first.
“Give us a break, Perrin. It’s personal,” Joshua kept his tone light, cajoling. Is that what he’d been doing to her? Manipulating her with kindness?
“Oh? And finding out you’re pregnant isn’t personal?” Cassidy shot out a second salvo. “Just try it, Josh. My whole world just changed.” Then her look went impossibly soft and she turned to plant a kiss on Russell’s cheek. “Oh man did it ever change.”
“She’s right, Josh. Melanie.” Russell pointed a finger at their chairs. “Sit your asses down and lay it out on the table. This is family. All of this.” He looked directly at Melanie on that last statement.
It was a look she recognized, one he’d been unable to give her years ago. Whatever else Russell might feel for his wife, he had enough love in his heart that he also loved Melanie. She couldn’t walk away from that.
She settled into her chair.
“Do it up, Josh,” Russell shifted his gaze. “Whatever it is, spit it out.”
Joshua looked at her uncertainly. Then turned to look around the table.
Melanie followed his gaze.
Bill with Perrin pulled so close they were practically in the same chair, their children leaning on their dad’s shoulders. Maria and Hogan holding hands as were Jo and Angelo. Cassidy still sitting in Russell’s lap with his big arms keeping her safe.
And Joshua.
Melanie folded her hands in her lap and stilled them. She was ready now. Her shields were back in place, at least mostly. No one here would see her reactions. No one except Joshua from whom she’d never been able to hide the slightest emotion.
He clearly read her irritation and her tightly held composure, offering a short apologetic nod that he’d made her feel that way.
Well, she wasn’t going to start. No way was she making it any easier for him. Again he acknowledged her choice and began speaking.
“The reason I wanted to talk in private,” he offered a scowl to the others around the table.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Perrin stick her tongue out at him. Melanie wanted to cheer.
“The reason was, I need to preface my question with the fact that I love you—”
“Duh!” “We knew that.” “That’s all?”
They both ignored the others’ comments. Joshua waited for them to die down. Melanie wondered if hope or horror was going to follow that statement. This was Joshua, she really, really wanted it to be hope.
She nodded for him to continue, offering him a slight smile of encouragement, as much as she dared.
His shoulders eased a tiny bit, but not much before he continued.
“And I wanted you to know that my idea, my question, if you are willing, is motivated only in thinking about what might be best for you and Perrin. It also could work in our, uh, novel project, but—”
“No codes!” “Cheater! Cheater! Pumpkin eater!”
“Okay!” Joshua turned on the table with a snarl that caused her to lean back as well.
She’d never seen or heard Joshua be openly angry. He’d clearly been furious when she’d revealed the story of her past, but this was completely different. She hadn’t known he was capable of showing fury. It was a dark, fierce sound.
“No codes? Fine. I’ll give you no codes. I’m trying to figure out how to spend the rest of my life with this woman without doing to her what her low-life mother did. I don’t want to force her to be even the least bit different than she truly is because she is so perfectly herself. I love her so much that I’ll just die if she walks away. I wouldn’t change her for all the world. Is that clear enough for you all?”
Melanie’s gasp was the only sound around the perfectly silent table. Ah! She had misread Joshua. But she was getting better at trust, and he’d know that about her. How perfectly he understood her. Angry for her, not at her.
Apparently satisfied with the results of his tirade, he turned back to her. It was so quiet that her ears actually rang.
“I have an idea,” his voice was impossibly back to a caress that she could now appreciate. “It’s about your career. It would also be good for us, I really think it would. But I don’t want that to influence your decision at all. I’ll follow you, or be at home waiting for you when you get back. I don’t care, I just want to be with you.”
She nodded carefully for him to continue.
Then he began to lay out his plan.
Chapter 17
The Smashing Six had gathered at Perrin’s store to get dressed up before going out to dinner. Tamara was almost a-dither as much as Perrin over her inclusion in a girls’ night out.
They’d coaxed Cassidy into a flowing dress of tropical fabrics which clung and revealed with every move she made. Jo had struggled against her fashion fate, but a cocktail dress of sky-blue jersey had revealed quite how impressive her voluptuous figure really was. Tamara wore the first of her own designs which was both edgy and inventive.
“Your turn,” Perrin announced merrily.
Melanie had turned for the racks. There was a suit of dark blue she’d been itching to try, but Perrin simply shook her head and led her into the back, commanding the others to find something out front for Maria. Only Perrin and Tamara went into the back design studio with her.
The renovation had been completed in just two weeks. A door had been punched through into the larger space beyond. The area now smelled of fresh paint and new equipment. The first five stations were set up in the efficient sewing room that could hold at least five more. Karissa, Clem, and the newly hired Celine would be starting in there tomorrow.
Melanie could only marvel at the changes that had been wrought, both in Perrin’s shop and in herself. She remembered those first days, sitting here, knowing she didn’t belong but having nowhere else to go.
Just a month-and-a-half later and she felt completely at home amid the whirl of conversations. Now it was familiar and welcoming. She loved being here.
At Perrin’s command, Melanie’s closed her eyes.
“But Perrin—”
“But Melanie!” she responded. “No peeking!”
She huffed out her exasperation, but closed her eyes.
She could
tell the instant the cloth touched her skin. This was her dress. Nothing felt like fifty-dollar a yard satin. It wrapped, caressed. Perrin had built in support, so only the scantiest of panties separated her from pure unadulterated heaven.
Even if she’d have less reason to wear such things in public now, maybe she would model it for Joshua. If he were a good boy. And he was; a very good boy.
His grand plan was so simple, she still marveled that she hadn’t seen it herself. She could still take the occasional modeling job, if she was in the mood. But she had something far more interesting to do now.
Perrin and Tamara fussed around her, reminding her every thirty seconds to keep her eyes closed until she’d almost wanted to snap at them. When Tamara tied a swatch of heavy corduroy over her eyes, it was a relief. Few designers minded her seeing the dress before the tweaks of a final fitting, but Perrin had been so insistent.
Her cell phone rang somewhere. The ring said it was her business line. A flailing hand, someone placed it into her palm. She answered it blind.
“This is Melanie.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Hi, Sue. How is the shoot going?” It was easier to be civil now about missing the swimsuit issue. The passing month had helped as well.
“That’s why I called. I don’t know how to do this properly, so I’ll just blurt it out. I need you.”
Melanie remained stone silent. She didn’t know how to react, she honestly didn’t. Sue took that as an opening.
“That new girl we brought on, I can’t even say her name I’m so upset. She’s currently the cover shot—”
“Congratulate her for me.” It took everything in her power to not end the call, to not say something snide and burn the bridge once and for all. Sue continued as if Melanie hadn’t spoken.
“—in the London papers: News of the World and The Sun. It will be hitting the U.S. tabloids by the weekend. The tart was selling lap dances in one of those Russian discos. There were paparazzi shots; she was wearing nothing but one of our bathing suits that she kept when she stayed behind after the shoot. She wasn’t drunk or stoned—not a single decent excuse I could use in the press—just a wild little hellion. Took money, let them… Let’s just say I’ve seen streetwalkers with more class. I need you. I need the Melanie magic to offset this news. We go to press incredibly soon. We’re in final photo selection right now and just had to throw away half of our ‘Moscow in the Spring’ collection, wow that place is so cold. Please, please, please. I saw that hot-hot spread you had in Fashion Alive and was just kicking myself. And now this. You have to save me. I’ll grovel. Anything you want.”
Actually, she thought that Sue was doing a pretty impressive grovel already. Melanie’s brain kicked into high gear. She wanted this. Not like she had before, but she wanted this to prove that she still had it. Was still in the game.
Shove that aside. Think like a businesswoman. No. More than that.
“Hang on, Sue.” She muted the phone.
“Perrin,” Melanie called out into the darkness of her blindfolded eyes.
“Yes?” she was so close they were almost touching.
“Do you do any swimwear? Really alluring, short-out-a-man’s-brain kind of swimwear?”
“Some. Oh yeah, on you, it would be screamingly hot. I did fluorescents this year, amazing with your hair and skin tone. And I can make more. I have the materials right here and some more ideas already sketched that I just haven’t had time to build.”
Melanie considered the factors. “Do you want to skip three or four levels at once and trade up for a whole different set of problems?”
“You’re the CEO. You tell me.” Melanie could hear Perrin’s smile.
That had been Joshua’s elegant solution. Melanie would step in as CEO. She’d also save the startup corporation, Perrin’s Glorious Garb, a bundle of money while guaranteeing international quality marketing by being its signature model as well. She’d get to take Perrin global, and still do the modeling she so loved.
Melanie clicked the phone back off mute, “You still there, Sue?”
“Right here.”
“Okay. Here are my conditions. If you say yes, we can deliver the images within seventy-two hours. Condition one: I will be using Pike Place Market and a fine Italian restaurant as my locations. Maybe throw in a Seattle ferry for a northwesty bonus.”
That should boost Jo and Angelo’s national profile significantly. And she’d bet she could talk Joshua into another ferry ride, especially if she was clad only in Perrin’s swimwear.
“We can fly you there,” Sue sounded eager.
“I am in Seattle right now, along with my second condition: I will have Russell Morgan do the shoot.”
“Oh yes. He’s amazing. I can’t believe you found him. Seattle? Really? That’s where he went? Whatever for? Never mind. Don’t care. Yes and yes so far.”
“I knew you’d like that. Third and final: I will be exclusively providing all of the swimwear, each piece of which will have the standard designer credit. Trust me, it will be innovative.” Because Perring didn’t know how to design anything that wasn’t.
“Done. Contract within the hour.”
“Standard rates plus my and Russell’s rush fees.”
“Okay,” she gave a very insincere sigh about the rush fee, but she had to know that was coming. “You’re the best, Melanie. By the way…”
“Yes?”
“We haven’t selected the cover yet.”
Melanie did the best to keep the smile out of her voice, “Always a pleasure doing business, Sue.”
She hung up and held the phone out into the darkness. It was taken from her fingers.
“No way!” Perrin breathed out slowly from where she’d apparently been frozen at Melanie’s side. “Did you just get into the swimsuit issue?”
Tamara’s squeal of excitement was loud enough that Melanie could hear all the others rushing into the back studio.
As Tamara cried out the news, there were numerous gasps and comments, some of which made sense and some of which didn’t. The latter included a fair amount of shushing noises.
Melanie was still blindfolded and couldn’t see their expressions to figure out what was going on.
“Can we lose the blindfold, Perrin? Please? Anyway, Lesson One in business: never burn a bridge.” Joshua and his counting lists were rubbing off on her. “Lesson Two in business: there’s no longer a me, there’s only an us.”
“Well, you may think that, Melanie, but you’re wrong.”
“Oh?” she tried to sound arch and haughty, but there was a merriness to Perrin’s tone that made her attempt a total failure. The others were laughing as well.
Fingers worked at the loose knot of her blindfold.
“Sometimes,” Perrin whispered in her ear over the noise in the room, “it is all about you.”
And she slid the blindfold aside.
Melanie stood in front of a three-fold modeling mirror.
But it was a Melanie she barely recognized.
The bright sheen of the pearly Duchesse satin shimmered down her length like water. The strapless bodice was an elegant finger weave of the Duchesse and the palest sky blue of the crepe back satin. The slightest breath caused the satins to shift and shimmer, all the more so because of the contrast of the shiny and the crepe textures. The blue brought her eyes to light like sapphires without the hardness that some blues caused. Bright and soft.
The sheen of the dress had been complemented by a lacy, pearl-studded, flowing back veil that left her face exposed and, while covering her hair, still allowed it to spread and billow. It positively shone.
“Mariée!” Even to herself her voice sounded drifty with wonder. “A bride! You made me a wedding dress, Perrin. All this time, you were making me a wedding dress.”
Perrin moved up beside her in the mirror and reached out to tweak a seam.
Melanie brushed her hand aside and then grabbed it and held on. “You don’t mess with
something this perfect. I can’t wait to wear this for Joshua.”
“Not before the wedding!” they all chimed in, and gathered close around to look at her in the mirror.
“Of course not. He hasn’t even proposed yet. I won’t let him. We both agree it is too soon.” She turned in profile, unable to believe what she was seeing. In an entire career built on looking beautiful, she had never looked this magnifique before. Not even close. “But I can’t wait.”
“Oh, I got you an early wedding present. Maria and Angelo are giving you the condo—”
“Perrin!” Maria and Jo cut her off.
“Aw, no! I wasn’t supposed to say that. You didn’t hear that. But they are. This isn’t nearly that impressive.”
Perrin handed her a small card.
Melanie first gave Maria and Jo a hug.
The condo. It was so perfect for them. A gift she couldn’t accept. She’d buy it. Though she’d insist on that later. That wasn’t a problem.
It was a home.
A real home, with Joshua. They’d make the second bedroom into an office for him. Or perhaps convert the overlarge pantry just off the kitchen he so enjoyed cooking in. Then the bedroom could be for a child.
She had to blink aside the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. The circle of friends, The Smashing Six. These were the women she would have as lifelong friends. Have children with. Grow old with. Belonging with them was a gift beyond price.
She had to wipe away more tears before she could read the card.
Perrin’s Glorious Garb. Her name and title: CEO.
CEO. The card made it real. She’d found her back door. Except it wasn’t some safety net to the end of her real career. Instead it said that her entire career to date had only been building toward this new beginning.
She hugged Perrin, carefully so as not to muss the dress.
Perrin was looking at her strangely, “Read it again. Out loud.”
“Perrin’s Glorious Garb. Melanie Harper.” She didn’t manage to get the title out past the sudden tightness in her throat.
It took her a moment, and then it wrapped around her like lover’s embrace.
Years ago she’d thrown away a last name that meant nothing.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 102
