Nights in Black Lace

by Noelle Mack

  “Hmm. You could be right.” He did the same thing for her, but the piece was bigger and the jam dripped. He caught it with a finger and put it in her mouth. Odette licked it up. “So where are you off to? Back to the panty palace?”

  “Do you mean the showroom? No.”

  “Not working today?”

  “I am trying to think of a valid excuse to not go in.”

  “Do they need you around all the time?” he asked.

  Odette made a vague gesture with her hand. “Usually.”

  “I guess someone has to fold the underwear,” he mused. “I mean, I never go into that kind of store, outside of the occasional Valentine’s Day run.”

  “Do you want some outfits to take home?” she asked lightly.

  “Now, that is a leading question if ever I heard one,” he said. He claimed the last chunk of sweet, soft, buttery brioche since she didn’t seem to want it. “I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment.”

  “Ah.”

  He sat up straighter, the tan skin of his muscular arms heightened by the white sheet. “Are you going to ask why?”

  “No.”

  “I travel too much, that’s why,” he sighed. “But at heart, I’m a one-woman man.” He made a face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to talk like a country-and-western song.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There has to be a country song about a one-woman man sick of one-night stands, but I’m damned if I can remember it.”

  “That is probably a good thing.” She didn’t know or care about country music, but she was miffed by the reference to one-night stands.

  Bryan folded his arms behind his head, finished with the coffee and the brioche. She picked at the fruit.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing,” she said, nibbling on a piece of cut pineapple. It was much too acid and she put it to one side on the tray. “I will take this away if you are done.”

  He reached out and took her wrist. “Hey, I didn’t say thank you. Breakfast in bed—I can’t remember the last time someone did that for me.”

  She hated whoever had, sight unseen.

  “It was delicious,” he was saying. “And if you’re not doing anything today, can I have the honor of taking you somewhere in Paris? You have to tell me where you want to go—I’d probably take you to some tourist trap.”

  He meant well, but Odette was still miffed. Mornings after were always tricky. But then she almost never brought a lover home. In someone’s else apartment, one had the option of leaving before daybreak.

  At home—well, here she was with a virile young American who had gotten closer to her in twenty-four hours than any other man she’d ever known.

  That was probably because he was going away, she told herself. She’d let down her guard, knowing she would not have to see him again after Friday. Which had helped her dodge the issue of telling him who she really was: not a stylist, but the multimillionaire owner of an international lingerie company.

  “Let me call Lucie at the office,” she said. She glanced at the bedside clock. “Zut. That one is right. It is earlier than I thought. No one will be there until ten.”

  “All right,” Bryan said happily. “Come on back to bed.”

  Odette could not very well refuse. She rose and picked up the tray, though, and put it on top of the dresser. Then she went back to the bed and crawled under the covers he flung back for her to her new favorite place in the whole wide world: under his arm.

  She scolded herself for being so romantic but Bryan Bachman made it hard to be anything else.

  Besides, she loved to nestle and he was so big and warm.

  “You never did tell me how you happened to be at the back of the showroom,” he began. “I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought I’d seen you behind the curtains—”

  “Oui. That was me.”

  “Talk directly into the nipple,” he teased her. Her mouth had brushed it. “Can’t quite hear you.”

  “It was me!”

  He laughed. “I was right. And were you looking at me?”

  “I was looking at the audience. You were right in front. Do you know what people will do to get a seat like yours?” she asked him.

  “No. Is it that big a deal?”

  “They scheme, and they pull strings, and they offer you heaps of money.”

  “Anyone ever do that to you?”

  “I don’t need money,” she said, then realized her mistake. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to lose my job over something like that.”

  “Who’s the big boss?” he asked absent-mindedly. “Aren’t designers supposed to come out and take bows?”

  “Some do, some don’t. These days fashion is more of a business than ever. The pretenders come and go.”

  “How’d you get into it?” She brushed her lips against his ribs, tickling him with nibbly little kisses to distract him. “Feels good, Odette. Be careful.”

  “I went to design school for fashion. And my mother was in the business.”

  “Really? As a designer?”

  “No. She did embroidery. They are called the petite mains. The little hands. They do the detail work for the couture houses. Buttons. Faux flowers. Feather trims.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It is painstaking work, and they are true artisans. But their craft is dying. Most of the women are old now and nobody young wants to do the work.”

  “Do you know how?”

  Odette nodded. “It is useful for a stylist. But no, I would not want to make my living at it.”

  Her conscience pricked her. Tell him the truth, it said. Your house supports a dozen such craftswomen, who will be able to retire in comfort. And you have vowed to keep alive their artisan skills as well.

  It was only one of her pet causes. How much money did one woman need? Giving it away was fun.

  He might find her charity noble—he did not seem to be aware that the ticket he’d bought had benefited it. But then it had been worded in French, and no doubt the young girl who’d sold it to him had wanted to talk about Le O.C. once she’d seen his tank top, which said Newport Beach in big white letters.

  But the uncomfortable issue of why she had not told him the truth in the first place was sure to come up.

  Bryan Bachman had turned out to be intelligent and passionate and…incredibly sexual. He would not be flattered to find out that she’d chosen him for a fling. Unluckily for her, he was the kind of man who wanted more, although he was honest enough about his footloose status.

  The thing was…she wanted him to come back. If it was possible. If he wanted to. If not, then good-bye and good luck. He would likely never find out, because it was not as if he cared about fashion or the crazy people who made their living at it.

  And he would not be a wanderer for long.

  Such were her thoughts until he prodded her. “Can you get me behind the scenes?”

  Odette raised her head, and propped her flushed cheek on one hand. “Why on earth? Wasn’t that show enough for you? You said it gave you a headache.”

  “I said the music gave me a headache. Okay, the models were too skinny, but the Arelquin women were a lot of fun to talk to.”

  “Your charms were not lost on either of them,” she said wryly.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Anyway, it would be something to do. If you don’t have to work, that is.”

  “My female intuition tells me that you have an ulterior motive, Bryan.”

  He guffawed. “You’re good. You’re very good. I do.”

  Odette felt her stomach sink. “What is it?”

  “My mother was a dressmaker. Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “If you did, I don’t remember it,” she said cautiously.

  “Not hot couture or whatever you call it.”

  “Haute couture.”

  “Whatever. She made prom dresses and bridal gowns and things like that. We got by.”

  Odette had to ask. “What
happened to your father?”

  “He took off to grow pot in Mendocino. Never paid a nickel of child support and never sent a postcard. I didn’t know him, so I didn’t miss him. No, it was just me and Mom.”

  Odette couldn’t resist. “Her style sense did not rub off on you.”

  “I’m a guy. What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know.” She patted his bare chest, feeling suddenly wistful. “But naked, you are magnifique. And not very many people can say that. Which is why clothing designers make so much money sometimes.”

  “Yeah, well, never mind that,” he said cheerfully. “You French are very interested in everyone’s family. Madame Arelquin asked me the same question about my father.”

  “And did you give her the same answer?”

  “I said he was a hippie and let it go at that.”

  “What did she say?”

  Bryan grinned as he tried to remember it exactly. “She looked very sad. She said it was too bad that my maman had to marry an eepee and not a nice bankaire.”

  “That sounds like her.”

  “Anyway, my mother would be thrilled with a virtual tour of a real Paris fashion house.”

  Odette knew she had just painted herself in a corner. “But they are very secretive. No one is allowed to see a collection before it is shown. Designs are knocked off within hours in countries where labor is cheap.”

  “I can imagine,” he said easily. “Well, it was just a thought.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. There must be a way to get him in somewhere else. Not that the nearly naked fitting models who hung around Oh! Oh! Odette catching up on gossip and knitting would care if a stranger strolled through.

  And what had he said? That they were too skinny for him? Odette was finding more and more reasons to fall for him.

  He sighed with happiness. “Guess I’d better get going.” He pushed back the covers and got up, fluffing his stuff. “Mind if I take a shower?”

  “Of course not. So long as I can join you.”

  “All right. You get it going and I’ll be right there.”

  It was as good an opportunity as any to end a conversation that was likely to trip her up. Odette headed for the bathroom, and set out scented soaps and great big towels.

  With the water running, she couldn’t hear anything, and came out to look for him.

  Completely naked and unselfconscious, Bryan was looking at the art in her hallway. He looked without much interest at the graffiti-influenced Basquiat painting that she’d bought in New York, and then moved from framed photograph to photograph, studying the images.

  “These are by Henri Cartier-Bresson.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. She was surprised that he would know that, and a little ashamed of herself for being surprised. He was educated and not uncultured. But the photographer’s signatures on the original prints were small and not that easy to read, and only one image was well-known. The others were lesser works that showed men and women, not posed, at a moment of connection—or coming apart.

  She was curious to know what he thought of them—not all were pretty and a few were heartbreaking. Odette had bought them when the great photographer died because each one spoke to her in silence and she saw something new each time she looked at them.

  And now Bryan, this man she scarcely knew, was looking at them in the quiet of the morning. She felt suddenly frightened, as if he were looking into her heart. His own silence upset her, but she scolded herself for it.

  He was entitled to look at them—that was why she had put them on the walls. And yet, no one but him ever had.

  “Someone said Cartier-Bresson photographs the moment after the last word is spoken,” Odette said at last.

  “Someone got that right.”

  He came back to bed, the strong planes of his body outlined by the morning light and softened by the opaque shadows it cast at the same time. She’d peeked outside the bathroom window. It was going to rain. No wonder they’d slept so peacefully. She always did on rainy days.

  It couldn’t just be him.

  4

  O dette had called in and found out she had to go to work. Bryan was on his own. The day had dawned overcast, according to the pictogram on the front page of a French newspaper he’d glanced at when he’d left her neighborhood, not that he’d noticed that under the covers with her. Her shutters had been closed while they had breakfast in bed.

  And the weather was going to get worse. The unmoving clouds were only getting darker. He didn’t want to go back to his depressing hotel and he couldn’t just camp out at her place like he was moving in. Uncool, no matter what country you were in.

  And, he thought ruefully, she hadn’t begged him to stay. But they’d made plans to meet up in the evening at a place called Chez Prune on the Canal St. Martin.

  She’d said his outfit was fine. She’d even bestowed a pair of men’s underwear on him, a prototype pair of briefs that were comfortable but really brief.

  Even wearing the rest of yesterday’s clothes, he wasn’t too disgusting. She’d scrubbed him thoroughly and playfully in the shower and they’d had a squeaky-clean quickie on the gigantic bathmat. Her bathroom alone was about as big as his Newport Beach studio apartment.

  He had a feeling that was unusual in Paris, which was a really pricey place to live. Her neighborhood seemed more quiet than expensive, but he was no judge of that.

  The buildings breathed distinction that had to do with their age, he guessed. He’d glanced at the plaque and seen 1656, then a lot of historical information in French he hadn’t stopped to read.

  Her place was nice, though. He liked the eclectic mix of things and her style in general. She was in the right business, he thought, feeling a little more cheerful. His mom would love Odette.

  Yeah. He told himself to get real. His mom was never going to meet Odette. He had two days, more or less, to share with a hot French chick who was more than nice to him and was wild, really wild, in the sack.

  Why couldn’t he just be grateful for that? His days of being dumbstruck by puppy love were behind him, and he was—would be, he corrected himself—looking for something more.

  The real deal. Whatever the hell that was. Sure could be easy to confuse red-hot sex with it. He went on his way, walking easily over cobblestone streets that were probably ancient.

  He ought to bone up on French history, impress her a little. Vive la France and all that.

  It was a great city and he wished he had more time. Sure, he could always fly back and look her up—speaking of that, he ought to check his flight.

  And his e-mail. Maybe the interviewer from Bonjour Paris had forwarded the jpegs. It would be cool if Odette appeared in them somewhere. He’d love a memento like that. How We Met.

  He scowled at his corny impulse to commemorate a relationship that was going to be over soon. But he went into the first internet café he saw.

  He could use more coffee.

  A few minutes later, he had a thick cup of zhoe, as the girl behind the counter, who’d worked as an au pair in Chicago, called it. And it was damn good zhoe, too. Hot and strong.

  He booted up the computer in the corner, where he could look out on the street if he wanted to, and be left alone. He pulled up his Hotmail traveling account, and waited idly while the new messages loaded.

  The attachment icon showed next to one from Bonjour Paris. Aww. She’d come through, or the bald photographer in bad-ass black leather had.

  He clicked and clicked but he couldn’t get the attachment to open. Bryan swore under his breath. He couldn’t even figure out a different program to open them with.

  Fuck.

  He scrolled the other messages. Nothing from the universities he’d applied to, nothing from friends. Just the usual weird shit that had escaped the spam filter, offers to extend his dick and the like.

  Odette did a fine job of that, he thought with a grin. He blew on his coffee and shifted his leg to hide the I-heart-Odette hard-
on he was getting, in case the counter girl looked his way.

  Bryan decided to check out the Bonjour Paris website. There had to be photos on it, and the lingerie show had looked like a big deal. Maybe there wouldn’t be any of him, but then again, he told himself smugly, he had been the winner of a quote-unquote coveted front-row seat.

  He was just sitting here. Might as well take an ego trip.

  The site downloaded quickly and photos of the leggy babes in underwear and their fine feathers came up first. Then the headline. Oh! Oh! Odette! Bryan sat up straight, forgetting all about his coffee. He couldn’t read the text in French that well, but a few facts jumped out at him from what he suspected was breathless gush. Odette Gaillard, youngest CEO in France. Odette Gaillard, ex-model. Odette Gaillard, multimillionaire. Odette Gaillard, bad girl gone good.

  She wasn’t a stylist. She owned the fucking business. She was a self-made woman, not even thirty, obviously talented, and an A-list guest all over the world. She had to know dozens of rich guys and movie stars. What did she see in him? Why hadn’t she told him who she really was?

  She must not have wanted him to know any of that. She must have been looking for a fast fling when she’d seen him, and told her assistants to keep away while she tried her luck.

  He had to admit that doing it that way leveled the playing field some. He’d gone with her because he thought she was hot. And really nice. And the thrift-store outfit had fooled him.

  Wherever she got those crazy clothes, they were not from a thrift store. Or a flea market. They were designer items made to look like thrift store duds.

  Bryan wanted to bang his fist on the counter. Instead he just sat there staring at underwear models like a perv, not even seeing them, until he realized the girl at the counter was giving him a disgusted look.

  He clicked out of the site. His mind was whirling. Okay, so now what? They were going to meet tonight, and what would he do if she kept on pretending she was just a poor little stylist?

  With an amazing apartment in an exclusive arrondissement, you dickbrain.

  He sighed and looked it up online.

  Yes indeed, Odette’s quiet neighborhood was populated by tech-biz billionaires who kept models for pets. And freaky sheiks who had been sent off to France by their exasperated families with suitcases full of petrodollars. Her neighborhood didn’t breathe distinction or age, it breathed money. As in mega-money.