One-Click Buy: April Harlequin Blaze

by Kathleen O'Reilly

  “It’s mayhem backstage, people everywhere—models, dressers, emergency seamstresses, the director, the designers, the hair and makeup people, the staging crew, there’s security.”

  He nodded.

  “They must be using the dresser to get the wedding gown out of there.”

  “I agree. But how?”

  She drummed her fingernails against her bag. “The dressers get treated like crap by the high-maintenance models and it’s like they’re invisible to most everyone else. The dresser will be in charge of the gown. She’ll have a list of all the accessories, shoes, jewelry that go with it. It will be her responsibility to make sure the dress is perfect when the model steps out onto the runway.”

  Wow. It was so simple.

  “A hem gets loose, some trim gets damaged, sometimes in the rush a model puts her heel through the fabric. Then the dresser has to run the gown back to a seamstress. It usually means the order of the show gets changed, or if it’s too badly damaged, they would remove the gown from the program.”

  “They won’t remove ApplePie’s wedding gown from the program.”

  “No.”

  She leaned forward, as if she could urge the cab on by redistributing her body weight farther forward. “How many wedding gowns were in the final segment of the show? When you watched the run-through? Do you remember?”

  He closed his eyes. “Eight.”

  “And they’ll bring that gown out last. There will be tons of attention on it, so the model will be out there longer. Then she’ll go back and they’ll do the finale. With all the models. And that gown as the centerpiece of the show, with Simone proudly hovering over it.”

  “So when’s the dresser’s opportunity?”

  “After the wedding gowns start showing. She’ll make sure there’s a tear or something and run it back to the seamstress. She’ll put it inside a bag so it’s not obvious what she’s got. And instead of going for the seamstress, she flees with the dress to an outside exit. Where there’s a van waiting. There are vans and delivery vehicles all over the place. She jumps in the van with the dress. It’s minutes before anyone notices the theft. Holden, she could be miles away before anyone notices. At least alert the security guys.”

  “Can’t. If you’re right, how does she get past security to get outside to the waiting van? They need more than one dresser on the payroll to execute this. They’ve got somebody in the security team too.”

  She was about to speak, when the cab came to a jerking halt that had Kimi bracing her arms against the back of the front seat to stop from being thrown onto the floor.

  19

  “ATTENTION!” she cried to the crazy driver.

  The driver gesticulated and swore, pointing out the front window of the cab.

  “Merde,” she said, immediately seeing the trouble. On the road ahead two vans had collided. With no room to drive around the mess, the driver stuck his head out the window and added his voice to the mix of shouting.

  “This is going to take a while. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot,” she told Holden.

  He was out of his side, throwing money at the driver, while she got out the other side. The opera house gleamed like the rich jewel it was, but it was several blocks away and her heels were not made for sprinting.

  “Come on,” he said, already jogging.

  “The things I do for fashion.” She bent over and took off one very expensive Jimmy Choo and then the other. Holding them in her hand by the silver straps, she took Holden’s hand and began to run. The pavement was rough beneath her feet and cold, and she tried very hard not to think of all the gross and disgusting substances she was probably running on.

  “Go on ahead,” she shouted when she could see that he was holding himself back for her.

  “No. We’ve got time. We’ll make it.”

  So they ran. Obviously he was in better shape than she was since she was using up all her energy to keep breathing and moving at the same time, and he could do both with ease while outlining a plan of action like a general before a big battle.

  The opera house grew closer, gleaming gold in the lights.

  “You’ve got it?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she panted.

  “Good. Keep your eyes open, but don’t get close enough for them to see you.”

  “Right. But the two of us can’t stop them all by ourselves.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I called my buddy at Interpol. He’s sending some guys who won’t be recognized.” He checked his watch. “They should be here any minute.”

  She nodded.

  He took out a kid’s whistle from the brown paper bag he was holding. It was like the gendarme whistles as seen in The Pink Panther movies. He solemnly hooked hers over her neck. “A cell phone would be better, but blow your whistle if you need me.”

  “Okay.”

  He kissed her once, hard and fast. Then they split up as arranged and she walked the perimeter of the opera house going clockwise, while he went counterclockwise. She slipped her shoes back on since she’d look less peculiar than if she was caught skulking by back entrances with a pair of heels in her hand. She tried to keep to the shadows.

  There were vans everywhere, of course, parked haphazardly, with barely enough room for anyone to drive out of the area.

  She kept her eyes open for Vladimir or Brewster, but saw neither. In fact, she saw no one more sinister than a few burly drivers slouching in their vehicles who gave her the once-over. But nobody approached or spoke to her, no dresser came flying out a door with a priceless wedding gown bunched in her hands.

  The word she’d have to use to sum up her current feelings would be anticlimax.

  It took her fifteen minutes of eyes-focused, ears-straining sleuthing to discover that everything was peaceful. She rounded a corner and saw Holden coming her way, shaking his head. Even his camera bag drooped with disappointment.

  “We’ve worked too hard to let them win. I’m going inside,” she said. “Through the back.”

  He nodded briefly. “I’m coming with you.”

  She raised her brows, but he jerked his head in the direction of his camera bag. “I shot the run-through, remember? They all know me.”

  “Okay.”

  She showed her credentials at the door to a bored security guard who shook his head. Nobody allowed in.

  There was no point in telling some story about writing an article from backstage. The security guard wouldn’t believe it, and if he did he wouldn’t care. She saw Holden start reaching for his wallet.

  “Can you reach Marcy Wolington-Hicks?” she asked the guy. “It’s important. Tell her Kimi Renton needs to see her right away.”

  The man looked as though he was still going to refuse, when Holden slipped him a bill. It was in the guy’s pocket so fast she could have imagined the transaction. “Un moment,” he snapped, and got on his radio.

  At that moment they heard a woman scream.

  The security guard leaped forward and Kimi and Holden followed.

  Following the scream, they raced into a scene of utter chaos. Simone, in her signature black, was on her knees. Her normally pale face was the color of sushi rice. In front of her stood a model who was rapidly falling into hysterics. Arianne Boucle, Simone’s favorite, a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, six feet tall, was flapping her arms, hyperventilating and crying hysterically. She was also stark naked.

  “Where’s the dress?” Kimi demanded of the model.

  She broke into a torrent of French, so fast Kimi could barely keep up. But the gist of it was that one of the perfect diamonds had come loose. She had to get out on the runway. Now. It was almost her cue. The wedding gowns were almost finished. She was to wear the grand finale gown.

  Tears spilled over her spiky lashes as she cursed; then shouted for a cigarette.

  Kimi grabbed her arm. “The dresser. Where’s the dresser?”

  “I told you. She had to fix the dress. But she’s gone. Nobody can find her.”

>   “When did she leave?”

  A hysterical hiccup. “I don’t know. Five minutes? Ten? Somebody better find my dress.”

  Then she jerked out of Kimi’s grasp and dashed over to her makeup girl.

  Kimi knelt beside the weeping designer. “Simone, you’ve got to pull yourself together.” But it was hopeless. The woman was sobbing as though she’d lost a child. “C’est fini!” she wailed. “Tout fini!”

  “You’ll need to go out there and talk, give us time to get the dress back.”

  But Simone was beyond reason.

  The director was standing like a statue, watching the crisis. “Get them to slow down or something,” Kimi ordered.

  “Already did.”

  “How long have we got?”

  “Five minutes tops.”

  “Okay. Stall. Do whatever you have to. Go out front and tell jokes if you need to.”

  He looked down at Simone. Shrugged. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Did you see the dresser leave with the gown?” Kimi asked.

  “It’s chaos back here. Maybe someone in makeup saw something.”

  Holden headed toward the exit.

  She asked the director, “Which way to the seamstresses?”

  She ran in the indicated direction. As she plunged into the dim recesses of the opera house she hoped she didn’t run into Vladimir or Brewster. At another time she’d have worried about coming face-to-face with the famous phantom, but right now she’d take a masked, operatic ghost over a gun-wielding thug in a heartbeat.

  She found the seamstresses tucked around the corner looking tired and frazzled, but, of course, no one had seen ApplePie’s wedding dress. And they were so busy with last-minute repairs, they hadn’t seen the dresser either.

  She caught up to Holden. “She can’t have left. We didn’t see her. Could she be hiding? What if we got people searching down here?”

  Frustration was written all over his face. “I was so sure they’d get the dress out of here fast. But maybe you’re—” At that moment they both saw a shadowy figure dart across the corridor. It was the drab dresser they’d seen talking to Vladimir on the day of the lingerie-shopping trip, and she was carrying a large bag.

  “Stop!” Holden shouted, and started sprinting.

  “Arrêt!” Kimi echoed. Not that she thought the woman hadn’t stopped because she didn’t understand the English word. With one scared glance at them the woman raced away.

  Holden took off like a top sprinter.

  She followed as best she could, hobbled by the damned shoes.

  Kimi heard the throbbing roar as the engine of a van started up, and ran faster, so fast she was in danger of toppling onto her face.

  But years of experience in high heels came to her aid and she managed to stay upright while running as fast as she could.

  She rounded the corner to the exit—suspiciously empty of security—where both the dresser and Holden had disappeared seconds ahead of her.

  The woman looked around. Her face was pale and perspiring, but her sturdy leather flats and panic were helping her move faster than Kimi would have believed possible. The van was backing toward her down the alley, the back doors already open. It was one of Simone’s own vans, so would never have caused a raised eyebrow.

  Holden was gaining on the woman, but there was no way he could make it before she and the large bag clasped to her chest got to the van.

  “Throw the bag,” a voice yelled from the driver’s open window.

  Holden must have figured out the meaning of the words, for he tossed down his camera bag and tackled the dresser as she was about to throw the precious bag into the back of the open van. With a cry of surprise and shock, she fell to the pavement. The van screeched to a halt.

  Kimi ran forward. The bag had rolled along the dirty sidewalk, coming to rest against a lamppost displaying a poster about couture week.

  Before the van’s driver door had even opened, Kimi picked up the bag and turned to run it back.

  There was confusion and shouting behind her. She paused, bag in hand, knowing that if Holden was in trouble she’d have to stay. Simone might not get her moment of supreme glory, but she would get the dress back.

  But she saw that Holden’s buddies had made it in time. Two guys with badges and guns shouted to the driver of the van and the last thing she saw was the van driver raising his hands in the air.

  Holden rose off the street and hauled the woman up with him. “Go!” he shouted in her direction. Kimi turned and kept running.

  She did a reverse sprint and by the time she got back to Simone’s side, she couldn’t even speak. She tossed the dress over to Simone, who hadn’t moved.

  Simone looked at the bag and then at her.

  “Go,” Kimi panted. “Dress her yourself.”

  The woman’s sharp face lit up as she opened the bag. And suddenly the old Simone was back. Barking orders, removing the dress with tenderness.

  “It’s creased.”

  “No time to fix it.”

  The still-naked but once more perfectly made-up Arianne rushed forward, and in less than a minute looked the most radiant, most expensively dressed bride that Kimi had ever seen.

  “You’re a queen,” Simone barked at the model. “The greatest actress in the world. Now go.”

  Arianne seemed to grow even taller and with a nod, stepped forward to the runway.

  Kimi peeked out from behind the curtain, still trying to catch her breath, a vicious stitch still stabbing at her side. There had obviously been a bit of a long pause and she could see the model doing a final pose in the penultimate gown in Simone’s collection. It was lovely, of course, a sheath of silvery-white satin, sleek as a blade, with a tiny bounce of a frivolous train at the bottom.

  She gazed over the audience, sitting polite but anxious, waiting for the finale, for the gown that had been written about, speculated on, imagined but never yet seen. She noticed her father and Claudia, seated three back from the runway. With a sick stab of shock she saw Vladimir flanking her sister; the two were sharing a glance, as if to say, I wonder if we’ll get something this great for our wedding.

  She couldn’t believe he was even here, and her skin crawled at the idea of Claudia and that psycho together. She grew even colder when she realized that the only way he could be sitting there acting lovey-dovey was if he knew that she and Holden would never reappear to tell their story.

  Her eyes continued to scan the audience from her position behind the curtain and, inevitably, she spotted Brewster. The bald faced arrogance of the man astonished her. She wondered who the two had sent to the warehouse to do the dirty work of getting rid of her and Holden, for it was obvious that he hadn’t any more idea of retiring from fashion than Vladimir had of not marrying into one of the most prestigious families in Italy. Brewster wouldn’t get his hands dirty, of course.

  She imagined she’d even rate a lovely farewell piece from him in his column. Had her body ever been found.

  As the expectant hush built—for the grand finale—she watched Brewster. He looked so smug. The bastard had even dressed to match the wedding dress, she realized, wearing a long coat in black, with silver and diamond trim. In his case, she doubted the diamonds were real—any more than he was. His ferret eyes almost gleamed with excitement. He’d orchestrated stealing the dress and now he was on hand to report on the devastation with his trademark cruel wit.

  Except that Brewster Peacock was about to get the shock of his life.

  20

  SHE WATCHED Peacock who was all but licking his chops. The music changed, and all eyes went to the runway and out floated Arianne. She stopped and posed like a queen.

  There were gasps all through the opera house. Kimi didn’t think Brewster gasped. She thought perhaps he squeaked like the panicked rat he was.

  Arianne continued to parade in a wedding dress that had even this jaded audience awestruck. Kimi had seen a lot of couture in her time, but never anything to rival this gown. Only Sim
one would use flawless diamonds where other designers might use bugle beads. The bodice flashed and flamed with cool fire, like passion, while the silk and feathers of the skirt and train denoted softness, a new start perhaps.

  She caught a glimpse of Nicole Pietra, and the world’s most famous actress looked absolutely stunned. Then she burst into tears and started clapping like crazy, jumping to her feet as she did so.

  Her husband-to-be was soon on his feet clapping as enthusiastically. She thought of the old saw about it being bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the wedding, and thought how much worse luck it would have been if he hadn’t seen it, as had almost happened.

  As wave after wave of couture enthusiasts rose and added to the deafening applause, she noticed Brewster quietly—or as quietly as a man in that coat could—sidle to the nearest exit. But he didn’t get far. Two men silently moved to flank him, a third bringing up the rear. They had law enforcement written all over them. Short hair, bland suits encasing hard bodies, tough faces.

  There was barely a ripple as Brewster was led away, since all attention was focused on Simone’s grand finale.

  Never one to let a moment of high drama drag out, Simone already had the rest of the models wearing wedding gowns return, where they formed a group at the end of the runway, Simone was in the center like a small black bird among a flock of swans.

  Kimi’s attention reverted to her family. She wondered how Holden and his buddies planned to get Vladimir out of there without making a production of it. She didn’t want Claudia or her father drawn into the embarrassment of the arrest. There was only one way to protect her family. She had to separate her father and sister from Claudia’s fiancé.

  And, she realized as she saw Vladimir’s tough, impassive face glance to where Brewster had been, she had to do it now.

  She tried to figure out how to get a message to her father or sister—cell phones were forbidden at Simone’s shows and would be confiscated. Security was tighter here than at the U.N.