Chapter 4
Chloe
Even though Matt had been very clear that he had spotted Pierre at the convention, Chloe still had not seen him and it was now the second day. It had taken everything she had not to turn around and look in the direction Matt had been looking at. Heaven knows, she would not have minded laying her eyes on the picture of perfection that was Monsieur Savant.
She looked at her reflection as she tucked in her black long sleeved round necked top into her black and white pinstriped pencil skirt. She had her hair held up in a loose bun and coupled her look with a pair of silver colored stiletto heels. She took a long deep breath and grabbed her name tag and black purse before she walked out of her room.
As she made her way to the restaurant, she could not help but wonder how coincidental it was that she had bumped into someone she knew back in high school. To be more specific, a geek she knew in high school who had transformed into this hot millionaire.
“People really do change,” she thought to herself as she helped herself to a breakfast tray. “Thank God they have decent coffee out here.” There was a smile on her lips as she helped herself to a cup of Ethiopian coffee before she got a serving of eggs, a couple of slices of crispy bacon, a chocolate muffin and a bowl of fruit. It might have been a lot but she had missed dinner the previous night for some reason. She was famished.
“It is almost like I never left home,” she said to no one in particular when she sat down and took a sip of her coffee. She’d sampled coffee from all over the world and as far as she was concerned, the much acclaimed Colombian coffee came only second to the fine taste Ethiopian beans offered. She had just taken another sip of her coffee when a man walked up to where she was.
“This seat taken?” the man asked in a heavy French accent. Her heart skipped a beat. She could have recognized that accent anywhere. She turned around and came face to face with a smiling Pierre. She wanted to talk and tell him that it wasn’t but somehow her voice was failing her. She forced a smile and shook her head. “Great, because I really didn’t want to sit down with a stranger.”
“Stranger?” she asked when she finally found her voice.
“Yeah, our companies worked together a year ago when that actress Divani…” Pierre started and she frowned.
“Avani,” she corrected him.
“Yes, Avani.” He feigned a frown and raised an eyebrow. “Have you already forgotten me?”
“I couldn’t if I tried,” she thought as she looked at him.
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head.
He sat down and looked at her as he set his tray on the table.
“Thankfully this is one of the few places that offers genuine tasting croissants.”
“I had the same thoughts but about the coffee,” she said as she took another sip of her coffee.
“Colombian?” he asked and she shook her head.
“Ethiopian,” she said.
“My kind of woman,” Pierre said in a soft voice and Chloe felt her cheeks get flushed. She took a bite of her eggs to hide the fact that she was blushing. “It is so amazing how someone so small can eat so much.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow.
“Hey, I deserve this. I went to bed on an empty stomach last night,” she said.
“Well, no judgment here. It’s just an observation I made. Somehow, the heavier people go through life surviving on kale and salads while the rest of you eat like that…” his voice trailed off. “I was a little heavy when I was younger.”
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Chloe said, laughing. “But I have to admit, you have done a mighty great job of cutting down.”
“It took a lot of work but that’s old news.” He took a bite of his croissant and sipped on his coffee. “So, now that we are working together again…” he started before she shook her head.
“Wait, what? Working together? What are you talking about?” she asked, feeling a little confused.
“What do you mean what am I talking about? I called you yesterday,” he said matter of factly.
Chloe dabbed the sides of her mouth with a paper towel and shook her head.
“Trust me, I would know if Pierre Savant called my private cell,” she said.
“You say my name like I am some kind of celebrity or something.”
“Have you checked the last…I don’t know five issues of Forbes Magazine or Us Weekly?” she asked and he shrugged as he took another bite of his croissant.
“I’m more of a Fortune Magazine and Accounting Today kind of person,” Pierre said.
“Well, if you checked out the tabloids you would see just how much America idolizes you and your celebrity wife. So I guess by association, you are a celebrity, right?” Chloe took another bite of her eggs and smiled at Pierre who was shaking his head.
“My wife is the celebrity. I am just a humble businessman,” he said.
“Who runs a quarter billion dollar business,” Chloe wanted to say as she nodded.
“Now, I know that this is supposed to be some kind of vacation,” he started and she shook her head.
“Attending a business convention is not exactly my kind of vacation.”
“A convention in a five star Swiss hotel? If they wanted something a little more professional, Las Vegas would have worked. Myrtle Beach even.”
Chloe smiled and nodded.
“Alright. I’ll bite,” she thought as she looked across the table at Pierre.
“So, let me get this straight,” Chloe started as she looked at Pierre. “The call I got last night by someone who wanted me because I was the one behind P and A’s magic. That was you?”
Pierre nodded.
“I have to say that I am flattered but what is this that is so important you had to come to me personally?” she asked.
“I need someone to take care of a very sensitive situation and even my nemesis says you are the best. I guess I have to believe it before I even see it.” He took a long sip of his champagne. “Because this is something that concerns my kids.”
“Kids?” she asked as she looked at him. In all the months she had been checking him out on the internet, she had never known he had kids. So that was his well-guarded secret. “I didn’t know you had any kids.”
“Twin girls. Not many people know that,” he said. “My family’s privacy means the world to me and I have worked my ass off to make sure that my babies are kept off the internet.”
“People on the internet can be cruel,” she said in a soft voice.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “I just want to make sure they have a decent childhood.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it and looked at it before he showed her the little picture tucked safely on one side of the wallet. She could not help but notice how much the girls looked like their father.
“They are beautiful,” she said, smiling.
“Yeah, that’s my Adele and Ariadne. Very alike yet very different,” Pierre said proudly.
Chloe frowned.
“I can’t tell them apart,” she said as she handed the wallet back to him and he laughed.
“That takes some getting used to. They might be identical twins but they are not exactly identical. A little time with them is all you need to know the difference, though I like playing the confused parent every so often.”
“They must hate it.”
Pierre laughed and nodded.
“The looks on their faces is so worth it,” he said and Chloe shrugged.
“I can only imagine,” she said. “So, Mr. Savant. Give me the details of your case. What is it you want done?”
“My kids. I want full custody.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow.
“This sounds like a private dispute. Maybe litigation would work better for you than a crisis manager? I mean what you are talking about would be better handled by a lawyer.”
“The divorce I will be filing will be handled by my lawyer. Right now I need you to work towards getting my kids with me. Full time. If Rafaela wants them, she will have to schedule her visits with me and they must be supervised.”
“Mr. Savant…” Chloe started and he shook his head.
“Please, call me Pierre.”
“Fine, Pierre. I need to know more about this so I know how to best approach the situation. Because I cannot work unless I have all the facts,” Chloe said. “Truthful facts, of course. But I still think that this is a legal situation.”
“I know but I want everything handled quietly because as you know Rafaela’s a public figure and like you said earlier, somehow I am too.” He shook his head as he took another sip. “Dragging this thing to court is going to ruin her public image and I care too much about my girls to let them see their mother like that.”
Pierre’s phone vibrated on the table and he looked at it before took a long deep breath and sighed.
“But I think we will have to talk later because there is an auction beginning in twenty minutes that I have to be present for,” he said.
Chloe sighed and pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“We need to schedule a sit down because I need all the information before I move forward with anything. That’s how it works,” she said and he nodded. “And given the nature of the situation, I think maybe we should do that before we head back to the States.”
“So, before the convention is over?” he asked and she nodded.
“If you can make it work in that short time frame then great because from what I have come to know with these kinds of cases, the sooner the better.”
“This is something that I definitely want…no, need handled before I go back to the States,” he said in a soft voice.
“Make the time and I will do the same.”
To be honest, this was not the kind of conversation she hoped to have with Pierre the first time she saw him. She wanted a whole lot more than just business but they were already in a threshold that she could not cross. It was all official. The man she’d had a crush on for the longest time was her new client. Pierre Savant was her client.
*****
By the end of the day, two things were very clear to Chloe.
One, Pierre Savant and Matt Zimmerman had some kind of business rivalry that she was yet to understand and two, that sexy French American man had absolutely nothing holding him back when it came to spending. He had just dropped fourteen million dollars on a piece of security software that had not even been tested yet. Chloe had lost sight of Matt somewhere during the auction. What she didn’t know was that Matt had left the hotel after losing the security software bid to Pierre. Or maybe she was too buzzed to notice. She was not really sure. She did not really have anything to keep her busy during the three hour long auction.
After looking around and bidding on a few items she knew her boss would have liked for P and A, she went ahead and took advantage of the open bar. But before she began drinking, Pierre had pulled her aside to give her the details of his case and she had still not come up with a course of action. It usually just took a few hours for her to come up with a strategy but she was all alone in Switzerland and she hadn’t even thought of how she was going to break the news to her team yet. Pierre’s case was nothing if not complicated. She hated any case that involved kids. She had actually never handled such a situation for obvious reasons. As soon as she got a chance, she made a call to Arnold and explained everything.
“Wait, so he called you personally?” he asked and she nodded almost as if he could see her.
“I hope it’s okay,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Arnold pointed out. “Technically, he is a business partner so it is not unusual for him to know the intimate details of how we run our business.”
“I guess.”
“So, have you thought of how you are going to handle this?” Arnold asked and Chloe sighed.
“Not yet. But if I can get information from an independent source…” she started.
“Independent source? You mean you want someone to dig into Rafaela’s life?” Arnold asked.
“That’s the only way I can think of doing this and actually coming out on top,” Chloe said.
“But I thought you said that he took the kids’ nanny with him.”
“He did,” she said in a soft voice. “But I still need a lot of juice to be able to get the kids away from their mother considering that this is not just an American thing. We are crossing borders here.”
“Fine. I’ll get someone to check out the last six months…” Arnold started.
“No, six months will not be enough. Get everything from when the divorce got finalized. Get the investigator to literally turn her life inside out. Every tabloid picture her PR team paid to have taken down, every party she attended, the people who attended those parties…if there was a single shred of evidence that would work in Pierre’s favor, I want to know about it.”
“Sometimes I wonder who works for whom here,” he said and she laughed.
“Please do this for me, Mr. Pittman,” she said and he sighed.
“Don’t suck up. It doesn’t really suit you,” he said and she laughed. “And don’t worry, I wrote everything down. I’ll have your team on it as soon as possible. Now remember to have some fun but don’t spend all the company’s funds.”
Chloe laughed.
“You already caught on to the stuff I bid on?” she asked.
“Definitely. There was a flag on a company issued card in Switzerland. Ten grand,” he said.
“Top of the range surveillance equipment. Except for the feds, no one else in the States has it,” she said.
“Fine. I guess we could always use more surveillance gear,” he said. “I’ll have everything ready by the time you get back.”
“Sounds great. Thanks Arnold,” she said before she hang up.
“Open bar is perfect for this particular day,” she thought as she walked towards the bar.
“One strawberry daiquiri, please,” she said when she sat down. She might have looked like just another pretty girl having a drink at the bar but at the back of her mind, her brain was going on overdrive. She could not help but wonder how she was going to handle the new case on her hands. It was definitely not going to be easy to take children away from their mother.
She had just had her third drink…or something like that when Pierre walked up to her. She looked at him and smiled.
“That was a good chunk of change you spent in there,” she said as he sat next to her.
“You know what’s better than being ahead of the competition?” he asked as he looked at her. “Staying ahead. And as far as I’m concerned, I would do anything to stay ahead.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Chloe said nodding. The bid had only been up to three and a half million when he suddenly bid five million. A few minutes later into the bidding war, the highest bidder was offering seven million when Pierre suddenly stood up and offered to double the amount. There was a gasp of surprise when from the crowd when Pierre shouted his bid. “It was actually quite impressive.”
“That is not what I was going for, but hey, if it served the purpose why not?”
Chloe nodded and downed another tequila shot. She closed her eyes tightly as she felt the alcohol burning its way down her throat.
“Maybe I should probably just call it a night,” she thought as she climbed off the bar stool.
“Whoa there,” Pierre said when she almost lost her balance. He held her steady and climbed off his own stool. “I should be the one drinking this much. I mean I am in the middle of a really bad custody battle.”
“It’s not exactly an easy case,” she said as he held her.
“Come on, I’ll take you back to your room.”
Pierre said as he slipped an arm around her waist.
“You know I can still walk, right? I’m just a little tipsy,” she pointed out.
“I know but there are still two more days in this convention and someone is going to have to be sober as she makes her presentation tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“You know about that?” she asked as they walked to the elevator.
“I have kind of made it my business to know what kind of business my partners are in.”
“There’s that word again.”
“Which word?” Pierre asked as they walked into the elevator.
“Partner.”
“Well, that is what P and A and SSL are, right?” he asked and she shrugged. Her legs felt wobbly and he tightened his hold around her waist. “Some strong coffee and water should take care of that. Floor?”
“Sixteenth,” she said and he pressed the button inside. “And I only had three strawberry daiquiris.”
“If you say so,” Pierre said smiling.
*****
Pierre was a perfect gentleman. He helped her out of her dress and into the shower and ordered some cappuccino as he waited for her. After making sure she had taken the cappuccino and at least a liter of water, he tucked her into bed and she smiled up at him.
“Get some rest. You should be okay in the morning,” he said.
“You know this is kind of a dream come true for me,” she said as he looked into her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I kind of have this huge crush on you ever since…forever,” she said and a smile played on his lips.
“Are you sure you just had three daiquiris?” he asked and she reached for his cheek. She ran her hand down his cheek and rested it on his chest. “Okay. I’ll just let that slide…no pun intended.”
“I want to let you do more than that,” she said before she slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you,” Pierre said, smiling at her.
She brought her hand up and held the back of his neck, pulling him down to meet her lips. She exhaled into his mouth when he kissed her softly. His tongue was exploring her mouth as she angled her head, allowing his tongue to go where it wanted. He gently pulled away from her and sighed, his hands on her shoulders.
“Not like this…not here,” he said in a whisper.
“Why not?” she asked and he pulled the covers over her.
“Get some sleep. I’ll check up on you in the morning.”
“You do that,” Chloe said in a sleepy voice.