CHAPTER SEVEN
IVORY HANDED HIM her portfolio. “They aren’t terribly good designs,” she began worriedly.
“Let me be the judge of that.” He felt uncomfortable without the eye patch. He reached for it, but she touched his hand lightly.
“Don’t,” she said gently. “You don’t have to do that here.”
He caught her hand roughly and pulled her down beside him. “You make me hungry when you say things like that. Watch out.”
She smiled with scarcely contained excitement. He searched her eyes for a moment, then made a sound under his breath and released her hand, devoting his attention to the new drawings.
He whistled softly when he saw the suit. “Nice,” he said. “Very nice. The inspiration for this wasn’t Tudor.”
“Actually, it was a pin I saw in a jeweler’s window,” she confessed. “It was a tiny bee made of gold and diamonds. They presented it on a field of oyster satin. I thought how gorgeous something similar would look on a suit jacket of that shade. So I changed the design to a butterfly, used silver beadwork instead of gold and added a few flourishes. I didn’t copy the artist in any way. This could all be beadwork instead of crystal if you’d rather.”
“You’ll do Austrian crystal,” he said, touching the drawing with a thoughtful expression on his handsome face. “What a unique device. It reminds me of diamond pins created for the Duchess of Windsor, but she favored leopards, as I recall.”
“I like crystal,” she said.
He lifted his head and studied her thoughtfully. “That’s what we’ll call your designs—the Crystal Butterfly Collection. We’ll do the butterflies in silver and gold and crystal...”
“How about in onyx? That was an idea Dee had for an evening suit...”
“Wonderful! You could even design a line of evening wear with the same motif as the suits.”
She caught her breath. She hadn’t considered so monumental a scope.
“Not that I don’t like the embroidered satin gown you did. I do. It’s unique and very elegant. We’ll keep it, but only as an haute couture piece—it’s too expensive to produce the embroidery by hand and I don’t like machine stitching. It’s cheap.”
She laughed with unbearable delight. “Oh, I must be dreaming.”
“Hardly,” he mused. “You’re quite talented. I begin to understand how you won our competition. We’ll get out of the red and you’ll be a top name in the industry. I have dreams of my own.”
“You’ve made mine come true.” She grimaced. “Miss Raines,” she said through her teeth, “is not going to like this.”
“Miss Raines won’t be a problem,” he said simply.
“She’s a senior designer and she has all kinds of authority. She’ll stick my designs in the back and use the ugliest models she can find. They’ll trip going down the runway and everyone will laugh.”
He burst out laughing himself at her remarks. “Do you think so? Leave Virginia to me. I’ll handle this. I’ll move her from designing to managerial duties. It is my company,” he added.
“And you run it so well, Mr. Kells!” she murmured dryly.
“Don’t I, though?” He looked very wise as he studied her, and a little arrogant. “I didn’t get where I am without learning how to read and manipulate people,” he said bluntly. “I’m good at it. You know why? It’s because I know what motivates, what produces quality work.”
She glanced in the corner. “Christmas trees?”
“And kisses,” he chided gently, smiling.
She looked wounded. He reached out and took her hand in his.
“I’m teasing. You’ll have to get used to it.” He pressed his mouth to the palm of her hand and got to his feet, bending to retrieve the eye patch. This time he put it in place. It seemed to remove him, somehow, to make him less accessible. He was like a man hiding behind a mask now, his expression unreadable, his dark eye inscrutable as she rose from the sofa to stand beside him.
He looked down at her warmly. “Trim your tree. I’ve got a hundred things to do.” His expression tautened. “Mama has a nurse, but I like to be at home with her at night. She’s not having an easy time with the chemotherapy and radiation treatments. They make her very sick.”
“I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you and your sister,” she added, “having to stand by and not being able to help her.”
“Very.” He took her face in his hands and tilted it up to his quiet gaze. “We can’t make a habit of this,” he said as he bent down to her. “But I think an occasional taste of each other won’t hurt so much.”
He kissed her softly, and felt her body melt into his, felt her mouth part, inviting, submissive. She wasn’t a woman who demanded. It went to his head. He lifted her a little roughly against him, and his mouth bit into hers with revealing hunger. When he heard her gasp, he put her back down, reluctantly letting her move away from the corded strength of his aroused body.
He had to fight to breathe normally. Her own emotions were easily seen. She was trembling.
“Do you like it, feeling this way with me?” he asked huskily. “It’s narcotic. You begin to need it after a while, in larger and larger doses. If we kiss each other like that too often, we’ll have each other, eventually.”
“You make it sound like a threat,” she said, trying to laugh off the shattering pleasure.
“Oh, it’s more than that,” he assured her solemnly. “And neither of us is quite ready for it. So let’s keep things cool for a while. Okay?”
She managed a smile. “Okay.”
“You see, the trouble is that you don’t know how it feels to go all the way. I do.” His smile was rueful, amused, tender.
She glared at him, suddenly jealous, possessive.
“You’re jealous. I like that,” he murmured quietly. “You’d fight for me, wouldn’t you?”
The expression on her face puzzled him. She didn’t answer. He couldn’t know how much fighting she’d had to do over the years. She toyed with the skirt of her dress and turned. “I guess you’re anxious to get home and see about your mother,” she said. “I hope she’s not feeling too bad.”
“Yes. So do I.” He opened the door and hesitated, his gaze narrowing. “I’ll have to have some cost studies done. One of my assistants will get in touch with you on Monday to go over materials and labor with you.”
“What about Miss Raines?”
“I told you—leave her to me.”
“Thank you, for the chance,” she said sincerely. “I’ll work very hard.”
“I know you will.” He touched her cheek. “I’m suspicious of people, did you know? When I first started out, people tried to use me for various reasons. I’m sensitive about being a stepping-stone.”
Her eyes didn’t blink. She nodded. “I would be, too.”
He relaxed, and smiled a little. “Thanks for the coffee and cake.”
“My pleasure.”
He was remembering the way she’d trembled in his arms, the furious beat of her heart, the way her breath caught when his mouth bit into hers. No, he decided. She couldn’t have faked it, not for all the career chances in the world. She was basically honest, a rare trait. He recognized it, because it was one of his own.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night.”
He closed the door behind him and walked, preoccupied, to the elevator. As he passed an open door, a man in a wheelchair waved at him. He waved back. It was like the old days. He’d done his share of apartment living. He knew the family feeling it gave to know all the people down the hall. This man looked kind. He smiled as he thought that Ivory was, too. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was talented and she had a kind heart. If he were still a marrying man, she’d be at the top of his list of possibilities. But that was something he’d never be. And now, with his mother in such a desperate condition, he couldn’t even think about having a private life. What he was beginning to feel for Ivory would have to wait.
The office was strangely quiet when Ivory walked in on Monday morning. She looked around her warily, fully expecting Miss Raines to jump out of hiding. The older woman might not react as Curry expected to the news that she had been given managerial duties. Miss Raines had been a designer, apparently, most of her adult life. She wouldn’t like giving it up.
A faint noise in her dark office caught her attention. She checked her watch. She was an hour late, because her bus had been delayed in traffic. Surely someone else was in the building. She felt nervous as her hand reached for the doorknob and slowly opened the door.
The lights came on, and everyone who worked in the sample room was waiting for her.
“Congratulations!” Dee called out, hugging her. The girls behind her echoed their best wishes.
“But how did you know?” Ivory asked, aghast.
“We have our ways,” Dee murmured dryly. She laughed. “Oh, all right, I have a friend in the executive offices. She called first thing and told me, just about the time Mr. Kells sent for Miss Raines.”
“She hasn’t come back yet?”
“She won’t be back,” Dee replied. “My friend said that they had a nasty argument. He won. She told one of the assistants to pack up all her things and send them to her apartment. She’s had another offer, apparently, and was going to take it right away. Bad luck, but she never should have shot off her mouth to Mr. Kells about you. They said he was furious!” Dee shuddered with mock horror. “God forbid I should ever get on the wrong side of him!”
“Me, too,” Ivory said wholeheartedly.
“Anyway, you’ll be tossed in at the deep end right away. You’re to get her old office down here and as much staff as you need to rush that suit into production, along with at least six more pieces to start the collection. We’re all just overwhelmed!”
“Well, so am I,” Ivory said, thinking that Curry Kells had put his weekend to amazingly good use. “I have to sit down,” she added in a subdued tone. “My goodness, maybe I’ve gone mad.”
“Not yet. You will, trying to get these designs into production. Harry Lambert is on his way down to discuss figures with you,” she added. “And you watch yourself, because he liked yours at Curry’s party, if you remember.”
* * *
INDEED HARRY HAD liked her figure, and still did, but he was very businesslike as he shook hands and sat down with her in her old office. She had yet to move into the new one; and despite Dee’s assertions, she wasn’t taking a single step until someone with authority told her to.
“Curry sent me to look at some cost figures,” Harry said with a grin, and didn’t mention that the older man had done so reluctantly. The man he’d intended to dispatch wasn’t free, and Harry was. Curry’s reluctance to have him talk to Ivory had irritated Harry. He couldn’t forget how Curry had appropriated her at the party. “You’re a wonder, aren’t you?” he added, with more than a hint of spite. “Nobody knew your name before you came to Curry’s party, and now you’re a senior designer.” He was insinuating things that Ivory didn’t like.
“I haven’t done anything that I’d mind reading about in the gutter press,” she informed him with a straight face. She couldn’t afford to let him see that she had, actually, but it had nothing to do with the present or Curry.
“You have to admit that it’s a great leap,” he continued.
“Yes, it is.” She smiled politely. “Let me show you why it happened.”
She brought out her portfolio and opened it, spreading the new designs out before his stunned eyes. He couldn’t stop staring. He knew genius when he saw it. He looked at her and scowled. Amazing that with that sort of talent she’d been overlooked for even six months.
“These are like nothing I’ve seen in years,” he said seriously.
“I should hope not,” she replied. “I don’t copy other designers.”
“Indeed you don’t need to.” He picked up the suit design with the Austrian crystal butterfly emblem on the bodice and shook his head in wonder. “This will be a runaway success. You won’t be able to meet the demand.”
“A prediction or wishful thinking?”
He laughed. “Well, call it a prediction for now. I do know salable goods. The cost is going to be the problem. It’s going to be expensive to produce, as I think you are already aware.”
“I could show it to a few buyers...”
“And risk having the design stolen? Bite your tongue.”
“I didn’t think about that.” She chewed on her index nail thoughtfully. “I showed it to Dee, though,” she confessed.
“Oh, Dee.” He laughed. “She’s a clam, like the rest of us. No, you can’t show it to buyers until it’s in production. And that’s what we have to work out right now—getting it there.” He opened a notebook. “Curry wants no skimping, either. He wants satin-lined oyster linen for the jacket and skirt, and Austrian crystal for the butterfly. What sort of buttons?”
“Silver, to match the outline of the butterfly,” she said at once. “And no pockets. It’s to be a simple, straight design with only the necessary darts for fit. The jacket is collarless and I’ve designed an oyster silk blouse to go with it, an open-necked one with a soft collar. See?” She indicated it on the design.
“Hmm.” He was studying it with an eye to price. “You’ve shown it midcalf. Is that where you want it?”
“I can compromise on length. It might be well to shorten it, but not above the knee,” she added firmly.
“No, I like it as it’s drawn and so did Curry. It won’t mean that much difference in price if the length remains as it is here. The buttons...how do you feel about having them crystal, too, instead of silver?”
She pursed her lips. “I like it.”
“Or fabric-covered, to enhance the butterfly?”
She looked at him approvingly. “You know, I like that idea best of all.”
He didn’t mention that it was Curry’s idea. The man wasn’t a designer, but he did know what looked good on women. And no wonder, he’d had so damned many of them. Harry shifted, trying not to think about his own lackluster love life.
“Let’s do fabric-covered, then.” He made some notes. “Thread?”
She told him, gauge and color, and added information about the zipper and skirt button.
“You want silk for the blouse?”
“Silk charmeuse,” she emphasized. “Yes.”
He sighed. “That will be expensive.”
“All of it will be expensive. But if it impresses anyone, it will be worth it. If I could afford an expensive suit, I certainly wouldn’t want one that was cheaply executed to cut costs.”
He chuckled. She was forthright. And she had a point. “All right. I can see your position.” He studied her quietly. “You’d be a knockout in something like this,” he said abruptly.
She laughed. “Not me. I like blue jeans and sweatshirts when I’m not working.”
“If you make a name for yourself, you won’t. You’ll need to wear the clothes you design and be seen by a lot of people.”
The thought thrilled her, because who better to show her off than Curry? She dropped her eyes before she betrayed her renegade hopes to Harry.
“I suppose so. But getting known—that’s a long way off.”
“Only a month off. We’ll know very soon after the January showings if you’re a success or a failure.”
“If I’m a failure, I won’t be around very long,” she observed quietly. “I will have been a flash in the pan, and I’ll be looking for a job.”
“Oh, Curry will find you something,” he said.
“Only if he’s short on bundle girls,” she returned dryly.
He burst out laughing. “You’ve got a sense of humor. That will help.” He turned back to the costing and conversation took a serious turn.
After Harry finished, word came from the executive offices on Wall Street that Ivory was to go and see Curry right away.
“But I don’t know how to get there,” she said to Dee, her expression one of consternation.
“Any cabdriver will.” She jotted down the address on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to Ivory. “There’ll be a security guard. You’ll have to go to the desk and sign in, and they’ll give you a visitor’s badge to wear. It’s that way everywhere these days, especially since the World Trade Center bombing. You can’t blame people for being super cautious.”
“No, I guess not.” She looked around and smiled at Dee. “You don’t suppose he’ll scrap the whole idea when Harry’s figured the cost?”
“I don’t really think so,” Dee mused. “Go on. He’ll tell you why he sent for you.”
He could have come himself, Ivory thought, and then was ashamed of herself for thinking it. A man in Curry Kells’s position was hardly expected to go and see employees. Still, he’d gone to see Ivory at home and given her that wonderful tree. She’d spent the evening decorating it, and she hated the thought of Christmas coming and going because she’d have to take it down. Then she remembered something: she’d forgotten to give Curry his gift on Friday.
The thought disturbed her all the way over to his office. She signed in, got her badge and went up on the shiny elevator all the way to the thirtieth floor where his office was. A secretary in the spacious waiting room showed her into the big room where Curry sat at a polished oak desk.
He rose as she walked in and motioned her to a black leather chair. She knew the black-and-white-striped dress she was wearing was not very elegant, but she had altered it to fit perfectly and felt self-assured when she wore it. That assurance vanished when she saw Curry’s face. It bore an expression that was cold and businesslike.
“You’re firing me,” she said with resignation.
He leaned back in his chair with a smile. “Hardly,” he replied. “I wanted to know how things went with Harry.”
She blinked. That was a surprise. Harry should have arrived at Wall Street at least a half hour before she got there. “Haven’t you talked with him?”
He nodded. “He was here a few minutes ago, and he looked guilty. I want to know if there were any innuendos made about how you got to be a senior designer so quickly. I won’t have women harassed here—especially you.”
His concern made her feel warm inside. “I showed him my designs,” she offered.
“That wasn’t what I asked, Ivory.”
She crossed and uncrossed her legs. “He wasn’t insulting.”
“I was,” he replied. “I was damned insulting. I didn’t want to have him talk to you and he knew it, but everyone here in the executive offices was busy.”
“Yes, well, isn’t Mr. Lambert head of our division?” she asked warily.
“He is. But I usually have one of the financial people do cost estimates.”
“Oh.”
“I want to know if he upset you.”
She lifted both eyebrows. “What did you intend to do if he had?”
“I enjoyed firing Virginia Raines,” he said arrogantly. “Maybe I haven’t fired enough people yet.”
She couldn’t believe she’d heard that.
He didn’t blink. “I know. It isn’t quite rational, is it? But that’s how I feel. I don’t want you hurt by anyone.”
She smiled gently. “Thank you. But I can take up for myself when I have to. I’m not helpless.”
“Let me feel protective,” he said quietly. “It isn’t something I indulge often, and it’s usually limited to family.”
She laughed softly. “Okay. But I don’t listen to gossip and as long as I know how I get where I’m going, nobody else’s opinion matters.”
“An interesting attitude,” he mused. “It makes me wonder how it was developed. You’ve been exposed to public gossip before, perhaps?”
She stared at him with cold eyes. “There was no scandal in my family,” she said with practiced hauteur while she shivered inside. Of course there had been gossip. Far too much. “I come from a socially impeccable background...!”
He sat up, his hands folded on the desk. “I’m sorry,” he said at once. “That was unforgivable. The reason I asked you over here was to explain what we’re going to do with you,” he said, smoothing over the awkward moment. “I’m going to have your new office redecorated. You can pick and choose your own furnishings, paintings and such. I’m sure that you don’t share Virginia’s taste. An office is an extension of the person. It should suit you.”
The statement prompted her to look around his. The black leather furniture was complemented by white curtains with red-and-black ties. On one wall was a painting of a stone fort surrounded by palm trees, and crossed swords, antique-looking, hung on another. The whole office had a Latin flavor, right down to the few pieces of small statuary that graced its tables.
“My mother is Puerto Rican,” he told her, and waited for any hint of prejudice to show on her face. It didn’t.
“And your father?” she probed gently.
“His great-grandparents were Irish immigrants. He was illiterate.”
“A lot of people are,” she said. She averted her eyes. He had a background very similar to her real one. She longed to tell him the truth, but it was already too late. She was trapped by the past she had invented.
His gaze narrowed as he studied her. “You have a vague Southern accent. It’s hardly noticeable unless you’re upset or excited. You hide it well. Are you ashamed of it?”
“Not particularly, but I went to a very good private school. Before I started at the fashion design school,” she added quickly.
His firm lips pursed as he studied her. “You’re a lady of many mysteries,” he said absently. “Before I’m through, I’m going to know you right down to your bones, and you’re going to know me the same way.”
Her eyes lifted in faint surprise. He sounded very serious. He looked serious, as well.
“Don’t start looking for places to hide,” he said with a gentle smile. “We’ve got all the time in the world. And right now, I have more on my plate than I can handle, anyway. You’d be a terrible complication.”
She let her eyes fall to his dark wine-colored tie. “So would you, for me.”
“But it won’t always be this way. And that’s all the more reason to be honest with each other,” he said.
She picked at a short fingernail. “I know.” She smoothed over the picked place. Her conscience was already killing her. “Goodness, is that the time?” she said suddenly, checking her watch. “I promised Dee I’d help her with the new pattern.”
He saw the subterfuge for what it was. “All right, querida. We’ll leave it there for now.”
She searched his face with faint pleasure. “Why did you call me darling?”
He pounced on that understanding of his mother’s native tongue with a suddenness that she couldn’t foresee.
“¿Cuando aprendiste español?”
“Cuando era una niñita,” she replied without thinking, and then caught her breath at being caught out so easily.
“Well, well,” he murmured. “I would have thought French would be more natural to you than Spanish, being from Louisiana. Parles-tu français?”
When she stared at him questioningly, he looked back at her the same way. “No, you don’t speak French, do you?”
“I’ve...forgotten most of what I learned as a child,” she said ingeniously. “I didn’t know that you spoke both Spanish and French,” she said hastily, trying to divert him.
“I have something of a knack for languages. But I can’t claim Spanish as a real accomplishment, since I’ve been speaking it all my life. Unless I miss my guess, so have you.”
She ground her teeth together. She hadn’t wanted to give herself away.
“You said your mother had French ancestry, and your father had British. Where did you learn Spanish?”
She scarcely heard him. She was choking in a stranglehold of memories of her mother. She jumped to her feet, gasping for breath. Her eyes were hunted.
He stood up, too. “Ivory,” he said sharply. “Ivory!”
She looked at him, and finally registered who he was.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “Sit down, now. Sit down. Calm down. I promise you, I won’t ask another question.”
She fumbled her way back into the chair, pitifully aware that her face was ashen. She clung to the leather arms, seeking security.
He buzzed for his secretary. “Send Bill for coffee, will you? Cream and sugar,” he added.
“Yes, sir.”
Curry picked up a pen on his desk, toying with it while Ivory composed herself.
“That was not fair,” she told him.
He sighed roughly. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re so damned full of contradictions. It was only a simple question, Ivory.”
“A man taught me Spanish, all right?” she asked angrily.
“A man. But not a lover.”
“Not a lover,” she muttered.
“But he wanted to be?”
She folded her hands in her lap, fighting for control. She looked at him after a minute, her face composed. “About the designs,” she said, grasping for conversational gambits, “is the cost going to be acceptable?”
He hesitated, but in the end he let her get away with it. She was too upset already. He wanted to know more about her, that was all; but she was like a clam about her past. Perhaps there had been a bad experience, and he was causing her pain. He decided to let it go.
“Hell, no, the cost isn’t going to be acceptable.” He grinned. “But I’m going to pay it anyway. I’ve always been a gambler, when I had a sure thing. This is no gamble. I can feel it.”
“What if you’re wrong?” she worried. “What if nobody likes the designs?”
“Everybody will.” He leaned forward intently. “I’d better not find out that Harry insulted you,” he added, unexpectedly returning to their earlier discussion.
“He didn’t. Not after he saw the designs,” she said with a faint smile.
“I’m not surprised. Don’t let him bother you. He’s a junior executive, and expendable if he harasses you. He came on strong at my party, but that was a social affair. In the workplace, a man has an obligation to be no more than a coworker.”
“Thank you. But you won’t have to fire him.”
He sat back in his chair. “Now. I’ve been going over the design for the suit. I’ve got people out scouring the country for Austrian crystal, and the pattern-makers are busy on sizing. I’m having the sample room run up two or three suits in various sizes for the showing. If we lose a model, I don’t want any last-minute snags about fitting.”
“Neither do I.”
“We can do the suit in wool or cashmere for winter,” he continued. “But for summer, it has to be a silk blend or linen.”
“I’d love to do it in wool,” she said dreamily.
“And we will, if it impresses the buyers.” He chuckled at the look on her face. “It will. Stop backsliding. You have to have faith in yourself.”
“I always have had, to a point,” she said. “It’s a gift, you know, not something I struggled to learn how to do,” she added. “And Harry had some very good ideas about altering the design just enough to cut costs. Like having self-buttons.”
He tossed the pen onto the desk. “My idea,” he said. “I’m glad you liked it.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Harry didn’t mention that?”
She sighed. “I should have known.”
“Of course you should. I’m not a designer, but I made damned sure I knew something about designing when I took over this company.”
“You have a lot of companies.”
“Ten,” he said carelessly. “This is the only design firm.”
“How do you keep up with them all?”
“I put in good managers and scare the hell out of them with surprise inspections,” he confessed. He sat forward a little. “How does the tree look?”
“It’s beautiful. I forgot to give you your present,” she added.
“Suppose I come over Christmas Eve for it?”
Her eyes lit up. “That would be so nice. But...but you’ll want to be with your family, your mother.”
“Yes, but I can spare an hour,” he said gently. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“So will I.”
The door opened and Bill, the office boy, came in with two cups of coffee and sugar and cream on a tray. He put them on the desk, staying only long enough to deposit them.
“Drink your coffee,” Curry invited. “And while we’re doing that, I’ll explain the cost estimates to you. I think this is going to be one of my more profitable ventures.” And, he added silently, as he watched her put cream in her cup, in more ways than one.