Ineffable (14 page)

Someone knocked.

Muttering a curse in French he answered the room service summons, and waited impatiently while the man set everything up. He shoved a $20 into his hand and hustled him out double time.

Margot was already cutting into the pancakes. “Thanks for ordering food. I’m starved. I didn’t get to eat my dinner last night, and the only food in jail was from the vending machine.”

Hearing she was hungry calmed him somewhat. He thanked her as she poured his coffee and fixed his plate. He even managed a few bites before he said, “Tell me what happened. I didn’t even know you were locked up until I got off the plane.”

“No? Sorry, baby. Things happened so fast, and then they took my phone, and by the time I got it back, I guess you’d already found out. Your dad?”

“
Oui.
”

“I’m sure he loved telling you,” she muttered, chewing morosely on a piece of bacon.

“Not really,” he said, deadpan. “Now what happened?”

“Baby, I’m not even sure, to tell you the truth.” She got up and walked to the window. “Last night we met some people for dinner. Everything was normal. Then this guy came up to our table saying all this crazy, sexist stuff, acting like we were prostitutes or something. The manager came and led him away, apologized, said he was drunk, whatever. We dismissed it. But as soon as the manager left, the fucker came back! I couldn’t believe it. He was, like, determined to cause a scene. The clients I was with were, like, what the fuck?”

She turned and looked him in the eye. “I tried to take the high road.” She turned back to the window. “But he reached out to touch me, knocked a glass of water into my lap, and I fuckin’ snapped. I picked up my plate full of food, and I mashed him in the face with it. His drunk ass fell over, and he hit his head on a table. He was bleeding and –” she shrugged.

He walked over to stand beside her.

“Someone called the cops, patrons were taking pictures; they said they had to arrest me.”

“Did they at least arrest him too?”

“I think so. Once he got done in the ambulance.”

He burst out laughing. “Damn, killer.”

She grinned and turned into his waiting arms. “I thought for sure you’d be pissed.”

That explained her hesitation when she saw him at the police station. She’d been waiting for him to yell at her.

“No,” he said firmly, undoing the belt of her robe. Feeling immeasurably better once her naked flesh was under his hands, he wished his own clothes to purgatory, but contented himself with a hard, warm hug. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I could have kept my temper.”

He shrugged. “It would have been out of character, no?”

She laughed softly. “Well, they don’t call me Goti for nothin’.”

He kissed her. Long, hard and lush. He was about to ask was she still hungry, if not, to bed. He’d already been one full day without her. She wasn’t the only one who needed reassurance.

Someone banged on the door, hard.

“Margot! Lemme in! Nori! Margot! Hurry the fuck up!”

“
Mierde!”
he swore, striding over to fling open the door.

“There’s a fuckin’ video of the entire incident on TMZ. It’s already gone viral on YouTube.”

Three separate voices in three different ways said, fuck, at the exact same time.

“At least public opinion is with you, Goti,” Tommy said. “Everyone’s totally on your side. Comment streams are on fire globally alternating between defending you and denouncing that drunken freak as a heretic.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Margot, tongue in cheek.

Tommy was pacing a hole in the floor, and had been for the past 30 minutes. She was still wearing the gold lame. Apparently she checked her emails and texts before she thought to shower.

“Lani! Why the fuck haven’t you answered the phone? Of course not! I was fuckin’ in jail, asshole! They take your phone in jail. I just got it back. Never mind that. Is the Swarovski meeting still on?” She listened, accepting a glass of juice from Margot as she paced past. “Thank fucking God. Okay. I gotta go. Just tell them it wasn’t our fault. I’ll deal with that shit after the meeting.

“Meeting’s still on,” she told Margot. “Forget the blue I originally picked out. Wear the black. We need to be serious given the fuckin’ cloud hanging over our head. What a shit show. You know, Nori, I think you should come. It would make a definite statement if the CEO of Ineffable appeared to lend his support. Now that I think about it, we may be able to stretch this deal to include you.”

Nori raised a brow at her and grinned. “You’re a marvel.”

“Yeah,” she said, tossing back the rest of the juice. “I gotta go take a nap and get ready. Black,” she told Margot, on her way out. “And a top knot and gold accessories if you have it. We need old school glamour for real.”

Nori laughed softly when the door closed behind her. “That woman amazes me.”

“You ain’t the only one,” Margot smirked. “I still can’t believe you’re not pissed. I know they say all publicity is good publicity, but a video of Margot Temper fuckin’ some guy up in public isn’t the kind of thing CEOs usually want associated with their brands.”

“No, but it is what it is,” he dismissed.

He’d seen the video, it was blessedly short but quite explicit. It was just as Margot said. For the first half of it he watched, furious as she and Tommy were treated like common streetwalkers by a drunken lout they didn’t know from Adam. The manager appeared, apologizing as he and a tall waiter led the drunk away. But he came back, and started in worse than before.

He leaned in to grab for Margot’s neck or face, he couldn’t tell which, knocked her water glass into her lap, and she snapped. He’d only seen that look once before, at his father’s dinner party. He’d never wanted to see it again, and he was sure after this that drunk idiot didn’t want to either. She rose up like a tidal wave, scooping her dinner plate up and mushing it into his face like a cream pie on one of those old school variety shows. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would have been hilarious.

Margot didn’t even stay to watch the fool fall down, she spun on one high heel and left the room with her head high, Tommy right behind. The publicist made it a point to walk over the fool sprawled on the ground, pausing to look over one creamy shoulder and say, “Dummy,” before she followed Margot from the room. For a spur of the moment incident, it couldn’t have been filmed better. It was almost beautiful.

“Are you coming to this meeting?”

“Do you want me too?”

“Yeah, but do you want to? I haven’t been in trouble in a while. The paps are gonna be after me tough for this. They’ve probably got the front of the hotel staked out.”

Nori shrugged. He really didn’t care. This would blow over, perhaps quicker if he stood by her side and behaved as though nothing was wrong. “This viral video isn’t important. And I’ve been on the phone to Irv – the lawyer – he thinks he may be able to get the charges dismissed.”

“Yeah? From your mouth to God’s ear. I so don’t need a bunch of legal crap right now.”

She’d been stringing a necklace since Tommy came in. Beads, chunks of stone, amber, even pearls, and the center piece was a large shiny crystal shaped like a diamond. It was brilliant, simple and very sexy. He watched, amazed as always by her skill as she attached the clasp and rose to put the necklace on.

“It’ll have to do,” she muttered, looking in a mirror. “I was gonna finish this last night, but.” She shrugged.

“Is that crystal Swarovski?”

“Yep. You like it?”

“Very much,” he stood behind her and reached both arms around to finger the different textures around her soft throat. “It’s both elegant and slightly barbaric, if that makes sense. It’s very you.”

She grinned at him in the mirror. “You recognize my aesthetic.”

“Of course. I know you.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her throat. “You should rest a bit, darling.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Lay down with me?”

“If I do you won’t get any sleep.”

She smiled, slow and sexy. “We’ll take a cat nap after.”

“I’ll be quick,” he said, scooping her into his arms.

She laughed. “Me too!”

The meeting went well. The woman from Swarovski loved the necklace, which Margot took off her own neck and gave her, and she didn’t hesitate to discuss the details of their pending partnership.

“I can’t believe they even arrested you. You poor darling. How horrible, spending a night in jail after you were assaulted! Why, it was practically self-defense, plain and simple. And that’s what I told everyone who called this morning,” she winked, and they all laughed.

Nori’s father wasn’t so forgiving. After the meeting, while Margot was sleeping off the night’s drama, he called.

“Did you see it?”

“
Oui
,” said Aro.

“Then you know it wasn’t Margot’s fault. She was accosted. She did nothing to initiate the situation.”

“But she most certainly ended it! Nori, be reasonable. This is not someone you can seriously think you have a future with. She could cost the company millions! This is an old French brand, our primary constituents are very traditional, conservative even.

“She’s volatile. Trouble follows her around like a bad smell. I know she’s a beauty and
chaud dans le lit
, but –”

“Silence! You don’t talk to me about Margot hot in bed or anywhere else,” Nori spat in French. “She belongs to me, and whatever you have to say about her, save it. I don’t care what our supposedly conservative consumer base thinks about my lover. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I will spin this little incident into a fucking cash cow
surement!
I have to go,” he said abruptly. “I’m angry, and I don’t want to argue. I told you how I feel about this.” He was referring to their conversation at the gym. “This is no longer up for discussion. If you will excuse me.”

He tossed his phone to the couch angrily.

“I knew it.”

He spun around. Margot. Looking rumpled and beautiful in a baby doll nightie, hair hanging around her face.

“He wants you to dump me.”

“He’s crazy. My father still thinks our main customer base is made up of old French farts who vacation at the beach with their families twice a year!”

“It’s not?” she teased.

He gave her a look like, please. “No. It’s not. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

She shrugged. “You weren’t beside me.”

He liked the sound of that. “Serves you right. Now you know how I felt last night.”

She walked the last few steps into his arms and sighed when he held her close, her cheeks against his chest, her hands up the back of his shirt. “I am bad news, Nori. I don’t try to find it, but trouble always seems to find me.”

He laughed. “Yes, my girl. It does. But that’s what makes you, you. Do something for me.”

“What?”

“Come with me to Ineffable in Beverly Hills. I told my father I would spin your video hit into a cash cow for the company, and now I have to make good on my word.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded.

“Okay. Lemme go wake up Tommy. I know exactly what to do.”

Two hours after they arrived at the store, several products modeled by Tommy and Margot, and photographed for Instagram, were sold out on the website, and back ordered to hell and back. Once they learned Margot was there, people filtered into the shop, and she posed for a few pictures while Tommy suggested items for them to buy.

He could see why the publicist was in such demand. She asked where they would wear things, probing questions to ensure there were no impulse buys, that what they chose was flattering and would be worn and loved.

She gave the women permission to spend more than they ordinarily might by telling them to wear it over and over in different situations with different items.

“Don’t believe that shit trend whores would have you believe about never wearing the same thing twice,” she dismissed, removing one necklace from an older woman’s neck, handing it off to an assistant and replacing it with something bigger and more striking. “Fashion is for the very rich or for suckers. What you want to cultivate is style. Hmmm?”

The older woman’s shoulders were already pulled back. “You’re a very smart young woman. I can think of three outfits I can wear this with.”

Tommy just winked. “You better get it then. ‘Cuz that blonde is hovering to snatch it up if you put it down.”

“And tell everybody you were styled by me,” she told people.

They nodded ecstatically, running all over themselves to do just that. The store manager was ecstatic. In between helping customers, she kept clutching Nori’s arm and hissing, “Margot and Tommy are fabulous!”

When Tommy wasn’t using her as a living prop, Margot sat behind the counter chatting to customers and working on a necklace with tools from that huge, vintage LV purse she was rarely without. People seemed to love watching her work.