Princess Daisy (58 page)

Pat Shannon found himself, for the first time in years, at a loss for conversation. Daisy seemed to be utterly comfortable looking idly around the room, without making any attempt to talk to him. Why didn’t she chatter, why didn’t she flirt, why didn’t she try to get him to talk about himself like any other decent, self-respecting woman?

As Daisy sipped her cold cream-of-cucumber soup, Shannon launched into an account of his trip to Tokyo. She asked just the right questions, he thought, but she seemed … was it reserved, or bored, or withdrawn? None of those words aptly described the faintly detached, although perfectly polite way in which she somehow indicated that there was perhaps something overly
mercantile
about conglomerate affairs in Japan.

As they were served their filet of sole Véronique, several men Shannon knew passed on their way to the street. They greeted him in a lingeringly hearty way that virtually demanded that he introduce them to Daisy. What the hell, Shannon asked himself, had inspired that ass Harmsworth to kiss her hand—a man who had been born and brought
up in the great Midwest, even if he did own half of Chicago? And why did Zellerbach give him that meaningful parting look, as if Shannon had just won the decathlon?

Daisy sat back, not permitting the lure of the soft banquette to caress her shoulders. She sat in a straight-backed way that, although it was not stiff, indicated, by her example, that while others might lean over their plates or loll in their seats, she had been so trained in queenly posture that it was second nature. She blessed the example of an old Grace Kelly movie she’d seen on television a few nights ago.

Shannon turned the conversation to Daisy, asking her where she’d gone to college, but even as she told him the bare details she was gently unenthusiastic about reviving memories of her student days, nor did she find the topic of Ham and Topsy Short, their only mutual friends, particularly spellbinding, a judgment with which Shannon privately agreed. While Daisy thought about and wistfully rejected the idea of ordering cheese—she had made herself refuse dessert because rich women never eat dessert—two couples Shannon knew stopped by their table. The women, Shannon thought in disgust, literally fawned over Daisy. How else could you describe their asking her where she’d found her divine dress and who did her divine hair? People had an atrocious way of demanding information from strangers, he told himself, as Daisy answered their questions with every indication of the mild, automatic pleasure of someone who is accustomed to such admiring questions, consigning her homemade chignon to Suga without a blush.

As the waiter brought his floating island Shannon realized that he was about to burst His promise not to talk business seemed, retrospectively, absurd. What were they doing here, the most looked-at couple in the room, the focus of curiosity of the whole damn place, if it didn’t lead to a reopening of his Elstree proposition? He envisioned a dozen dinners during which, to keep from arousing Daisy’s ire, he would allow the Elstree campaign to go down the drain, drop by expensive drop. In a last effort to keep from stirring up her evil temper again, he blurted out a question that had been on his mind since they’d left her apartment for dinner.

“Where did you get your lurcher?”

She turned toward him, black eyes filled with a disquieting
gleam, a lively suspicion on her lips. “And just how did you know Theseus was a lurcher?” she demanded.

“Oh, shit!” Shannon groaned.

“
How?
I called him a guard dog.”

“It’s Lucy—” he started to sputter with laughter.

“Who’s Lucy … your clairvoyant? Nobody in this city has ever recognized a lurcher,” she said, the light of battle in her eyes.

“Lucy’s my lurcher,” he confessed.

“Ah-ha—the man dogs and children just naturally trust! So that’s what he smelled on you, eau-de-lady-lurcher. Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“I honestly don’t know …”

“You don’t? I’ve never met a lurcher owner who didn’t ask me,
immediately
, what cross Theseus was.”

“What cross is he?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I believe I was trying to impress you,” Shannon said, his dark blue eyes under their black brows challenging her to a frolic, “but I blew it, didn’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” Daisy said with her first provocative smile of the evening. She had decided to let him off the hook. He was not a man who would enjoy being embarrassed again. “Since you ask, Theseus is Irish wolfhound crossed with greyhound on one side of the family and deerhound with greyhound on the other, with whippet and sheepdog thrown in. What’s Lucy?”

“Brindle greyhound with Alsatian but I’m not positive about the rest—more greyhound certainly. She’s a bit of a bastard.”

“What lurcher isn’t? Do you hunt on foot with her?”

“Lucy’ll chase anything that moves, but she’s anti-blood sport. She nearly died of fright one day when she killed a rabbit. She must have bumped into it.”

“I’ve had to train poor Theseus to heel—or keep him on a lead—I can’t let him hunt—he’s the most frustrated lurcher in captivity,” Daisy said sadly.

“Perhaps,” Shannon said delicately, “they should … meet”

“And what,” asked Daisy, “would you do with the pups?”

“I’d give you the pick of the litter, of course, and split whatever the rest of them went for.” As soon as he said it he felt like a fool. Did one discuss money with this sovereign woman?

“That’s generous of you,” Daisy said, lifting her eyebrows in a tiny movement of disdain, “but I don’t want the responsibility of a pup. You keep the best one and give the money to some charity or other.” She was silent for a moment and then added, smiling, “I don’t usually meddle in Theseus’s romantic life—he manages quite well enough on his own—but since Lucy is a lurcher, too, I think a blind date might be a good idea.”

Emboldened by her affability on matters canine, Shannon decided to take the risk of discussing Elstree with this proud and so easily offended creature. The more he looked at the pure felicity of her profile and observed the serene harmony of her gestures, the longer he listened to her low and charming voice, the more convinced he became that she could restore faith in hereditary aristocracy in any land, including Red China, and what was more important, sell important quantities of cosmetics and perfume to American women.

“Daisy,” he started and then stopped. Her heart, which had been beating hard at the prospect of having to reopen the Elstree question herself, slowed to a slightly slower pulse. She could tell by the way he’d said her name that he was about to begin negotiations.

“Yes, Shannon?” she said invitingly, and the way she looked at him made him think of a shower of dark falling stars.

“Daisy, I know I promised not to talk about it, but I wish you’d reconsider the matter of doing the Elstree commercials. I promised not to put any pressure on you, but it occurred to me that you might not have thought of it as a challenge—you said you loved challenges when we were talking before—and perhaps if you could put your mind to the question in that light …”

“I already have. In fact, I’ve given it a great deal of serious consideration.”

“And?…”

“Shannon, if I sign a contract to endorse a Princess Daisy line for Elstree, it would mean the loss of a number of things that are very precious to me: first, and most important of all, my privacy; then my reluctance to trade on my title; and almost certainly my job since I could never do justice to both. I’ll have to give up my ability to come and go as I please without anyone looking at me and thinking, Oh, that’s Princess Daisy, the Elstree Girl—and I detest being pointed out and stared at I’d lose all the
anonymity I’ve guarded so carefully for years.” Her voice was almost harsh with this accurate picture of the future. “I’d become just another household word—if the campaign worked—and you can’t go back from that.”

“So it’s no,” he said.

“It’s yes.” She didn’t wait for him to react. “I want one million dollars and a contract for three years, during which time you can use my face, my name and as much of my genuine blonde hair as you want to sell Elstree in everything from commercials to department stores. But the million dollars has to be paid in three installments, the first third on signing, and the rest to be paid over the next three years,
whether or not
the campaign is successful, whether or not you decide to drop the Princess Daisy line because it isn’t selling, whether or not you change advertising agencies again and they want to try something else. Otherwise we don’t have a deal.”

A million dollars, said Shannon to himself, and I don’t even know how she’ll photograph.

“Or,” said Daisy, “we can forget if”

“We have a deal,” he said hastily. “What made you change your mind?”

“Private reasons,” Daisy answered, with a small, secret smile and a great wave of terror and triumph lifting her heart.

22

N
orth was amused for not quite three minutes. As amused as if a familiar, fluffy pussycat had taken it into its head to snarl at him. Why not let it exhaust itself while he fended it off with a touch of fancy footwork and the casual back of his gloved hand? Less than three minutes into Daisy’s patient repetition of her plans he realized she was serious.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said severely, a frown settling on his face. “You can’t do it, you don’t know the first thing about modeling or promotion—you’d be rotten at it—the whole business is ridiculous. I thought you had more sense than to make a fool of yourself.”

“Shannon doesn’t think I’ll be a fool,” Daisy said sharply. She had enough inner doubts without fighting North’s assessment of her value.

“Shannon! That meddling prick! Coming in here and junking a perfectly good campaign, going ape-shit over your gee-whiz hair and your classy look—he’s nothing but another businessman-snob who imagines himself a star maker,” he sneered.

“I don’t want to get into a screaming match about Pat Shannon,” Daisy said. “I just want you to realize that I have to leave the studio.”

“Something that you haven’t the slightest right to do! Who the hell took a chance on you when you came out of that crazy California college desperate for a job—a job I must have twenty applicants for a week?”

“Bootsie Jacobs hired me, as a matter of record.”

“Only because I said she could. Do you have any idea of how much time and money it cost me to make you into a
commercial producer? Your whole learning process has been at my expense. I don’t care if you worked your ass off fourteen hours a day, you got invaluable training and not every director in town would have put up with you—eagerness isn’t everything.”

“I learned fast. You’ve had me working hard for five and a half years and even in the beginning I had talent, too,” Daisy said defiantly. “Always.”

“Talent isn’t everything! Lots of people have talent. It’s knowing the ropes—and now, now that you’re useful, you choose to walk away. How you can do this with any decency is beyond me. I don’t think anyone has ever been so ungrateful.”

“I repeat, I need to make a lot of money, North.”

“Money.
Money
—you know damn well you get paid as much as any other producer in the business.”

“Then add a hundred dollars to what I make and you can try to hire Bob Giraldi’s producer or Steve Horn’s producer or Sally Safir—you’ve always admired her.”

“But Sally’s an equal partner with Richard Heimann! Who could afford that?” North cried in highest outrage.

Daisy surveyed him calmly. “Evidently Richard can.”

“Is that what you’re holding me up for—a piece of the action?”

“Of course not. I’m not holding you up for anything. I’m leaving to make as much money as I possibly can.”

North’s whole face sweetened into an expression of intimacy that she hadn’t seen on his features in weeks.

“Okay—I admit that I can’t compete with Elstree. I don’t understand why you have to make all that money, but I respect the fact that it must be very important if it’s led you to make this bizarre decision. All right—go in good health, Daisy. I wish you luck. But all I want to say is, have you considered what this will do to our relationship?”

“What will it do?” she asked in deceptively mild curiosity.

“Since you insist on leaving, it’s got to change things.” He looked at her narrowly, radiating all the valuable, disabling charm he knew how to project whenever he chose to.

“What things?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, shit, I loathe this sort of discussion,” North flung at her. “It’s typically female.”

“And you started it. Listen, North, what went on in Venice should have stopped right there, the day the strike ended. You just can’t stand inactivity and that’s why it happened. It’s been over for weeks now and you know it. Stop
digging
in the ashes. I’m quitting, and you’ll manage without me.”

“You’re goddamned right I will!” He was outraged, this man who had almost never been thwarted and certainly not left. When there was leaving to be done, he did it, on his terms, just as easily as he did the plucking of the fruit when it was ripe. His tame beasts did not roar back at him and they never, ever left the cage without permission. “You’re not fucking indispensable,” he shouted at her.

“I have no choice.”

“The hell you don’t!”

Daisy looked at him consideringly. She knew she was right not to tell him her reasons for taking the Elstree offer; the same instinct that had prevented her from talking about herself, except in a superficial way, when they had been together in Venice, still hummed deeply within her. North was too flinty, too harsh, too quick to discard anything that was less than perfect. He was like her father in that, she suddenly realized. Even during the hours of their lovemaking she had seen only minor signs of any change in him. There had been no deeply loving tenderness, no true softening of his taut exactingness, no greater allowance made for human vulnerability. He lacked some gift, some talent for loving and accepting. She would not use information about Anabel or Danielle as emotional blackmail to force him to be forgiving, she could not spread out her personal problems before him in order to bribe him to allow her to accept an opportunity she had every right and every reason to take. She stood still, facing North, patiently, undemandingly, yet so obdurate in all the power and dignity of her beauty, that he used his last ploy.