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“You know the business stuff inside out,” said Nick, admiringly. “Better than I do,” he admitted ruefully.
“It’s not that I’m worried about,” replied Zoe. The thing about culture that irked her when compared to business was that it all seemed so arbitrary. A good business deal had parameters – it could be complicated but if you knew what you were doing then you could look through the small print and see if it was an advantageous deal or not. Culture had no rules. The only way to know if something was ‘good’ or not was to be ‘in the know.’ There was no set of guidelines to determine which entrée to order, which color to wear, which wine vintage to select – you either knew this stuff or you did not. You didn’t need to be intelligent to understand culture, you just had to be able to parrot pre-determined information. You had to say what everybody else “knew” to be true, have the right opinions about the right art, have right taste about the right food. It was all about homogeneity.
And it was, Zoe had now decided, a pain in the ass.
Whether because of Nick’s tense mood or her own fear of making a mistake, a sense of foreboding hung over Zoe as they left the capital once more, this time heading for the Jourdan chateau and estate, not far outside the city. They arrived a few hours later and were met at the door by a long-faced and dignified butler, who showed them into a hall in which other bidders already milled around like nervous gazelles.
“May I take your coat, Mademoiselle Reese?”
Zoe inhaled sharply. This was it. The moment was now. There was no going back.
She settled a cool, distant smile on her face. “Yes. Thank you very much.”
Zoe felt a slight stiffening of people around her and a casual turning of eyes in her direction, and then realized what she had done: she had said ‘thank you’ to a servant! More than that, she had said ‘thank you very much’. She might just as well have thrown her arms around him and hugged him.
One of the first things Nick had taught was to forget all of her southern manners where ‘the help’ was concerned; they were to be treated as if they did not exist. She did not dare look at him now. Her first test and she had blown it. She felt herself starting to freeze up – she wasn’t sure she could go through with this.
And then she felt a light touch on her hand as Nick gently took it and squeezed. He could not make more of a show of comforting her than that in their present company, but that was enough. It let Zoe know that he understood, and he wasn’t angry. It was a small thing and if that was the worst thing to go wrong this weekend then they could consider themselves lucky.
“Ladies and Gentlemen.” The room was addressed by a smartly dressed woman with dark hair and an air of authority. “I regret to inform you that Monsieur Jourdan has been unavoidably detained on business in Paris. He craves your indulgence and he will join you later this weekend to hear your offers. In the meantime, we will make you very comfortable here. My name is Alice Guilbert, I am Monsieur Jourdan’s personal assistant, if there is anything you require, please do not hesitate to let me know.”
Zoe and Nick exchanged uncertain glances as the hum of suspicion rose around them. No one seemed to be happy about this turn of events but Zoe found herself conflicted. In a way it felt like a reprieve; she did not have to confront Jacques Jourdan today. But of course it was a very temporary reprieve and it just gave her more time to worry about that meeting. It also gave her more time and more opportunity to be found out by someone else. She had though that she only had to fool Jacques Jourdan himself – one meeting and she was done. Now she had to be around other people, other business leaders, some of whom might well be familiar with Vanessa’s work.
Everyone here was looking for some way to out-do the others, some way to trip up the competition. If she did something wrong then she could be certain that that information would find its way back to Jacques Jourdan himself. The more she thought about this, the less it felt like a reprieve and the more it felt like a whole other examination she had to pass.
The chateau was better equipped for entertaining than most hotels, boasting more than enough rooms and staff to adequately take care of the needs of all the guests. Zoe found herself settled into yet another new room, finding that she missed her miniscule bedroom in New York, and really missed her bedroom back home with her Mom and Dad. There was a tap at the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and Zoe breathed a huge sigh of relief to see Nick. He was the only person in this building in front of whom she could be herself. They kissed, and she let her worries dissolve momentarily.
“How’s your room?” asked Zoe.
“Feels empty without you in it.”
Zoe smiled; this would be the first time in a week that they had slept apart. “A rest will probably do us both good.”
“I guess. You’re not getting tired of me are you?” He said it with a smile but Zoe wondered if he might be as insecure as she was deep down.
“Tired? Yes.” She kissed him. “Of you? Not yet.” The kiss deepened. “There’s still an hour till lunch,” murmured Zoe, hopefully.
But Nick pulled back. “We can’t. It’s just too risky.”
“You didn’t pack condoms?”
“Not what I meant.”
He meant that, for this charade to work, Vanessa Reese had to be single. Partly because, Vanessa Reese was single; partly because she was not the type to date a failed businessman like Nick; and partly because, while they might know there wasn’t the prospect of any romance between ‘Vanessa’ and Jacques Jourdan, they needed Jourdan to believe it was a possibility. He clearly liked her and men were different around single women. They could not risk one of their competitors finding out that ‘Vanessa’ was sleeping with Nick. They could try to be discrete of course, but if previous experience was anything to go by, they were not that quiet.
“We’d better go down,” sighed Zoe. If they stayed in her room any longer then, for all their good intentions, stuff was going to happen.
“Separately,” added Nick. “Vanessa is very independent. I’ll go. You follow in a few minutes.”
Zoe nodded. But she felt strangely empty as she watched Nick leave. It wasn’t that she had to be at his side all the time, nor that she disagreed with his analysis. She just wished that he hadn’t suggested it.
After a minute or two, with only the butterflies in her stomach for company, Zoe headed downstairs. As she entered the reception room (all these rooms had names!) the sleeve of her dress caught on the door, something Zoe only noticed when she heard the tearing sound.
“Fucking shit!”
Like the ‘thank you’ earlier, it was out of her mouth without her even thinking.
“Excuse me.” She nodded apology to the staring eyes of the room, trying not to look at Nick, and hurried back out and up to her room to change.
As she entered she found that she was fighting back tears – she was screwing this up! She hadn’t even started and she was ruining it. She fought down the urge to cry. Then, she tried to calm herself. Everyone swore when something like that happened, it wasn’t a big deal – right? She turned to take off the dress and caught sight of something in the mirror that made her spin back again.
When they had selected clothes for her to wear, Nick and Zoe had taken great pains to hide the heart-shaped tattoo on her left shoulder blade. Backless dresses were out, as was anything that hung decorously revealing that particular area. It had not been a problem. But now the torn sleeve clearly revealed the symbol as clear as day. Had anyone seen it? To Zoe, looking in the mirror now, it seemed glaringly obvious, as if it was lit up in neon, but was that just because she knew it was there and was looking for it.
Vanessa Reese did not have tattoos. And if
she did, they would not be little hearts (originally there was to have been a boyfriend’s name emblazoned beneath it, but the relationship had not lasted to the next tattoo session). Three times in as many hours, Zoe had dropped the ball. If only it had ended there.
At dinner Zoe, not only used the wrong cutlery (everything Nick had taught her going out of her head) but dropped a fork on the floor and accidentally catapulted a spoon across the table to land in another diner’s wine glass (she was still not sure how she had done that). Though she tried to stay out of the conversation she was roped into it by one particular man who seemed fascinated by everything she had to say. At first she had held her own on the subjects of Monsieur Jourdan’s art collection and his excellent wine, but then, and against all reasonable fairness, the subject turned to ballet.
Zoe floundered.
“What dancer am I thinking of,” the particular man (whose name was Goldman), asked the table in general before addressing Zoe specifically. “Miss Reese will know, of course. Miss Reese, who am I thinking of.”
Zoe felt an unpleasant wave of heat spread through her cheeks as she started to blush, the stress causing a physical reaction. “I dunno.”
It was a stupid response and she knew it. She could have said: ‘I can’t recall right now, isn’t it strange how names can just go out of your head like that?’ She could have said: ‘Oh it’s… oh what is the name? Oh how frustrating.’ Or any number of other variations on the theme of knowing the answer but it having slipped her mind, which happens to the best of us. If she had said ‘I don’t know’, that would have still be problematic but at least expressed correctly. But no, she had said the wrong thing, and she had said it wrongly. She had revealed both her ignorance and her lack of sophistication in two ill-chosen words.
And Mr. Goldman wasn’t letting it go yet. “Really? I was led to believe that you were a ballet aficionado, so to speak.”
“Then you were led wrong.” Zoe compounded the error. She couldn’t seem to help herself and across the table she felt Nick’s eyes on her. She couldn’t look at him.
