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“Not in this case,” Martin said. “The client’s nondisclosure agreement is punitive.”
“Punitive?”
“If anything leaks, you and I and the firm could be sued for damages.”
Bree frowned at that. “Elena, I’m not saying anything is going to leak, but—”
“Don’t worry,” Martin said. “I’m taking out an insurance policy to cover any damages we might incur from this case.”
“Is the contract worth it?”
“Yes, and you have no idea what it might mean down the road for you, for me, and for Bluestone if we can prove ourselves with this case.” Martin slid three documents across the table to Bree. “Sign if you’re in. If not, no problem, I can find someone less talented to do the job for a smaller piece of the company’s future.”
Bree hesitated for a moment, then smiled as she found a pen in her purse. “Well done yourself, Elena. You got me hook, line, and sinker.”
“Thank you, Bree,” Martin said. “I’d hoped that would work.”
CHAPTER 9
AFTER BREE SIGNED THE NDA, Elena Martin left for another meeting. Bree took the two cardboard boxes into her office and locked the door behind her.
She removed her jacket and got out a pad of paper and her phone in case she wanted to take photographs for later reference. Bree opened the first file and was intrigued to see it held the records of a lawsuit from several years before; the file was stampedDISMISSEDandSEALEDin red letters.
The case had been brought in Raleigh, North Carolina, by two women and a man she’d never heard of against a defendant whose name was instantly recognizable. It shocked her.
“Frances Duchaine,” she whispered. “TheFrances Duchaine? Really?”
Bree read the first few sentences of the dismissed suit and her free hand traveled to her mouth. By the time she was halfwaythrough the document, she was not only thoroughly engrossed but also angry. When she finished, she was furious and wanted to throw the file away. But then she went back to the start of the complaint and that stamped word dismissed and wondered how much, if anything, she’d read was true.
Bree forced herself to withhold judgment, calm down, and be open-minded. She set that file to one side and chose another from the box.
Before Bree opened it, though, she thought:What if it is true? But how could it be? Wouldn’t someone have known? Duchaine is not exactly a secretive billionaire. A billionaire, yes, but not some secretive financier. She’s a marketer at heart. She’s her own brand. In the public eye all the time. Someone should have known. But again, why would a woman as successful as Frances Duchaine take the risks alleged in the suit?
Bree looked back at the first suit and the date of its dismissal, then wrote down the name of the plaintiffs’ attorney—Nora Jessup—and her address. She also noted the superior court judge’s name—Eloise Carmichael. Only then did she open the second file.
It contained a stapled sheaf of photocopied press clippings about Frances Duchaine and her meteoric rise and sustained position in the world of high fashion. Bree knew some of her history, but she spent the next hour studying the woman in greater depth.
Duchaine had suddenly appeared twenty-five years earlier, plucked from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology by no less an icon than Tess Jackson.
At that time, Tess Jackson’s eponymous brand was growing so fast, she couldn’t keep up with design demands. Jackson had graduated from FIT herself and was a generous alum. She’d called the president of the school and asked to see the portfoliosof the three senior students the faculty believed showed the most promise.
Jackson was scheduled to give a lecture at FIT a few days later. Of course, word of the three chosen students got out. Duchaine, at that time a sophomore, was not among them. But she heard Jackson was looking for a young designer and ambushed her near her car when she arrived at the school.
“Frances looked like a model then too,” Jackson toldNew Yorkmagazine ten years later. “In fact, that’s what I thought she had in her portfolio, headshots and such. And when she told me she was a sophomore in the design program, I said I was interested only in the most experienced students. Frances would not take no for an answer and said I should at least look at her drawings. So I did. Right there in the parking lot.”
Jackson was floored by what she saw, and on the spot, she offered Duchaine a job as her personal assistant to learn the business while she coached her on her designs. Not long after that, Duchaine’s fashion started to appear under Jackson’s label.
And not long afterthat,Duchaine became Jackson’s sometime lover.
It worked until it didn’t. For almost seven years, Jackson’s brand and its subsidiaries grew and prospered. At age twenty-seven, however, and with Jackson in her late forties, Duchaine left the company and the relationship and started her own brand.
“It was inevitable, but it still broke my heart,” Jackson said in the article. “Now we are friends and I know it was the right choice for Frances. She is not the kind of woman who likes to be contained by any sort of convention. That’s what I loved and still love about her.”
Duchaine’s brand exploded because she aimed at the finer ready-to-wear market before going wide.
On the notepad, Bree wrote,She followed Jackson’s business model. Worked even better for her than it did for Jackson. When Duchaine sold part of her company to a hedge fund, it made her a legit billionaire. Why would she do the things the women allege in the lawsuit? Why jeopardize the empire?
Bree kept turning the pages in the press packet and saw pictures of Duchaine with one handsome man or beautiful woman after another. Now forty-eight, Duchaine had been romantically linked to a number of people of both sexes over the years.
