about the mess with Gina? Would Alexis exploit that, too, if pushed to the wall? Would she play up the elder sister’s engagement as a desperate attempt to save the younger from a charge of larceny?
She would. Sarah knew damned well she would. The certainty curdled like sour milk in the pit of her stomach. Whom did she most owe her loyalty to? Gina? Dev? Alexis? Herself?
The last thought was so heretical it gnawed at Sarah’s insides while she prepped for her first meeting with the Giraults early that evening. Dev had told her this would be an informal dinner at the couple’s Paris town house.
“Ha!” she muttered as she added a touch of mascara. “I’ll bet it’s informal.”
Going with instinct, she opted for a hip-length tuxedo jacket that had been one of Grandmama’s favorite pieces. Sarah had extracted the jacket from the to-be-sold pile on at least three separate occasions. Vintage was vintage, but Louis Féraud was art. He’d opened his first house of fashion in Cannes 1950, became one of Brigitte Bardot’s favorite designers and grew into a legend in his own lifetime.
This jacket was quintessential Féraud. The contour-hugging design featured wide satin lapels and a double-breasted, two-button front fastening. Sarah paired it with a black, lace-edged chemise and wide-pegged black satin pants. A honey-colored silk handkerchief peeked from the breast pocket. A thin gold bangle circled her wrist. With her hair swept up in a smooth twist, she looked restrained and refined.
For some reason, though, restrained just didn’t hack it tonight. Not while she was playing tug-of-war between fiercely conflicting loyalties. She wanted to do right by Dev. And Alexis. And Gina. And herself. Elise Girault could take a flying leap.
Frowning, she unclipped her hair and let the dark mass swirl to her shoulders. Then she slipped out of the jacket and tugged off the chemise. When she pulled the jacket on again, the two-button front dipped dangerously low. Grandmama would have a cow if she saw how much shadowy cleavage her Sarah now displayed. Dev, she suspected, would approve.
* * *
He did. Instantly and enthusiastically. Bending an arm against the doorjamb, he gave a long, low whistle.
“You look fantastic.”
“Thanks.” Honesty compelled her to add, “So do you.”
If the afternoon negotiating session with Monsieur Girault had produced any stress, it didn’t show in his face. He was clean shaven, clear eyed and smelled so darned good Sarah almost leaned in for a deeper whiff. His black hair still gleamed with damp. From a shower, she wondered as she fought the urged to feather her fingers through it, or the foggy drizzle that had kept up all day?
His suit certainly wasn’t vintage, but had obviously been tailored with the same loving skill as Grandmama’s jacket. With it he wore a crisp blue shirt topped by a blue-and-silver-striped tie.
“What was it Oscar Wilde said about ties?” Sarah murmured, eyeing the expensive neckwear.
“Beats me.”
“Something about a well-tied tie being the first serious step in a man’s life. Of course, that was back when it took them hours to achieve the perfect crease in their cravat.”
“Glad those days are gone. Speaking of gone... The car’s waiting.” He bowed and swept a hand toward the door. “Shall we go, ma chérie?”
Her look of surprise brought a smug grin.
“I had some time after my meeting so I pulled up a few phrases on Google Translate. How’s the accent?”
“Well...”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’ve heard worse.”
But not much worse. Hiding a smile, she picked up her clutch and led the way to the door.
“How did the meeting go, by the way?”
“We’re making progress. Enough that my chief of production and a team of our corporate attorneys are in the air as we speak. We still need to hammer out a few details, but we’re close.”
“You must be making progress if you’re bringing in a whole team.”
Sarah refused to acknowledge the twinge that gave her. She hadn’t really expected to share much of Paris with Dev. He was here on business. And she was here to make sure that business didn’t get derailed by the wife of his prospective partner. She reminded herself of that fact as the limo glided through the lamp-lit streets.
* * *
Jean-Jacques Girault and his wife greeted them at the door to their magnificent town house. Once inside the palatial foyer, the two couples engaged in the obligatory cheek-kissing. Madame Girault behaved herself as she congratulated her guests on their engagement, but Dev stuck close to his fiancée just in case.
The exchange gave Sarah time to assess her hostess. The blonde had to be in her mid-fifties, but she had the lithe build and graceful carriage of a ballerina...which she used to be, she informed Sarah with a nod toward the portrait holding place of honor in the palatial foyer. The larger-than-life-size oil depicted a much younger Elise Girault costumed as Odile, the evil black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
“I loved dancing that part.” With a smile as wicked as the one she wore in the portrait, Madame Girault hooked an arm in Sarah’s and led her through a set of open double doors into a high-ceilinged salon. “Being bad is so much more fun than being good, yes?”
“Unless, as happens to Odile in some versions of Swan Lake, being bad gets you an arrow through the heart.”
The older woman’s laugh burst out, as loud and booming as a cannon. “Aha! You are warning me, I think, to keep my hands off your so-handsome Devon.”
“If the ballet slipper fits...”
Her laugh foghorned again, noisy and raucous and totally infectious. Sarah found herself grinning as Madame Girault spoke over her shoulder.
“I like her, Devon.”
She pronounced it Dee-vón, with the accent on the last syllable.
“I was prepared not to, you understand, as I want you for myself. Perhaps we can arrange a ménage à trois, yes?”
With her back to Dev, Sarah missed his reaction to the suggestion. She would have bet it wasn’t as benign as Monsieur Girault’s.
“Elise, my pet. You’ll shock our guests with these little jokes of yours.”
The look his wife gave Sarah brimmed with mischief and the unmistakable message that she was not joking.
* * *
Much to Sarah’s surprise, she enjoyed the evening. Elise Girault didn’t try to be anything but herself. She was at times sophisticated, at other times outrageous, but she didn’t cross the line Sarah had drawn in the sand. Or in this case, in the near-priceless nineteenth-century Aubusson carpet woven in green-and-gold florals.
The Giraults and their guests took cocktails in the salon and dinner in an exquisitely paneled dining room with
