The next morning, a bleary-eyed me was trying to pick something to wear for the seven o’clock interview with Aileen Gerber. I’d gotten as far as putting on bra and panties when I thought I heard the buzzer. I wasn’t sure as I sleep at the very back of the loft, far from the front door. I stuck my head out of the bedroom. Sure enough, the buzzer. Stubborn Leila, as usual disregarding my insistence she sleep late. She’d worked hard enough, first straightening up what the caterer had missed, then running down on unsteady feet to Starbucks two blocks away to get Aileen’s Frappuccino. I wanted her to get some rest. I could handle the interview by myself. She did like to think she was indispensable. Which she was, but sometimes her hovering got to me.
Leila had her own set of keys, but last night, after downing vodka and polishing off a bottle of Dom Perignon, we’d both been high. On my way to bed, I noticed she’d dropped the keys to my place on the couch.
‘Coming,’ I yelled out, even though she couldn’t hear me. I padded barefoot to the door and let her in. I left the door open and went back to my room. Scrambling through my jammed closet, I picked a pair of black jeans and a boat-necked celadon jersey top.
I kept the clothes on their hangers to show Leila. ‘What do you think?’ I asked, walking out into the showroom.
‘You’re even more beautiful than last night.’ Thorne was standing in the middle of the room, looking like the king of men in his navy suit, pale-blue shirt and yellow tie with a face so incredibly handsome it could launch a thousand missiles.
I just stood there, my heart doing bungee jumps. ‘What are you doing here?’ I forgot I was half naked.
He walked up to me. ‘I couldn’t start my day without kissing you.’ He took my head in his hands, tilted it to meet his. ‘Nicole Wenders, I haven’t stopped thinking of you for one second.’
My insides started trembling. I felt caught, powerless, pinned like a butterfly against a wall I couldn’t kick down. That scared me. I grabbed his head, pulled it towards me and kissed him, my tongue reaching to every corner of his mouth. An electric surge ran through me. I was in control again. I loved his thick lips pressed against mine, his tongue trying to outdo mine. He grabbed my ass, pressed me tight against him so I could feel how hard he was. I wanted to pull him down on the floor and eat him until he groaned for mercy.
I pushed him away. ‘You’ve had your kiss. Now get out of here.’
He grinned, not in the least put out. ‘I’ve got an important meeting this morning. If it goes through, it’s going to do a lot of good things.’
‘To you, of course.’ I had enough sense now to pull the top over my head which left only my panties showing. Let him get his eyeful down there. He wasn’t going to have me. At least not on his terms. I walked to the door, opened it.
He took the hint and followed me. He stopped on the threshold and gave me a sweet smile that threw me. The arrogance was gone. ‘Woman of my dreams, you’ve got the wrong idea about me. I do have a heart. By the way, good choice of clothes and I don’t mean your skimpy underthings. It’s the colour of your top. Brings out the green in your eyes. And wear your hair up and show off that swanlike neck.’ He kissed my forehead and then he was gone. I stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what I was feeling. I was wet, which was perfectly normal under the circumstances, but I stood on that threshold half-dressed and stared down at the stairs. The picture of his disappearing back kept playing in my mind like a YouTube video gone beserk.
I want him back. Not just for sex. I want to listen to him. I want to know who he is.
No, I’m hung over. Confused. Tired. I don’t care if I ever see him again. He’s got me all wrong. My eyes are more blue than green and wearing my hair up makes me look older. In fact, I never want to see him again.
Shit! I forgot to thank him.
An hour later, I handed Aileen Gerber a Frappuccino and a plate of smoked salmon and cucumber tea sandwiches left over from last night. I was dressed in leggings and a blue silk hip-length tunic with my hair loose over my shoulders. The photographer hadn’t shown up yet.
‘Thanks.’ She quickly ate two sandwiches, finished the drink. I sat down in front of her, fighting to keep my mind on this woman, this moment. An interview with WWD was a dream come true, but I could still feel Thorne in my mouth, his hard-on against my stomach, his hands kneading my ass.
Aileen fished into her backpack, extracted a notebook and pen. I uncrossed my legs, sat up. A chance in a million, Nicole, I thought. Don’t blow it.
‘You always show only twelve bags. Is that right?’
‘A lot of hard work goes into making a bag. It’s all I can manage right now.’ I threw a look at the front door. ‘Where’s your photographer?’
‘I told him to come at seven-thirty. I wanted to get some facts down and a little human interest stuff. Never hurts.’ Aileen wrote something down in her notebook. ‘OK. How did you start?’
‘Making bags when I was a kid,’ I said, happy to move away from the number twelve. ‘I’d cover paper bags with magic marker doodles, then sew ribbons on them for straps. By the time I got to high school I’d moved on to cloth bags, selling them to my friends for a couple of bucks each.’
‘Why handbags?’
‘Here I was, six, seven years old wanting desperately to be grown-up. Grown-ups wear heels and handbags. I knew I couldn’t make heels with paper bags. Besides shoes only hold feet. A bag, it can hold all you need to get through the day. You can hide a secret inside if you want.’
‘Not if you have kids.’
‘You’re right.’ I went over to the work table and picked the closest bag, a patchwork satchel in different shades of grey. ‘That’s why my bags all have a hard-to-find pocket that I hope will keep a secret safe. At least from kids.’ I opened it up and handed it to her. ‘See if you can find it.’ I loved going through my mother’s bags, rolling and unrolling the lipstick, running her silver-edged comb down my hair, burying my nose inside and taking long sniffs of that wonderful mom smell that always made me feel safe. Until the day I found a letter tucked under the lining where the stitching had come undone. She had folded it and refolded it so many times the page was falling apart.
Aileen rustled through the bag. ‘I can’t find the pocket.’
‘On the outside.’ I upended the bag, showed her the two-inch slit. I extracted a note, showed it her.
‘“Desire,”’ she read. ‘Clever idea.’
‘I’d go to Barnes and Noble and look through all the fashion magazines to get ideas. My idol was Princess Di, of course, like every other girl I knew. She wore the most elegant bags.’
‘You’re young. Mine was Audrey Hepburn.’
‘I’ve seen her in a few movies on TV. She was great-looking.’
Aileen sighed, reached for another sandwich. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘I made a clutch for Princess Di cut out of an old tweed coat.’ That coat had belonged to my father. Mom was throwing it away because he had just thrown us away. He’d gone, to another woman, to another city, state, country. I never did find out.
‘I sewed sequined Ds all over it and sent it to Kensington Palace.’ I poured my heart into that purse. I was desperate to make something beautiful. The purse was meant for Mom – her name was Dorothy. A present to stop her sobbing day and night, but she didn’t want it. She didn’t want anything or anyone except my father. I had read in the magazines that Princess Diana was also unhappy so I sent her the bag. ‘She sent me a handwritten thank-you note. I treasured it for years.’
‘If she’s the one who wrote it and not