TWO
Morgan watched as her glamorous, sophisticated mother stepped out of her office in a lemon suit, nude heels and with a perfectly straight platinum chin-length bob.
‘I need a decision about the jewellery for the auction,’ Morgan announced as Hannah approached them. ‘Do you have any gemstones in stock that you want me to use? What do you want me to design? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Classic or contemporary? Is that why you want me at this meeting?’
‘Hello to you too, darling,’ Hannah said in her driest tone. ‘How are you?’
Morgan waved an elegant hand in the air. ‘Mum, we had coffee together this morning; you didn’t say anything then about me having to come downstairs.’
‘It’s a conference room, not a torture chamber, Morgan,’ Hannah replied, her tone as dry as the martinis she loved to drink. ‘Nice photo of you in the Post, by the way.’
Since she hadn’t been out recently, Morgan wasn’t sure where she’d been photographed. ‘Uh...where was I?’
‘At the opening night of that new gallery in Soho.’
Her friend Kendall’s new gallery; she’d popped in for five minutes, literally, and it couldn’t go undocumented? Sheez! But she was, very reluctantly, a part of the NYC social scene, and because she was a Moreau whenever she made an appearance she was photographed extensively. Many of those photographs ended up in the social columns and online.
Hannah folded her arms and tapped her foot. Good grief, she recognised that look.
‘Morgan, it’s time we talked about you joining Moreau International in an official position.’
Morgan sighed. ‘Has six months passed so quickly?’
They had an agreement: Hannah was allowed to nag her about joining the company every six months. For the last twelve years they’d had the same conversation over and over again.
‘I’ve decided that I want you to be MI’s Public Relations and Brand Director.’
Run me over with a bus, Morgan thought. PR and Brand Director? That was a new title. ‘Mum, I’m happy doing what I’m doing—designing jewellery. You and James are doing a fabulous job with MI. You don’t need me.’
And she was damned if she was going to take a job away from a loyal MI employee who was way more qualified for the position than she’d ever be. And—funny, this—she actually wanted to get paid for what she did, not who she was.
But she had to give Hannah points for being persistent. She’d been trying to get her to work for MI since she was sixteen—shortly after they’d received the happy news that Morgan was just chronically dyslexic and not selectively stupid.
It had only taken her mother and a slew of medics, educational psychologists and shrinks to work that out. Everyone had been so pleased that they’d found the root cause of her failing marks at school, her frustration and her anger.
The years of sheer hell she’d lived through between the time she’d started school and her diagnosis had been conveniently forgotten by everybody except herself.
Water under the bridge, Morgan reminded herself. And she knew her mum felt guilty for the part she’d played in the disaster that had been her education.
Morgan knew that it hadn’t been easy for her either. She’d been thrust into running MI in her mid-thirties, when her adventure-seeking husband had decided that he didn’t like the corporate life and wanted to be MI’s chief geologist, discovering new mines. Hannah, with her MBA in business and economics, had taken over the role of MI’s CEO, juggling its huge responsibilities with two children, one of whom had made her life a great deal more difficult by her inability to meet her mother’s and teachers’ expectations.
How often had she heard variations on the theme of, ‘She’s such a bright child; if only she would try harder.’
Nobody had ever realised how hard she’d always been trying, how incredibly frustrating it had been not to meet her goals and everybody else’s. Had they honestly believed that she didn’t want to learn to read and write properly? That she’d enjoyed being the class freak?
Ages eight to sixteen had been a suck-fest of epic proportions. Finally being diagnosed as being chronically dyslexic had freed her, a little, from the shame and guilt she’d felt for years. She’d started to believe that her learning disabilities weren’t her fault and her relationship with her family—well, mostly with her mother—had rapidly improved. Her mum was still a controlling corporate queen, and she still marched to the beat of her own drum, but they’d found a way back to each other—even if they did have to have this conversation every six months.
Morgan knew that she wasn’t stupid, but she also knew that working for MI would require computers and reading and writing reports. While she could do all of that, she just took longer than most—okay, a lot longer—and the corporate world couldn’t and wouldn’t wait that long. And shouldn’t...
Until she was the best person for a job, she wouldn’t take it. Not to mention that her dyslexia would become an open secret; she wouldn’t be able to keep it under wraps. Wouldn’t that be fun? She could just see the headlines: The ultimate dumb blonde... Gorgeous but thick... With her looks and money, who needs brains anyway?
She’d heard them all before—even from someone she’d loved...
Morgan shuddered. No, thank you. Call her stubborn, call her proud, but she wasn’t going to expose herself to that much ridicule again.
Besides, designing jewellery was her solace and her joy—her dream job. If only Hannah would see that and get off her back about working for MI her relationship with her mum would be pretty much perfect.
Morgan took her mum’s hand and squeezed. ‘I love you for the fact that you believe I should play a bigger part in MI, but I am neither qualified nor suited for the corporate world, Mum. I don’t want to be part of that world. I’m happy being on the fringes of MI.’
‘I will wear you down someday.’ Hannah sighed loudly. ‘On another subject, I want you to haul out your designer dresses and start creating hype around the ball at social events.’
Morgan gagged. ‘Ugh. Don’t I do enough already?’
‘Hardly.’ Hannah sniffed. ‘One function every two weeks and cutting out early isn’t good enough to promote your business, and not nearly good enough to promote the ball. You need to charm more people than you’re currently doing. Darling, you are a social disgrace. How many invitations did you turn down this week alone?’
Morgan shrugged. ‘Ten...twelve?’
‘Helen, my personal publicist, said that you were invited to at least twenty-five, maybe more. Soirées, charity dinners, afternoon teas, breakfasts...’
Morgan tipped her head and counted to ten, then thirty, before attempting to speak rationally. ‘Mum, I have a business to run, designs to get out the door. I work, just like you do. Okay, I don’t oversee a multinational company but I work. Hard.’
‘You’re a Moreau; you should be out more. Can you start going to some more formal parties? The benefits, the political fundraisers, the balls? That is where the money is, darling—the people who can actually afford the price of the ball tickets. We need to target the people who have the real money, and they are at the more sedate functions.’
Sedate meaning deadly dull. ‘Don’t nag me, Mother. You know I hate those stuffy functions where the conversation is so...intense. The situation in Syria, the economy, the plight of the rainforests.’
‘Because, you know, those issues aren’t important...’ Riley said, her tongue in her cheek.
Morgan