Captain of Industry Page 6

  A nibble confirmed that while there was a risk of falling chocolate slivers getting on her sweatshirt, Suzanne was right. Cinnamon oatmeal cookies and vanilla ice cream, plus chocolate, suddenly made playing with Legos exactly the right thing to do.

  “I’m going to get ice cream on the pieces.” Jennifer licked her thumb. “This is tasty.”

  “That’s…” Suzanne seemed flushed. “That’s fine. Part of the whole gestalt.”

  “If you say so. Where do we start?”

  “There’s a method to the madness.” Suzanne became exceedingly businesslike. “Organize, classify first.”

  Taking a cross-legged position on the floor she’d last used in a formal Japanese teahouse, she scooted forward until her tummy was against the low table’s edge. Carefully listening to Suzanne’s instructions, she decided her best contribution was sorting. The white bricks seemed endless so she began with the taupe and black. Suzanne had an explanation for every step, why it was more efficient or logical. Her movements were economical and Jennifer could imagine her building a computer from the inside out, connecting little bits and clips to each other.

  She found that brick sorting was, in fact, relaxing, and was inordinately pleased when Suzanne praised how quickly she’d finished, even though she laughed when Jennifer called some of them periwinkle instead of blue. They worked well together on building the shuttle wings as they talked about old movies and new television shows.

  At one point their fingertips brushed and Jennifer was momentarily content to enjoy the brilliant thrill that ran up her arms. It was like being in the sun on a cold day, welcome and appreciated for the simplicity.

  But it wasn’t really that simple, was it? Gay 90s or not, if Jennifer were to believe books and movies, deciding to sleep with a woman came with labels. Chances were high it would put her career on the skids, especially as an unknown. There was a reason why Rock Hudson and Barbara Stanwyck and Raymond Burr had kept their private lives and liaisons as quiet as possible. Ellen DeGeneres had a hit sitcom and the rumors were endless, but she was still holding out from making a declaration, even though everyone knew.

  Rumors, slurs, innuendo, whispers. Some people could break out, stand above them. But others were buried forever. She had no idea which fate would await her if she and Suzanne…

  She shook off the thought. Or tried to. Her body wanted one thing but her brain was refusing to let go of the worry.

  “It’s after midnight.” Jennifer couldn’t really believe the time. She’d gotten all the white sorted, then further into onesies and foursies, and Suzanne was in the middle of setting up the grid for the launch pad foundation.

  “Tired?”

  “Not really. But I have an audition in the morning. It’s near CUNY, ten a.m.”

  “Time for a cab?”

  “I guess.” She watched Suzanne’s fingertips run over bumps in the bricks as she muttered under her breath. “I’ll use my handy new phone to call.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Well, you knew she was a nerd among other things, Jennifer told herself. You just spent hours playing with Legos. She squelched a laugh—was this what it was like not to be someone’s sex object? She managed to get to her feet in spite of her hips feeling as if they would never resume a normal position again.

  “Wait.” Suzanne had paused in her counting to focus on her. “I’m sorry, you’re going?”

  “It’s late. Audition tomorrow.”

  “That’s right.” Suzanne unwound her legs from under the table and got to her feet, not looking the least bit stiff. Her shoes and tie were long gone, shirt untucked and dotted with melted chocolate, and her slacks were rumpled.

  They stared at each other across the table and all Jennifer could think was how touchable Suzanne looked. How intimate the last few hours had felt.

  “I should go.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was another long silence as the room seemed to drain of all air.

  “Unless you have another idea.” Jennifer was abruptly grateful for her vocal lessons—there wasn’t a trace of panting in her voice.

  Suzanne frowned. “I’m out of It’s-Its.”

  “Silly.” Her legs finally obeyed her and she went around the table. “You think about it.”

  She gave Suzanne a kiss just like the one that Suzanne had given her to muss her lipstick the night before, then drew back.

  Suzanne blinked twice, then grinned, tossing the Legos in her hand onto the table. “That’s a much more fun idea. What took you so long?”

  Before Jennifer could protest, Suzanne had pulled her close. Their lips brushed, then Suzanne hesitated. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes.” Jennifer leaned into Suzanne, closed her eyes and raised her mouth and found herself leaning into air.

  Suzanne had plunked down on the floor with a loud curse. She peeled off two Lego bricks that had embedded in the arch of one foot. “They should use these in warfare!”

  Laughter and tension burst out of Jennifer in a great whoosh that left her weak-kneed and dabbing tears out of the corners of her eyes.

  “Just you wait.” Suzanne gave her a baleful look while massaging her instep. “It’ll happen to you.”

  “I can honestly say that this date wins for weird.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. And I’m glad you consider this a date.”

  “I was using the word in its most generous definition.” She looked down at Suzanne with indulgence even while part of her was freaking out at the surge of affection that was swamping her common sense. Early appointment, it prodded. She could ruin your career before you have one, it insisted. She touched the bracelet and the babble grew distant.

  Suzanne was on her feet again, carefully eyeing the floor as she took a step closer to Jennifer. “Now where were we?”

  “Time for me to go.”

  “You asked if I had another idea.”

  “I think—maybe we should wait on other ideas.”

  She watched Suzanne’s expression go carefully neutral and had a sudden vision of her at a boardroom table using that expression to hide her thoughts as she negotiated over millions of dollars. The thought left Jennifer disquieted, almost chilled. Suzanne could add up a situation with the blink of an eye and decide which assets she needed and which she didn’t, and then she would take action. Cool, dispassionate—skills she used even when making toy spaceships.

  All Suzanne said was, “When can I see you again?”

  “I have another Lucius event tomorrow night. It’s important. The Winter Fashion Strut for the Cure.”

  “I’ll see you there.” A muscle under one eye twitched in what might have been a wink.

  Jennifer opened her mouth to ask how Suzanne thought she could manage tickets to an event sold-out for months and then simply smiled. “See you there.”

  She didn’t risk another kiss.

  Chapter Twelve

  Suzanne hobbled to the nearest sofa and pulled off her sock. No, she was not bleeding, though her instep held the purpling imprint of a corner-thick brick. A two-thin had also caught her right in the soft spot past the ball of her foot. Both bruises were worse for the fact that she hadn’t felt either at first and she’d had her whole weight on them, anticipating a long, slow, exploratory kiss.

  A kiss with a gorgeous woman who had sorted Legos like one of the nerds.

  The first time she’d offered a glamour girl a hot dog for lunch, she’d been given a look of such horror they’d taken a cab to an exclusive Asian fusion place in Chelsea instead. Jennifer had gobbled up a hot dog and made an appreciative noise or two. The image of Jennifer licking food off her fingers was a favorite replay on Suzanne’s mental VCR.

  Yet Jennifer’s clothes dripped with designer labels. When she wasn’t engaged with someone she had a face of carved ivory with that cut-you-dead stare of “I am not for you” Suzanne knew so well from high school and college.

  She had wanted to persuade Jennifer to stay the night, but a pulse of
panic made her feel that she might just lose all her cool by devolving into the stammering teen who hadn’t been able to get out a coherent word at her first science fair.

  Plus there had been the throbbing in her foot which felt like torn skin, gushing blood and shattered bones even though the skin wasn’t even broken.

  The Legos giveth, the Legos taketh away. Someone should invent protective footwear.

  It had seemed so easy last night to pursue Jennifer. Gorgeous girl, wooing, then bed. A simple and straightforward series of events. Again she wondered if Jennifer had ever been with a woman. It wouldn’t be the first time Suzanne had attracted a lesbian virgin. A couple of times it had been just curiosity and Suzanne didn’t mind obliging. The other women had been quite honest about it and she herself had been trying to live the life of the carefree New York millionaire. It had seemed an attractive choice at the time. So many museums, so many plays, so many people who wanted to party with her.

  Magical times for the too-tall geek from Cupertino, California, who still couldn’t believe she lived in a place that only had walls around the bathroom. Sure it was chic—until you wanted to tack up a to-do list. She missed her Grace Hopper poster too, but that was back in a storage locker in California.

  She massaged her bruises and thought about losing herself in another raid on ancient tombs, or wiping out a stronghold of orcs, but she felt too keyed up. Even the Legos held no appeal for the moment. Instead, now that her brain seemed to be clearing from the Jennifer Lamont-induced fog, the checklist to review with Annemarie tomorrow was clamoring for more attention.

  She got comfy at her desk and started digging into public listings for the companies involved in the merger rumors. No one had approached her to run it. Maybe no one would. But if they did, work would begin immediately, and all the players were in California. It was entirely possible that her space shuttle project wouldn’t be taking flight anytime soon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “That’s attached to me!” Jennifer glared into the mirror at the hairdresser. “There’s no weave to take out.”

  “Sorry darling.” The vapor-thin stylist ran his fingertips along her scalp as if checking to see if what she’d said was true. “My card says you’re supposed to be in a French braid.”

  “Lucius has never had me braided.” His comb jerked her head back before she could get a good look at the note card on his desk. “I’m Lamont, Jennifer.”

  He paused in his torture. “No you’re not.”

  She gave him the look he deserved.

  “Don’t go all diva on me.” He turned to the controlled chaos of the rest of the room to shout, “Who’s supposed to be doing Lucius’s girl?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” the Goth stylist at the next table said. “Mm-mm-mm.”

  Jennifer’s angry retort was cut off by her sudden sneeze. The air was thick with sprays and oil turned to vapor by flat irons. She blinked rapidly to keep her base eye makeup from running. At this point in the prep she was not supposed to have tear ducts.

  The audition had gone badly. She didn’t look or sound like a Jersey girl, a verdict delivered after four lines. Plus one of the producers had slipped her a card for a “special project” and just smiled at her when she’d said he had to call her agent. Another casting couch invitation. She’d three times as many of those as she’d had actual auditions.

  What irked most was that they had wanted working-class Jersey and that was what she believed she’d given them. If any of those producers had ever lived there, they’d know there wasn’t a lot of difference between West Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, even less so for anyone grinding out a living in a steel mill. She’d grown up with Jersey girls and Jersey girls made pilgrimages to the King of Prussia mega mall. She knew the tone, the accent, the poses.

  She could hear that someone else was better for a part, but to be told she didn’t have the first clue about a role had been a blow to her ego that couldn’t be made better by walking up and down a runway. Yes, the meeting with the woman who would be her vocal coach had gone well, but that was someone being paid and she would of course say nice things about her potential.

  Why wasn’t she content with what she could so easily do? You never want what you have, her mother’s voice hissed in her ear. You’re not good for anything else.

  “Honey, you’re in the wrong seat.” The stylist shooed her to her feet.

  “I went where I was told.”

  He pointed and she spied another equally ethereal young man frantically waving at her. When she was close enough he fussed, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  The hotel meeting room turned dressing area was a mass of voices and confusion, and not helped by the bass-fueled electro-swing pulsing from the adjacent banquet hall. The two dozen or so temporary makeup stations had two or three people at each, and racks of garments were lined up the middle, guarded by seamstresses and tailors waiting for their turn at the models. Sure, it was all for charity. But the designers were still nervous wrecks about every last detail, including where in the show the organizers had ranked them. Lucius was peevish about not being later in the program, but Michael Kors had four models and two competing lines. Of course his work was going last and a Big Name Model was doing the final walk, in, what else, a wedding gown.

  Like their designers, the models were aware that there was nothing else going on in the fashion world this week and so everything they did would be under a microscope. Jennifer wasn’t immune to the pressure, and it was heightened by the charity folks having their own backstage photographer taking pictures of the prep, so they were all supposed to look gorgeous throughout the makeup and hair process. That picture of her in Suzanne’s pajamas had moved from the gossip page to AOL Style and would be run in the Daily News. Lucius had crossly told her he’d wasted too much time that day explaining that he had absolutely nothing to do with some off-the-rack garments. And that it was all her fault.

  Her little phone was chirping and buzzing in her handbag. She resisted the urge to check if it was Suzanne. More likely it was her agent wanting an update about the audition and to chide her again for walking out of the photo shoot yesterday morning.

  It hadn’t escaped Jennifer’s notice that while her agent was yelling at her for what she’d done, she hadn’t threatened to dump her. Hadn’t even come close.

  “Jennifer, there you are, darling girl.”

  She hadn’t seen the Glamour reporter with the unmistakable retro black beehive sneaking up on her. Talking to Monique DuMar was always a gamble. It was either sugar sweetness or bitter acid. It was tempting to gossip, but she understood Ingrid Bergman’s warning about the perils of the two-sided press game. Once you played, you were in for life.

  “Tell me about those pajamas! You looked edible.”

  “I tripped and ruined Lucius’s gorgeous dress and someone found them for me. Necessity and all that.” She closed her eyes as the stylist dusted her roots with dry shampoo to keep her hair from sagging under the heat.

  “You started a new rage.”

  Jennifer opened one eye. Monique was serious. “Silk jammies—I slept in them last night too.”

  Monique grinned and wrote something down in a notebook that bulged with scraps of paper and photos. “Thanks, darling. Is this you at Washington Square?”

  Jennifer gaped at a snapshot from yesterday afternoon. She’d known people were taking her picture, but how had Monique ended up with it?

  “Sure, that’s me. I was just out for a walk.” Thank goodness her makeup was okay and it was before she’d changed into the sweatshirt. She realized that it was Suzanne walking toward her in the background, but not really recognizable to anyone who didn’t expect to see her in the photo.

  “You’re wearing Kate Spade.”

  “I know. I like her work.” It was the truth. It was also the only right thing to say.

  The stylist none-too-gently forced Jennifer to face the mirror.

  Monique had again scribbled someth
ing down. “You should be walking for her. You go well together.”

  “How did you get that picture?”

  “Sweetie, you’re the feature on AboutTown.com.”

  “I am?”

  “You need a new publicist if you’re just hearing it from me.”

  “I don’t have one yet.”

  Monique cocked her head. “The Luciuses of the world are fine for some of these girls, but he’s holding you back.”

  “He’s a great and well-paying client.”

  “Then sweetie, you need a new agent.” She scrawled something on the last page in her notebook and tore it out. After folding the sheet over, she held it almost within Jennifer’s reach. “Promise to always return my calls.”

  “I will try,” Jennifer said. Heedless of the stylist’s displeased hiss, she relaxed fully into her chair as she met Monique’s gaze full-on. Like yesterday morning she was abruptly aware that she wasn’t the extra in the scene being played out. She was, for a few lines anyway, the featured player. She didn’t reach for the paper.

  After a moment, Monique leaned forward to put the note easily within reach. “When you speak of me, darling, be kind.”

  Jennifer tucked the folded paper into her handbag and then acquiesced to the position the stylist was prodding her into. As the words “Thank you” left her mouth she became aware of the photographer snapping a dozen quick photos of her with Monique and the stylist as reflected in the mirror.

  A flicker of her concern for how the photo might look must have shown, with her hair half done and an unplanned expression on her face, because Monique leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “I’ll make sure they pick a good one. Who wants to share a bad photo with La Lamont?”

  Hair finally done, she moved on to makeup and then she was standing still for the seamstress who was sewing her into her garment. Once that was complete she had no choice but to go on standing. There could be no wrinkles in the sleek layers of blue silk and charmeuse that created Lucius’s empire silhouette negligee. If she stood still she looked almost demure. The Louboutin pumps with their sammy-red bottoms sent a different message when she walked.