“It’s me, Kelly,” Olivia said.
“Ms. Harrington? I thought you were doing a spa day with your mom.”
Olivia didn’t like lying to her assistant, but Kelly was a notorious gossip, and Olivia didn’t want anyone finding out about Michael’s will or her plans to buy the Beaumonts’ shares until things were settled.
“I just called to check in,” she said, “and to let you know that my cell phone got wet so you can’t reach me by that number.”
“What happened? Did you drop it in one of those sea salt soaks? I dropped my cell phone once when I was in the bathtub. It scared the shit out of me. I thought I was either going to be electrocuted or start reading women’s thoughts like Mel Gibson in that movie—what was the title?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t have time to watch movies.”
“You don’t have time for anything. All you do is work, work, work. Which makes absolutely no sense to me. Especially when you’re the boss. If I were you, I’d be going to the spa twice a week. And not with my mother. I’d be taking my hot boyfriend for one of those couples’ massages. And speaking of hot boyfriends, Mr. Calloway came by looking for you and seemed kinda annoyed when I told him you weren’t here.”
Olivia was shocked that Kelly knew about her relationship with Parker. Not that she would call it a relationship. They were more FWOB—Friends with Occasional Benefits. Still, she didn’t want anyone from work knowing about it.
“It’s probably not any of my business,” Kelly continued, “but you need to be careful with clingy guys. I mean, this isn’t the Dark Ages or Fifty Shades. If you want to spend the day with your mom at the spa, or with some other guy, then that shouldn’t be any of his—”
Olivia cut her off. “If Mr. Calloway should come back by, would you please tell him that I’ll call him later. And if there’s nothing else…”
There was a long pause. “Well, I did sorta spill my Diet Coke on the computer, and it sorta quit working. But that lawyer guy you just hired who always has the food stains on his tie—Jason something or other—came by and got it running. I hate to say this, but I think he wants to have sex with me. He got a major hard-on when I bent over to flip the power off. For a second I thought he was going to boink me right there on the desk. Not that I would’ve gone along with it—although he does have pretty eyes.”
Olivia massaged her temples. “Okay, then. If there’s not anything else, I’ll talk to you when I get back.”
“Sure. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Olivia felt that left things wide open. “I’ll try not to.” As soon as she hung up with Kelly, she called her mother. The voice was less friendly, but the morals pretty much the same. Deirdre Beaumont looked at sex as a way to a man’s heart…and his wallet. And for her it had been true. Her beauty and sex appeal had captured the attention of three wealthy husbands in her lifetime. Which was a good thing, since her mother went through money as quickly as she had gone through husbands. Michael had been the one exception. The one man her mother had actually loved. When Michael met her, Deirdre had been in her late forties. Well past her gold-digging prime. Her last husband, Olivia’s father, had disappeared without a trace after bankrupting his company. With no prospect of a rich husband in sight, she and Olivia had been living off credit cards and close friends. Michael had arrived like a knight in shining armor. Something Olivia would always be grateful for.
“Hello, Mother,” Olivia said.
“Olivia? Whose phone are you calling from?” Deirdre didn’t even wait for an answer before she started in. “I cannot tell you the hell I’ve been in since you left. That Frenchwoman you convinced me to invite into my home is nothing but a foulmouthed guttersnipe who will no doubt kill me and the entire staff in our sleep.”
“Stop being dramatic, Mother. Babette is not going to kill anyone. She’s just creative and high-strung.”
“High-strung, yes. Creative, no. I don’t have a clue why you brought her from Paris. You are much more talented than she is.”
Olivia smiled. For all Deirdre’s flaws, she had always been a proud, protective mother. “Thank you, but if I was that good, Michael would’ve had me designing. Babette is considered one of the best lingerie designers in the world.”
“I find that hard to believe. And Michael was always selfish. Even if he liked your designs, he would’ve wanted you helping him, instead of helping Samuel in the design studio. Does Samuel know about Babette?”
“No, not yet. But I plan to tell him soon.”
“I doubt that he’ll be happy. He’s extremely sensitive about his work.”
The head designer wouldn’t be happy that Olivia had hired someone else to design the new line. But she had to do what was best for the company. With sales declining, French Kiss needed fresh blood and new ideas. Babette seemed to have both and had convinced Olivia that adding a collection of men’s underwear was the way to save the company from the brink of bankruptcy.
“Samuel will go along with what’s best for the company,” Olivia said.
Her mother released an exasperated huff. “I cannot understand why you continue to care about the business. And now you’ve talked me into selling the house and investing in your crazy scheme when I should sell it and retire to the French Riviera. And just so you know, I hate having complete strangers trooping through my home at all hours of the day and night.”
“They’re called real estate brokers and prospective buyers, Mother,” Olivia said, “and you don’t have to be there when the house is shown. The broker selling my house calls beforehand.”
“And just where are we going to live if the houses sell at the same time?”
“We’ll rent an apartment downtown. And it won’t be for long. I’m going to get the money from the sale of the house back to you as soon as Babette’s new line starts selling.” Unless it didn’t sell, in which case they would both be in big trouble. “So has Babette been working?”
Deirdre snorted. “Not that I can tell. She spends most of her time in the guest wing eating my imported Swiss chocolate and watching the past seasons of Downton Abbey on demand.”
Olivia really wanted to yell at her mother to light a fire under Babette’s tight French ass. But it wasn’t her mother’s job to keep Babette on task. Olivia was lucky that Deirdre had been willing to keep an eye on the annoying Frenchwoman while she was in Louisiana. Until the new line was finished, Olivia didn’t want anyone knowing about her plans.
“So did you find the Beaumont brothers?” Deirdre asked.
“Yes.” She glanced at the house. “And I don’t think that they’re doing much better than they were when they came to visit years ago.”
“That was certainly a surprise. I didn’t even know Michael had a brother until the ghastly man showed up with his three delinquent sons. Of course Michael never talked about his past…or talked much period.”
Olivia’s stepfather had been a man of few words. Which had worked nicely for an introverted nine-year-old afraid of her own shadow. Michael’s silence and stability had been a welcome relief from her mother’s constant chatter and unreliability. After her father ran off without a word, Michael was the strong, reliable father figure Olivia craved, and he didn’t seem to mind her tagging along behind him, or spending every possible second she could at the corporate offices of French Kiss. She had always struggled in school with her attention deficit disorder, and the company and Michael became her entire world. And when she went off to college, she followed in Michael’s footsteps, majoring in business and marketing, even though she was more interested in design. After college she’d worked side by side with Michael on every new line, marketing idea, and store opening.