Marie muttered something in French, which Grant had one time translated loosely as “horsefeathers.”
“Regardless, I don’t want you to give this to me, Marie. The design is wonderful, and if we could use a less expensive fabric-”
“I will never use the design again. Never. Oh, that man.” Marie, huffing, flopped back in her chair, five feet two inches of steam and energy.
“Grant loved the design,” Greer mentioned.
“He does not appreciate me. He has never appreciated me. I sent all the way to Bordeaux for that lace…”
“Which you knew ahead of time would make the negligee impossibly expensive.”
“And I told Barney I wanted satin. Not this-” She picked up the white camisole that Greer had placed on the desk and pushed it to the floor again. “Not like satin. Not wash-and-wear. I am so tired of wash-and-wear fabrics I could scream. I hate fake. Real satin must be treated like a baby; it requires a lot of trouble, a lot of time, but then! Then, when you see what it does next to a woman’s skin…”
“But that also brought up the price,” Greer reminded her gently.
Marie wasn’t paying attention. “I wanted to create something it would take courage to wear. A little daring. Real élan.”
“Would you wear it yourself?” Greer questioned.
Marie glanced at Greer in surprise. “Of course I would not wear it myself. I would look flat like a wall if I put that on. It would trail on the floor after me as if I were a little girl playing dress-up. You think I am stupid? You think I’ve kept Grant in my life by being stupid? He knows what he’s got when the lights are out, but when they’re still on, my darling, he can’t be sure. A little subtle padding, a few carefully sewn tucks, a flounce here and a bow there to distract him from what I don’t have.”
“That’s exactly why your designs are so brilliant, Marie,” Greer said soothingly, tactfully not mentioning that one didn’t divorce a man for whom one was willing to resort to such deviousness. “You have a gift for hiding a woman’s worst points and accenting her best. Exactly why we’ve been so successful. Grant was just telling Barney that yesterday.”
“Grant,” Marie scoffed. “My husband knows nothing. Nothing.” She hesitated. “He said that, though?”
“He said that.”
“I am not forgiving him for that negligee not being on the cover.”
“Of course you aren’t.” Greer unconsciously fingered the pink satin negligee before carefully placing it on the chair and moving toward the door. “He was upstairs with the girls yesterday. There was something wrong with one of the sewing machines; Rachel said it was usable, but Grant told her to forget it-that you’d find one stitch out of place. He told her you were a perfectionist…and that if she didn’t feel the same way, the door was available to her.”
“I am a perfectionist,” Marie said proudly.
“Of course you are.”
“That Rachel…she can be careless if I’m not looking right over her shoulder every minute.”
“I think that’s why Grant made a special trip up here while you were out with that cold.”
“Hmm.” Marie’s eyes narrowed as Greer took another step backward. “Take the negligee, take it, take it. Stop fussing. You know I meant for you to have it.”
“Marie-”
“Take that thing. Immediately.” Marie waved at the negligee, and then briskly stood, picked up the garment and pushed it into Greer’s arms again. As an afterthought, she reached up to press a kiss on both Greer’s cheeks in the French way. “You are a good friend. I want you to have it, and wear it for a very special man, yes? It suits you exactly. I knew the minute I thought of the design.” She added, “And when I divorce Grant, I will start my own business and you will come with me. We will make our own firm. All women. No men. Not one.”
Later, Greer was working in her office on ad copy, the negligee folded carefully and out of sight, when Grant paused in her doorway, nervously tightening his tie.
“Safe,” she said shortly.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Twenty minutes after that, Marie and Grant passed her office on the way out. Greer suppressed a grin. It was only three in the afternoon, yet she knew the two were leaving for the day, and not for business. Their arguments inevitably ended the same way, and Greer had no doubts that they would both come in yawning the next day.
She returned to her work and barely lifted her head again until five. The ad copy was done, and sales figures took the rest of the afternoon. She’d started a study months before on colors related to sales in lingerie. Women assumed men considered black and red sexy, and yet the men who bought lingerie for their wives invariably picked out white. Pastels appeared to confuse men so that they had difficulty choosing, but women always had a favorite soft color they adopted for their own. Putting that all together and making recommendations to Grant was part of Greer’s job.
By the time she’d cleared her desk and grabbed her raincoat and purse, she’d almost convinced herself she’d forgotten the negligee. She hesitated and then pushed open the cardboard box, fingering the delicate satin and lace wistfully.
How many studies had she done on lingerie in the past five years? And all of them had led to the same conclusion: Women bought beautiful lingerie to make a statement for them: Hold me, warm me, I need to be touched. A woman had a secret wish to be pampered, a wish that she couldn’t say out loud and that she didn’t want to say out loud.
The negligee would have been all wrong for the cover of Love Lace, but not for reasons Greer could have explained to the men. The pink satin whispered, I am a strong sexual woman, and I don’t mind singing it from the rooftops. Wearing this negligee would require confidence. Confidence in one’s own sexuality, confidence and enough courage to flaunt one’s sexuality, to entice, to boldly seduce. Few women had that kind of confidence.
Or is it you, Greer? she thought absently. Maybe you were expressing your own insecurities when you rejected that design for the catalog cover. Maybe other women feel perfectly free to play the aggressor in a sexual relationship. This is hardly the nineteenth century…maybe the problem lies in you.
She closed the box, slid it under her arm and picked up her purse again. She would tuck the negligee away in a drawer at home. She took it anyway.
Ryan’s embrace had preyed on her mind all day. His neighborly embrace. The man disturbed her. Cream lace on pink satin disturbed her.
Going home to clean out the cat’s litter box was the best method she knew of clearing the mind of disturbing fancies.
Following that, she had a date with Daniel. Come to think of it, Ryan had been listening when she’d made that date, the first night she’d met her neighbor.
Greer banished Ryan from her mind. Thinking about Daniel was safer. Daniel was a sweetie. And Daniel wouldn’t arouse pink-satin daydreams in anyone’s mind.
Chapter Five
The bra felt just a smidgen tight around her left breast. Greer sucked in her ribs on an inhale, and twisted on the exhale. It helped. Peering at her reflection in her dresser mirror, she was relieved to see that the lopsided fit of the bra didn’t show. Her dress was a sheath of royal blue with a mandarin collar and gold embroidery from neckline to hem in back. The Chinese style made her figure look almost petite. Beneath the dress, she was wearing a violet half-slip and a new bra that was one of Marie’s best-selling designs-except for this particular castoff. The seamstress had made one cup slightly smaller than the other.