The Matchmaker's Gift(15)
Abby smiled. “You’re not the first and you definitely won’t be the last. In five years, every college kid who watched The Firm is going to want to be a tax lawyer like Tom Cruise.”
Will threw his head back and laughed. “Wait until they find out what it’s really like.”
“Here’s to the tax lawyers,” Abby said, clinking her glass of wine against his.
* * *
Abby woke the next morning with a pounding headache—the side effect of two glasses of wine on an empty stomach. It was an inauspicious start to a frustrating morning, in which she managed not only to put a run in her last pair of stockings but also to misplace the key to her apartment. She arrived at the office fifteen minutes later than usual, and although it wasn’t yet eight thirty, a message from Diane was already waiting, scrawled on a Post-it, stuck to Abby’s desk: Come see me.
Abby pulled her damp hair into a ponytail and rushed down the hall to Diane’s office. Diane kept her waiting awkwardly in the doorway before finally acknowledging her and waving her inside.
“I have something for you,” Diane announced. She gestured to the flat, square box on her desk—heavy navy cardboard etched with silver foil stars, the word éTOILE engraved across the top. “It’s a scarf from Victor’s summer collection,” Diane said. “Like I told you, he notices everything.” She gestured to her own pink-and-white bouclé suit, with two separate rows of silver buttons. “This is from his collection as well.” She tilted her head and examined Abby’s outfit—a nondescript, pale gray suit and a white cotton blouse with a Peter Pan collar. “I don’t think the scarf will go with that shirt—what if you tie it around your ponytail instead? Don’t worry, he’ll see it. That man doesn’t miss a thing.”
The only scarves Abby owned were the ones her mother knit for her—thick, cozy wraps made of brightly colored yarn. The scarf in the box was something else entirely—a finely stitched wisp of sky-blue silk, adorned with silver and pearly white swirls. “It’s beautiful,” Abby said, tying it to her hair. “I’ll return it at the end of the day.”
“No need,” Diane said. “Keep it in the office for Victor’s next visit. We’ll be seeing a lot of him before we wrap this thing up.”
“How much of him could we possibly see?” Abby asked. “I thought the wedding was the first week in September.”
“It is,” Diane answered. “That means he has two months to torture us. I certainly hope you’re up to it.”
* * *
Victor’s fiancée was twenty-five years old, but she was dressed more like a teenage girl, in loose, ripped jeans and combat boots. She had the unmistakable build of a fashion model—impossibly tall and inconceivably thin, with a heart-shaped face and doe-like eyes. Both her lawyer and her mother had accompanied her to the meeting, but it was clear that Nicole Blanchard was the one in charge. Abby could not reconcile Nicole’s mother—the round, bland face and the frumpy attire—with the stunning and spirited sylphlike creature to whom she had apparently given birth.
Victor arrived separately, ten minutes later, carrying chocolate croissants from a French bakery that Abby had never heard of before. He was ruggedly handsome, tan and fit, a cross between Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford. His jacket was tailored to fit his burly frame, and his suede loafers (no socks) looked so soft that it took all of Abby’s willpower not to lean down and touch them. Victor kissed his future mother-in-law on both cheeks and drew his fiancée into an airtight embrace. Finally, he crossed the room toward Diane, reached for her hand, and kissed it.
Before Victor would allow them to begin, he insisted that everyone try a croissant. The six of them gathered around the ten-foot-long table anchored in the center of the conference room. While Diane’s secretary brought everyone coffee, Victor passed out the pastries himself. “These are Nicky’s favorite,” he said, his slight French accent noticeable mostly in the cadence of his speech and the clouding of his r’s. “The best chocolate croissants in the city.” Abby caught Diane checking her watch, but her boss did not interrupt.
As the six of them sipped coffee and picked at the croissants, Abby learned that Nicole grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, and that she’d been “discovered” by a scout during a Christmas shopping trip to Grand Chute. At the age of seventeen, Nicole moved to New York, where she eventually signed with the Ford Models agency. The first time she met Victor, she was twenty-one years old, walking the runway at one of his shows.
“Who could look at that face and not fall in love?” he said. And while Abby understood that he might be playing the part of the fashion designer besotted with his muse, she noticed something that caught her by surprise—when Victor looked at Nicole, his eyes lit up. As unlikely as it seemed, Abby got the overwhelming sense that he truly cared for her. Victor étoile, Abby decided, was a decidedly multifaceted man. He ran an international, multimillion-dollar empire. Reports from various sources (including Diane) painted him as a hard-hitting businessman. Yet, here he sat, with crumbs of chocolate on his shirt, staring at Nicole like a schoolboy with a crush.
When they were through with the niceties, Diane began. “I am thrilled that we could begin today in such a cordial manner. Our goal, of course, is to draft an agreement that will protect everyone’s best interests. We want to make this process as painless as we can. Soon enough, you’ll be walking down the aisle, and this prenuptial agreement will be in a drawer somewhere, forgotten.”