Australian Fashion Week was coming up, and Elena had demanded a splash so big that the world, not just Sydney, would notice that her pet publication was a premium fashion magazine.
“Madeleine,” Elena called softly.
“Yes, Elena?” She dashed into the office, with a notebook and pen poised.
“She’s coming. It’s confirmed.” Elena’s eyes were bright, and she was almost vibrating with energy.
“Oh-kay.”
“Véronique Duchamp,” Elena said, sounding impatient, “has confirmed as the headline designer, opening for Australian Fashion Week. So this is it.” She rapped a fingernail on her desk. “We need her. This is the answer to our sales slide. Style Sydney needs an exclusive interview with her.”
“Okay.” That didn’t sound so hard. She could call Lucy in Editorial and tell her to…
“Madeleine!”
She stopped scribbling and looked up.
Elena shook her head as though she were dim-witted. “Véronique is a prickly designer who has granted no one an interview in thirty years. Thirty. Years. And yet her fashion has been world leading for almost all that time.”
Maddie frowned. This was far more than a little problem to solve.
“Such an interview would be a game changer for us.” Elena tapped her chin with her index finger. “We need to get her attention. We need to stand out from the rivals. CQ will also be trying every trick in the book to get their own exclusive. They’ve been desperate for an interview for decades. That must not happen.” She grimaced. “Lecoq will be coming for Australian Fashion Week this year, now that Véronique’s confirmed she’ll be here.”
“Oh.” Maddie wrote furiously, a little surprised Elena had even said the woman’s name. She usually avoided it. “How do you propose we…?”
“Flowers. She loves them. Send so many that even Véronique can’t ignore them. Something expensive—send them to her home in Paris. Martine will know the address.” She waved her hand. “Make it happen.”
Maddie scurried off, musing over the odd look in Elena’s eyes. Funnily enough, it constituted the happiest she had ever seen her boss. Her killer instinct was being stoked. It was…irritatingly attractive.
After returning to her desk, Maddie emailed Martine for Véronique’s address and then called up the site of the French floral boutique that Bartell Corp had an account with. A soft ping announced Martine’s reply. Maddie opened the incoming email and copied out the address. She flicked back to her online cart and pasted in the address, as she remembered how thrilled Elena looked. Post-orgasmic even. The thought made her swallow.
She caught herself. This was so bad. Maddie was crushing on her boss. A boss who treated her like every other PA she’d ever had. To Elena, Maddie was clearly just a pair of arms for fetching tea or proofs. Sighing, she stabbed, over and over, the nine button on the Nombre nécessaire box on her flower order.
Despite how pathetic she felt about her secret desires, Maddie hadn’t been able to tear her eyes off her boss. Since Elena had fired Style Sydney’s editor-in-chief, Jana Macy, she was now filling in, doing Macy’s job herself on top of everything else. It was fascinating to watch her shift in focus to fashion—as well as trying to save something, rather than shutting it down. Perry was right. Elena was born for fashion. The corporate raiding and empire building was just a numbers game she liked to win. But here, in the cut and thrust of a style magazine, actually running it, hands on, Elena Bartell came alive.
There seemed to be nothing Elena didn’t know about the process. From the designers to the layouts, she was across all of it, and the staff at Style Sydney knew it. They snapped to attention when she lifted the bar with her incisive demands. There was no faking her expertise. Among her Style staff she was a goddess.
When they gushed about her, her ideas, her genius, Maddie would say nothing. What did she know about fashion? She spent a lot of time nodding. Every now and then, Elena would enter the room and catch her glazed expression while the staff was discussing “peplum inspiration” or “material viscosity”. Elena’s look always contained equal parts of amusement and mockery.
It was hard to let go of that nagging voice telling Maddie that maybe all of this was Elena toying with her, and she was playing a long game Maddie hadn’t yet figured out. And yet, just when her distrust had reached its peak of paranoia, she found two emails while cleaning out and sorting Elena’s secondary email account.
Dear Ms/Mr E.B., Your donation of $10,000 is making a difference. Campaign: Ramel Brooks Lawyer Fund. Thank you.
The next email, issued less than two minutes later, announced that the Ramel Brooks Lawyer Fund had reached, and exceeded, its target amount. It was dated the day Elena had fired Maddie. She stared at the email for a good five minutes. Gratitude washed over her. Her boss had transformed the young man’s life. Any quality lawyer could crush the prosecution’s feeble case, so Ramel would be off to college as planned. He’d even have plenty of money left over for textbooks.
Yet no one would ever know who did this.
That donation wasn’t a unique event, either. Maddie had so far stumbled across paperwork for anonymous donations to a women’s shelter, a Polish inner-city community centre and its youth basketball team, and a receipt for bail money to free a group of transgender activists in North Carolina who’d been arrested protesting prohibitive bathroom laws.
If that wasn’t unexpected enough, there was the incident last week. On Maddie’s birthday, a cupcake was sitting on her desk when she arrived at work. Red velvet. No card. No note. Just that. It looked eerily familiar. She sniffed it. Oh. No wonder. She smiled and made a call.
“Hi, Mum, I just wanted to thank—”
“Darling! Happy birthday! I was just going to call to check you’re still coming over tonight. Simon will be here and your brother, too. I’ll be cooking that Moroccan dish you love. And my famous sponge for your cake. Yes?”
“Definitely.” Maddie was drooling all over her desk. “I mean if I get out of work on time.”
“Pssh, don’t worry about that. You will.”
Maddie stared at her phone in confusion. Then she remembered her reason for calling. “Thanks for the cupcake. Red velvet—my fave! Looks as delicious as ever.”
“Don’t thank me, I just took the order.”
“What?”
“Of course we don’t normally take orders for a single cupcake, but when she said who it was for, well, you’re a special case. Your brother dropped it off on the way through. Chris had to go into the city anyway.”
“Um, she who?” Maddie felt baffled by the entire conversation. “Who ordered it?”
“Your boss, of course. Didn’t she say? She rang to find out your preferred cake and order it for your birthday.”
Maddie was definitely hearing things. “Elena? Elena Bartell ordered this? For me, personally? And she knows it’s my birthday? I never told her.”
“Oh yes. And she knew—wouldn’t it be in your file or something? Anyway, she obviously appreciates you, and she sounded lovely. We talked a little bit. Bonded over dogs, of all things. You know how I love rare breeds. She has a Cirneco dell’Etna, did you know that? I’d love to see it one day.”
“Dogs.”
“Anyway, I explained tonight’s plans for you, and she promised not to keep you. She said she’d make sure you’d be free. So, seven?”
