Her words were almost lost as the music increased in volume.
“One of my enterprising employees,” Elena replied.
A lime-green spotlight slashed a line up the stage and back. The limelight? Literally? How Véronique.
“You mean one of your ex-employees, surely? I was under the impression you fired her, almost a week ago, if industry gossip is to be believed.”
Elena frowned into the darkness, wondering who the stool pigeon was. “Madeleine wished to seek new opportunities.”
“Not quite how I heard it, dear.” A bony hand lightly patted her wrist. “If she’d been one of mine, I’d never have let her go. In fact, I even offered her a job.”
Anger surged. Elena snatched back her hand and folded it in her lap, well out of reach. The music drowned out any possibility of further talk. Elena had an irrational urge to rip the woman’s large, pretentious Chanel sunglasses off her smug face. It was night, for heaven’s sake. Instead, she gave an indifferent sniff and turned back to the catwalk, fixating on Emmanuelle’s job offer. Had Madeleine taken it?
As the first model pranced out, she returned to wondering something else. Where on earth was she?
* * *
Véronique Duchamp really did know how to put on a show, Elena decided. The zoo theme was well executed, with models in sparkling, geometric animal heads lurking and prowling around fake bushes along the edges of the platform, as other models swished along the catwalk. Nature sounds and wildlife calls could be heard behind the stirring beats.
Towards the show’s end, the purpose of the trapeze became clear when a svelte, leotard-dressed “monkey” swung down, snatched an exotic, floppy hat off one model, and, on the return trajectory, with perfect precision, plopped it on the head of the model following behind her. Neither model flinched at the aerial antics inches from their heads, while the crowd clapped its delight.
“Superb,” Perry said in an awed whisper. “I think Véronique was a Broadway choreographer in another life.”
Elena afforded him a small smile. The sweeping spotlights began to converge on one point, and a voice-over announced the pièce de résistance. Elena, Emmanuelle, and Perry all edged forward as the music built to a crescendo. Véronique always saved the best to last. She had never disappointed in three decades.
The spotlight captured and slid down a female form, revealing more and more. Her face was in darkness, but the dress was lit up ethereally. The gown was gorgeous—a swirl of wafting material so fine it seemed to flow over the body like liquid. The crowd broke into applause. All except for Elena, whose focus was on the model’s form, not her couture.
There were no jutting collar bones, angular elbows, or sharp hips. This woman had a slightly fuller shape for a model, and an actual bust. That, in itself, was both unexpected and appealing. Elena appreciated soft, subtle curves like these a great deal. The model also accentuated the fluid dress as though she and its fine drapings were always meant to be as one. The woman’s gait, however, was not precise or bold; her feet were not plucked up deliberately like a dressage horse and then drilled down. No, her walk was steady, almost leisurely, like someone strolling along the beach with a hat in one hand and not a care in the world.
Elena arched a brow. Did Véronique want the room to know: this model is you? You could wear this? Was that it? It would explain the body shape too. Elena marvelled at the cheekiness of Véronique in thumbing her nose at convention yet again.
As she watched the woman’s feet, encased in slender, white heels (Giuseppe Zanotti, perhaps?), she saw the faintest wobble they made each time the model planted her heels. They weren’t even that high. Elena stared in confusion. And then it hit her. This was not a model.
The spotlight began to rise up the woman’s body. She felt Perry stiffen beside her, suck in a harsh breath, and whisper “Ah!”
Before Elena could ask him why, the woman reached the end of her saunter and looked straight at her, just as the spotlight fully lit up the model’s features.
Elena froze at the sight of a face she had come to look forward to seeing every day. It took her a moment to process the impossible image. Why would Madeleine be on the catwalk? Was she imagining it? Before she could make sense of that, the model did the unthinkable. She smiled. It was not just any smile. But a wide smile that was as dazzling as it was out of place on any runway in the world. She seemed unaware she was even doing it.
Felicity’s horrified squeak behind her was drowned out by the collective gasp of the room at the unexpected faux pas. To her left, Perry clapped his hand over his eyes and groaned softly. It was a smile so familiar to Elena that it made her heart clench to see it again. She could only stare back in astonishment at Madeleine Grey, her ungainly, awkward, constantly embarrassed former assistant, draped in a gown so exquisite she could pass as a goddess. She looked luminescent under the beautiful lighting, her eyes shining.
Elena swept her gaze over the stunning woman. That was what she was, she now realised. Hidden under all those ridiculous grunge clothes had been a woman of such beauty she now stole Elena’s breath. She sat speechless, as she drank in the sight of her. Desire coiled inside her, sharp and dangerous, begging her for something she had never dared think about.
And she finally understood.
Madeleine was not her friend. Not like Perry. It wasn’t normal to feel this way for a friend. It wasn’t normal to want to dust your fingertips over a friend’s body and map it the way she suddenly had a burning urge to do to Madeleine’s. She savoured the sight of her. Her Madeleine. The woman she…felt deeply for.
This could never happen, a tiny voice of reason whispered to her. Of course it couldn’t. For so many reasons.
She crushed the inner voice and drank in the sight of her, clapping hard now, along with the rest of the crowd. The cold, constant ache in her heart at missing this woman so much eased for the first time in a week.
How had she ever thought she could let her go? Not once, but twice?
The roar of the crowd and its drumming, loud applause faded out, and she could only feel the blood thundering in her ears at this most unexpected development. Her lips parted for a ragged in-pull of breath, then an equally uneven exhalation, as Madeleine did a jaunty hip swish when she turned.
Breathtaking.
Her heart thundered its approval. Elena heard one awed word, cutting through the background din.
“Oh.”
It came from her own lips.
CHAPTER 27
Afterglow
Relief flooded Maddie. Under the spotlight, she paused, holding the pose as Natalii had shown her, her head straight, as the cameras flashed and shutters clicked. Even in the semi-darkness, she felt the presence of Elena, her gaze pinning her in place. Her former boss’s lips were parted, and Maddie’s pulse pounded even harder than it already was.
The music shifted—her cue to finish her walk. She pivoted and headed back up the runway. Maddie focused on keeping her toe straight and planted (“It is all in the toes, oui?”), leaning slightly back and sashaying her hips just a tiny bit. She’d love to have seen Elena’s reaction to that bit of sass.
A whoosh from overhead announced the trapeze “monkey” was back, and she forced herself not to react as a solid weight dropped on her head. This dazzling, blue-jewelled crown was insured for $300,000, Natalii had informed her earlier, much to her dismay. She prayed it wouldn’t slide off.
Seven more steps. Six. Five.
The crowd erupted, as Véronique stepped out from behind the curtain at the back of the runway and gave her an approving smile.
Two steps left. One.
