Fleur De Lies by Maddy Hunter Page A

French. Solange had screamed It’s you as if in that moment she had somehow recognized him.

five
    “My suggestion about the makeup demonstration was such a hit.” Jackie sat at the mirrored vanity in my cabin, applying gloss with a Mona Michelle lipstick wand. “If we could figure out a way to have more home visits, I’d make a killing. And you know what that would mean. Hel-looo , pink Porsche.”
    I slid into the strappy heels that elevated my little black dress to dinnerwear status. “Goes to show what I know. I take back what I said about your idea being tacky.”
    “You’re forgiven. I don’t expect someone who specializes in old people to know anything about product testing on upwardly mobile target groups.”
    Our boat was moored in a tidal estuary of the Seine, tied up alongside a granite quay in the river port of Honfleur, a picturesque town whose architectural design illustrated the passage of time from the Middle Ages—with its half-timber houses, cobbled lanes, and cramped alleyways—to the Renaissance, with its tall, slate-fronted tenements shouldered rooftop to rooftop around an inner harbor that had been “newly” excavated a brief four hundred years ago. My balcony faced Honfleur’s main boulevard—a long stretch of road flanked by upscale wood and brick apartments on one side, a grassy esplanade on the other, and a noisy stream of horn-tooting traffic in between.
    “So what products did you showcase in your demonstration?” I asked, surprised that the toothsome trio had given their blessing to anything Jackie had suggested.
    “Everything! We did makeovers. Complete makeovers! When our hostess found out what the four of us did for a living, she begged us to share our expertise with her family, so we gave all the Roussel women miracle makeovers. Really, Emily, properly applied face powder can make all the difference in a woman’s life.”
    It took me a moment to peel back the layers of what she’d just said to understand the gist of what had actually happened. “So the four of you didn’t charge through the door with Mona Michelle con cealer sticks in hand, all prepped to turn eager faces from ordinary to extraordinary? Your hostess had to sweet-talk you into it?”
    She stared at my reflected image in the mirror, eyes thoughtful. “ Ewww . Very nice. Turning a face from ordinary to extraordinary. Can I borrow that?”
    “You can have it if you’ll answer my question.”
    She swiveled around on her stool, looking a bit twitchy and awkward. “Okay. The girls threw major hissy fits that I was inviting them to actually work during our home visit, and they hated my idea about an international arm of Mona Michelle. They think do mestic sales is where the action is. To quote Krystal, ‘If it ain’t broke, it’s not broken.’”
    Actually, considering the source, that was pretty profound.
    “So they nixed my suggestion about makeup demonstrations for the host family, but after Mrs. Roussel came up with the very same idea, they were totally on board! I was so touched, Emily. Believe me, it takes a lot of character to execute a complete one-eighty in the space of an hour. Not everyone can do it with such style, but the girls are so anxious to please, they made it look easy.”
    She cast puppy dog eyes on me. “You’re one of my best friends, Emily, so don’t take this the wrong way, but Bobbi, Krystal, and Dawna? They’re like … the sisters I never had.”
    A chorus of digital dings chimed overhead before a man’s voice floated out from the cabin intercom. “Ladies and gentleman, the restaurant doors are now open.”
    As if on cue, we heard a host of doors slam in the corridor. A low rumble of voices. High-pitched laughter.
    Jackie capped her lipstick wand and sprang to her feet. “Hey, the boat’s moving.”
    As she hurried onto my balcony to watch the boat ease away from the quay, I crossed the floor to check my hair and makeup in the vanity mirror. “So how many makeovers did