Satin Doll by Maggie; Davis Page A

Louvel was a gold mine, a museum, a classic haute couture house that overlooked no painstaking detail. Whoever had run the place in the past had set up an elaborate process to take a mill sample in gray goods like the raw velvet she held between her fingers, and then order a particular color that the finisher, perhaps, would do only for one time, for one particular creation of that season, and only for a select handful of customers. Owning an haute couture design created just for you had to be the ultimate ego trip, Sam was thinking. Wealthy upper-class Frenchwomen of the not-so-distant past had lived for their beautiful clothes and the care they took of their bodies. Parisiennes, Jean Ruiz had told her, had never been famous for natural good looks, but what they had, they made the most of, superlatively.  
    Wasn’t that—she wondered, dropping the velvet swatch on the nearest table—the fulfillment of every woman’s wildest dreams?  
    In the next room they saw whoever was doing the designing for Louvel’s worked from toiles, patterns made from unbleached tailor’s muslin, fitting them either to the client herself or to a jersey-covered dressmaker’s dummy made to her exact specifications. Without Chip to translate, Sam bogged down with Sophie’s English explanations. The cloth patterns were scattered like so many butternut-colored leaves and drifted over the floor of the room.  
    Sam had heard about toiles, but had never seen them. She wanted Sophie to tell her who at Louvel’s could show her the technique, but Sophie only shook her head uncomprehendingly. “Now we see the salon and rooms for fitting,” the model said. “I am ze only mannequin now,” she added, sighing.  
    Sam watched the undulating sway of Sophie’s incomparable bottom under the clinging kimono. The redhead was something of a mystery. The tall, slender model was beautiful enough to be at a top-flight design house anywhere, London, New York, or Paris. She moved well, and she had an exquisitely proportioned, rather bony body perfect for showing clothes. Sophie might be an airhead, she might get stoned during working hours, but the real question was What was she doing here at Louvel’s?  
    They went down the last flight of stairs to the European first floor, one floor up from the street. The atelier women still trailed after them in spite of its being past noon and the end of their Saturday workday, and Chip lounged close behind. As they trooped down the steps Sam could see someone waiting on the landing before the doors to the salon.  
    The handsome, fair-haired Frenchman who’d been there that morning wearing a jogging outfit turned around at the sound of their feet on the marble stairs. Now he was wearing a continental-style gray silk business suit and held a pearl homburg in his hand. The suit was magnificent and so was he, Sam thought, staring. His face lit up when he saw them.  
    “Ah, good,” they heard him murmur. “I was afraid I would miss you somehow.”  
    Sam stopped abruptly on the last step, wondering why he had come back.  
    “Permit me,” he said with charming formality. He spoke American English with almost no trace of an accent. “I am Alain des Baux. I was with my sister in the salon before, do you remember?”  
    Oh, yes, Sam remembered. How could she forget a man who looked the way he did? Whoever he was, Alain des Baux had been fantastic in his jogging Reeboks, but in the gray suit he was mind-boggling.  
    She froze awkwardly as he reached for her right hand and lifted it, holding her fingers lightly curved over his. Then he bent his gilded head and brushed the back of her hand with warm, firm lips.  
    Sam stood stock-still on the marble staircase, caught in sudden, breathless shock. She’d never had her hand kissed before, not even in New York, not even as Sam Laredo. People really did these things, she was telling herself. The elegant pressure of his mouth was so incomparably sensuous it should have