Chapter 12 #2
“Loved it! It was worth all the hard work you and your mother put into it. It was terrific. Have you met my son?” he said innocently, and suddenly Quinn came to life.
She was the designer’s daughter, and just trying to be professional and discreet.
“You and your mother will have to have dinner with us sometime. Things ought to slow down a little now that the show is over.” Eloise laughed at the suggestion.
“Yeah, for about five minutes. She’s busy on Cotton Candy now, and we’re taking that and this collection to Paris to take orders there during Paris Fashion Week. We leave in two weeks. She never stops for long.”
“I’m getting to know that. Maybe we’ll see you there,” Patrick said. They were being jostled by the crowd, and she looked at them both with a friendly expression.
“I’d better rescue my mother. She looks like she’s being eaten alive by the crowd.
It was nice to see you,” she said to Patrick and glanced at his son, “and nice to meet you,” and then, clutching her clipboard, she disappeared into the crowd.
The two men found their way off the stage, and Patrick smiled at Quinn on the way out.
“You looked like you needed a helping hand.” He grinned at him, and Quinn looked sheepish.
“I didn’t know what to say to her, I couldn’t figure out if she was the designer’s daughter or not. Let’s take them both to dinner sometime.”
“Ah, so we’re now a father and son act,” Patrick teased him.
“Maybe I will come to Paris with you. That might really be fun.” Quinn had dated several French models, and had been to Paris Fashion Week before, and gone to some of the shows when his dates were in them.
“You’d better be nice to me if you expect me to introduce you to my women friends’ daughters.” That had never happened before.
“Not women, or daughters, just that one. She’s got a nice real look, not all the phony crap that goes with models. And most of them are teenagers, too young for me.”
“I suspect you’re in a much better position to know about models than I am. I haven’t dated a model in about twenty years.”
“You’ve moved up in the world, Dad. You’re dating designers. Maybe I’m ready for the next step too.” They left each other outside the venue, and they both went back to their offices smiling. They’d had a good time.
—
Patrick spent the night with Eugenia that night at his house, since Eloise was still staying with her.
It was the first relaxed evening they’d had in weeks. Now that the show was over she could breathe again, and she hadn’t fallen asleep at dinner.
“Guess who I introduced my son to today,” he said, and she couldn’t guess. “Eloise. We saw her when I was looking for you backstage. He was very taken with her. He thinks we should go to dinner together sometime. What do you think?”
“I’d love to meet him, and have dinner with him.
But Eloise is unpredictable and not very social.
She works so hard, she rarely goes out, though now that she’s working for me for a little while, she’s not working quite as hard.
She’s very shy and she gets anxious. Daphne tried to introduce her to people for years and finally gave up.
Eloise just turned thirty, and I think she’s perfectly happy staying single forever. ”
“She’s so beautiful, that’s a terrible waste.
She looks just like you. He even said he might come to Paris with me, if I go to see you.
” She smiled at the idea of introducing their children to each other.
Usually those attempts were never successful, and children usually hated their parents’ friends.
She’d tried when they were younger, unsuccessfully.
“You’re welcome to try. It would be fun if they like each other, and it might be a nice introduction for Quinn to meet the others.” She’d been thinking about it lately and Patrick liked the idea. He liked her children, and Eloise might be a nice friend for Quinn, if nothing else.
They had a good time talking to each other that night, since they’d had so few opportunities to see each other for the past two weeks, between the wedding and the show.
He was getting to know her. She was going to take her two new lines to Paris and take orders there, and be busy again. She was a moving target.
“I like the idea of coming to Paris, by the way,” Patrick said to her, but he didn’t want to crowd her when she was working. “Would you have time to see me?” He didn’t want to bother her if she was too busy. He knew what that was like, and wanted to be respectful of her commitments.
“It won’t be as crazy there, since I’m not doing a show, just a presentation in our sales office. It would be fun to see you,” she said, and kissed him.
“Then maybe I’ll come,” he said, pensive. They held each other close when they fell asleep that night after they made love. He had missed her while she was so busy, but now he had Paris to look forward to.
—
They had breakfast together the next day, after making love again in the morning.
They were well suited and had a great time in bed.
At breakfast, Patrick was reading The Wall Street Journal and Eugenia was reading The New York Times on her iPad when she stopped and stared at a photograph and read the headline above it.
She looked up at Patrick in astonishment.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.” She handed him her iPad and he stared too, and then he whistled, read the article, looked up at her, and said, “Wow!”
“Holy shit, Patrick. Now what do I do?”
“You exercise your morals clause,” he said simply.
Austin Wylie had been indicted on federal charges for selling missiles, automatic weapons, and other comparable weapons of destruction to three countries in the Middle East, and two in Africa, all of whom were hostile to the United States.
“You know, I always had a feeling about him. I thought there was something smoky about his oil business. He was too rich just for oil. I figured he was doing something illegal. This is exactly what I thought. I’m shocked but not surprised. ”
“Do I have to give him back his money?” Eugenia looked suddenly disappointed.
“I need that money, Patrick. Things are going well, but I’m not back where I was yet.
I’m trying to rebuild my business, and I can do it with the twenty million he gave me.
Without that, I’m going to be broke again. What do I do?”
“You can’t keep tainted money to run your business,” he said wisely. “That will come back to haunt you at just the wrong time, and you could lose everything. They could accuse you of knowing where it came from, laundering money, or being part of the deal.”
“Shit. When do I have to give it back?”
“Soon. Now. You have to register your displeasure with him, and publicly refuse to do business with a dangerous criminal. He’ll go to prison for this.
The faster you give him his money back, the better for you.
” Patrick thought for a moment and looked at her.
He trusted her completely and he dealt in much bigger amounts than what Wylie had loaned her.
“I can loan you twenty million for a while, until you find new investors.”
“I’ll have money after Paris, but not twenty million. I don’t want to take money from you, and I don’t know when I could pay you back.”
“You need to find investors to replace him. Just know that if you need me to cover you for a while, I can.”
“Thank you.” She was genuinely touched. It was a very generous offer.
She thought about it on her way to work, and called Stefano when she got to the office, telling him her dilemma. “Patrick’s right,” he said to her. “That’s liable to turn into a really dangerous mess, Mom. Who knows what else he was selling? Military secrets, whatever he can get his hands on.”
“I thought he was harmless,” she said.
“Well, clearly he’s not.”
“Patrick was uncomfortable about him all along.”
“He’s a smart guy,” Stef said. “And he’s right, you need to give Wylie his money back.
He’s going to need it for lawyers. But unfortunately, I don’t know anyone I think would invest in the fashion industry.
No one’s ever asked me for that.” Eugenia had taken out two loans during the pandemic, and she didn’t want to add more debt to her books.
Another investor was the only way. But who?
“You know, Mom, you should talk to Liz. I know you were uncomfortable about her at first, but she’s really smart, and she likes you, and she knows all kinds of investors.
She’s much better at networking than I am,” he said.
Eugenia hated to call Liz after all the things she and the girls had said about her.
She felt like such a hypocrite. But without Austin’s money, she was still at risk of losing her business, and things were going so well, heading in the right direction.
And if she got big orders in Paris for her new lines, she wouldn’t be able to produce them without more money, if she had to give Wylie back his.
With some trepidation, she called Liz, who listened to what she had to say. She expected Liz to tell her to get lost. Instead, she stunned her mother-in-law, and leapt into action. She was more than willing to help her.
“Give me a few days,” she said to Eugenia.
“I’m going to shake the trees and see what I can come up with.
I have some ideas.” She didn’t hesitate for a minute.
She dove right into the deep end of the pool to save Eugenia and her business.
Stef was right. And Eugenia was grateful for her efforts, even if she didn’t find any investors.
Liz promised to call her by the end of the week, which sounded too fast and unrealistic to Eugenia.
She called her banker and lawyer after that, and arranged to return Austin’s twenty million by the next day, without penalty, just as their contract said, thanks to Patrick’s good advice.