Danielle Steel - Zoya

He thought about it, and then looked at her as they arrived at the apartment. “Sometimes it's hard to step back in time, sweetheart. Why don't you do something new?” Like what, she asked herself. All she knew was dancing and dresses, and dancing was certainly out of the question. She laughed to herself as they walked into the apartment, and he turned to look at her. She was so beautiful with her creamy skin and brilliant eyes and bright red hair. She still looked like a young girl and the sight of her always filled him with desire. She didn't look old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son, as she sat down in a chair and laughed as she looked up at him, handsome in the dinner jacket he wore. He had had it made in London, much to his mother's disgust. “Your father could have made you one better.”

“What's funny?”

“Just a crazy thought … I was remembering when I danced at Fitzhugh's. It was so awful, Simon. … I hated it so much.”

“Somehow I can't quite see you, shaking your bottom and swinging your pearls,” he laughed at the vision but his heart went out to her too. She had been so brave through all that she'd been through. He was only sorry he hadn't known her then. He would have married her and saved her from all that. She didn't need saving now, she was capable and strong. He was almost tempted to take her into his business with him, but knew his family would have been horrified. She didn't belong on Seventh Avenue. She belonged in a far more elite world, and then suddenly he had a thought. He poured himself a glass of cognac, and opened a bottle of champagne for her as they sat by the fire and talked. “Why don't you open your own shop?”

“Like Axelle's?” She looked intrigued, but she liked the idea, and then she thought of her friend and shook her head. “That wouldn't be fair to Axelle. I don't want to compete with her.” Axelle had been too good to her to hurt her now, but Simon had other ideas in mind.

“Then do something different.”

“Like what?”

“Do everything, women's wear, men's, maybe even some children's. But only the best, all that stuff you do so well. A whole look … shoes and bags and hats … teach people how to dress, not just the fancy ones like the women who go to Axelle's, but the others too, the ones with money who don't know how to put it all together.” The women she had dressed at Axelle's were surely the best dressed in New York, but most of them also went to Paris for their clothes, like Lady Mendl, and Doris Duke, and Wallis Simpson. “You could start small, and then add to it as you go along. You could even sell my coats!” He laughed, and she looked up at him thoughtfully, sipping her champagne. She liked the idea, and then she glanced up at him with a serious question.

“Could we afford it?” She knew he did well, but she had no idea how much capital he had. It was something they never discussed. They had more than enough for the life they led, but his parents were still living on Houston Street, and she knew that he supported them, and all his father's brothers. He looked at her gently then, and sat down next to her.

“Maybe it's time we had a serious talk about all this.”

She blushed as she shook her head. She didn't really want to know. But if she were to open a store of her own, perhaps she had to. “Simon, I don't want to pry. Your business is your own.”

“No, my love. It's yours now too, and it does very well. Extremely well.” He told her what he had made the previous year and she stared at him in amazement.

“Are you serious?”

“Well,” he apologized, not understanding the look of shock in her eyes, “we could have done better if I'd ordered all the cashmeres I wanted in England. I don't know why I held back, next season I won't,” he explained as she laughed openly at him.

“Are you crazy? I don't think the Bank of England handled that much money last year. Simon, that's incredible! But I thought … I mean, your parents …” This time he laughed at her. “My mother wouldn't leave Houston Street if you took her out of there at gunpoint. She loves it.” All of Simon's attempts to move them to a more luxurious apartment uptown had been unsucessful. His mother liked her friends, the shops where she did her marketing, and the neighborhood itself. She had moved to the Lower East Side when she had come to New York a generation before, and she was going to die there. “I think my father would get a kick out of moving uptown. But my mother won't let him.” The woman still wore housedresses, and took pride in only having one “good” coat. But she could have bought every coat at Axelle's if she wanted.

“What are you doing with all that? Investing it?” She thought with a tremor of her late husband and his ventures on the stock market, but Simon was a great deal shrewder than Clayton. He had an instinctive sense for what worked, and in his case, what worked made a great deal of money.

“I've invested some of it, mostly in bonds, and I've put a lot of back in the business. I also bought two textile mills last year. I think if we start making our own goods, we'll do better than we do with some of our imports, besides which, I can control the quality better that way. Both of the mills are in Georgia, and labor is dirt cheap. It's going to take a few years, but I think it's going to make a big difference in our profits.” She couldn't even begin to imagine it, the profits he had just mentioned to her were staggering already. He had built the business up from nothing in twenty years. At forty, he had already made a vast fortune. “So, my love, if you want to open your own store, get on with it. You're not going to take food out of anyone's mouth,” he thought about it quietly for a minute as Zoya tried to absorb what she'd heard in the past half hour, “in fact, I think it might be a damn good investment.”

“Simon,” she set down her glass and looked at him earnestly, “will you help me?”

“You don't need my help, sweetheart, except maybe to sign the checks.” He leaned over and kissed her. “You know more about this business than anyone I know, you have an innate sense of what's right and what's not. I should have listened to you about the Shocking Pink when we were in Paris.” He laughed good-naturedly, he had eaten all his pink fabric, the orders for it just hadn't come in. New Yorkers weren't ready for it, except the handful who went straight to Schiaparelli and bought it in Paris.

“Where would I start?” Her mind was racing ahead, suddenly filled with excitement.

“You might look for a location over the next few months. And we could go to Paris in the spring so you could order some goods for a fall line. If you move now,” he narrowed his eyes, calculating quietly, “you could open by September.”

“That's awfully soon.” It was only nine months away and there would be a great deal to do. “I could have Elsie decorate it for me, she has an unfailing sense of what people want, even when they don't know it.”

But he smiled gently at his wife, sparked by her own excitement, “You could do it yourself just as well.”

“No, I couldn't.”

“Never mind, you may not have time anyway. Between finding the location, hiring staff, and buying for the store, you'd have too much to do anyway to worry about decorating it on top of it. Let me think about this. … I'll talk to some people I know about looking for a location.”

“Do you mean it?” Her eyes danced with green fire, “Do you really think I should do it?”

“I sure do. Let's give it a whirl. If it doesn't work, we'll close it and take a loss after the first year. It can't hurt.” And she certainly knew now they could afford it.

She talked about nothing else for the next three weeks and when she took him for mass on Russian Christmas, she whispered to him for most of the service. One of his cronies in real estate had located what he thought was the perfect location, and she could hardly wait to see it.