Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

“I’ll try to get the estimate to you this week. And if you decide to do the project with my office, I have some free time at the moment while another client is still building her house, and I think we could get off to a pretty rapid start, since there’s no construction involved. But I work with a great architect if you ever decide to go in that direction.”

He had actually enjoyed the meeting and smiled as he shook her hand and then walked her to the door. Jennifer was waiting to take her upstairs and was back twenty minutes later, looking pleased.

“I like her,” Jennifer volunteered before he asked her, after the decorator left. “She seems sensible, energetic, and young.” She was old enough to have experience, but young enough to be flexible and not too set in her ways.

“So do I,” Hugues admitted. “I think Heloise would love everything she said and would enjoy working with her. And she wants to use the furniture we’ve got. That’s a big plus.”

“Did you hire her?” Jennifer was happy to see him smiling again and in a better mood. He was excited about doing something that would make his daughter happy when she got home.

“Not yet. She said she’d send me an estimate this week. But she came very well prepared.” He had been favorably impressed.

And true to her word, Natalie had the estimate on his desk in three days. Her price was reasonable for the design work and to oversee the project, and the costs were going to be even more reasonable since she had suggested they use the painters he had on staff at the hotel.

“What do you think?” Jennifer asked him after he’d read it, and he was smiling again.

“If she sticks to it, the estimate is great.” He was about to tell Jennifer to call her, and then decided to do it himself. Natalie was quick to come on the line. She sounded like an upbeat, happy person, and he liked that about her too.

“It’s a deal,” he said simply. “I like your estimate. When can you start?”

“How about next week?” It was going to be a scramble for her, but she wanted to impress him so she’d get the other three suites to do after this. “We’ll get started. I’ll work on fabric samples and color swatches this week.” She suggested doing the bedroom in pale yellows, and the living room in warm shades of beige and taupe, if that appealed to him. He liked that, and she suggested a meeting on Monday morning, unless he had time over the weekend.

“There are no weekends in my life anymore,” he explained, especially now that Heloise was gone. When she was at home, he would take breaks occasionally to spend time and do things with her, but now he worked seven days a week. There was always something for him to do in the hotel.

“There aren’t in my life either,” Natalie said simply. “That’s the advantage of not having kids.” Or a husband, she almost added and then didn’t. She had never married but had lived with a man for eight years, until he ran off with her best friend three years before. Since then she had done nothing but work, and she didn’t regret it. Her business had been booming ever since, and she thought that getting a sample suite to decorate at the illustrious Hotel Vendome was a major coup. “How about Sunday afternoon? I just don’t want to come too late. I’d like to show you the samples in the room, while it’s still light. They have to work in electric light too without washing out, but you’ll get a truer sense of the palette if we look at them in daylight first.” She was very professional with him.

“Why don’t you come for brunch? We do a very decent brunch here. Particularly since my daughter changed the menu. We can go up to the room to look at the fabrics after we eat.” It sounded sensible to him and he liked talking to her. And Sundays were never as hectic for him as the rest of the week.

“That sounds great. Thanks very much. What time?”

“Meet me downstairs at eleven. I don’t want to take up your whole afternoon,” Hugues said pleasantly.

“Thanks again.” They both hung up then, and Natalie let out a whoop of glee and shared the good news with her assistants. “We got the job!” she shouted, and they echoed her delight. “We’re going to have to work our asses off to do this quickly. I really want to get the other three suites. And maybe the presidential suite after that. So let’s not drag our feet on this one. I only want to show him fabrics that we can get quickly. No fourteen-week back-stock orders, and nothing that’s been discontinued or has to be woven especially for us.”

“Got it,” Pam, her main assistant, said, and Natalie said she’d go to market herself to look for fabrics for the next two days. She wanted to see if she could find some new paintings for the rooms too, without destroying their budget. But she had some great resources for art and asked her second assistant, Ingrid, to check that out. She wanted to show him as much as she could on Sunday. And she wanted to get started soon.

The rest of the week was crazed for her. They had several other jobs they were working on, and she had Jim, her design assistant, tackle them, while she went out looking for fabrics and ideas for Hugues.

When Natalie arrived at the hotel at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, she was carrying two enormous canvas bags of fabric samples, and several boards with paint samples that she had had mixed for him. Hugues came out of his office and suggested she leave them at the front desk, as they headed toward the dining room. A bellman took both bags from her. She was wearing a white Chanel jacket and jeans with sexy high heels. But everything about her shrieked “respectable” and “attractive.” She had long straight blond hair she wore pulled back and looked like a young Grace Kelly, and he noticed that she wore pearls at her neck and on her ears. There was nothing showy about her. She gave off an aura of competence and good taste. She was carrying a Kelly bag in a neutral cashew color, with an Hermes scarf tied to the handle. He liked walking into the restaurant with her, and she complimented him on the handsome decor of the room, which worked very well and was at the same time cozy and chic. It had long since become one of the most popular restaurants in New York, noted for its great food, fine wines, and casually elegant atmosphere.

They chatted about work and travel over brunch, which Natalie commented was excellent. She told him she had lived in London for four years, and then come back to New York.

“Do you miss living in Europe?” she asked him. He was still very European, in his manners and his dress, and the hotel had a decidedly European feeling to it, and in the way it was run. It was one of the things their guests loved most.

“Not really. This is home now. I’ve lived here for almost twenty years. I just hope my daughter doesn’t decide she wants to live in Europe after going to school in Lausanne.”

“I doubt it. It would be hard to give up all this, and an adoring father. I’m sure she’ll want to come back when she finishes school.” Natalie smiled at him warmly.

“You never know. She’s only nineteen. She’ll have fun there at her age.” She was already looking forward to skiing in the Alps and had been e-mailing him about it.

Natalie talked about some of her ideas for the rooms then, and she was anxious to show him what she’d brought. As soon as they finished lunch, she retrieved her bags from the front desk, and he grabbed a key and took her upstairs. She liked what she saw in the room. It was even prettier than she remembered, and the first thing she suggested was moving some of the furniture around, to give it a feeling of more space. She took one piece into the bedroom and suggested they get new lamps. He had never liked the ones they had, so he was pleased. She propped the paint samples against the walls then, and spread the fabrics around in groups and explained how she would use them.