He liked the sound of that. It was far less expensive than the suggestion of the other decorator, who wanted to throw everything out. And they had beautiful things in the rooms now. They just needed some freshening up and new touches. He liked the way this woman thought. And he also liked the idea of trying her out on one suite instead of plunging ahead with four. And despite her reputation, because she was considerably younger than the first one, she was willing to make adjustments on fees and price, and she had more time, although she had a considerably smaller staff and did most of the work herself. She said she had two assistants and a design assistant, so she kept her overhead low. The other woman had a twelve-man office with three young designers working for her, and a color consultant on staff. When Hugues asked, Natalie said she did all the color work herself, and her clients had been happy with it so far. He had heard good things about the hotel she’d done in Washington, and he asked her to give him an estimate for the first suite if he decided to move ahead. She promised to have it on his desk within a week. She seemed hungry for the job, and he liked that about her too. She was matter of fact and down to earth and didn’t put on airs. She stood up then and thanked him for the meeting, and said she didn’t want to take more of his time. And they had already arranged for Jennifer to show her the suite before she left.
“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.
Just looking at what she had chosen brought the room to life. There were warm taupes and dove grays, an ivory color, and a few dusty soft blues. It all worked together beautifully, and one by one they eliminated the fabrics he liked less. She suggested a new rug, and he agreed, and he liked her ideas for the window treatment, and the right wall color jumped out at both of them immediately, and she was going to trim some of the moldings in the living room in taupe. He loved what she suggested and how she did it.
She put what they had selected in one bag, and everything they had rejected in a stack on the couch, and then they walked into the bedroom and did it all again. The yellows she had selected were absolutely perfect in the room. In less than two hours they had made all the important decisions, and she promised to order everything in the coming week. And then they sat down in the living room, and she showed him photographs of the paintings that she liked. There were two that he approved immediately, and he was impressed by how reasonable they were. He thought she was a genius at what she did.
At three o’clock they were back in the lobby, and they were both excited by what they’d accomplished in a short time. One of her big bags was full of the samples of everything she was going to order, and the other was full of what he didn’t want, although he had liked some of that too, but not as much as the rest. She had given him great choices, and he liked the prices of the fabrics she wanted to use. She had stayed away from expensive brocades and velvets and had stuck with sturdy fabrics that would hold up to constant use.
“It was great,” he said as he smiled at her. “You made it fun. I wish my daughter were here.”
“We’re going to knock her socks off with a fabulous new suite when she comes home,” Natalie promised, and she could hardly wait to start. She wanted to knock his socks off too, since he was paying the bill.
He thanked her again and walked her outside. The doorman hailed her a taxi and put her bags in it for her, as Natalie shook Hugues’s hand and smiled at him.
“Thanks for brunch and a terrific afternoon,” she said warmly.
“Thank you for a beautiful new suite.” He returned the smile as she got into the cab, and he waved as they drove off, and then he walked back into the hotel with a happy expression on his face, and a spring in his step. He hadn’t had this much fun since Heloise left for Lausanne. The concierge nodded at him as he walked by, wondering who the pretty woman was. He hadn’t seen Hugues look that peaceful and relaxed in years.
Chapter 7
BY WEDNESDAY NATALIE had ordered everything, fabric, paints, trim, the two paintings he liked, and she had found lamps and wall sconces that were perfect for the room. She dropped by the hotel on Thursday to show him rug samples, and he was impressed by how much she’d done. He hadn’t said anything to Heloise about it when he spoke to her. He wanted to surprise her when she came home.
He had explained to Natalie that they needed to close the suite for as little time as possible. It was why he wasn’t letting her do the high-revenue presidential and penthouse suites yet. He wanted to see how fast she worked. Natalie felt sure that if they began working on it at the end of October, once all the fabrics were in, she could have it up and running again by Thanksgiving. They had agreed to leave the bathroom as it was, the existing fixtures were good looking, and with a fresh coat of paint it would look bright and new. She assured him that she had everything under control. And he promised her that if the final result was as elegant as he thought it was going to be, he would give her the other three large suites to do and one day the presidential and penthouse suites as well. Natalie was thrilled, and so was he. He wanted her advice now about some of the other rooms, without redoing them all.
They met the following weekend to look at some other rooms, and she suggested simple fixes and adjustments that wouldn’t cost a lot of money but would update their look. They had brunch in the restaurant again, and they seemed to find reasons to talk to each other every day. Jennifer smiled at him now whenever Natalie called, or Hugues mentioned her name. He seemed to be enjoying their new decorator a great deal. It made Jennifer happy to see him relaxed, interested, and enjoying a woman he was willing to spend time with, and not just the quick hit-and-run clandestine affairs he had had for years. The time he was sharing with Natalie contributed something to his life.
“Don’t give me that look,” he said to Jennifer one day, when she announced yet another call from Natalie. Her third of the day, and he called her just as often. “It’s just business. She’s doing a great job. Heloise is going to be thrilled.” Jennifer was not so sure. If her father was as interested in Natalie as he appeared to be, not just as a decorator, Jennifer was concerned that Heloise might feel threatened by her. She was completely unaware of her father’s quietly conducted dating life for the past fifteen years and had never shared him with anyone. It would be an entirely new experience for her.
He talked to Natalie about Heloise the second time they had brunch together, and went for a walk in Central Park afterward. It was a golden September afternoon. He told her how important his daughter was to him and what a special girl she was.