Facade

voice.
    “Can I take a quick shower?”
    “Be my guest. There’s another shower in the next room.” When Jonas stepped out from under the hot spray, Nicky was standing in front of the mirror, applying make-up and looking like a highwayman. “Jonas? Can I call you again some time?”
    “Yes, you can. In fact, I’d like it if you did.” Despite the fact Nicky was in full working gear, he smiled that warm smile Jonas had discovered behind the façade.

    AFTER putting on his suit again, Jonas walked downstairs with a spring in his step. Tanna, dressed to the nines, met him at the bottom of the stairs. “Your fee is transferred, Mr. Hunter, and I’ve taken the liberty of calling a car to take you to your hotel and then the airport.”
    “Thank you, Tanna,” he answered.

    18
    Zahra
    Owens
    “Could you please pencil Nicky in for London fashion week?
    But I’m sure we’ll be calling you before that as well. If that is okay with you, of course.”
    Jonas didn’t need to think about it. He’d seen behind the façade and hoped to be allowed that privilege again soon. He smiled at the gorgeous young woman. “Consider it a date, Miss Taylor.”

    Façade
    19

    JONAS was uncharacteristically nervous when he walked into Nicky’s Paris fashion studio. Not because he would meet the young, eccentric designer again, but because he wasn’t here for Nicky. He was here with one of his other clients, a well-preserved fifty-something communications mogul named Christopher Price. The man had inherited a newspaper from his father and had turned it into a global media conglomerate with publications all over the world.
    Deciding to branch into television, Chris had just bought a commercial television station in England and had asked Jonas to accompany him to Paris for a little celebration. Although Jonas was well aware of Chris’s tastes, he was surprised to be taken along for a shopping spree to his favorite designer. Most men of a certain age, when asked what designer could make them a suit, would go conservative and say Armani. Not Christopher, though. He’d always had that touch of eccentricity and frankly, plenty of money to indulge it. No, Chris wanted a Bryant, and although Jonas wasn’t sure why exactly, he was apparently going to find out.
    Nicky had kept them waiting in a small room adjacent to the studio. Jonas noticed it had the same uncomfortable chairs on spindly thin legs as the downstairs waiting room at Nicky’s house.
    They looked like antiques and were probably meant to impress, but they only annoyed their occupants when they were kept waiting.
    Several of Nicky’s minions had entered, bringing fashion magazines and then, already some thirty minutes after their arrival, two glasses of champagne. Sometime after that a young man walked 20
    Zahra
    Owens
    in carrying some sketches. Jonas recognized him as Laurent, the young man so sternly told off by Nicky the last time Jonas had met him.
    “Monsieur Price,” he bowed, greeting Chris respectfully and speaking his name with a French accent that seemed much heavier than the one Jonas had been treated to a few weeks ago. “Monsieur Bryant will be with you shortly, but I am sure he would like you to choose a style before he arrives, so you may save time.”
    “His time or ours?” Chris replied, smiling. He didn’t even glance at the sketches. Jonas had known him long enough to tell that although his face and voice betrayed nothing, Chris was not amused.
    In fact, Jonas had seen the man fire one of his most trusted employees with exactly that same smile. Jonas also knew he had plans that involved the young designer or at least his studio, otherwise they would have left already; Chris simply wasn’t the type of man to be kept waiting. He knew the media man liked the build-up, though, the anticipation of what was going to happen as much as the event itself. This didn’t mean their time waiting had to be spent in boredom. Jonas was good at entertaining his patrons outside of the bedroom as well as in it, so he engaged Chris in small talk, letting Chris tell him about one of the editors of his New York magazine whom he’d promoted after the man had turned him down.
    Although Chris seemed relaxed, exchanging touches with Jonas that on the surface seemed casual, but that he would never bestow on a stranger, Jonas could tell his client’s patience was stretching thin.
    Chris had just asked one of the young men rushing around where the restrooms were when