The Butler(41)

“I didn’t see one,” he said, smiling. He still couldn’t believe she was going to do it. One woman, alone. She wasn’t a contracting company, or an architect, or a licensed designer. She was just going to do it and figure it out as she went along. “Well, we’ll have our work cut out for us now.” And he thought they were finished with her apartment.

“First, I have to get an agreement from him, and negotiate what he’ll pay me.”

“It should be a lot. Don’t settle for too little,” he advised her. “He can afford to pay you well, if he bought a place like that.”

“I hope he remembers that.” She smiled at him, satisfied that Joachim would at least be there for a while. Hopefully a long while.

    The Russian owner called her as soon as he got the word. He had a deep, booming voice and a strong Russian accent, and told her that he was sure she was going to do a beautiful job for him. He said he felt it in his bones and in his veins. She promised him progress reports and ongoing photographs, and he repeated what Audrey had said in blunter terms.

“You make beautiful, I pay more.” He quoted an amount for a monthly payment, which staggered her. It illustrated to her how foolish she would have been to turn it down. She still looked dazed when she saw Joachim in the kitchen.

“It’s official. I’m a high-end prostitute now. What he offered to pay me is obscene.” She quoted Joachim a number that she would pay him for as long as he worked on the project. She couldn’t expect him to help her with it for what she was paying him for the short-term job to set up her apartment.

“Will that make me a prostitute too?” She didn’t answer, and he laughed. “So be it. Why not? It’s more lucrative than being a butler. We’re in it now,” he said, and chuckled on his way home. Life had certainly been interesting since he met Olivia White. He was a decorator’s assistant now.





Chapter 10


The first payment was made on time by Nikolai Petrov on the first of the month, and she gave Joachim his portion of it. He had been interviewing contractors for her, and had already hired groundskeepers to clear away the brush, and arborists to trim the trees. They went back to look at the house again, and she saw no major structural changes she wanted to make. It was mostly refurbishing wood paneling and boiseries. They’d polish up the floors in the end. She had to figure out what bedrooms to use, and what to turn into dressing rooms, guest rooms, and a fabulous modern gym, at the owner’s request. She had two notebooks filled by the time the first check came in. And they sent the contractors’ estimates to Moscow, to leave the choice to him. He picked the most expensive one, which didn’t surprise Joachim, who said that to a man like Petrov, the more money he spent, the better he thought it would be, which wasn’t always the case.

    They had just returned home from their third visit to the chateau when Olivia got a call from her realtor in New York. She had an offer on her mother’s apartment. It had been on the market for three months. It wasn’t a fabulous offer, but it was respectable, and Olivia wanted to sell it. She had a small apartment of her own, and living in her mother’s would have depressed her. She had already emptied it, sold what she didn’t want, and put the rest in storage, so she didn’t have to deal with that now. There were a few pieces of furniture in storage that she was thinking of bringing to Paris, and after thinking about it that night, she made a suggestion to Joachim the next morning.

“I have an offer on my mother’s apartment,” she told him. “I think I’m going to take it. And I want to bring a few pieces of furniture to Paris. Do you want to come with me for a few days and help me organize it?”

It sounded like fun to him, and a change of scenery. “I’d like that.”

“I only need a few days there, but it would help me if you take care of the shipping, while I sign the papers and wrap up the apartment. It’ll be a weight off my shoulders. My mother was so sad there so much of the time, especially since her…friend…died, and even before that—the place feels like bad karma to me. I want to get rid of it.” He nodded, it didn’t sound like a happy memory to him either.

“I haven’t been to New York in a long time. I took a brief holiday there about ten years ago. I don’t know the city very well,” he commented.

“I’ll put you up at a hotel near my apartment. I live in SoHo. There are lots of hotels there. It’s downtown. My mother lived uptown, on the Upper East Side.” He had a vague idea where all of it was and told his mother that night where he was going. He had told her all about the chateau too. She was intrigued by the woman he was working for. He seemed to be more of a property manager these days, or a secretary, than a butler. But he kept telling her it was only a stopgap until the agency found him a suitable job in England.

    “She sounds like an interesting, enterprising woman,” Liese had commented. She was busy with her own job at the moment, hot on the trail of the heirs to the Monet. She’d had one false start, but thought she was on the right track now. She’d been working on it for a long time. She never gave up until she had explored every possible avenue. Olivia struck Joachim that way too. Liese was seeing less of her son these days. His new employer was keeping him busy, but she thought it was good for him. She had wondered at first if he was attracted to her, but then decided he wasn’t. It appeared to be strictly business for both of them. Although they seemed to have the same phobias, or similar ones, about close attachments. And as she had guessed at first, Olivia was a businesswoman above all. The job she was doing for the Russian billionaire sounded intriguing, and she could see that Joachim was having fun.