The Butler(49)

Chapter 12


After she’d read the report, there were no longer any questions in Olivia’s mind about Joachim. She had no intention of firing him, in spite of his criminal brother. Javier hadn’t come near Joachim in twenty-five years and had turned his back on him. Why would he surface now? As they continued to work side by side at the chateau, they became closer and more at ease with each other again. They were accomplishing a great deal in a short time, with the chateau owner’s willingness to spend vast amounts of money to speed the process along. And Joachim could tell that Olivia was comfortable with him and trusted him again.

“He must have an incredible fortune,” Joachim commented to Olivia one night about the Russian owner of the chateau. They were working late going over their expenses. Nikolai Petrov never challenged their bills or scolded them for what they spent. His check to Olivia arrived on time every month, and he kept more than enough money in the account from which they paid their suppliers. Olivia was very pleased with how the chateau was progressing. It already looked like a different home, with all the grand glory of the chateau in its original state, and the fine workmanship and every modern convenience that money could buy. She had ordered the fabric for the upholstery and curtains, and there was an entire workroom set up to receive it, with some of the finest curtain makers in Paris waiting to work on the order.

    Audrey called her from time to time to see how it was going and was impressed that Olivia was managing it so well. It was beginning to look like they would have the chateau ready for the owner in under eight months, although the pool area might take a little longer. They even had twenty-two very imposing ancestral portraits to hang in the entrance.

And through the entire process, Petrov hadn’t come to Paris once. Olivia sent him frequent photographs, and he assured her that he trusted her completely, and was pleased with her results, which was very gratifying. He was always nice to her on the phone and by email, expressed the utmost confidence in her and treated her well.

It was an exhausting project, but Olivia loved doing it, and Joachim was enjoying it with her. It was an ideal combination of unlimited money, Olivia’s good taste, and a beautiful house, which they were making even more beautiful every day.

The one thing she always found odd was that whenever Petrov called her, the number he called from was blocked so that she could not see it, and she didn’t even know what country he was in. She had no phone number to reach him, only email. Supposedly he lived in Moscow, but Audrey said she’d been told that he moved around constantly, and had an elaborate security system, and dozens of bodyguards. Every pane of glass in the chateau was now bulletproof, at his instruction, and his bedroom and office suite were missile-proof. There was an entire floor of bedrooms for his bodyguards, also at his request. There were to be twenty-four of them, bunking two to a room.

    Olivia and Joachim spent many nights working late at the chateau. He was mostly in charge of keeping all of the crews working hard at full speed, and he dealt with the outdoor crews who were trying to make the gardens look like Versailles, at Petrov’s request. They had even brought in a fully grown twelve-foot-tall hedge cut as a maze, which cost a fortune. And the stables were being refreshed for horses he wanted to buy and bring in from Saudi Arabia. They added some additional touches, but few were needed.

Olivia concentrated more of her efforts on the inside of the chateau and coordinating the artistic side of it. Joachim oversaw the construction and outdoor landscaping. Together they formed a formidable task force. They even worked on many weekends. There was still much she wanted to do in Paris, but she had no time now until they finished the chateau. And looming in the distance was the end of her lease on the Paris apartment. She already knew she wanted to stay, but hadn’t told her landlord yet, and hoped he’d let her. She didn’t want to move again, she loved her new home, and had no desire to go back to her dreary apartment in New York. It seemed part of the past now and wasted years of her life. But she hadn’t let it go or sublet it in case she decided to move back at the end of the year in Paris.

They were driving back to the city from the chateau on a Friday night when Joachim asked her a question she constantly asked herself.

    “What do you want to do after the chateau?”

She’d been thinking about it a lot lately, as the project neared completion. “Maybe the same thing on a smaller scale. A lot of Americans still buy chateaux in France. I’ve loved refurbishing this one. Maybe something less extreme. I’ll never have another client with this much money, but it adds a lot of pressure too, although he’s certainly easy to work for.” They both agreed on that. Petrov was an invisible, undemanding presence with unlimited funds.

“Too much so. I hate to think where the money comes from,” Joachim commented. A job as a butler still hadn’t come up in England for him, and he’d done nothing about pursuing it lately. He was having too much fun working with her, and he couldn’t make this kind of money as a butler. She was paying him a very fair portion of her earnings, in consideration for all the work he was doing. They both knew she couldn’t have done it without him. There was far too much work for one person to handle, too many component parts, and workers you constantly had to chase to show up and threaten and cajole. He was better at that than she was, and she liked the artistry of it better. Their combined talents made for a very efficient team.