Flirting with the Forbidden

Interested in the rare burnt orange gems that she could never get enough of? Duh. ‘Of course! I’ll owe you if you can sneak a couple of the nicer ones to me before you offer them to Carl.’

Carl was Head Craftsman for MI’s flagship jewellery store which was on the ground floor of the building. A rival to Tiffany and Cartier, Moreau’s made up the third of the ‘big three’ jewellery stores in New York City. Carl had his clients and so did Morgan, and they shared one or two others. They happily waged a silent war, competing for the best of the Moreau gems that were on offer. And for the clients with the deepest pockets.

‘I’ll offer you two per cent above whatever Carl offers for the Clinohumites. Don’t let me down, Derek, I want those stones.’ She might be a Moreau, but her business was separate to the jewellery store and the gemstones. She had to buy her stones at the going rate and sell at a profit...and that was the way she liked it.

‘Of course. I owe you for designing Gail’s engagement ring. She still thinks I’m a god.’

Morgan laughed. ‘I’m glad she loves it.’

Even though he had a hugely responsible job at Moreau’s, he would never have been able to afford the usual prices Morgan commanded. Sometimes she thought that the money she charged for her designs was insane but, as her mother kept insisting, exclusivity had its price, and the Moreau price was stratospheric.

Morgan heard the door to her studio click closed behind Derek and his guard and sat down on a stool, next to her workbench. She twisted a tanzanite and diamond ring on her finger before resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

Morgan Moreau Designs. She couldn’t deny that being a Moreau had opened doors that would have been a lot harder to break down if she hadn’t possessed a charmed name associated with gemstones. But having a name wasn’t enough; no socialite worth her salt was going to drop squillions on a piece of jewellery that wasn’t out of the very top drawer. Morgan understood that they wanted statement pieces that would stand out from the exceptional, and she provided that time and time again.

It was the one thing—probably the only thing—she’d ever truly excelled at. She adored her job; it made her heart sing. So why, then, exactly, wasn’t she happy? Morgan twisted her lips, thinking that she wasn’t precisely unhappy either. She was just...feeling ‘blah’ about her life.

Which was utterly ridiculous and she wanted to slap herself at the thought. She was a Moreau—wealthy, reasonably attractive, popular. She ran her own business and had, if she said so herself, a great body which didn’t need high maintenance. Okay, she was still single, and had been for a while—her soul mate was taking a long time to make an appearance—but she dated. Had the occasional very discreet affair if she thought the man nice enough and attractive enough to bother with.

She had a life that millions of girls would sell their souls for and she was feeling sorry for herself? Yuck.

‘Earth to Morgan?’

Morgan looked up and saw her best friend standing in the doorway of her studio, her pixie face alight with laughter. Friends since they were children, they’d lived together, travelled together and now they worked together...sort of. Riley was contracted to design and maintain the window displays of the jewellery store downstairs. She was simply another member of the Moreau family.

‘Hey. I’m about to have coffee—want some?’

Riley shook her head. ‘No time. Your mother sent me up here to drag you out of your nest. She wants you to come down and join the charity ball planning meeting.’

‘Why? She’s never included me before.’

‘You know that’s not true. Every year she asks if you want to be involved, and every year you wrinkle your pretty nose and say no.’

‘You’d think she would’ve got the message by now,’ Morgan grumbled. Organising an event on such a scale was a mammoth undertaking and so not up her alley. She’d just make an idiot of herself and that wasn’t an option. Ever.

She’d felt enough of an idiot far too many times before.

‘Well, she said that I have to bring you down even if I have to drag you by your hair.’

‘Good grief.’

Morgan stood up and stretched. She took stock of her outfit: a white T-shirt with a slate jacket, skinny stone-coloured pants tucked into black, knee-high laceup boots. It wasn’t the Moreau corporate look, but she’d do.

Morgan walked towards the door and allowed it to close behind her; like all of the other rooms in the building, entrance was by finger-scan. Keys weren’t needed at Moreau’s.

‘Did you get your dress for Merri’s wedding?’ Riley asked as they headed for the stairs.

‘Mmm. I can’t wait. We’re hitching a lift with James on the company jet, by the way. He’s flying out on the Thursday evening.’

‘Perfect.’

And it was... Their friend Merri was getting married in her and Riley’s hometown of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and Morgan couldn’t wait to go home. She desperately missed her home country; she’d love to return to the vineyards and the mountains, the crisp Cape air and the friendly people. But if she wanted to cement her reputation for being one of the best jewellery designers in the world—like her grandfather before her—then she needed to be in fast-paced NYC. She needed clients with big money who weren’t afraid to spend it...

And talking of exceptional, she thought as they stepped out of the lift onto the fifth floor, where Hannah and the New York-based directors of MI had their offices, she had to start work on the piece Moreau International had commissioned her to design and manufacture that would be sold as part of the silent auction at the charity ball. Maybe that was why Hannah wanted her at the meeting...

TWO

Morgan watched as her glamorous, sophisticated mother stepped out of her office in a lemon suit, nude heels and with a perfectly straight platinum chin-length bob.

‘I need a decision about the jewellery for the auction,’ Morgan announced as Hannah approached them. ‘Do you have any gemstones in stock that you want me to use? What do you want me to design? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Classic or contemporary? Is that why you want me at this meeting?’

‘Hello to you too, darling,’ Hannah said in her driest tone. ‘How are you?’

Morgan waved an elegant hand in the air. ‘Mum, we had coffee together this morning; you didn’t say anything then about me having to come downstairs.’

‘It’s a conference room, not a torture chamber, Morgan,’ Hannah replied, her tone as dry as the martinis she loved to drink. ‘Nice photo of you in the Post, by the way.’

Since she hadn’t been out recently, Morgan wasn’t sure where she’d been photographed. ‘Uh...where was I?’

‘At the opening night of that new gallery in Soho.’

Her friend Kendall’s new gallery; she’d popped in for five minutes, literally, and it couldn’t go undocumented? Sheez! But she was, very reluctantly, a part of the NYC social scene, and because she was a Moreau whenever she made an appearance she was photographed extensively. Many of those photographs ended up in the social columns and online.

Hannah folded her arms and tapped her foot. Good grief, she recognised that look.

‘Morgan, it’s time we talked about you joining Moreau International in an official position.’

Morgan sighed. ‘Has six months passed so quickly?’

They had an agreement: Hannah was allowed to nag her about joining the company every six months. For the last twelve years they’d had the same conversation over and over again.

‘I’ve decided that I want you to be MI’s Public Relations and Brand Director.’

Run me over with a bus, Morgan thought. PR and Brand Director? That was a new title. ‘Mum, I’m happy doing what I’m doing—designing jewellery. You and James are doing a fabulous job with MI. You don’t need me.’

And she was damned if she was going to take a job away from a loyal MI employee who was way more qualified for the position than she’d ever be. And—funny, this—she actually wanted to get paid for what she did, not who she was.

But she had to give Hannah points for being persistent. She’d been trying to get her to work for MI since she was sixteen—shortly after they’d received the happy news that Morgan was just chronically dyslexic and not selectively stupid.

It had only taken her mother and a slew of medics, educational psychologists and shrinks to work that out. Everyone had been so pleased that they’d found the root cause of her failing marks at school, her frustration and her anger.

The years of sheer hell she’d lived through between the time she’d started school and her diagnosis had been conveniently forgotten by everybody except herself.

Water under the bridge, Morgan reminded herself. And she knew her mum felt guilty for the part she’d played in the disaster that had been her education.

Morgan knew that it hadn’t been easy for her either. She’d been thrust into running MI in her mid-thirties, when her adventure-seeking husband had decided that he didn’t like the corporate life and wanted to be MI’s chief geologist, discovering new mines. Hannah, with her MBA in business and economics, had taken over the role of MI’s CEO, juggling its huge responsibilities with two children, one of whom had made her life a great deal more difficult by her inability to meet her mother’s and teachers’ expectations.

How often had she heard variations on the theme of, ‘She’s such a bright child; if only she would try harder.’