He had several meetings scheduled in New York, and would be returning to Paris in a few days or a week at most. It was a long stay for him. Sometimes he flew in and out the same day for one important meeting. He liked closing most of his deals face-to-face, not by email, text, or phone. He was a compelling person, and took full advantage of it to get the results he wanted.

Pierre de Vaumont had been sitting in his private room in the first-class lounge, drinking his second cup of coffee, when a chauffeur-driven Mercedes had pulled up to the first-class area at the curb. A man got out of the front seat, obviously a bodyguard, and a slim woman in a black hat with a wide brim and dark glasses waited in the back seat. The bodyguard took her passport to the first-class desk and checked her in. The staff at the desk nodded when they saw her name and allowed him to check her in without further questioning. They knew the procedures and had been warned of her arrival ahead of time so there would be no mistakes. She was one of their most valuable clients, even more so than de Vaumont.

It was the first trip Theodora Morgan had taken in over a year. She was the founder and very successful owner of Theo.com, a well-established internet shopping service that had broken all records of success worldwide. A year before, at thirty-seven, she was one of the most successful businesswomen in the world, and a fashion icon herself, always photographed when she appeared in public, although she kept an intentionally low profile, particularly in the last year. She was also the recent widow of Matthieu Pasquier, who owned more than a dozen of the biggest fashion brands in the world and was the acknowledged multibillionaire mogul of luxury fashion. She and Matthieu had met when she started her fledgling business at twenty-two, fresh out of Harvard. She had started it on a shoestring and rapidly proved the business model’s success. Financial journals and the business press began writing about her. Pasquier had made a point of meeting her. He was twenty-five years older than she, and a ruthless businessman. He had fallen in love with her bold, adventuresome, innovative business plan, and her gentle, determined nature behind it, as well as her youth and beauty. After a rapid courtship, they were married a year later, and remained married for fourteen years. She was his third wife and he had no children, and she had enchanted him even further by giving birth to a son, Axel, ten months after their wedding.

Her own family history had prepared her for marriage to an older man. Her father was almost twenty years older than her mother, and they had had a stable, loving home, where she had thrived as her parents’ only child. She had often preferred the company of adults while growing up.