The Savannah Robicheaux of twelve years ago had a mane of long hair she sometimes plaited the night before so that it fell down her back in symmetrical ripples.
‘The Beauty behind Velvet Beauty’, one small magazine article had been headlined.
Raised in the glamorous Sorrento Hotel in Killiney, Savannah Robicheaux was chambermaiding from a young age: ‘none of us are afraid of hard work,’ says the young entrepreneur when we meet in her small offices in an industrial park outside Dublin.
It had been such a coup to get the article in the magazine. Eden had helped her with it.
Eden was a force of nature and could pick up the phone, ring absolutely anybody and ask them for anything.
‘They can only say no,’ Eden would say, shrugging as if this type of behaviour was entirely normal.
‘How did we come out of the same womb at the same time?’ Savannah said jokily.
Eden gave her a hard stare. ‘You need to push your boundaries.’
Savannah shivered. ‘No, I don’t. You can do it for me.’
‘Yeah, but I won’t always be around to do it, sis. You need to be tougher, take no prisoners.’
Savannah hated the ‘you need to be tougher’ talks. Nobody ever said how to be tougher – did she need to wear chain mail, down two vodkas before she made tricky phone calls, what?
‘I’m not like you.’
‘S’pose.’
Eden had set up the interview and then another one, and suddenly, Savannah’s company had momentum.
The beauty buyer in a glamorous store in Tokyo began stocking Velvet Beauty, which made it suddenly visible on the world stage. Then, an equally glamorous Irish store began stocking it.
‘They only noticed you because the Japanese liked your stuff,’ said Eden grimly. Eden had firm views about how fame in other territories made local stockists sit up and take notice.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Savannah was delighted. She didn’t care what had come first: what mattered was the success.
‘You don’t get the nuance, it’s insulting—’ began her twin.
‘I’m not insulted. I’m making money!’ said Savannah happily.
She’d met Calum at a business dinner and he’d made a move on her right away.
She’d been wearing a dress Eden had made her buy: of heavy silk satin and the colour of moss on summer trees. It was high necked at the front with a cut-away back to reveal her elegant shoulder blades and the pale golden curve of her spine.
Calum Desmond, a dead ringer for a James Bond role in his dinner jacket, dark hair sleeked back, onyx studs in his fine Italian dress shirt, had walked up to her holding two glasses of champagne.
‘I told myself that when I found you, I’d bring you champagne,’ he said.
Charisma surged around him and Savannah, who rarely drank at work events in case she giggled at the wrong moment, found herself taking a glass from him.
‘When you found who?’ she asked daringly.
This handsome man, winged brows shadowing dark eyes, a hint of dangerous masculinity around him, seemed fascinated by her. Her! It was a dizzying feeling.
‘You.’
He wasn’t much taller than she was in her high silver sandals but his presence felt as if it filled the ante room beside the function room. He was quite dazzlingly handsome, was devilishly dark. All five o’clock stubble and hooded eyes.
‘Me?’
This was flirting but she was really out of practice. She hadn’t time for men as she tried to build the company. She sipped her champagne, licked her lips, then realised how clichéd this looked.
