Six: The Meeting

Author's Note: During the original six-part series, I hinted that Adrien played a fairly large role at House of Gabriel, in addition to being a supermodel. As I thought about expanding the story, it occurred to me that the fashion world - especially in Paris - is pretty small; the odds that Marinette's firm would have to cross swords with House of Gabriel seemed rather good. And too good of an opportunity to pass up. -ep

The first few days after my return from the Riviera were busy administratively for me. While I'd been frolicking on the beach, my admin at House of Gabriel had been diligent about booking me for wall-to-wall design meetings, many of which I had studiously avoided in order to, well, studiously avoid seeing Father.

We'd never seen eye-to-eye even during my teen years, and it had gotten worse when it originally looked like Adrien might be getting into a relationship with Marinette. That had faded, of course, in the face of Chat pursuing Marinette, but Father had no way to know I was still involved with her. It had the potential to be far more of a sore point now that she worked for a rival design firm. Regardless, I tried to minimize my interactions with him the minimum required by my Board of Director duties.

My inability to stay focused on House of Gabriel work, though, led to Marinette quite nearly figuring out I was Chat.

Marinette had been obsessing over a meeting her firm was to have with House of Gabriel; apparently, a design they were working on had been leaked to Father, and he'd demanded a face-to-face with her boss to demand the line be spiked as it was too close to something he'd already put out. I'd lent a thoughtful feline ear or two to her as she'd explained the mess they appeared to be in, but otherwise hadn't thought much about it.

That is, until I pulled open the glass door to our conference room and saw her sitting at the long oak table. Her back was to me as she'd been fussing with connecting her MacBook to the projector in the room; I swallowed a bit. As I also happened to be wearing a polo that day, I realized I was showcasing the rest of the golden tan on my exposed arms that she'd only glimpsed parts of below the Chat mask. I started to back out of the conference room, only to back directly into Father.

"Adrien," he said, the tone fully expressing his displeasure.

"Father," I acknowledged, stepping aside to allow him through. I tried not to raise an eyebrow; he seldom left the mansion, leaving it to an aide to prop up his visage on tablet. That meant this meeting was extremely important.

Marinette's head snapped around and caught my eyes. "Hey, Adrien," she said warmly.

I stepped over to her and placed my tablet on the table, and pulled her into a formal hug. "Long time, no see," I said, trying to sound like it had been more than just a few hours since I'd seen her. "How are you doing?"

"Great," she said as the two of us stepped into a far corner of the room. Her eyes slid to the tan on my arms, then up to my face. "You've gotten some sun recently," she observed quietly.

"I wish," I smiled. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the frosty reception Father was giving Marinette's boss, and judged he might be out of earshot. "This is from the tanning bed, I'm afraid. I have a photo shoot tomorrow that requires me to look, and I quote, 'sun kissed.'" I swiveled a bit. "Do I pass?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I'd have to see the rest of you in order to make that determination," she said with a gleam to her eye.

"Speak to my agent," I laughed, allowing a bit of Chat out. "I might be available for parties."

"Indeed," she said. She glanced back at Father. "I could use one afterward. This is not going to be fun."

"I'm afraid I'm just coming up to speed," I lied, since I now knew exactly why we were all here.

"Pardon my frankness, but your father is being a jerk."

I rolled my eyes. "Tell me something I don't know."

She smiled slightly. "My boss happened to have used the exact same shade of blue in something Gabriel already has out," she explained. "He wants us to kill our entire line over it."

"Blue?" I repeated, having, of course, heard this already. "Really?"

Marinette cocked her head at me, and I belatedly realized I'd just repeated the reaction I'd had as Chat. "Yeah," she confirmed.

I took a moment to look at her and saw the worry in her face. Her firm was much smaller than ours, but on the rise; I knew Father was concerned and was likely using this situation to try and stamp out a competitor. I had a more pragmatic view of the market, one he didn't share, of course. Unfortunately for him, my voice was an equal now at the table, and I felt like I was about to get to use it fully for the first time.

Smiling, I leaned down to Marinette. "I have an idea. Roll with me if you like it."

"Okay," she said.

"Adrien." Father was summoning us back to the table.

We sat, and at her boss's direction, Marinette proceeded to run through the designs in question, going to great pains to prove that despite the color snafu, the line itself bore no significant overlap with our own. I watched Father take it in stonily, and once she'd finished her presentation, he turned on her boss.

"Francie, this is unacceptable. I will have our lawyers press yours unless you immediately agree-"

"Gabriel!" Francie said tartly. "It's a god-damned color. Our styles are nowhere close to your dated designs."

Father straightened in his chair. "Our designs are classic. They never age."

"That explains why you're losing market share. To us."

My head pivoted between the two like a tennis match. I started to feel a growing admiration for Marinette's boss; she was the first person in years to take it to Father. And she was right, I'd been making the same case for a while now that our styles were looking long in the tooth. I let the two of them duke it out for a few minutes before I cleared my throat. "If I may," I interrupted.

Father and Francie paused and turned toward me. Both appeared startled that I'd said anything.

"I say we co-brand it."

Father stared at me. "We what?"

"Co-brand. A joint effort between House of Gabriel and Chateau Le Blanc. In exchange for adding our logo to the mix, and a small percentage on the sales, we use our global distribution network to get these pieces out and augment it with a modest ad buy."

Now Francie was staring at me. "Why would you work with us?"

"Despite what your designer has said," I nodded to Marinette, "some of the cuts on those outfits are dangerously close to what we already have in the pipeline. This allows us to avoid some messy legal entanglements; instead we both win in terms of getting some fresh looks out in time for the Fall."

All three of them were looking at me.

"Essentially, Francine, you'll get to license House of Gabriel. None of your competitors will have that advantage."

I could see her turning it over in her head. I could also see Father, ever shrewd, starting to nod.

"What percentage are you thinking?"

"Eighteen percent," I said easily, having run the numbers in my head. "Sell more than fifteen thousand units and I'll drop it to fifteen." I paused. "Sell sixty thousand and we'll cut it to twelve."

Both Francine and Father were nodding now.

"How long?" Francine asked.

"We have exclusive rights to distribute this line and any others you create for the next two years. And," I added, looking over to Marinette, "we get to see your designs much further in advance to avoid this situation in the future."

Marinette turned to her boss. "That seems like a reasonable ask, if we go into a partnership with House of Gabriel."

Francine looked between her and me, studiously avoiding Father. "What do you think, Gabriel?"

"I think my son has managed to figure out a way both of our firms can profit," he said.

Francine nodded. "I'll have to take it back to the board."

"Take until tomorrow at five," I said. "After that, I'll have to unleash the lawyers for my Father."

Francine stood and shook my hand from across the table. "Gabriel, you should let Adrien out more. With him at the helm, you might have a chance to survive into the future."

"I'll take that under advisement," he said icily, and quickly fled the room.

"You're welcome," I said under my breath to his departing form. Turning back to Francine, I added: "Please do let me know as soon as you can. I'm not sure how long I can stall him."

"We will," she said, turning to Marinette. "I'll meet you in the lobby."

I stayed and helped Marinette disconnect from the projector. "That went better than I expected," she said.

"It did," I agreed. "I know how long you've been obsessing over this."

She snapped around to me. "You do?"

Whoops!

"House of Gabriel has spies everywhere," I quickly joked. "Heck," I added slyly, "you probably can't even trust an alley cat in this business."

Marinette looked at me for a long moment. "That might actually be the only person I could trust," she said quietly.

It wasn't lost on me how she'd phrased the response, and I worried slightly I'd overplayed my hand. "Well, anyway," I said smoothly, "I've got another meeting to run to. It was great to see you again."

"Likewise," she smiled. "Don't be a stranger."

"I won't," I said, hand on the door. "You know your way out?"

"Yes."

I smiled the megawatt model smile and pushed out into the hallway, escaping to my office. The rest of the day was a mess of meetings, and by time I'd snuck to the rooftop stairwell to transform for my commute home, my mind was a soggy mess of oatmeal. Flying over the skyline refreshed my spirit immensely, and I landed on my balcony with a soft thump and rolled to my bedroom door.

Marinette was in the kitchen and was just pulling something out of the oven. "Hey," she smiled as I leaned into kiss her. "How was your day?"

"Amazing," she said. "That meeting I've been worried about went better than I expected."

"That's great!" I enthused as I used a claw to uncork the bottle of wine she'd left for me.

"I ran into an old friend of mine, too. He turned out to be a genius."

"Should I be jealous?" I smiled slyly. "This isn't he guy you were pining away for back in high school?"

"Yeah," she said. "It was Adrien. And no, Chat, my heart is with you."

"Good," I replied, decanting the wine. "I'd hate to have to rough him up."