“Okay, sweetie,” Poppy said, getting up to grab her handbag, which was a perfect-looking Kelly knockoff. “Wish me luck. I’ll have my mobile on if you need me.”
Thirty minutes later, I had made five media calls, all of which went well. I was particularly happy with the chat I’d had with a London-based writer from Rolling Stone, who had promised she’d be at the junket.
“Guillaume Riche looks just yummy!” she had exclaimed. “And the advance copy of the ‘City of Light’ single you sent me sounds amazing. You really have a star on your hands!”
The call had left me with a warm glow, which is exactly what I was basking in when my phone rang again. Assuming it was one of the British journalists I’d left a message for calling me back, I cheerfully answered the phone, “Emma Sullivan, Millar PR!”
A deep voice on the other end of the line blurted out several sentences in French.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, interrupting the flood of words. Even if I couldn’t understand the language, I knew he was upset. “Je ne parle pas fran?ais.”
I was getting awfully tired of saying that.
“Who eez thees?” the voice asked in thickly accented English. “Where eez Poppy?”
“Poppy is away at a meeting,” I said. “This is her new colleague, Emma. I’m also working on Guillaume Riche’s English-language launch. Is there something I can help you with?”
There was dead silence on the other end.
“Yes,” the man said finally. “Emma, you must hurry. This eez Guillaume’s manager, Raf. I’m een Dijon, so you are going to have to help me.”
“Help you with what?”
“Guillaume just called me,” Raf said rapidly. “Emma, he somehow fell asleep een a storage room near ze lifts on ze second floor of ze Eiffel Tower last night.”
I gasped. “What?”
“I’m afraid eet eez true,” Raf said. “The morning cleaning crew discovered heem, and as you can imagine, he eez een a lot of trouble.”
I groaned. “Could it get any worse?” I asked rhetorically. Only it turned out the question wasn’t so rhetorical after all.
Raf paused for another moment.
“Well, yes, eet could,” he said with a sigh. “There eez one more thing I may have forgotten to mention. The young lady he was with clearly thought eet would be amusing to steal heez clothes while he slept. So eet seems he was een ze lift with just heez briefs when ze crew found him.”
“What?”
“Mais oui.”
“Where is he now?” I asked, starting to panic.
“He’s een ze Eiffel Tower security office being interrogated,” Raf said, his voice sounding weary. “But there eez a lot of press outside—ze same journalists who have been bothering heem for a week, mostly. You are going to need to get down there and do some damage control.”
Raf read me Guillaume’s mobile number and told me that the tower’s security manager had already okayed a press rep being allowed in to speak to him. I was to call him as soon as I got to the tower, and I’d be escorted up.
“Emma, there eez one piece of good news een all of thees,” Raf added at the end. “The security guards have not called ze police. They know who Guillaume is and prefer to handle this privately. So there may be some opportunity there for you to sort things out.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
I hung up and pounded my head on the desk for a moment. This couldn’t be happening.
I dialed Poppy’s mobile number, but there was no answer. I tried again. Still nothing. I left her a panicked message explaining the situation. Then I dialed Véronique’s number. I was sure that she—or one of the company’s in-house PR reps—would know how to handle things.
“Well, you obviously need to take care of this,” she said calmly when I was done recapping my conversation with Raf. Why was it that the French never seemed to panic?
“Me?” I tried to stop myself from freaking out. “But I can’t reach Poppy!”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” Véronique said, her voice cold, “you are being paid as part of Guillaume’s PR team. So if you and Poppy want to keep your jobs, I suggest you hurry down to the Eiffel Tower to solve this little problem before word gets out. Or should I hire another PR firm that is more reliable?”
I sat there in shock for a moment before mumbling a reply, slamming down the phone, and hurrying out of the office.
“Oh, dear, Emma, I am so sorry I can’t be there,” Poppy whispered into the phone when she called me back fifteen minutes later. I was en route to the Eiffel Tower, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat in the back of the cab. “I’m already on the train. We’ve left the station.”
“I understand,” I said through gritted teeth. “But what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” Poppy whispered back. “Lie?”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I’m going to get lots of practice with that here, aren’t I?”