Satin Doll Read Online Free PDF

bloody cane.” He saw Sam’s eyes slide to the man in the jogging suit and he growled, “No, not him, he’s busy.”  
    Sam dropped the duffel bag at her feet. There’d been an accident, from the looks of it. The girl in the workman’s arms was bleeding. She stepped cautiously around the frenzied old woman and started toward them. The girl in the satin nightgown extended her arms piteously, screaming in French. As Sam bent over the man with the girl in his arms, the redhead promptly wrapped her arms around Sam’s knees tightly and wailed.  
    “What’s the matter with her?” Sam said. With her free hand she tried to unwind the redheaded girl’s clutch on her legs.  
    “I need a rag, hanky, anything,” the workman snapped. “Can’t seem to get anyone to go for a towel.” He said something to the fragile girl in fluent French and shifted his weight to one knee. “Let’s see if we can get her to a chair.” His big, blunt-fingered hand held a blood-soaked cloth to the girl’s wrist, but the lap of her black dress was dark with bloodstains. Spidery lines of red snaked down the calf of one thin, shapely leg.  
    “All I’ve got is Kleenex,” Sam offered.  
    The man holding the girl was tall, even as he knelt, and had broad shoulders like a professional athlete. “Give it here. Think you can keep pressure on it while I carry her?”  
    Sam stared down at the moaning girl in his arms, wondering what these strange people were doing there. The old woman and the bleeding girl looked like they’d wandered in from the streets, the Paris version of shopping-bag ladies. The kneeling workman was probably a janitor or handyman. And the man across the room in his jogger’s sweat-suit and the fainting blonde looked like passersby.  
    The girl stirred, and the big workman opened Sam’s package of Kleenex, loosening his grip on her wrist only long enough to slap the tissues against it. In that brief second Sam could see there was only a small scratch on the girl’s blue-veined skin, yet it was pouring like a fountain.  
    The redhead grabbing Sam’s knees had seen it, too. “ Elle se meurt, vraiment! ” she promptly screamed.  
    “No, she’s not going to die, dammit,” the workman snarled. He told Samantha, “Grab it tight, keep pressure on it, I’m going to lift her.”  
    “Listen,” Sam began, “I don’t know who these people are, but I’m from Jackson Storm, in New York, the new owner.” She took the girl’s wrist between her fingers, feeling the stickiness of warm blood already oozing through the pad. “Somebody should go—”  
    “Jesus God, pay attention, will you? The one over there,” he indicated the blonde woman with a jerk of his head, “is a stupid hysteric who faints at the sight of blood. And this one’s a chronic bleeder, gushes like a river over a scratch.” He got to a half crouch, carefully cradling the girl in his arms, his biceps bulging under his short-sleeved shirt. “Are you with me?”  
    Sam was with him, thinking it was a situation that didn’t exactly enhance her image as a Jackson Storm executive just in from New York. Where were the people who were supposed to greet her, take her bag, show her to her living quarters, welcome her to Paris? In fact, they were supposed to have met her at the airport. The only ones who looked like Maison Louvel employees were the seamstress with the tape measure around her neck and a girl in slacks and a blue apron who had just rushed in. She didn’t know about the rest, especially the half-naked redhead in the satin nightgown, who was still flopping around on the floor.  
    The workman carried the limp form of the girl the few feet to the sofa and lowered her, propping her in a half-reclining position. They saw her blue-veined eyelids flutter. Bending over her, the man said something softly and the girl opened her eyes.  
    The fragile girl was pretty, and like the old woman she was dressed all in black, a silk dress with a