Abel spent the next two years concentrating on building his hotels in Europe. He opened the Paris Baron in 1953 and the London Baron at the end of 1954. Barons were also in various stages of development for Brussels, Rome, Amsterdam, Geneva, Bonn, Edinburgh, Cannes and Stockholm in a ten - year expansion programme.
Abel became so overworked that he had little time to consider William Kane's continued prosperity. He had not made any attempt to buy shares in Lester's Bank or its subsidiary companies, although he held on to those he already possessed in the hope that another opportunity might be forthcoming to deal a blow against William Kane from which he would not recover so easily. The next time, Abel promised himself, he'd make sure he didn't unwittingly break the law.
During Abel's increasingly frequent absences abroad George ran the Baron Group and Abel was hoping that Florentyna would join the board as soon as she ' left Radcliffe in June of 1955. He had already decided that she should take over responsibility for all the shops in the hotels and consolidate their buying, as they were fast becoming an empire in themselves.
Florentyna was very excited by the prospect but was insistent that she wanted some outside experience before joining her father's group. She did not consider her natural gifts for design, colour, and organisation were any substitute for experience. Abel suggested that she train in Switzerland under Monsieur Maurice at the famed ~cole H&eli~re in Lausanne. Florentyna baulked at the idea, explaining that she wanted to work for two years in a New York store before she would consider taking over the shops. She was determined to be worth employing, '... and not just as my father's daughter,' she informed him. Abel thoroughly approved.
'A New York store, that's done easily enough,' he said. 'I'll ring up Walter Hoving at Tiffany's and you can start at the top.
'No,' said Florentyna, revealing that she'd inherited her father's streak of stubbornness. 'What's the equivalent of a junior waiter at the Plaza Hotel?'
'A sales girl at a department store,' said Abel, laughing.
'Then that's exactly what I'm going to be,' she said.
Abel stopped laughing. 'Are you serious? With a degree from Radcliffe and all the experience and knowledge you've gained from your European trips, you want to be an anonymous sales girl?$ 'Being an anonymous waiter at the Plaza didn't do you any harm when the time came to set up one of the most successful hotel groups in the world,' replied Florentyna.
Abel knew when he was beaten. He had only to look into the steel grey eyes of his beautiful daughter to realise she had made up her mind, and that no amount of persuasion, gentle or otherwise, was going to change her views.
After Florentyna had graduated from Radcliffe, she spent a month in Europe with her father, watching the progress of the latest Baron hotels.
She officially opened the Brussels Baron where she made a conquest of the hand~rome young French - speaking managing director, whom Abel accused of smelling of garlic. She had to give him up three days later when it reached the kissing stage, but she never admitted to her father that garlic had been the reason.
Florentyna returned to New York with her father and immediately applied for the vacant . position (the words used in the classified advertisement) of 'junior sales assistant' at Bloomingdale's. When she filled in the application form, she gave her name as Jessie Kovats, well aware that no one would leave her in peace if they ever thought she was the daughter of the Chicago Baron.
Despite protests from her father, she also left her suite in the Baron Hotel and started looking for her own place to live. Once again Abel gave in and presented Florentyna with a small but elegant co - operative flat on Fifty - seventh Street near the East River as a twenty - second birthday present.
Florentyna already knew her way around New York and enjoyed a full social life, but she had long ago resolved not to let her friends know that she was going to work at Bloomingdale's. She feared that they would want to come and visit her and, in days, her cleverly constructed cover would be blown, making it impossible to be treated as a normal trainee.
When her friends did inquire, she merely told them that she was helping to run the shops in her father's hotels. None of them gave her reply a second thought.
Jessie Kovats; - it took her some time to get used to the name - started in cosmetics. After six months, she was ready to run her own beauty shop. The girls in Bloomingdales worked in pairs, which Florentyna, immediately turned to her advantage by choosing to work with the laziest girl in the department. This arrangement suited both girls as Florentyna's choice was a gorgeous, unenlightened blonde called Maisie who had only two interests in life: the clock pointing to the hour of six p.m. and men. The former happened once a day, the latter all the time.