âI CANâT do this.â
Eveâs voice was little more than a whisper as the icy hand of fear gripped her throat and trailed its chilly fingers down her spine. She wanted to run, but was suddenly too panic-stricken to move. Besides, in the stiletto-heeled thigh-length boots she probably wouldnât get very far.
On the other side of the curtains the ballroom of Florenceâs grandest palazzo was packed with five hundred of the worldâs most wealthy and beautiful, who had come to pay homage to the man who had been dressing them for half a century. Only the cream of Antonio di Lazaroâs client list had been invited to attend this exclusive fiftieth anniversary retrospective, and any celebrities not sitting out there in the glittering ballroom waiting for the show to begin were backstage, getting ready to model some of the legendary Lazaro labelâs most iconic designs.
Sienna Swift, current supermodel darling of the international fashion scene, looked up briefly from the magazine she was reading and gave Eve her famously dazzling smile.
âCourse you can. Youâll be fine.â
âBut Iâm aâ¦a journalist.â The dishonesty of the statement made Eve falter as she said it. âMy friend Lou was supposed to be doing this articleâsheâd have been fantastic, but Iâve never done anything like this in my life. I donât know the first thing about modelling!â
Sienna turned the page. âWell, babe, youâve got the legs for it. And better boobs than the rest of us put together. Whatâs to know? Itâs hardly rocket science.â She paused to scrutinise a photograph of one of her closest rivals before adding, âItâs all about sex, I suppose.â
âSex?â Eve wailed, her spirits sinking even further. âWhy sex? Where I come from sex is not something you do in front of five hundred people and photographers from every major publication around the globe.â
Apparently. She couldnât very well say she didnât know the first thing about that either.
Sienna sighed and put the magazine down.
âOK, we havenât got long, so letâs make this as simple as possible. All you have to do is find someone to focus on. Youâre up there on the catwalk, right? And you just fix your eyes on some bloke and forget everyone else. Watch.â
The model took a couple of steps back, thrusting her hips forward in classic catwalk style and placing her hands on them. Looking around for a likely candidate, she fixed her smoky gaze on the singer from Italyâs hottest new boy band, whoâd just come offstage.
âYou walk towards him and you never take your eyes off him,â she murmured through sultry, pouted lips. âNot for a second. This is lust at first sight. Youâre looking at him as if heâs the sexiest man alive and youâre going to go right up to him and strip his clothes off and there and then.â She swung back to Eve with a wicked smile. âThatâs all there is to it!â And to the obvious dismay of the blushing singer she picked up the magazine again and resumed her study of it.
Eve squirmed uncomfortably in the transparent PVC minidress, and tugged it down over her bottom. It would be a lot easier to follow Siennaâs advice if she was allowed to wear her glasses, without which she wasnât going to be able to focus on anything more than half a metre away from her face, and if she wasnât dressed in an upmarket plastic bag. She seemed to have drawn the short straw in the clothes lottery, and had been allocated one of Lazaroâs more bizarre creations from his avant-garde phase in the 1960s. Strategically positioned fluorescent flowers stopped the dress being absolutely X-rated, but she still felt horribly exposed.
All around her some of the most beautiful women in the world were sipping mineral water from miniature bottles and dropping the kind of names that would have sent a real journalist into a frenzy of excitement. Among them Eve felt lonely, disorientated, and about as glamorous as a transit van in a garage full of sportscars.
She didnât belong here.
She closed her eyes against the sudden wave of homesickness that threatened to knock her for six as she thought of her messy desk by the window in Professor Swansonâs office. At this time of year her view of the college quadrangle was almost entirely obliterated by the wisteria rampaging across the window, casting a murky underwater light over the clutter of teacups and student essays and piles of scribbled notes in the dusty book-lined room.
That was her world, and she had been crazy to think for a second that she could cut it in Louâs. Fashion journalistsâespecially those who were successful enough to shadow supermodels for exclusive behind-the-scenes articles on the A-list events of the yearâwere generally not shy, shortsighted academics. There was just no way she could pull it off.