Page 3 of Strut

He smiled like he’d seen it all before and I guessed he had. “Well, if you decide you’d like to give modelling a shot, let me know and we’ll talk. We’d like to sign you, Alec, very much. You have a good future in editorial modelling. Showcasing design clothing in high fashion mags isn’t going to be a problem for you. They’ll love you. But more importantly, for your career longevity and agency interest, you have great potential for commercial work with a variety of product lines, and that’s where the long-term money lies. Cage would, of course, help settle you in New York, get you an apartment, help with a visa, that kind of thing. You won’t have to do it alone.”

We talked for another ten minutes and then he left me standing with his card in my hand and my jaw still dragging on the floor. What the ever-loving fuck? This couldn’t be happening. But by the time I was ready to leave, I’d added another three cards to Devon’s and I knew it was very, very real. I had a serious shot at this.

Good god, how was I gonna tell my folks?

* * *

Somehow, I managed. I ignored the general wailing and gnashing of teeth, the obvious concern for my sanity and welfare, not to mention the endless lectures on how modelling offered no long-term security, and how New York was a cesspit of crime. I disregarded their fears, and with Tui’s encouragement, I signed with Cage. Three weeks later, with my head still spinning like a re-run of the exorcist, the initial one-year contract in my hot little hand, and a serious conversation with Rhys under my belt, I found myself jetting my way to New York and a future I’d never imagined.

Hunter Donovan was nothing more than a blip on my radar, shelved as the bad mistake of a poorly directed crush.

I had an exciting future ahead of me.

My new life was about to start.

CHAPTERONE

October, the following year.

Alec

We wereboth going to die.

The thought felt oddly calm in my head as the yellow cab blasted its horn and veered across the centre line in the middle of Manhattan morning commuter traffic. I white-knuckled the seat in front to stop from being thrown sideways against the window and prayed.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Yeah, he probably wasn’t going to answer that.

The red-haired lunatic driver from hell barely drew breath in his cheerful and oddly tuneful rendition of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” at a volume nobody needed to hear and with Whitney relegated to backup.

I glanced at Tim, sitting beside me in the back seat, his soulful brown eyes bulging out of his head. At barely nineteen and fair dinkum Aussie down to hiscrikey mateT-shirt, his tan had paled to a hell-no, pasty grey.

“What the fuck is this guy on?” Tim hissed under his breath.

“Can you please slow down?” I yelled at the driver over the music.

“Huh?” The cabbie looked over his shoulder and I gasped as he almost collected a cyclist on his right fender.Holy shit.My heart lodged somewhere north of my throat, in the part of my brain dedicated to absolute fucking terror. This city was doing my head in.

“Watch the damn road!” I shouted.

“You gotta problem with my driving, feel free to walk,” he shouted in a thick Queens accent that hadn’t met anrit didn’t want to fuck with. He waved a dismissive hand and Tim and I pitched forward as the cab came to a sudden stop, almost rear-ending the Mercedes in front. The cabbie jumped on his horn and threw his arm out his open window, gesticulating madly to the driver who flipped him off in return.

I sighed and fell back in my seat just as Whitney faded to black and the cab filled with the dulcet tones of Annie Lennox wishing to have someone back who’d already hurt her. Really, Annie? Just walk away, baby, and be thankful it was only broken glass.

When the light turned green, I rapped on the plexiglass partition. “Pull over. Anywhere here will be fine.”

The driver’s gaze jerked to his rear-vision mirror, a deep scowl cutting across his face. “But we ain’t there—”

I cut him off. “Just do it. I’d like to survive the day long enough to earn some money, if that’s okay with you.” I shoved some bills through the open slide and wondered when I’d gotten so damn rude. A year in New York had roughed a whole lot of edges I didn’t even know I had. You didn’t survive long in this city without a blistering return serve or three in your back pocket for whenever it was needed. And it was needed, a lot.

A crazy adrenaline-fuelled, eclectic, infuriating, and fun-as-all-hell place to live, New York had little time for the naïve, wide-eyed Kiwi who’d arrived on its shore the year before. These days, it had way more respect for this more caustic version that had taken root from sheer necessity—a big change from the laid-back country boy who’d been brought up on a dairy farm in the rolling green hills of Pukekohe. All my bright, shiny, prim and proper edges had been well and truly knocked off. My mother would be horrified, but it got the job done and I’d be dead meat without it.

The cursing cabbie barely crossed the intersection before he cut off a battered Ford Focus in order to get to the kerb—well,ontothe kerb if we were going to be picky. As soon as the cab jerked to a stop, Tim and I grabbed our bags and broke the land speed record, leaving the vehicle and its cloying aroma of sweat and the tuna fish sandwiches the cabbie had proudly informed us he had in his lunchbox, to the relative safety of the footpath... sidewalk... whatever.

It was no joke. Manhattan sidewalks were only slightly less dangerous than an Amazon traverse, and with a distinct similarity in the wildlife—large teeth, poisonous stings and razor-sharp claws. You underestimated the determination of a New Yorker at your peril, and in the year I’d lived in the town, I’d collected a catalogue of bruises and been showered with some of the most creative cursing-out known to humanity and often from the unlikeliest people—read octogenarians with the vocabulary of a pirate on crack. Feeding time at the zoo had nothing on New York in rush hour, the assault on your eardrums only marginally less than the cab driver’s preferred volume setting on his radio.

I normally rode the subway or chanced my life and biked to my local modelling assignments, but one of the other models I shared with had procured my bike for reasons unknown—the fucker—and I was running late. Not to mention the morning crush in the stations guaranteed zero cooperation in getting to your destination on time anyway.

Another flatmate, Tim, had his first casting of the day in the same general vicinity, so we decided to share a cab—also no guarantee of getting there on time, orat all, as it turned out, but that was New York. A cab was a luxury considering we couldn’t even see an oily rag in the distance, let alone live on the smell of it. Whoever said male modelling was all glitz and easy money, I wanted to rip that fucker’s tongue out and shove it up his arse, giving a whole new meaning to the term talking shit.

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