Page 17 of Love Me Gently

She was a beautiful model from Brazil, and I wanted to be her. And then more famous.

It was with only a small remaining amount of trepidation that I picked up the phone on January sixth, giving Robert a few days to get back to work after the New Year, and made the call.

To my further appeasement, he was incredibly professional, and when I told him I received his name and number through Zane, he scheduled me into his office for an initial consultation and meeting on his first available appointment. Which happened to be almost two weeks away.

Thrilled, I spent the next two weeks mulling over more books and websites and videos on modeling and posing, how to adjust my frame to allow light to hit me better, how to smile or shift my eyes to appear either sultry or fierce.

Stella giggled every time I passed a mirror and struck a pose, but even she noticed a fresh quickness to my step.

My customers at Laredo’s apparently noticed the difference as well, because my tips increased substantially. It left me with an extra small chunk I squirreled away into a tin can I kept under my bed, slowly growing my savings and a smaller coffee tin for “splurge” funds.

When my appointment came, set late on a Friday afternoon at Whisk Agency, I ensured I’d spent an appropriate amount of time curling my blond hair and working on my makeup to look a few years older. I was wearing my best dress and tights. Wearing an ultra-long white shirtdress, I left the collar opened and the top couple buttons undone. It wasn’t enough to reveal cleavage, but enough to see skin tone and my collarbone. My heels were in my shoulder bag so I could put them on as soon as I reached the building. My heavy, gray snow boots clunked on the slushy sidewalks, remnants of snow earlier from in the week, but like life in Deer Creek, New Yorkers prepared for the weather and went on about life as usual. It was one of the only similarities between the two places I’d been able to find in the last six months.

My nerves were at an all-time high by the time I reached the building. If everything Zane had told me about, and everything I’d read about on Whisk, was true, this had the potential to be my big break. I desperately needed it. How amazing would it be to not only start off the new year with this opportunity, but also to be able to phone my parents and let them know?

I had to nail this appointment.

Taking a few minutes, I changed into my heels on the covered and dry sidewalk, before doing a quick makeup scan with my compact mirror. All done and looking as good as I was going to, there was nothing left than to go for it.

Summoning up all the confidence I had, which was approximately the size of a mustard seed, and faking everything else I needed, I curled my hands around the brass handle on the glass door and opened the door.

Instantly, I was hit with a blast of heat as I stepped into the lobby and headed straight for the lobby’s receptionist desk.

“Hello,” I said, already digging into my purse for my driver’s license. Robert had told me I’d need to show ID to be allowed on the elevator. “Trina Mills. I’m here to see Mr. Madrid?”

I cringed at the way I phrased it more like a question than a statement. If the woman behind the desk, beautifully and stylishly coiffed but old enough to be my mother noticed, she said nothing.

“Sign here,” she said, pushing a blotter toward me for visitors. “And take this badge with you. It must be visible at all times.”

She glanced at my ID, nodded, and picked up the phone. “Mr. Madrid, your appointment is here. A Miss Mills? Excellent. She’s on her way.”

She set down the phone and gave me a quick glance, with a barely-there smile, pointing at the elevators. “Twentieth floor, second bank of elevators to your right. Sign out when you leave.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I tucked my license into my purse and grabbed the badge, clipping it to my purse as I walked to where she gestured.

As soon as the elevator doors closed shut behind me, my stomach rolled. By the time the elevator slowed to a halt, I was one more floor away from expelling my nerves all over my feet.

“Goodness,” I muttered, and pressed a hand to my stomach. “You can do this.”

When the doors dinged and opened, I stepped off the elevator, ensuring my steps were firm and confident. Spying the receptionist desk first, I headed straight toward it even though there was no one sitting behind the cherry wood and marble counter-height top.

I forced myself not to fidget with my purse string or the hem of my shirt, and instead, I surveyed the area. Richly colored woods, beautiful marble. Frosted glass walls with the same cherry-colored wood doors behind the reception desk. A hallway to the right. Couches that looked built more for design aesthetic than comfort to my left. Glass top tables at the edges of the two small couches and one in the middle created a sitting area that, while made with warm colors in tans and chocolate brown pillows, none of it said “get comfortable and stay a while.” It was exactly what I expected from a modeling agency’s entrance. Everything was rich-looking, expensive, and screamed impersonal at the same time whispering, “Notice me.”

No way was I moving close to it.

A door opened down a hallway to my right, and I turned in the direction of the noise, hoping it was Robert Madrid. In an instant, I set my posture to how I’d been practicing for this moment for the last few weeks.

Shoulders back, breasts out, chin up, arms relaxed at my sides. I placed one foot in front of the other to elongate my legs and at the last second, as a shadow appeared from around the corner, I flipped my blond hair off my shoulder.

“Miss Mills,” the man said, as he appeared.

He was stunningly handsome. Dressed in a well-fitted double-breasted black pinstripe suit, his shirt was stark white and his tie, a deep blood red.

He was at least a decade older than me. Old enough to be experienced andhot, young enough to not be anywhere close to my father in age. The lack of gray in his styled, dirty-blond hair and no wrinkles helped with the age.

“Mr. Madrid, I assume,” I said, holding out my hand as he walked toward me. I swung my hips in one long stride of a step and reached him. “Trina Mills. Pleasure to meet you.”

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