Knot for Sale (PAPERBACK, LGBT)

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THE CONTROLLED CHAOS behind the scenes of any live fashion show had to be experienced firsthand before you could truly appreciate it. I stood pliant and accommodating among the babble of voices and the confusion of scurrying feet, while two stylists simultaneously handled me like a posable doll.

One of them was frantically swapping out the shiny black five-inch heeled sandals I’d been wearing for a different pair of five-inch heeled sandals, these a metallic gold color with intricate ankle straps. The second stylist was attacking my cleavage with fresh powder, muttering something under his breath that I couldn’t make out.

Meanwhile, the clothing designer—a thirty-something pot-bellied beta man wearing a white t-shirt, skinny jeans, and a large, extremely ridiculous-looking fur hat—was passionately expounding on my supposed backstory for the dress I was modeling. I was a young Greek demigoddess, apparently… on the run from Zeus after defying him. When I heard a roll of thunder from the venue’s sound system, I was to whirl and look over my shoulder in fear, clutching my voluminous white skirts and fleeing along the runway to show off the flow of the satiny fabric to best effect.

All this, while wearing the aforementioned five-inch heels, of course.

Such was the life of a runway model in New York City. I nodded agreeably as the stylists finished primping and buckling.

“Five seconds!” someone shouted.

The designer blanched, hurrying behind me to lift the diaphanous train of the toga-like dress in readiness.

“Go, go, go!” called the assistant, and just like that, it was showtime.

The moment I emerged from the wings onto the catwalk, I became a different person. I was no longer Emma Hope, formerly Emma Huntwell—the orphaned omega daughter of a dead London crime boss, who struggled with food issues, an occasional stutter, chronic anxiety, bad taste in men, and paying the rent on time.

The skirts billowed out behind me like clouds in the breeze as I strode onto the runway to the sound of popping flashbulbs. For the next few moments, I was a demigoddess on the run from the father of the gods; an object of fascination and desire from the all-too-human audience seated four rows deep at my sandaled feet.

Their faces were a blur in my peripheral vision. I stared straight ahead, fierce and proud, my eyes highlighted by black-stripe makeup that had been softened with shimmering blue across my eyelids and cheekbones, like an ombre superhero mask.

I was two-thirds of the way down the catwalk when recorded thunder boomed over the loudspeakers. Caught out, I whirled half around, looked over my shoulder, and fled the rest of the way down the runway, my extravagant skirts rippling like water behind me. When I reached the end, another roll of thunder rumbled. Executing a neat turn that deftly avoided any tangling of fabric, I ran lightly back toward the wings, looking to and fro as though I feared a retaliatory lightning strike directly from the heavens.

As I reached the wings, I passed the next model darting out as though she, too, were fleeing something terrible—wearing a similarly themed but otherwise quite different toga-like dress. Like stepping through a portal between worlds, fantasy abruptly crashed back into reality.

I hurried toward the dressers, who were already waiting with the next outfit—this one, swimwear. They quickly stripped off the toga-dress and hung it, leaving me in my nude-colored pasties and C-string thong among the bustle of backstage. Within sixty seconds, I was redressed in a drapey two-piece swimsuit with different shoes and a flowing sash tied around my waist, ready for the next round.

So it went, until the designer’s entire collection had been duly unveiled. Strut, pose, turn, strut. I could do it in my sleep, which was handy since I was running on… not very much of it, these days.

When the last model returned from showing off the final ensemble, we went out on the stage en masse, flanking the eccentric designer with his eccentric hat as though all of us were ready to fall into bed with him there and then.

It was a good show. No one had slipped and fallen, or turned an ankle, or fainted from low blood sugar under the lights. The audience seemed appreciative, and so did the designer in his embarrassed, socially awkward way.

More importantly, it was a paycheck—if not a huge one. Those had been worryingly thin on the ground of late.

Back in London, I’d had a solid career. I was one of those ‘interesting’ faces, the kind that held people’s attention because my gray eyes were a little too big and my chin was a little too narrow. The alien look, they called it, because it tended to keep consumers’ eyeballs stuck on an ad for longer than a picture of one of the pretty ‘girl-next-door’ types would.

I’d been a hot property, in high demand, and the money had come rolling in. Then everything had fallen apart. I’d hooked myself to the wrong man—part of the old Huntwell crime syndicate I’d grown up in. I found out the hard way he’d been playing me like a string quartet, and he had a bloody fiancé he’d never bothered to tell me about.

Figuring he probably hadn’t told her about me, either, I tracked her down and texted her to let her know what she was signing up for. Percy hadn’t taken that well, to put it mildly. He’d summarily dumped me before I could dump him, while also threatening to have me blacklisted in the modeling industry.

So, I did what I’d always done when times got tough.
I ran.

In fact, I ran all the way across an ocean, and sometimes I still didn’t think it had been enough. Percy eventually ended up in prison along with his father. But someone else in his orbit still had it in for me, even now.

Paper paycheck in hand—because apparently Lyrik Sherina LTD had never heard of direct deposit—I dragged my exhausted body onto the subway. I was already absorbed in mental calculations about how many calories I could afford to eat tomorrow. When that train of thought grew too depressing, I looped an arm around the nearest pole and pulled out my phone to check messages.

These days, such a perfectly normal activity came with a side order of adrenaline. They were sporadic, but the vague, threatening text messages I’d been getting since Percy had been sentenced to prison never stopped completely; not even when I’d changed my phone number. Sure enough, as soon as I unlocked the screen, there it was.

Time’s up, bitch.

I deleted it, pretending those three simple words hadn’t sent me into full-on fight or flight mode.

In addition to the random personal threat, there was another text from Jessica, reminding me that the rent was due in two weeks. Also, one from a fellow model I’d met at the show tonight, asking me if I wanted to go out for drinks. I replied to both, trying to ignore my still-pounding heart—I know and no thanks, too tired, respectively.

Voice mail had to wait until I was at my stop and outside of the noisy station in the Lower East Side. Keeping an eye on my surroundings and a hand resting close to the pepper spray in my pocket as I walked, I dialed and set the phone to my ear.

“You have one new message.”

“Please be my agent with a new gig,” I muttered. Gigs had been too few and too far between in New York, especially lately.

“Emma. Darling. It’s Paul.”

I sucked in a breath, hope sparking. Just one more decent job, and I’d at least be set for this month.

“I need you to come in first thing on Monday, pet. Another client has canceled on us, and the higher-ups are getting antsy. Jared and Clio want to discuss your future with the agency. You know I’m on your side, sweetheart, but—”

I disconnected the call mid-message, my stomach roiling as clammy sweat popped out on my brow. ‘Your future with the agency’ might as well have been code for ‘we’re cutting you loose.’ Stumbling to a halt outside my apartment building, I stared up at the window of the cramped, eighth story flat I shared with two other random people.

A couple of hours ago, I’d been a demigoddess. Now, I was about to be unemployed, someone was sending me anonymous threats, and I only had enough money for maybe two weeks before I was broke and homeless, as well.