‘You forget that I was working in the City in London eight years ago, when the tabloids were full of Sorcha Quinn, enfant terrible…The pictures and headlines are easy to conjure up again. It’s not so long ago, and this campaign…well, it’s sensitive.’
His aunt was beginning to sound exasperated. He knew she’d be coming to the end of her patience any minute now.
‘And as I recall you didn’t hold back your opinion then either, Romain. If she’s survived to be here today under consideration for this job then you at least owe her a fair chance. It’s not as if she came out of all that unscathed. It’s why she changed her name to Murphy—which is how you didn’t recognise her straight away when your board suggested her.’
The uncomfortable prickling assailed him again. He hadn’t recognised her. In fact something in her pictures had reached out and touched him. In a place he’d prefer not to look. Thankfully his aunt was still talking, and it was easy to divert his thoughts.
‘That’s all behind her, Romain. I have a reputation to maintain too, believe me, and if there’d ever been a hint of trouble she’d have been out. I wouldn’t have her on my books otherwise.’
Romain snorted discreetly. No leopard changed its spots so completely. He didn’t doubt that quite a few of his aunt’s models lived in such a way that if they were ever found out they’d be off the Models Inc register so fast their heads would spin. No. Women like Sorcha Murphy would keep their dirty little habits a secret. And if there was one thing he was fanatical about, it was that he never went near women involved with drugs. Professionally or socially. The very thought made his chest constrict with dark memories.
‘I know you, Romain,’ his aunt continued, sounding more confident. ‘If you were seriously concerned about Sorcha Murphy’s reputation you wouldn’t have even considered her for this. Your board of directors obviously have no qualms about her past…’
His aunt had a point. And she didn’t know that it was largely Sorcha’s past and apparent redemption that had made them so keen to use her. For him, things weren’t so straightforward. He stared across the room, finding it hard to tear his gaze away. Something was keeping him looking. Just as it had with her pictures. Some hint of vulnerability? A quality that many models failed abysmally to recreate for the camera. How could someone who looked so pure, so innocent, have been or—as was most likely—still be caught up in such a murky, corrupt world?
Just as he was thinking this, and feeling a surprising feeling of disappointment rushing through his veins, Sorcha Murphy looked across the room, almost as if she could sense the weight of his penetrating gaze. Their eyes locked. Blue and grey. And the world stopped turning.
Sorcha felt as though she’d just received a punch to her gut. And the only coherent thought she had in her head was: How did I not notice him before? There was a niggle of recognition, but she couldn’t place him immediately, and the intensity in his eyes was making it hard to focus…
As though incapable of autonomous movement, her eyes could not move from the stranger’s gaze. The most unusual steely grey, his eyes were cold…full of something…and she couldn’t quite figure what it was. One thing it wasn’t was friendly. She shivered inwardly, and yet still could not look away. Even though it was his eyes that held her as if ensnared in a web, she was also aware of his phenomenally dark good looks, the way he stood head and shoulders above anyone else, making him stand out in the crowd. Kate was forgotten. Everything was forgotten. Everything was distilled to this one moment and the tall dark man with the mesmerising eyes who kept staring, and staring. As bold as brass.
And then, in a split second of clarity, she read what was in his eyes. Condemnation and judgment. A kind of disdain. Blatantly obvious. A look that had once been all too familiar in most people’s eyes—one she hadn’t seen for a long time. A tremble started somewhere in her legs, turning them to jelly, and panic seized her insides. Aghast at the strength of her reaction, with a few strangled muttered words she thrust her glass into Kate’s free hand and walked through the crowd and out of the room, not even sure what she was running from.
‘What on earth happened to you? One minute you were here, and the next you went as white as a ghost and stormed out of the room…’
Sorcha took her glass back from her friend and took a rare big gulp. She’d been in the toilets for the last ten minutes, holding a damp cloth to her skin in an effort to halt the rising tide of a nervous rash that hadn’t appeared in years. She was still so stunned and shocked at her reaction to a mere look from that man across the room that she felt shaky. And in no mood to have her far too perceptive friend speculate on the possible reasons why.
One thing was for sure: with that blistering look she’d been transported back to another time. A time she did not want to remember. But he’d been with Maud. Surely they wouldn’t have been talking about her? She hated the irrational feeling of unease it had given her. It had felt as though he’d been able to see right into the very soul of her…
‘Nothing, Katie. I just had to go to the loo…’
‘For ten minutes?’ Katie snorted. ‘I know you, Sorcha, and—’
Her friend broke off, seeing something behind Sorcha, over her shoulder, and then her hand was gripped so tight that she gasped. ‘Katie!’
‘Don’t look now, but the most divine man is across the room…he’s talking to Maud. He must be this nephew she said was coming tonight.’ A look of comic disbelief made Kate’s jaw drop. ‘My God! I’ve just realised who he is. But of course his pictures don’t even do him justice…He’s looking over here—’
‘Katie…’ Sorcha groaned, hiding her rising panic. It had to be him—the man she had seen across the room.
When Kate said her next words, they didn’t even sink into Sorcha’s head straight away because they were said with such breathy awe.
‘He’s Romain de Valois. Maud’s nephew is Romain de Valois. It all makes sense now. The girls were talking about him backstage earlier. He’s heading up some huge campaign—not to mention he’s even here, and easily the most handsome man in New York…Of course they all think they’re in with a—’
‘Romain de Valois?’ A horrified gasp made its way out of Sorcha’s throat, which seemed to be tightening up. She’d gone horribly pale. Kate was oblivious.
‘Yes…you must have heard of him. Oh, Sorcha, just look. He is seriously the most gorgeous specimen—’
‘Katie.’ Sorcha’s voice was urgent, panicked. ‘Don’t you remember who he is?’
It seemed as though the fates were conspiring to throw her back down memory lane tonight whether she liked it or not.
Her mouth twisted into a bitter line. ‘Please tell me you haven’t forgotten that piece in the paper…the one that was worse than all the rest of them—the one that caused every other paper, every magazine and every photographer in London to turn their backs on me?’
Kate finally tore her gaze away from the man across the room and looked at Sorcha. Her brow creased for a second, and then her face became horrorstruck—about as horror struck as Sorcha felt.
Kate clutched her hand. ‘Oh, God, Sorch…that was him. He gave that interview.’
Sorcha just nodded dumbly. Her insides seemed to be shrivelling up. Even eight years ago Romain de Valois had wielded enough influence to crush a fledgling career. He’d made her the black sheep among models. In a scathing interview he had denounced the use of drugs within the fashion world and had held her up as an example. Enough people had been terrified of losing his favour to seriously damage her reputation. Yet her naïve mistake had been far outweighed by the public scandal and the fallout. She’d been cruelly judged and tried for a crime she hadn’t committed, and no one had been prepared to hear her side of the story. His power had been too great. And who cared