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“I’m right here.” Donovan’s familiar voice filled the hallway.
Not wanting any pity, Zoe didn’t dare turn around. Like his brother, Donovan had an extremely charismatic smile. Ever the charmer, he always knew how to bring out a natural blush on any model Zoe had worked on. If she glanced at Donovan, Zoe knew she’d swoon, and right now she was too pissed off to be cheered up. She kept her angry focus on the Windsor knot of Marcus’s tie.
“Tell her everything is still going on as planned,” Marcus said over her head to his brother.
“The interviewing process?” Donovan asked, and Marcus nodded. “It’s just a process.”
“Someone too good for an interview?” Another deep voice asked.
While the voice may have been sexy, the tone was not. Zoe spun on her heels, prepared to give this person a piece of her mind when she stopped and gaped. Instead of the fitted shirt and jeans she’d seen him in earlier at the elevator, he now wore a tailored, classically cut two-thousand-dollar navy blue suit with a blue-and-yellow paisley tie. Suits made Zoe’s knees weak the same way lingerie did men’s.
“You?” The man brushed roughly against Donovan’s shoulders without apologizing.
“You?” Zoe repeated. “I don’t understand.” Zoe wondered how she hadn’t recognized the similarities.
“Will, this is Zoe Baldwin, the woman we’ve been talking about.” Donovan clamped his hands on his brother’s back. “Zoe, this is our baby brother, Will.”
“You’re a makeup artist?”
“She’s the B in Beauty Business,” Donovan interjected.
So, the man from the elevator wasn’t a struggling model? Judging from the expensive suit he wore, he was far from struggling. Zoe shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Artist, genius, whatever you want to call me is fine.”
“How about we keep it simple and call you interviewee number six?” Will asked.
Gone was the charming smile from downstairs. Zoe’s hand brushed against the front pocket where she shoved his business card. She extracted it and fingered the raised letters, assuming it gave the three initials of his position. CEO. Jesus Christ, this man with a dry sense of humor held her fate in his hands. Somewhere in the back of her mind Zoe heard the proverbial ship sound its horn and sail off into the ocean.
* * *
At six in the evening, Will Ravens sat back in his newly ordered chair and tried to get the feel of it and the new position. He was in over his head. As a former professional soccer player for the Texas Raiders, the only thing he knew about women was what he was attracted to. Not being raised in the family business, Will did not possess the same keen cosmetic eye as his siblings. He knew what he’d liked and what he’d seen in the portfolios from the interviews this afternoon. There was nothing to catch his eye—but that wasn’t necessarily true. The woman’s face from earlier this afternoon entered his mind. He thumbed through the portfolios of the potential CDDs. A silver paper clip fastened to the manila folder secured a photo of Zoe Baldwin’s heart-shaped face to the outside.
How was she the woman behind the makeup and not on the runway? Her flawless sienna-and-gold skin was radiant. Her chestnut-brown hair, secured today at the back of her neck, did not do her justice as the photograph before him did. In it, her mane hung over her shoulders and she smiled for the camera with one raised brow and a playful smile across her face.
“So, what did you think of Zoe Baldwin?”
Will dropped the portfolio at the unexpected interruption and cursed under his breath. “Jesus, Donovan, don’t you knock?”
“We’re family.”
“All the more reason to knock,” Will joked. The last round of complaints from their cousins were due to Donovan’s dating the models. He went through at least one on a weekly basis. They threw themselves at him. The one thing a lot of models wanted more than a modeling contract for a spread in an RC ad was to land one of the Ravens men. Having his brothers in charge of anything dealing with models was as productive as letting a fox guard a henhouse. Fortunately, Will, the youngest of the men, had more common sense.
