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KNOCKED UP BY THE DON
CHAPTER 1
HARLOW
“Watch it!” the fantastically slender model hisses at me as I accidentally prick the underside of her arm with a pin. “I haveflesh, you know. I’m not made of plastic, and I’d like to keep some of my skin intact.”
I don’t know about plastic, but her personality sure seems like it’s made of marble. I’ve never met a more stone-faced model in my life—then again, I’ve never had a chance to help out at Fashion Week in New York either. “Sorry,” I mumble with a handful of straight pins firmly pressed between my lips. If I drop any of them, a gaggle of barefooted runway models will start shrieking about the sanctity of their toes. I’m pretty sure they have every body part heavily insured. I do my best to pinch together the dress I’m trying to affix to this model without poking her again. It’s my first time working Fashion Week and intimidated is a gross understatement for how I feel. Coupled with excitement and awe that rivals that of meeting a superhero, my hands are quite literally shaking.
As soon as I have her dress on, the tall blonde beauty strides away from me like a beautiful long-legged space alien that can cross the room in two swift steps. Almost instantly, my former boss Marguerite shoves another model in front of me to dress, as if this is a human assembly line. This time a male, he’s also ridiculously attractive, and entirely nude.It’s difficult not to look at what’s hanging between his legs, especially when it starts to swell in response to my touch as I begin to pin him into his pants. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be able to control that at runway shows?” I joke, trying to lighten the awkward moment.
He grins at me with a devilish look in his eyes but doesn’t answer my question. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Twenty-three, why?”
“And which design firm do you work for?”
“Is this Twenty Questions?” I retort.
He chuckles, and even his laugh sounds sexy. I think these models are literally created to be tempting. “I’m just trying to figure out how someone who can’t stick a straight pin, and has never seen a swollen cock, wound up working at the most prestigious fashion event in the city,” he teases. Fair enough.
“I don’t technically work for any design firm, at least not yet,” I explain. “I just graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make a name for myself in the industry. My old internship boss needed some help this week, so she let me come along.”
I finish up getting him dressed as quickly as possible, not saying anything else that might give away my lack of experience. This guy is much nicer than the female model who looked at me as if I belong outside on the street pandering for coins instead of backstage with her.
I can’t help but notice some of the things going on around me in the bustle of preparation for the runway show. All of the heavy hitters are here, including designers from Racked,themost elite, profitable firm in the industry. They have a catalogue of high-profile clients that essentially strangles all the competition.
I have my sights set on getting on board with a less cut-throat company in order to make a name for myself as a fashion designer—a firm that’s stable, but definitely lower on the food chain than Racked. I know better than to even think about trying to get my foot in the door at a firm like that. Even with my impressive internship recommendations, they’d laugh me straight back to the last century. There’s not a single newbie fashion designer in the entirety of the Garment District that would dream of applying there, including me.
“You’re all set,” I say to the model with a smile. “Good luck on the runway.”
He smooths his hands down the front of his pants, stalling at his crotch for a moment before winking at me. “I don’t need luck; I was born for this. Try not to ogle the other designers too much.”
I feel my face flush with embarrassment. It’s not as if I could get a glimpse of anything the designers from Racked are working on anyway. They keep all their ideas under tight wrap until the show begins. It’s almost crazy how tight their security is; their models even get dressed behind opaque screens to keep anyone from sneaking a peek at their designs.
I look around me and take in a breath for a moment, as Marguerite is too busy talking with one of the models to put me to work again. The entirety of backstage is a flurry of fabrics and furiously deviating hues. Creativity is practically seeping through the walls, and the smell of freshly dyed cloth and new leather permeates the air. This experience is a dream for me. A dream suddenly twisted into a nightmare when I hear the sound of gunshots in the main exhibition hall.
Everything happens so quickly that it blurs together in my head like a time-lapse movie on LSD. Screams erupt, half-dressed models and horrified-looking designers run, and I drop all the straight pins onto the floor. I see Marguerite scrambling to push through her colleagues to get to the exit and hear the sound of more gunshots being fired. I don’t know anything at all about guns, but isn’t the point of firing one to actually hit something? These sound like they’re just being used to scatter people away, like roaches under a lifted rock. But when one of the shots takes out the overhead lights, leaving only the foreboding red glow of the emergency lights, I start to wish I was under a rock.
The exit doors are swarmed with a moving mass of people all tangled up together as they try to squeeze out of it. It reminds me of one of those horror movies that quickly turns into a grisly scene. So, I run in the opposite direction, hoping to find a different exit—maybe a back door that leads out into the street instead of the hallway.
I push through the clothing racks laden with designer clothing, try not to freak out at the fact that it’s eerily quiet in the direction I’m heading in alone and push down the feeling of intense adrenaline threatening to give me a full-blown panic attack.I just need to get out of here.
A small door comes into view at the far wall of the building, and I run toward it, letting out a small stifled scream when a man suddenly appears to be running beside me. “Hurry!” he says as I look over to see that it’s the ultra-attractive male model from before. “Just get to the door and—”
Before he can finish his sentence, another gunshot erupts. This one hits a target. My entire body stiffens to an abrupt halt, prompted by sheer terror as the model crumbles to the floor at my feet. His beautiful face has been cracked open by a bullet lodged in the side of his skull.
I feel like I need to scream, but no sound comes out of my gaping open mouth. His eyes roll back into his head until the sockets are completely filled with white. I’ve never seen a dead body before; I always thought my first experience would be more peaceful, more formally presented in some sort of decorated casket with the sound of somber music playing, than this sight of a man being brutally killed in front of me.
I look down at my dress to peel my eyes away from the carnage, but it doesn’t help because my ivory-colored sheath is splattered with blood. I have a sickening feeling that the damp trickle down the side of my cheekbone is also blood. Frozen in a state of panic, I’m too shocked to even move. I stand there, covered in blood splatter, with a dead man at my feet, trying to push a breath through my lungs before I pass out. I still need to get out of here. I need to will my feet to move before I wind up on the floor right next to him. But instead of my adrenaline kicking into a flight-or-fight mode, I feel heavy and made of more marble than that snarky female model’s personality from earlier.
The only thing that breaks me from my stupor is the sight of a man approaching slowly from behind one of the garment racks. He walks with a deliberate stride that is almost predatorial, still holding the gun in his hand before sliding it into the waistband of his pants. The rational part of my brain tells me he isn’t going to shoot me if he’s putting his gun away, but it also tells me that whoever this guy is, he’s just murdered someone in front of my eyes. That makes me a witness.Damnit, why won’t my legs move?
The man comes to a stop, standing squarely in front of me and staring at me with a steel gray gaze. Contrary to my bloodied appearance, his impeccable suit isn’t even creased in the slightest. How can you murder someone and yet still remain so calm, so clean, so cool-tempered? The better question is how a man who looks so divinely handsome can commit such a heinous act?
The man locks his eyes with mine, and I give up on trying to reclaim that stuck breath in my chest. Without saying a single word, he reaches down and grabs the dead model by the top of his shoulder. He hoists the lifeless body up over his shoulder with one single swift motion, as if he’s casually flipping his suit jacket over his back. A daunting sensation comes over me that whoever this guy is, he’s done this before. He pauses just briefly, lifting an eyebrow at me as I stand there motionless. It’s almost like he’s trying to figure out why I haven’t run away screaming at the top of my lungs yet.Trust me buddy, I’m wondering that myself.I’m transfixed in both horror and a seductively dark sense of intrigue I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have. It makes me feel a bit like someone has taken a seam ripper to my insides.
There’s a scuffling sound coming from the other side of the room, and without further hesitation, the man disappears back behind the garment racks that he had stepped out from, carrying the dead weight of what was once a flirtatiously lively model. Suddenly, I snap back into the moment at hand. Instead of racing out the door I’d been headed toward, I spin around on my heels and run straight back toward the runway entrance. I sprint through the elaborate opening and race down the runway, practically tripping over my feet until I spill out into the chaotic crowd.
