Carla sat up and stared at her sister incredulously. ‘You are?’
Isobella shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘He insisted.’
‘Well, I like him already.’
‘Don’t get too carried away. The whole team will be there.’
‘But still,’ Carla grinned. ‘You and McHusky.’
‘Carla, be sensible,’ she chided, absently rubbing her finger over the small scar in the centre of her neck. ‘Nothing good can come of this.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. He’s finally getting you out of this house. Pulling you out of your comfort zone. For that I think the man deserves a medal.’ Carla jumped up. ‘Come on, let’s get you ready. What are you going to wear?’
‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ Isobella murmured, feeling so depressed she just wanted to crawl into her bed and pull the covers over her head. ‘I think I’ll just plead a headache and stay home.’
Carla regarded her sister seriously. ‘Izzy. What harm can it do?’ she asked softly.
Isobella looked at her sister, flinching slightly at the childhood endearment—the name that had been on every designer’s lips back in her heyday.
Was Carla mad? What if she wanted more?
She’d trained herself to not want more. Of anything. She didn’t want to open the lid on a whole bunch of cravings she’d kept tightly locked away.
Carla lay back down on the bed. ‘Not all men are like Anthony, babe. You have a great figure. Stop hiding it.’
Isobella snorted. ‘I had. Past tense.’
‘Your figure is as divine now as it was when you were storming those Paris catwalks.’
Isobella heard the slight trace of envy in Carla’s voice. The sisters were chalk and cheese in the looks department. Carla was shorter and curvier, and although her figure was trim she always struggled to keep weight off. Isobella could, and did, eat like a horse, with no negative side effects whatsoever.
‘You know what I mean,’ Isobella replied.
‘Babe. Any man worth his salt won’t care about what you look like with your clothes off,’ Carla said gently.
Isobella shook her head incredulously at Carla, knowing full well that the male of the species usually judged women exactly on what they looked like under their clothes. ‘I look hideous!’
Carla shook her head. ‘God. Once a model always a model. You have such a screwed-up body image, babe. So, your body’s not what it was? But you are far from hideous. Your scars are part of you. You can lock yourself away because of them or live despite them. Beauty is more than skin-deep, and any man who judges you for the marks on your body isn’t worthy of oxygen.’
Isobella knew what her sister was saying was right. She’d heard Carla and her parents say it a thousand times. She did have a skewed sense of beauty. She knew that. The international fashion scene was as catty as it was cut throat. It was hard to overcome how much it had screwed with her head.
‘I know, I know.’ She sighed. ‘I just wish…I wish it had never happened.’ Another tear squeezed out from beneath her lids and she wiped it away. It had been years since she’d uttered those words. Damn Alexander Zaphirides!
‘Me and you both, babe.’ Carla raised herself up on her elbow. ‘Not least of all because those first few weeks you spent in Intensive Care were so harrowing there wasn’t a day that went by when we didn’t think you were going to die. But here you are. Alive. Don’t let it keep robbing you of your life.’
Yes, Carla was right. She was right. But even though she’d already decided to give up modeling, the whole reverse fairy-tale—the swan turning into the ugly duckling—had been a huge psychological blow. Her self-esteem had taken an even bigger hit than her body. Her physical scars had reduced slightly over time, but she still grappled with her mental ones every day.
‘Now up!’ Carla ordered, grabbing Isobella’s arm. ‘Let’s find you something to wear.’
Isobella followed reluctantly, and stood passively while Carla hunted through her cupboard.
‘Aha! This. You bought it and never wore it. It’s perfect.’
Isobella looked at the dress Carla was brandishing. It was one of many things she’d bought over the years since the accident, despite knowing she’d never wear it. Mainly because she didn’t socialize, but also because it revealed more than it concealed. But the female inside her had been unable to resist. The Fleckeri’s brand might have robbed her of her confidence, but it hadn’t taken away her love for shopping or beautiful clothes.
It was the colour of a deep merlot, and was made from a fabric that clung in all the right places. Isobella shrank from it. ‘No. It’s too… It’ll show my trachey scar… I can’t possibly…’
‘It’s perfect,’ Carla bossed.
The feminine side of her wanted to reach out and touch the very sexy dress, but Isobella knew if she touched it she’d be a goner. ‘It’s all wrong.’
‘Why did you buy it, then?’ Carla demanded.
Because it was beautiful. ‘It’s not the image I’m trying to project,’ she said primly.
‘McHusky is here for a few days, and then you won’t see him again. Don’t you want to at least make him drool a little?’ Carla held up her thumb and index finger with a whisker of space separating them. ‘It’s one night, babe. Just one. Don’t you want to feel like a woman instead of a nerdy, four-eyed lab geek?’
‘Hey,’ Isobella protested at her sister’s blunt assessment. But she could hardly refute it. A ‘four-eyed lab geek’ was the image she’d meticulously presented to the world. ‘I do not want to attract Alex.’
Carla shrugged. ‘So do it for yourself. You just said you wished it had never happened. Put on the dress and pretend for one night that it didn’t. Be Izzy again.’
Carla held out the dress, and Isobella felt herself reach for it against all her better judgments.
Alex wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting from Isobella tonight. In fact he wouldn’t have been surprised had she not shown at all. But secretly he’d hoped that maybe they’d all get to see a little more of the person beneath the coat and the glasses.
Unfortunately not.
He spotted her the second she walked in. She was late, and he’d been eyeing the doorway while making polite conversation with Roland about the project. She paused at the ‘Wait here to be seated’ sign, searching for their table.
She was wearing horrible baggy trousers and a shapeless shirt that flared down from a mandarin collar in an A-line and left everything to the imagination.
She looked around, her eyes darting from table to table. She seemed nervous, one hand clutching at her bag the other pushing her god-awful
