measure.
Charlie took hold of her arm above her elbow, and that was good because she really couldn’t see a thing. People around her were shouting, “Over here!” and “Look up!” over and over, and she hadn’t anticipated so much noise. Whenever she watched this part on TV it was silent, a voice-over, then a cut to a commercial, but here it was loud and scary and intrusive.
Charlie’s hand squeezed gently as he escorted her toward a towering white tent, which she knew was the Fashion Week venue in Damrosch Park. The area was huge, with runway shows from morning till night, cocktail parties, dining areas, meeting rooms, press rooms.
She’d been here, to Lincoln Center, but on the other side, with the fountain and the Met and the magic staircase. To be here now, when the whole complex was dressed up in its fancy best, when to get inside the tents should have been impossible for a girl like her, was a lot to process.
Thank goodness for Charlie’s steadying hand. What world was she in that the most comforting thing around her was Charlie Winslow? She honestly couldn’t tell if she was trembling more from the freezing cold or the excitement.
There was so much to look at between flashes of light, she was shocked to step inside. There was a line, and because this was the real world, there were metal detectors to go through. No one seemed to mind, though. Security was tight, and the slower pace as they were herded forward gave her a chance to catch her breath, only to lose it again as she got a load of who she was standing near.
Charlie’s breath warmed her neck as he leaned in close. Goose bumps. Everywhere. Down her spine and up her arms. When his voice followed, low and warm, her own breath hitched and her eyes may have rolled up in her head for just a second. Probably in a minute she’d get with the program. She wouldn’t feel faint from his touch, or by standing one person away from her favorite designer on earth. The problem was, she couldn’t decide what to stare at—the clothes or the designers themselves. Oh, God, there was the model who was on the cover of this month’s issue of Elle, and good God almighty, that was the star of her favorite CSI, and Bree was so grateful for Charlie’s arm.
“You’ll never see more food go to waste than you will at this party,” Charlie said in that same intimate whisper he’d used in the limo. “I don’t think any of these people actually eat. They do chew a lot of gum, though. Ketosis. It’s a breath thing, not that you’ll ever hear about it in Vogue or W. People who don’t eat may look fantastic on camera, but their breath could kill a buffalo. Be warned.”
Bree giggled, and while it was true that everyone in the two long lines snaking into the tent was on the ridiculous side of thin, most of the people she saw were subtly chewing, or standing in such a way as to avoid being breathed upon.
Of course, she thought of her own breath now. She’d barely eaten today, too nervous.
“You’re fine,” he said, with a minty-scented chuckle. “Don’t fret.”
She smiled at him as they inched along. “I guess I’m not hiding my small-town roots very well, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She gave him a knowing look. “I’ll try harder to appear blasé.”
“Don’t do that for my sake.” Charlie tugged her around even more, until they were facing each other. “I like that this is magical for you.”
“I’m a real novelty, huh?”
“Truthfully, yes. But a good one. I want to hear much, much more about your life before New York. I’m a native, and the way I was raised, you’d think there wasn’t anything between California and New York. I’ve never been to Ohio, although I’m reasonably sure I could point to it on a map. It’s at the bottom of Lake Erie, right?”
“Wow, I’m impressed. Yeah.”
“And where in Ohio did you grow up?”
She waved her hand at him and turned to check on the line’s progress. “You’ve never heard of it.” When she looked back, his smile was a bit crooked. “So that food you mentioned. Passed around on little trays? Buffet? Sit down banquet?”
“The first two,” he said. “There will be places to sit, tables all around, and here’s a secret. You can completely tell the pecking order by who sits, who stands and where those two things happen.”
Her eyes widened at yet another morsel of insider-y goodness. She felt as if he was giving her the ultimate backstage pass, and while she knew a lot of it had to do with manners and even more to do with Rebecca, there was a tiny flare of hope buried deep inside that perhaps he was letting her in because he liked her? A little?
Probably a good idea not to linger on that thought. She needed to be in the moment, enjoying the hell out of what she had. To ask for anything more was tempting fate.
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