an essay?”
“Not exactly him. No.” Sabrina squirmed briefly in her chair.
Caitlin exhaled and counted to five. Out loud. And then she tried again. “But he entered the contest?”
“Not exactly him. No.”
“Sabrina—” Caitlin’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ll show you.” Sabrina’s hand disappeared into the pile of papers and she unearthed an entry form, waving it in front of Caitlin like a white flag. “You have to read this. Then it will make sense.” The young woman nibbled on the tip of her ragged fingernail. “Maybe.”
“Fine.” Caitlin felt a tension headache sink its hooks into the base of her neck as she plucked the paperwork and the photo out of Sabrina’s hands. “Let me know when my next appointment arrives.”
“Yes, Ms. McBride.”
Caitlin retreated to her office, sat down at her desk and slipped off her shoes, careful to line them up just so, before glancing at the entry that had her assistant in a tailspin.
Not that she blamed her. In the five years since IMAGEine, Caitlin’s Minneapolis-based image consulting business, had teamed up with Twin City Trends for their annual makeover contest, this was the first time they’d received an entry from a man.
She deliberately turned the photograph over to escape the intensity of those deep-set, charcoal-gray eyes.
“Now, Mr….” Caitlin glanced at the name at the top of the entry form. “Walsh. What’s your story?”
She turned the application over to skim the “in one hundred words or less tell us why you need a makeover” portion of the entry form and was surprised to find it handwritten rather than typed. And even more surprised to see the neat penmanship dominated by carefully rounded letters; the lower case ones graced with decorative, curly tails.
Okay….
Caitlin lightly cleared her throat.
As she skimmed the essay, unexpected emotion grabbed hold of her heart. And squeezed. No wonder Sabrina hadn’t known what to do with this particular entry.
She didn’t know what to do with it, either.
And Caitlin always knew what to do about everything.
“Are you kidding me, Caitlin? You can’t disqualify this entry. It’s our winner!” Dawn Gallagher picked up the entry form and read the opening lines of the essay out loud.
“‘Dear Twin City Trends Makeover Team,
My name is Jennifer Walsh. I’m twelve years old, and I’m writing to you because my dad needs a makeover…’”
“This is pure gold. Gold that happens to have a high rate of exchange at the newsstand.”
“A person has to be eighteen or older to enter,” Caitlin reminded her, wishing she’d followed her first instinct and quietly discarded JenniferWalsh’s entry form instead of showing it to Dawn. Blame it on the fact that she’d been charmed by the sweet formality of the girl’s essay and thought Dawn might be, too. She’d had no idea the style editor would insist they’d found their winning entry.
“He is over eighteen,” Dawn argued.
“But he didn’t enter the contest.”
“An insignificant detail.”
“There is no such thing as an insignificant detail,” Caitlin felt the need to point out.
Dawn stared at her for a moment and then dropped into the leather chair opposite Caitlin’s desk. Caitlin waited, knowing from past experience that Dawn wasn’t admitting defeat. She was plotting her next move.
“My senior editor posted the stats on the last issue, and I have to admit they’re pretty dismal.” Dawn’s smile was strained. “Subscription sales have declined ever since our competition decided to publish a cheaper version of the magazine. Jillian is hoping the annual makeover edition will turn things around. In fact, she’s hinted if that happens, she’ll think about making the contest a monthly feature.”
“With you in charge.”
“Possibly.” Dawn shrugged but couldn’t hide the ambitious gleam in her eyes. “But might I remind you, if there’s no increase in sales, there’s no makeover feature. And if there’s no makeover feature, there’s no need for a style editor.”
“I see your dilemma,” Caitlin said dryly.
“You can’t deny how much buzz this could create,” Dawn continued. “A man featured in our contest. The entry sent in by his twelve-year-old daughter. It’s fresh. It’s intriguing.”
“It has…potential.”
Dawn’s eyes sparkled. “And you have to admit, this guy…Devon Walsh…is mega-handsome. A diamond in the rough.”
Caitlin frowned. A diamond in the rough? Had she missed something?
“You see it, don’t you?” Dawn held up the photo. “He looks like an aging rock star. Silky dark hair. Mysterious eyes. Bad-boy stubble…”
Bad-boy stubble? Oh, please.
She’d definitely missed something.
“…unless you aren’t sure you could improve on this.” Dawn shrugged.
“Believe me, a shave would be an improvement,” Caitlin shot back, aware of her friend’s tactics but still a little offended that Dawn would question her ability.
“You’ve been hoping to increase your male clientele for the past few years. Who knows? If you can transform this particular frog into a prince, execs will be lining up around the block to schedule an appointment at IMAGEine.”
Caitlin thought the frog/prince analogy wasn’t exactly a fair one. Devon Walsh might be on the scruffy side but he did have great cheekbones. And she couldn’t deny that one of her goals included expanding her client base to include more men. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a setup.
“Are you sure about this? For all we know, Devon Walsh is a wannabe actor or model who put his daughter up to this, knowing we’d take the bait.”
Hook, line and show-me-the-rise-in-subscriptions sinker.
“Your cynicism is showing, my friend, but if it makes you feel better, pay Jennifer Walsh and her dad a visit to make sure this is legit before we sign on the dotted line. If it isn’t, we’ll go with your top pick. Plain and simple.”
Plain and simple.
It sounded good in theory. So why did Caitlin have the uneasy feeling that her life was about to get complicated?
Just before lunch, Devon Walsh noticed that an eerie silence had descended over the house.
