pushed Bridget in front of the woman’s face. “Can you do something with her?”
Raquel studied her face. “Well, first we would have to remove all that awful white powder.”
“I’m not wearing any makeup,” Bridget said.
“Ahh!” the woman gasped clearly horrified at such an announcement.
“Except for my Bobby Brown eyeliner,” Bridget conceded. “I mean a girl’s got to have something.”
“Look,” Richard snapped. “We’re running out of time. Just do something. Okay?”
“I can try,” the woman replied. “I’ll need my kit. Come with me.”
“Can’t you just get it and bring it here?” Bridget asked.
“Oh, I can’t carry it. It’s way too heavy. My boyfriend…I mean my ex-boyfriend…took it upstairs and left it in one of the bedrooms. Follow me.”
“Hurry,” Richard urged, only to have Bridget stick her tongue out at him as she walked by. “And while you’re at it, take off those glasses, too!”
BRIDGET FOLLOWED the voluptuous Raquel up the stairs, noting the makeup artist’s walk as she did. She tried to mimic the hip-swaying action, but each time she thrust her hip out to the left or to the right all she managed to do was throw her body off balance. Tripping her way up the stairs was nowhere near as sexy.
They reached the top hallway and turned into one of the bedrooms where a full-size trunk sat at the end of the bed. Raquel flipped the latches and opened the lid to reveal a treasure trove of color beneath it.
“Wow,” Bridget reacted. She hadn’t seen this much makeup in…she’d never seen this much makeup.
“I know. I’ve collected shades from all over the world.”
“Really?”
“No, I just think it sounds more exotic when I say that. But they’re definitely from all over the tri-state area. New York, New Jersey and Long Island.”
Bridget considered informing Raquel that Long Island wasn’t a state, but decided they really didn’t have enough time. Instead she grabbed a chair from a corner of the room and pulled it close to the trunk. She took off her glasses and tucked them into the pocket of her black capri pants.
“Okay,” Bridget said lifting her face. “Have at it. Just don’t make me look like a hooker.”
Again, Raquel appeared to be offended. “Do I look like a hooker?”
Bridget considered the body-hugging strapless red dress that clung to the woman’s figure like plastic wrap. “Uh…no?”
Moments later various brushes were running over her face as Raquel talked. “The truth is you have very smooth skin. If I had more time, and could do something with your hair, and your clothes and your breasts—”
“Hey, no messing with my breasts,” Bridget stated. But the idea did have merit. If she could stay on the show for another round, get a little professional help, maybe she could pull an ugly duck–beautiful swan transformation. That would mean Raquel would have to stick around, too. “So, do you think you’ll make the first cut?”
“Of course I do.”
Bridget envied the woman’s confidence.
“What makes you so sure? There are a lot of beautiful women downstairs.”
“I gave him a note that said I would be willing to perform multiple sexual acts on his body.”
“That’s cheating!”
“It is?”
Bridget shook her head trying to understand. “But you don’t even know him. And besides that you have a boyfriend.”
“Shh,” Raquel whispered. “Not so loud. The rules said you weren’t supposed to have a boyfriend.”
“For a very good reason,” Bridget told her. “If Brock picks you, it’s to be his wife.”
“Oh, silly, that’s not what this show is about.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I mean, of course that’s the end result, but really we’re all here for very different reasons. I’m here because I want to be a star. Maybe even do a cosmetics commercial one day.”
Bridget considered the women downstairs and didn’t imagine that their reasons were all that different. Except for hers, of course. Her reasons were perfectly legitimate. She was going to do the show to make her employer—who she secretly feared she was developing feelings for—eat crow for thinking she couldn’t make the cut, and to prove to him that she was more than just an assistant. What more noble reasons could there be than that?
“All done,” Raquel announced.
Bridget pulled back and took the hand mirror that Raquel handed her. Wow! She looked different. Not hooker-different, either. Raquel had just added subtle shades under her cheekbones, over her eyes and on her lips that seemed to make her features stand out in the best sort of way. And she did it all without adding any more eyeliner.
So much for Bridget’s great makeup rebellion. This actually looked good on her.
“You are an artist.”
“Told you.” Raquel closed her case and started for the door. “Come on, we don’t want to be late.”
Bridget agreed. She reached for the glasses in her pants pocket and put them on.
“Eeek!” Raquel screeched when she saw her. “You can’t wear those, you might smudge. Besides that, I don’t like to see my work go unnoticed. Call it the creative genius in me.”
Great, Bridget thought. Between Buzz, Richard and Raquel this show was going to have more geniuses than it knew what to do with. “But I can’t see. Seriously, after ten feet everything blurs.”
The blonde held her two hands palms up then shifted them back and forth as if weighing the choices. “Beauty. Sight. Beauty. Sight. Beauty.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Silly, beauty always wins.”
“Fine,” Bridget grumbled and put the glasses back into her pocket. She would just have to try really hard not to squint. She didn’t imagine that Brock had a secret desire for squinters.
Carefully, she followed Raquel down the stairs and knew that the foggy blur at the bottom was Richard.
“Hurry,” he urged the two women on.
“I can’t see,” Bridget hissed.
“And I can’t hurry in heels,” Raquel told him, pouting.
Finally, they made it to the bottom of the
