Page 12 of Knot for Sale

“Nah,” I joked. “They’re just the small fry. Total losers.”

She fell back on the bed with her arms spread wide, staring up at the expensive ceiling, which glowed softly with recessed LED lighting.

“You know, I could spend the week sipping martinis by the pool and phoning it in,” she said wistfully. “Tell any rich bloke who gets handsy to fuck off, take my twelve thousand dollars, and worry about the rest of it when I get back to New York.”

I perked up. “Now you’re talking.”

She let out a sigh like a deflating balloon. “Except it was heavily implied that if I don’t have a contract in hand when I step off the plane, I won’t have an agency anymore, either.”

Damn.

“I feel like I’m harping on about this,” I said, “but, again—are you one hundred percent sure that modeling is what you want to do with your life? Because it’s seriously stressing you out, dove.”

She lifted a hand and let it fall back on the bed, limp. “Not having enough money is stressing me out. I like modeling just fine.”

‘I like modeling just fine’wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but the money thing was a fair point.

“It’s a feast-or-famine business, Em. You know that.”

“I’d noticed.” Her tone could have stripped paint. “Hence me being here in a last-ditch effort to model bras and knickers for a bunch of arseholes who like to party with women half their age on yachts.”

I wasn’t going to win this fight.

Slapping my thighs briskly, I stood up and unzipped my tote bag. “In that case, you’ve got an image to present. Get your swimsuit on, roomie. We’re going to meet the competition and lounge artistically beside a Jacuzzi.”

I had to hand it to her—Emma Hope hadn’t stumbled into her modeling success through luck. She was good.

Her persona played on the slightly disconcerting alien vibe; the kind of presence that made it hard to look away, because you were too busy trying to figure out exactly what it was about her elfin features that was so unusual.

I had the advantage of regularly seeing her stumbling around in a bathrobe before she’d had her first coffee, so I knew it was a combination of unusually large gray eyes and a pointed chin that was ever so slightly unsymmetrical. The end result should have been ten times more valuable than high school prom queen looks. I still didn’t understand why her career was stagnating.

Since I didn’t actually give a shit about the TSB contract, I threw on a pair of swim shorts in a shade of orange that complemented my green eyes and called it good. By contrast, Emma disappeared into the palatial bathroom for twenty minutes and reappeared wearing a smoking hot asymmetrical sapphire two-piece that looked decidedly accident prone.

She’d applied her signature makeup—heavily modified smoky-eyes done mostly in black and charcoal, with striking highlights of royal blue and aquamarine that echoed the color of the swimsuit. Her short, bleached-platinum hair was slicked back on the sides and aggressively spiky on top. Six-inch silver platform sandals that spiraled up her calves with a length of metallic ribbon completed the ensemble.

“Yas, queen,” I said as she emerged. “Way to slay!”

“Let’s hope they’re in the market for the ‘eighties glam rock star’ look,” she muttered.

“Dove, anyone with half a brain is in the market for an eighties glam rock star,” I told her, slinging a towel over my shoulder. “Now, come on. Those martinis aren’t going to drink themselves.”

We retraced our steps to the upper deck and camped out in a pair of padded lounge chairs, free drinks in hand.

“Did you seriously tell the bartender ‘shaken, not stirred’?” she asked, the corner of her lips twitching in amusement.

“You bet your sweet ass I did,” I shot back, enjoying my Bond moment.

While Em lounged and deployed aloofness like a weapon, I casually surveyed her competition. I at least had to give TSB some points for basic diversity. There were body shapes here beyondstarving waif, and skin tones other than peaches and cream.

And, I supposed, there was me—so maybe my inclusion should have been a tipoff.

After about twenty minutes, the rich dudes started filtering onto the ship. Most of them were old. A couple had heavily Botoxed and bejeweled wives in tow, which was interesting. A blond alpha in his mid-thirties walked past, barely sparing a glance for the nubile flesh on display around the hot tub. Pity—he had a ‘young Daniel Craig’ thing going on that I couldseriously get behind, and the subtle cloud of oakmoss and petrichor that followed in his wake was a delicious change from the chemical stink of expensive aftershave.

I turned to Emma to see if the hotness had registered, only to find her staring fixedly at the gangplank on the far side of the deck, the blood draining from her face. I frowned, following her gaze to find an unremarkable beta about our age embarking with an older bald guy with a beard, who might have been an alpha.

Returning my attention to the lounger beside me, I drew breath to ask what was wrong... but Emma had already surged to her feet and was power walking toward the central staircase as though the hounds of hell were behind her, and she was terrified of catching their notice.

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