Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

It was a huge slice of business for Perfect-NY and exactly the sort of job that Izzie didn’t want to be doing the day after her heart had been broken.

As she marched into Jacobman’s giant office block on Madison, she looked the part – on the outside. She was fashion perfect in black Marc Jacobs with her hair sleeked back, wearing a solid four ounces of Bobbi Brown nude make-up in order to look as if she was wearing no make-up at all.

On the inside, however, she was tired, dead-eyed, and felt as if she had barely enough energy to lift her coffee cup to her lips.

The meeting was in the Jacobman Corporation’s third boardroom – the first and second ones were big enough to host a Yankees game – and there were only four people present: Izzie, representing Perfect-NY, two people from the SupaGirl! range and a Jacobman bigwig, Stefan Lundberg.

Cosmetic companies spread their net wide when looking for the right girl for their products. But Perfect-NY had been invited to showcase any of their girls who filled the brief because the current Mrs Rick Jacobman Jnr had once been a model at Perfect-NY and had, astonishingly, never forgotten the agency which had launched her career, a rather short one which had then launched her into the arms of Rick, heir to the Jacobman millions. Around the model agencies, Svetlana Jacobman was seen as a model who’d won the ultimate cosmetics contract. Even with a cast-iron pre-nup hanging over her should it all go horribly wrong, Svetlana had joined the ranks of the truly rich.

‘Yeah, she’s fresh-faced, but she’s sorta kooky, isn’t she?’ snapped one of the SupaGirl! executives, tossing aside the third model card they’d looked at. ‘We’re not about kooky. We want a normal American teenager.’

On the other side of the boardroom table, Izzie stuck her nails into the palms of her hands to make herself keep schtum. Normal teenager – yeah, right. She’d seen the brief, and no matter how they pretended they were looking for normal, what they really wanted was a fifteen-year-old goddess who’d never seen a zit in her life in order to advertise oil-free foundation.

‘Lorelei is actually very versatile,’ Izzie said, once she’d managed to get her temper under control.

‘We’re not about kooky,’ agreed the other SupaGirl! person, who looked about twelve years old and was clearly a yes-woman for the other executive.

‘No, definitely not. Let’s skip her. Who else have you got?’ snapped the first executive.

After another half hour of this, Izzie had only four models left to show them and couldn’t face doing it, and being rejected again, without a hit of caffeine. Perfect-NY weren’t getting an early chance to place one of their models with SupaGirl! after all. This whole thing was a PR exercise to please Svetlana Jacobman and the bitchy executive had never had any intention of doing business this way.

‘I need a coffee,’ Izzie said, forcing a smile on to her face and rising abruptly from the conference table.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Stefan, following her.

Outside the conference room was a small kitchen that was, nevertheless, bigger than the one in Izzie’s apartment.

‘No good so far, but hey, you never know, we might hit gold yet,’ Stefan said as he leaned against the door jamb and watched Izzie making her mind up between machine espresso or filter. She’d known him for a few years; he was good looking in an outdoorsy way, but he was too obvious: blond hair carefully gelled, shirt opened to show his impressive chest. Izzie had a vision of him in front of the mirror in the mornings, working out exactly which button to open down to on his shirt. She hated that: she preferred her men rougher, as though they could afford nice suits but really couldn’t be bothered trying to look so smooth. Unfortunately, that type of guy clearly couldn’t be bothered about her either, if Joe Hansen was anything to go by.

Irritation with Joe spilled out on to the general population.

‘I’m not holding out much hope for us hitting gold,’ she snapped. ‘Your Laurel and Hardy team don’t seem to like any model I show them.’

‘Ouch. Laurel and Hardy. That’s harsh. Bad day?’ said Stefan.

‘You could say that.’ Izzie went for filter coffee. She might start to shake if she had any more espresso inside her.

‘Man trouble or office trouble?’ Stefan asked.

Izzie shot him a glare. Stefan was straight, therefore not allowed to broach the ‘having man trouble?’ conversation.

With guys like him – straight, women-mad with access to a corporate gold card – man conversations always ended up with him offering himself, clothed or otherwise, as a shoulder to cry on.

‘I don’t have man trouble, because I don’t have anything to do with men.’

‘Pity.’

‘Pity, schmity.’

‘You sure you don’t want to talk?’

‘Stefan,’ she snapped, ‘I’m not talking about this with you. We are not friends.’

‘Ouch.’ He feinted grabbing his bruised heart at that.

Izzie laughed. ‘What I like about you is that I can say anything and you can take it.’

‘I’d love you to say anything to me, but you always turn me down. Like that time I asked you to have early drinks with me before the Ford party…’

‘I had to work. Besides, when I turned up, you’d found yourself a date.’

She’d been tempted by the invitation at the time, during another date-drought, before she’d given up on men altogether. But Stefan had cut a swathe through more than one model agency. She’d often wondered if he had his own wall with model cards on it and a merit-rating system.

The night in question, she’d showed up at the party to find him being consoled by a Texan model who had legs up to her armpits, a curtain of platinum hair down to her coccyx and a body made for lingerie adverts.

‘She was on the subs’ bench,’ he said. ‘You were first team.’

‘You’ve an answer for everything, Stefan,’ she sighed. ‘You do realise that if it was anybody else but me, you’d be facing a sexual harassment suit right now? You’re lucky I’m so easy-going.’

‘You, easy-going? Hey Irish, never get hard-going, will you?’

‘Let’s concentrate on what we’re doing.’

‘Not over coffee,’ he groaned. ‘We’re supposed to be doing the brainstorming in the conference room.’

‘It’s hard to think creatively with that pair wrecking my buzz. Can’t you hire executives whose facial muscles allow them to smile?’

‘Point taken. They are kinda miserable. Hard to believe, but there’s a lot of competition to get on to the SupaGirl! team. Great package, great healthcare, gym in the basement…’ Stefan pretended to flex a muscle, ‘…guys like myself, looking decorative and available for dates because hot girls from the model agencies keep turning them down –’

‘That’s it!’ Izzie banged her cup down, spilling coffee on to the counter. ‘A competition. What about a find-a-model-for-SupaGirl! competition?’

Even as she was saying it, her mind was flipping the idea over. Was it a stupid idea or a clever one? There was such a fine line between the two.

‘Brilliant!’ said Stefan, clearly not thrown off track by his meanderings being interrupted. Izzie wanted to give him a hug. He might be a macho male in some respects, but he was an out-and-out professional.

‘Absolutely brilliant. Publicity and launch in one fell swoop.’

No, hugging would be a mistake, she reckoned. Stefan might misconstrue it. She patted his arm instead in a filial gesture. ‘Glad you like the idea.’

‘Like it? I love it.’

‘Perfect-NY will represent the girl who wins and we’ll help you set up castings all around the country,’ Izzie went on. No point in her coming up with a fabulous idea and letting the SupaGirl! executives take over.

She almost danced out of the building an hour later and was on her cell phone to the office before she’d got a cab.

Everyone was on a call, so she left messages on people’s voicemails and then sat back on the scuffed black seat and realised that she had nobody else to phone. Carla was her closest friend and she’d just left an ecstatic message on her voicemail.

But there was no one else to talk to. No special someone to phone and murmur that she’d had a brilliant idea, nobody to tell her they were proud of her. Gran loved to hear about her work, but she felt a shaft of misery at the idea of phoning home in order to connect with people who loved her. The deep gloom that had lifted briefly in the conference room descended again.