And the most beautiful woman in the world stepped out.
Jack stopped so suddenly that Howie and Larry both barreled hard into his back and a car rounding the corner nearly knocked them down.
Glossy, straight dark brown hair moved over shoulders covered in red velvet. Soft fabric clung to a perfect hourglass figure and swirled seductively around an incredible pair of legs, made even sleeker by extremely high heels. Long, elegant fingers were tipped with nails painted red to match the dress and the full lips that were curving up into a smile.
The woman on the Union Square set wasn’t only the most beautiful woman Jack had ever seen, she was also the most vibrant. As she took her place on the set beneath the lights the photographer began taking pictures of her. Though Jack didn’t know what it was she was selling, he wanted it anyway.
And her.
He wanted her, too.
“My girlfriend is never going to believe it when I tell her I saw Mary Ferrer live and in the flesh.” Howie’s expression was starstruck.
Larry’s eyebrows went up. “You know her name?”
“She’s on the covers of a bunch of magazines Layla has lying around in the living room. Hard to believe it, but Mary Ferrer is actually better looking in person.”
Men, women and kids of all ages stopped what they were doing in the middle of downtown San Francisco to watch the beautiful model pose for pictures. As she smiled, flirted and laughed for the camera, she was sexy without being too sexy, sweet without being too sweet.
A little girl broke free from her mother’s hand and barreled onto the set with a squeal of joy. The model scooped the girl up into her arms with a laugh, and the two of them chatted cheerfully until her mother rushed up to take her daughter back. Jack couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see that Mary was waving away the woman’s apologies without a second thought.
That was when something inside Jack’s chest clenched tight…and he immediately knew why.
“She’s the answer to our problems.”
But what he felt when he looked at the beautiful stranger didn’t just come from thinking she could be the perfect spokesperson for their invention. Jack was a scientist who believed in what he could prove with numbers and calculations and wires and chips hooked together. At the same time, he’d been following a dream long enough to understand that passion lay beneath it all.
Suddenly, he had to ask himself, was love at first sight actually possible?
Larry and Howie had turned to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind. “How on earth could that gorgeous creature have anything to do with our problems?”
“Our device needs sex appeal. She’s got plenty of that. But we also need someone to represent it who will appeal to the broadest possible market.” He could see it all so clearly, just as clear as his first vision had been ten years ago. They would need both still shots and live commercials of her holding the Pocket Planner. Because people wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off her, they also wouldn’t miss the product she was selling. He gestured at the large crowd of men and women, boys and girls, of all ages. “Everyone is clearly mesmerized. Even two-year-olds can’t resist her.”
“Okay,” Howie said slowly, “you’re making some good points. But how are you going to convince Mary Ferrer to work with us? Especially since she has to be one of the most expensive models in the world, and our budget at this point barely covers our coffee.”
“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “I’ll convince her.”
Howie and Larry looked at each other with raised eyebrows, but neither of them expressed another doubt. Both of them knew that when Jack Sullivan decided to make something happen, it always did.
Chapter Two
Mary Ferrer could hardly believe this was her final photo shoot.
During a brief break when Gerry, the photographer, changed film and the hairstylist touched up her hair, she looked around at the set that had been created in Union Square for the shoot.
How many bright lights had she sat beneath in the past thirteen years? How many makeup artists and stylists had she worked with? How many high-fashion looks had she sold? How many beautiful pairs of shoes had she worn that had felt as if she’d been walking on nails? How many big cities had she flown to for fashion shows then departed from as soon as the curtain fell so that she could get to her next booking on time?
Though Mary never took her good fortune for granted, the truth was that she’d started to lose interest in all those fabulous trappings somewhere in her mid-twenties. She had been discovered at nineteen by a very well dressed young modeling scout who had passed through Mary’s small village looking for a cup of coffee while he was on vacation in Italy. The man had given Mary his card and had begged her to let him represent her as a model. She’d reached out for her big chance with both hands.
All her childhood friends had been either married or engaged by eighteen. Just like the other women in her village, Mary knew her girlfriends would have a handful of children by their mid-twenties…and they would stay in the same place their whole lives.
But Mary had always dreamed of more.
Of bigger.
And better.
She had always wanted to travel the world, had been filled with a deep need to see what else was out there. She’d read everything she could get her hands on in the library about other countries, from compelling travel journals to somewhat dry atlases. She’d also made sure to learn English so well that she could read it fluently by the time she’d graduated from school. Alone in her bedroom as a child, she would read her English language books out loud and try to mimic the tones of the actresses starring in the subtitled American movies at the theater in Rome.
Unfortunately, all Mary’s mother had wanted was for her to settle down with a nice man who was up to the job of “taming” her wild urges and giving her babies. If Mary closed her eyes and blocked out the sounds and activity around her, she could still remember their final conversation as if it had happened yesterday.
“I will not allow you to leave,” Lucia Ferrer had declared.
But Mary had not only inherited her mother’s dark hair, flashing blue eyes, and olive complexion, she’d inherited her stubbornness as well.
“This is my chance to finally get out of this small town,” she’d retorted in rapid-fire Italian. The two of them were so similar that the years since Mary had hit adolescence had been fraught with tension. Her father had done his best to try to smooth things out between mother and daughter, and she could see the alarm in his eyes at their exchange.