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in a high bun on top of her high-cheekboned head.
    “Who are you?” she screeches through bright red lips.
    Her rolling
r
catches my attention, but I feel like a child caught in a lie. “I’m sorry. I’m here with my boyfriend, Blake. I’m just here to watch him work.”  
Please don’t scratch my eyes out.
    “Blake?” she questions, eyeing my white tank top and torn-up jeans. She turns to her right, where a man I didn’t notice before stands waiting on the sidelines, and she tuts as she stares. “I thought Blake was back with Marguerite?” she asks.
    My face twists into anger at hearing the name of his ex-girlfriend, and I cannot fight back the feeling of nausea that seeps into my gut.
    The man lets out more of a cackle than a laugh. “You never can trust the gossip you hear, Sophie! What are you doing to that poor girl?”
    Still with a tight grip she practically cringes as she speaks. “Gio wants her.”
    “Her?” the man squeals, revealing his flamboyant tendencies. “As a replacement? Is he nuts?”
    She shrugs, and I’m starting to get annoyed that they seemed to have forgotten my existence. She answers him. “He says she is what he wants. Her eyes. Look at her eyes.”
    I feel like a science project, or an alien found in the deserts of New Mexico, as the man leans in, eyeing me like a new species of human.
    I come in peace . . .
    “He’s right,” he quips. “
Ipnotizzante.
”
    I know that word! Mesmerizing. It means mesmerizing.
    She rolls her eyes and finally looks back at me. “Come with me. We have to get you ready.”
    “Ready for wh—”
    As she cuts me off, I’m whisked away. The hard yank of both of my arms turns my attempt at words into a gasp. I want to jump from one complaint to the next when it suddenly feels like tens of hands are groping my body as they push me around the corner behind a curtain.
    How is this escalating so quickly? All I wanted was a private, secluded corner to cower in.
    “Hey!” I squawk, overwhelmed as I tilt my head to the left and right, realizing that in fact three other pairs of hands have joined in.
    The woman with the bright yellow nails barks at me—“Would you keep still!”—and as if forgetting my existence again, she turns to the handsome gay man with the bright purple bow tie from before. “We don’t even know if she’ll fit.” Her lack of faith in the situation is obvious in her tone.
    He snaps back as he grabs for the hem of my shirt, touching my waist before pulling it over my head. “She has slender hips like Marielle, but it’s those thighs I worry about. Too much meat. Is this Gio’s idea of a joke?”
    I snort, yanking my arm free from the woman’s grasp. “Stop this! Where’s Blake? I don’t want to do this, and I DO NOT have big thighs—”
    My jaw being brusquely grabbed cuts off my words. It’s a commanding grasp, but there is an element of tenderness to it, too, in the delicate placement of the fingertips against my cheekbones that has my eyes going wide and my mouth shutting.
    The electric hazel gaze I make contact with has me instantly petrified. The roundness and crinkles around his eyes offer a likable, almost childlike sensibility, but the gold flecks in his irises wield a stern sense of logic, not to mention that his overall beauty throws me. His thick, midnight-black hair is slicked back over his head, but with a delicate curling of hair flopping over his forehead, giving him a hip look that matches his perfectly manicured scruff. His stare, combined with his firm grip, exude authority, and I notice the silence of my new entourage. I assume he must be important.
    “What is your name,  
cara mia
?”
    I wrinkle my nose at hearing his accent, and the Italian endearment. I had to take two years of Italian while at UCLA. My stomach does a somersault at its calm, deep tone, and I’m inclined to answer.
    “Skyler Silva.”
    “Molto bella!”
His hand leaves my face, leaving a lukewarm impression. He points