She picked up her phone and sent a message to the brand contact: *Hart confirmed, full run. Recommend featuring her in the lead position for the summer preview. Trust me on this one.*
She didn't do that for everyone. She almost never did it at all anymore.
But twenty-two years was long enough to know a good bet when she saw one walking out of her office.
✦ ✦ ✦
Lucien's phone showed a notification at four seventeen p.m.: a new name added to the Nova agency's public roster.
His assistant had set up an alert. He had asked her to and then felt mildly absurd about it for the rest of the afternoon.
He clicked through. The listing was minimal — name, height, eye colour, one test shot. The photograph was the one from the sportswear shoot. She was looking directly at the camera with an expression he couldn't categorise. It wasn't the look she'd given him in the study. It wasn't the look she'd worn at his business dinners, carefully pleasant, carefully present.
