More Than Fashion (9 page)

I switched off my mic so we could talk freely. “Much. Although sleeping in a room with a bunch of other women sucks. Some of them snore like you wouldn’t believe. But hey, at least I’m not hungover anymore.”

“That’s good. I was worried about you.” Her eyes cut to Gavin, who was hunched over his table as he worked. As usual, he was impeccably dressed in a fitted black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and those jeans that fit his ass perfectly. “How are things with you-know-who?” she whispered.

“I’m trying to avoid him as much as possible and pretend he doesn’t exist.”

“How’s that working so far?”

“Not great,” I admitted with a sigh.

I helped her into the dress and stood back to inspect it. It was stunning, with the sweetheart neckline showing off her lovely chest and the colors contrasting nicely with her dark skin. The silk hugged her curves as it gradually flared into a trumpet silhouette, then pooled into darkness around her feet.

“Julie, it’s so beautiful.” Carla looked at herself in the mirror as I stuck a pin in the side of the dress. I’d made the strapless bodice a little too big and needed to bring it in near her underarms so her boobs wouldn’t pop out mid-runway show. “I want a dress like this when I get married someday.”

“As long as it’s not to Daryl,” I muttered under my breath. She’d been with her boyfriend for six months, but he was the absolute worst. He’d be possessive and controlling one minute, then act like they weren’t even together the next, yet Carla let him get away with it. Maddie—our other roommate back in LA—and I had told Carla to dump him a hundred times, but she never listened to us.

“I know you don’t like him, but he’s really not that bad,” she said, keeping her voice low so no one could hear us.

“No? How does he feel about you coming on the show?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Well, he’s not thrilled about it, but…”

Before I could answer, Lola swept into the room and we all froze. “Designers! I have another surprise for you!”

Uh oh. I gripped Carla’s hand. We only had a few hours to go; this could
not
be good.

“You have a dress for your bride…but what about her friends?” An evil smile danced on her red lips. “We want you to make a bridesmaid dress that goes with your wedding dress. We’ll give you an extra hour and one hundred dollars for fabric. Your additional models will be in shortly.”

She walked out, and the entire room seemed to groan at once, me along with them. The bridesmaid dress would have to be pretty simple if we only had an extra hour to do it.

“How am I supposed to make a second dress when I barely have time to finish this one?” I asked Carla, as I helped her take the wedding gown off.

“You’ll figure something out. You always do. Like that time when I ripped my dress at—” Her eyes widened when Nika and Derrick walked by, and she coughed. “Um…I better get to hair and makeup.”

“Good idea.” I didn’t think anyone had heard her, but she needed to be more careful. With competition as fierce as it was, I didn’t want any of the other designers to know our secret and try to use it against me somehow.

“Sorry,” she whispered as she walked away.

Once she was gone, I returned to the fabric room to buy more of the silk I’d used on the wedding dress. I had an idea for what to do, but I’d have to dye the fabric fast and pray it would be dry in time for the runway show. Maybe there was a hair dryer I could borrow somewhere.

When I got back, I found a note on my table, written in Gavin’s precise handwriting.

You two should be more careful. Wouldn’t want anyone to find out your secret. One of them, anyway.

Is that a threat?
I wrote back, nearly ripping the paper with the rough, jagged strokes of my pencil.

Of course not, love. Just an observation.

My head snapped up, and I caught him watching me. Good. I ripped up his note in an exaggerated way, walked over to the trash, and tossed it inside. His eyes followed me the entire time, and I gave him a pointed look before returning to my table. Hopefully he got the hint that this conversation was
over
.

***

I managed to finish both my looks in time, and my bridesmaid dress paired perfectly with my wedding gown. It was knee-length, with the ombré effect done in reverse—the bodice all black, fading to lavender at the waist, then blue and pink, and finally snow white along the hem. Together, the two dresses were stunning, and I thought for sure the judges would love it.

But I ended up in the middle.

I tried to be happy about that. Being in the middle was better than being in the bottom three and possibly going home, after all. But I’d really thought I would be in the top this time.

Those of us in the middle returned to the backstage lounge to wait for judging to finish. I took some pleasure in seeing Gavin among us, even though—and I would never admit this to
anyone
out loud—I’d loved his wedding dress and thought he should have been the winner. He’d made a very structured, high-collared ball gown with long sleeves and a low neckline, all in black satin except for white tulle underneath that peeked out. It was incredibly beautiful, straddling the line between elegant and sexy, modern and classic, goth and bridal.

Trina had made my second favorite look, a cream-colored pantsuit with a plunging neckline and a cape. Her bridesmaid dress was actually a cobalt blue romper done in a similar style, and both looks had a unique blend of masculine and feminine, while still being very sexy. It was a bold and risky take on the challenge, and she’d known the judges would either love it or hate it. She was out on stage now, but I didn’t know if she was in the top three or the bottom three.

I picked a seat across from Gavin to avoid any moments like the one we’d had in the fabric room. Unfortunately, that meant I was stuck on the couch with Jeff. Derrick sat on the other side of him, and he stared at Jeff so hard I could practically feel the fanboy waves coming off him.

“Your look should have been the winner,” Derrick said.

“The judges just didn’t want to give me a win on my first challenge back on the show,” Jeff said. “Not to mention, my model is far too busty. It’s really unfair for me to have to design around that. Everyone else has a normal-sized model.”

Give me a fucking break. He had a gorgeous redheaded model with an amazing body, and now he wanted to blame her for not winning? When he should have been the one designing for her proportions? What an asshat.

“Totally unfair,” Derrick agreed. “You were my
favorite
designer on last season’s show. I was shocked you didn’t win! It should have been you.”

Jeff shrugged, smoothing his bleached hair. “It’s my fault, really. My work last season was too conceptual for the judges. Too avant-garde, too fashion-forward. They didn’t get it.”

I rolled my eyes so hard I gave myself a headache. Too avant-garde, my ass. His problem was he refused to take constructive criticism from anyone. And I doubted he’d gotten any better since then.

“Is it tough being back on the show?” Derrick asked.

“Not really. The hardest part is leaving my boyfriend for such a long time again. He misses me so much when I travel all over the world for work. He’s totally lost without me.”

Wow. It wasn’t that
he
missed his boyfriend. It was that his boyfriend couldn’t handle it without Jeff for a month or so. I wondered if they would still be together once this footage was aired on TV.

They carried on, but I draped myself over the armchair of the couch and tried to tune them out. Across from me, Nika scooted
very
close to Gavin, and I couldn’t help but notice how short her skirt was and how her bare thigh pressed against his and how she leaned toward him to show off her low-cut top and huge breasts.

Not that I cared. She could have him. Really.

“It must feel good to be the only straight guy on the show this season,” she said to him, and it was tough not to gag.

He looked taken aback by her question. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

“It means you can have your choice of just about any girl here.”

He gave a short laugh. “I didn’t come on the show to meet women.”

She rested a hand on his knee. “Nothing says you can’t have some fun while you’re here. I bet every girl here would be happy to help.”

It was pretty clear she wanted to be the one he picked for that fun, but I couldn’t stop myself from muttering, “Not this girl.”

His eyes met mine, and an amused smile lit up his face. Dammit, I should have pretended I wasn’t listening.

“You sure about that?” he asked, his gaze traveling down my body in a way that made my face flush. Not from embarrassment, but because I remembered the way he felt between my legs and couldn’t help but want him again. And, from the smug look on his face, I could tell he knew exactly what I was thinking.

Cocky asshole.

“True. Some girls here don’t like dicks.” Nika flashed me a pointed look as she said it. Like I gave a single fuck if people thought I was gay.

“Somehow I don’t think that applies to Julie,” Gavin said, giving me a devious grin.

Nika laughed in an exaggerated way, throwing back her head and exposing her neck. She squeezed Gavin’s leg at the same time, clearly trying to get the attention back on her. But he ignored her, keeping his eyes locked with mine.

We stared each other down while the rest of the room looked on, neither one of us willing to back down from the challenge…or able to deny the heat flickering between us. If we’d been alone, the urge to kiss him would have been impossible to resist, not with the fire in his eyes that matched the one inside me. It was only the space between us and the other designers walking back in—with Trina as the winner, luckily—that saved me from the temptation.

But a girl could only resist for so long.

CHAPTER NINE

I 
managed to avoid Gavin for the next two days, which was the only way I got through the third challenge without being tempted to kiss him…or kill him. My urges flipped back and forth every fifteen minutes, usually triggered by him looking hot and then saying something arrogant. One second he’d stretch and show off his sexy tattooed arms, and then he’d open his mouth and ruin it all.

For the third challenge, we had to design an outfit for a “real” woman, not a model—and her dog. I made a short, princess-cut dress out of a gorgeous print with stark gray vines, then layered it with a long black vest. The dog got a matching vest with a strip of the print running along the sides.

The judges put me in the middle again, but I was just glad to get through it without my finger getting chomped off. I loved dogs, but I’d gotten a pampered Chihuahua that liked to nip, and his owner hadn’t seen a problem with that at all. Not that I was surprised, since she’d decked him out in a collar studded with diamonds and named him Prince. She was even more difficult to work with than her dog.

But the worst part about the challenge? Gavin won.

***

Back in the Loft, I grabbed some dinner from the buffet they’d set up in the kitchen and sat with Trina and Dawn at one of the tables. I hoped Molly would grab the last seat, but instead Gavin took it. Since he’d won the challenge, he could have spent dinner in his private suite, but no. And now Molly was forced to sit at another table. Thanks a lot, asshole.

“Congratulations,” Dawn said to Gavin, giving him a friendly smile. “Both your looks were great. I was so impressed with everything you did in such a short time.”

Gavin had created an awesome chainmail jacket for his dog, a short-haired dachshund, along with an off-the-shoulder top and cropped pants with chainmail trim for the owner. He’d made the chainmail himself, painstakingly crafting it by connecting different aluminum rings with a pair of pliers. I had no clue how he’d managed to get it done in time.

“Thanks, although I think they should have given it to Julie.”

“No, you deserved it,” I said, stabbing my salad with my fork. I kept waiting for the guy to screw up, to not make something amazing, but he kept letting me down. “How did you learn to make chainmail?”

“I watched some YouTube videos and taught myself. It was a great way to pass the time while my sister made me watch TV with her hour after hour.”

Wow, I’d learned something personal about him. “Is she back in England?”

He paused, fork halfway to his mouth, and his brow creased. “She’s…home, yes.”

Okay, that was awkward. There was obviously more to the story there, but for once, the guy looked uncomfortable. I was torn between reveling in his discomfort and wanting to make him feel better somehow. Stupid emotions, always causing me trouble.

“Gavin deserved the win, but I’m sure going to miss the private suite tonight,” Trina said, in an obvious attempt at changing the subject. Today she wore a purple bow tie that was the same color as her hair. “I’m not looking forward to sleeping in the women’s room again.”

“Why’s that?” Gavin asked. He’d finished eating and now stacked mini cups of coffee creamer into a pyramid, higher and higher.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Let’s just say one of the women snores like a donkey being strangled.”

Dawn lightly smacked her hand. “Trina, that’s not polite!”

“Sorry, but it’s true.” Trina laughed, and I noticed their hands lingered on each other. Was something going on between them? I knew Trina was into Dawn, but this was the first hint I’d seen that Dawn might return the feelings.

“She’s right,” I said. Trina was talking about Molly, and the description was spot on. “I think I need to invest in some earplugs if I’m going to get through the next few weeks.”

“I’d be happy to share the private suite tonight,” Gavin said, giving me a sly smile.

“You wish.”

“Thanks, but I don’t sleep with dicks,” Trina said, and we all chuckled at her double entendre.

“Touché,” Gavin said. “I would have taken the couch anyway.”

“Wow, such a gentleman,” I said. “But I’ll still pass.” I flicked a finger at his coffee creamer pyramid and knocked it over. Bitchy? Maybe. But the guy got under my skin like no one else ever had.