The airport was bustling with people, yet a chilly breeze found Audrey Prescott and Susan West as they left the first class check-in queue. Susan walked a step ahead of Audrey, all the way to the executive gold lounge. She was obviously still in a nasty mood, and Audrey smiled to herself. She knew just why, and for once, the power games didn't bother her.
From the day Susan had started as her 'minder', she'd been obsessed with advancing Audrey's career- and public life, and social life, and love life- Audrey guessed she saw Donovan as a potential step backwards in the love department.
Audrey and Donovan sure had something going on that morning, it had been plain for all to see. It was almost like they could see each other, that the barrier of the large black camera wasn't there. She stared deep into the lens, face always towards the camera. She moved and swung to the music as though she were dancing with him. He watched her non-stop, never forcefully directing or criticising- yet he had loved the influence he had on this beautiful woman. There was an unexpressed attraction that only grew over the time they worked together, and it made everyone around them restless too. What everyone else hadn't seen was their stolen embrace at their farewell that had left them with so many questions unanswered. How, Audrey thought, dare he have approached and kissed her so fervently, expressing such bittersweet desire, without so much as a "Thankyou for working with me, Miss Prescott, it was an honour".
Needless to say, Donovan was shooting himself just thinking of his uncharacteristic presumptuousness. As he moved through to the economy class waiting area, he wondered what had come over him. What had made him give into this sudden onset of desire as if things were so simple that if any two people in the world were attracted to each other, they were free to express it? No, it couldn't happen- she was a supermodel, he was a Dublin street rat, risen from the slums to work with her by pure coincidence.
At that very moment, as they thought with regret how the morning had been and gone, Audrey chanced to look down through the glass of the lofty executive lounge. When she saw Donovan crossing the floor to the gate from which her own flight to Milan was soon to be boarded, she let her heart lift with hope and promise- before Susan brought her back to earth with a loud slurp on her martini. "So, what happened with you and that Jeffrey Walters? The Portco C.E.O.?". Audrey sighed, and frowned with exasperation. Susan picked up on it. "That other boy... that silly young punk... now you can just forget him, O.K? For god's sake, Audrey, you're a grown woman... you'll be thirty soon. It's time for you to settle down with a well-earning New Yorker, someone like Fred Kendridge. Maybe your career will go on, but these... these shenanigans certainly will not!" And nothing more was said between them until they had boarded the plane and taken off for the great city of Milano.