Captive Heart by Scarlet Brady

Captive Heart
     
    1
     
                  “Azul. Can you believe it?”
                  “The go-to people for exotic shades of eyeliners right now,” said Ruby, on the other side of the dining room table. “And price tags to match. You must really know how to get people's attention with that SaskiBlue persona you've created online. So how did you come up with that name anyway?”
                  “Oh it's just an old nickname. Because of my eyes," Saskia said, coyly batting her eyelashes. "People say they can't decide whether they're green or blue, so some friends decided it should be a new color; and they called it SaskiBlue. Then, when I needed to, I couldn't think of an online handle to save my life, so I just went with it.”
                  “Well, your eyes are definitely a great feature. I can see why an eyeliner company would want to work with you. Not to mention that every time you mention Azul, your eyes just about triple in size.”
                  Saskia knew she was doing the big-eye thing - the one that had earned her the teasing nickname of “Saski-Blue” from her friends in high school back home. Despite their brief acquaintance, she knew she did not have to be self-conscious in front of Ruby. However, a corporate meeting in Manhattan would be a different story. The big-eyed gawk had to go.
                  Ruby, who had been momentarily distracted by a helmeted eight year-old Boba Fett running through the room, seemed to sense something of Saskia's thoughts. She smiled as she sat back down with her newest friend, now apparently a hot Internet property, sought after by corporate sponsors. “Don't try so hard to be all poker-faced either, Saskia. Unless, of course, you've got a series of blogs planned out for how to deal with the crow's feet you're going to get from squinting.”
                  “Sorry. It's just that this is Azul - a real cosmetics company with real executives. I've been after this since I moved to New York, but now that I've got a meeting, I'm afraid of them seeing some total Iowa bumpkin.”
                  “That is one trap you cannot fall into, hon,” Ruby said, taking a sip of her tea. “When I was married to Zane we were all about the whole social climbing thing. We ran into plenty of people who had come out to New York from somewhere else and were trying too hard to be something they weren't. Your makeup tips are great, but let's face it, there are a thousand blogs and Youtube channels girls can go to for that information. What's driving that blog is you, and that's what's caught the sponsors' eye. Tampering with that now would be a bad idea.”
                  Saskia knew Ruby was right, but the idea that Saskia Bergen was a commodity that was catching the eye of a major cosmetics company who wanted to run their ads on her page was still a little hard to get her mind around. Those big, blue-green “Saski-Blue” eyes of hers were her best feature, even if they did betray surprise a little too often. She had always been a little too short, or a little too chubby, or her golden hair just a little too dark to really qualify as one of the beautiful people. What else would motivate someone to start up a beauty blog, after all? She had been in living in the Bronx for less than a month now, and most of her possessions were still in boxes in her apartment. Ruby, the single mom next door, was the only person in her building she knew so far; the only person she knew in the entire city for that matter. And here Saskia was, already being courted by a major cosmetics firm wanting to get in on some of her sweet, sweet site traffic.
                  She had wanted to see how far professional blogging could take her from the outskirts of Ames, Iowa. Now it was shaping up to give Saskia more than she had bargained for.
     
    ******
     
                  “What