The Monte Carlo Proposal

The next few minutes were par for the course. I accused her of trying to steal from me; she denied it. But I was talking off the top of my head. My real consciousness was elsewhere, in the urgent warmth that had seized me as I lay on top of her and wouldn’t let go of me now.

It got worse when I realised something else about her.

‘Why are you soaking wet?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been swimming,’ she said scathingly. ‘I thought it would be good for my health. Ow!’

She’d trodden on something sharp, which must have hurt because her feet were bare. So was the rest of her, almost.

She was wearing a silver lacy dress, tight at the waist and slit high at the thigh. The water not only made it cling to her, it also made it virtually transparent. So now I could see what had been writhing against me.

She was beautiful—slender, perfectly proportioned, rounded, dainty, sexy, provocative. This was getting very difficult.

Make me strong, I prayed silently to the guy who helps me on these occasions. Let me at least act like a gentleman, even if I don’t feel like one right now.

But he must have been off-duty tonight, because there was the warmth, growing stronger every moment.

I returned to normal consciousness to discover that we were having an infuriated discussion about casinos. I think I accused her of having an accomplice inside, but don’t ask me how we reached that point. I know we ended up scrabbling around on the ground for the cash that had fallen out of my pocket in the struggle.

I suppose it was when she mentioned the British Consul that I realised I’d got it wrong, and she really wasn’t a thief.

‘Where are you running from?’ I asked.

‘A yacht. It’s called The Silverado and it’s moored down there. Look.’ She pointed down into the harbour. ‘That one. Right next to the big vulgar one.’

‘You mean The Hawk?’ I asked cautiously.

‘You know it?’ Now she definitely sounded hostile.

‘Why do you make that sound like a crime?’

So she told me all about The Hawk, how its boss was a creep called Jack Bullen, better known as Bully Jack.

I was glad she couldn’t see me too well at that moment.

‘Hugh Vanner has been trying to crawl to him,’ she seethed.

‘That makes this Vanner character a creep,’ I said, ‘but why Bullen?’

‘Because Vanner would only crawl to an even bigger creep than himself. He even sent him gold and diamond cufflinks. I ask you!’

‘That’s really disgusting,’ I agreed fervently.

She told me how Vanner had tried to make her be ‘nice’ to his guests, and she’d jumped overboard to escape him.

She was small and defenceless, with not a single possession—not on her, anyway. But she was defying the world and I’d never seen anything like her.

Maybe the idea came to me then. Or maybe it had been nudging the edges of my thoughts for a few minutes past. But it was forming rapidly, and I had the outline pretty much shaped when I heard, ‘That’s her!’

And there was a man who could only have been Vanner, rushing at us with two gendarmes, shrieking that the silver girl had stolen from him.

I pointed out that the money lying all around us was mine, which stymied him, although he still frothed at the mouth until, to shut him up, I had to give him my name.

‘You’re Jack Bullen?’ he said in a choked voice.

After that he couldn’t get rid of the gendarmes fast enough. He wanted to get me alone to do some business schmoozing.

‘When you’ve returned this lady’s property,’ I told him. ‘Deliver everything to The Hawk.’

Fending off his attempts to join us, I took her arm and made for the road where there would be a taxi.

‘You were going to take me to the Vice-Consul,’ she said.

‘I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to The Hawk.’

She was still arguing as we got into the taxi. I laid out her options.

‘You can go with Vanner, with the gendarmes or with me.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘It’s what I’m good at. Now, shut up or I’ll toss you back into the water.’

I don’t normally talk to women like that, but something had happened to me that night. I was like a drowning man who sees his last hope and knows he has to grasp it. So my finesse went out of the window.

Then I saw her looking at me. An incredulous, half-quizzical smile had taken over her face, and I found myself smiling back. We knew nothing about each other, except that we were on the same wavelength.

‘All right,’ she said.

CHAPTER THREE

Della’s Story

‘WE DON’T have much time,’ the man told me in a low, hurried voice.

I could see that we didn’t. The taxi was on its way down the slope to the harbour, and we were going to be there at any moment.

‘All I can say now,’ he said, ‘is that I need help badly, and you’re the only person who can give it to me.’

‘How?’

‘I’m being nudged—well, frog-marched—into a marriage I don’t want to make. Selina’s a banker’s daughter, and money must marry money. That sort of thing.’

‘Sure, like you’re a millionaire,’ I said sceptically.

‘I told you who I am. Jack Bullen.’

‘Yes, after I’d given you all the clues. That story will do well enough for Vanner, but not me. I suppose you work on his yacht?’