The Prince's Proposal

‘Nonsense,’ she said.

It was just ten seconds too late. Francesca smiled wearily.

‘You don’t know the disasters I’ve had, Jazz.’

‘Haven’t we all? It’s called growing up.’

‘By twenty-three I should have cracked that one,’ Francesca said drily. ‘No, I’ve got a bit missing when it comes to understanding people. Figures, fine. I can do sums standing on my head. Facts, great. I can remember them and I don’t muddle easily. But people! I’m hopeless and I always have been.’

Jazz could not think of anything to say.

Francesca stood up and squared her shoulders. She even managed a lopsided smile.

‘So that means I’d better concentrate on a career, right? So lead me to this damned party.’

Conrad Domitio shook his head at the hundredth canapе and thought wistfully about fresh air.

‘How long will this go on?’ he yelled at the publicity assistant.

She stepped a little closer to the tanned god in front of her. Tall, hazel-eyed, with an athlete’s frame and philosopher’s formidable brow, Conrad Domitio had everything. Even his voice was sexy. It made her shiver in spite of the competition from a heavy drumbeat. Her and every other woman at Gavron and Blake, his publishers. Probably every other woman in the room, now she came to think about it.

‘Another hour,’ she yelled back.

She knew, of course, that it would be longer than that. But Conrad Domitio was impatient with publicity. In her dealings with him she had learned to undersell the full extent of their campaign. So she was not telling him that tonight, after the party, she was under strict instructions to bring him to dinner with the girls. After all, he was not only a hero and handsome as hell, he was a prince. A prince.

The publicity department had hardly believed their luck when they found out. ‘He’s a heck of a good writer, too,’ his editor had reminded them. But they had waved that aside. They knew what was important in selling books. And Ash on the Wind was going to be their spring number-one seller. She could feel it in her bones.

‘An hour?’ Conrad looked at his watch. He could take an hour. Just. ‘OK.’

It would not be so bad if the walls were not plastered with huge photographs of him, looking like a movie star, he thought. He had never wanted to have those photographs taken. To be honest, he had not really wanted to write the book at all. But the expedition’s photographer had taken some amazing footage of the erupting volcano and even more telling photographs of the escaping crater party. Always fair, Conrad acknowledged that they deserved a book. Conrad, an inveterate diarist, had more than half of the story already written.

So he had agreed. He did not regret it. He was even quite proud of the book now that it was done. But he was unprepared for the circus that the publishers seemed to fancy.

So far they had come up with wheezes guaranteed to strike cold horror into the heart of a serious seismologist who wanted to work again. Tonight’s publicity handout, for example. It made him sound like an ego-driven control freak. That or a comic-book super-hero. Conrad shuddered inwardly and told himself that he could get through an hour of anything if he had to. And the profits from the book were going to a really good cause.

Which was why, nine months after he had led six weary men out of the dust-filled darkness of the erupting volcano, they were standing here drinking Gavron and Blake’s cabernet sauvignon surrounded by six-foot-high photographs of steaming mountains and multi-eyed grasshoppers. The lighting was halfway between a disco and a forest thunderstorm, and the music was frankly jungle drums along the river. There were tables piled with copies of glossy books, Ash on the Wind, among them, but it would take infrared binoculars to find them, as Conrad had already pointed out.

He looked at his watch again. He could just about see it in the gloom.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked the publicity assistant.

She waved a hand at the seething, chattering crowd. ‘Circulate. Circulate.’

Conrad’s mouth twitched. For a moment there, she sounded just like his grandfather, ex-King Felix of Montassurro. He did not say so. Instead he gave one of his expressive shrugs.

‘The sooner we’ve spread the word, the sooner I can get my train back to normality, I suppose,’ he said with resignation. ‘You go that way, I’ll go this.’

They turned their backs on each other and he plunged back into the cavernous lighting to do his duty.

The disco lighting shook Francesca out of her shell-shock. Well, a little.

‘I should have changed,’ she said, watching a woman in a strappy silver top flit past, waving.

Jazz grinned after the woman. ‘Party organiser,’ she diagnosed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Half the people here will have come straight from work like us. The only people in combat gear will be authors and the younger editors.’ She surveyed Francesca and made an unwelcome discovery. ‘Oh, no. Not the first-aid-box glasses.’

Francesca was defiant. ‘They’re all I could find.’

Jazz held out her hand. ‘Give them here.’

‘But I’m as blind as a bat without them. You don’t know what it’s like to be as short-sighted as I am.’

‘I’ll read the instructions to you,’ said Jazz without sympathy. ‘Try to get a drink and not bump into the furniture. That’s all you need tonight. Get a business card off anyone who sounds worth following up.’

‘But—’

‘No serious businesswoman is going to work a room like this with bandaged glasses.’ And, as Francesca muttered rebelliously, ‘You’re going all out for the career, remember?’

‘I’d still like to be able to see.’

‘No,’ said Jazz with finality. ‘You’re representing The Buzz tonight. We’re hip. We’re cool. Bandaged glasses aren’t.’

Francesca gave in and surrendered her glasses. Jazz picked up a glossy bag and handed it to her.

‘Publicity handouts and party favours. Take what you want. Lose the rest.’

Francesca was rueful. ‘I’ve got a lot to learn.’

Jazz was already flicking through the bag’s contents. ‘Chocolates,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Keep them. Party programme. Need that. Now, what books have we? Spot the Whale. Nah. Five Thousand Years of Refuse. The definitive story of trash by Professor Somebody. That will pull the punters in. Not. Ash on the Wind. Two authors. I don’t like that. Still, they both look quite tasty. Let’s see.’

Francesca knew it was hopeless to try and read anything without her glasses. In that dark party room she was going to do quite well if she managed not to walk into something.

‘I’m going to be a hazard to shipping tonight,’ she said drily. ‘Curse all serious businesswomen and their image problems.’

But Jazz was not paying attention.

‘Hey. Look at this,’ she said excitedly. She stuffed a shiny sheet into Francesca’s hand, scanning the entrance hall avidly.

Francesca squinted at a moody black and white photograph. There seemed to be a face in there somewhere. She gave it back. ‘Sorry.’

‘He’s yummy,’ said Jazz, seizing the handout impatiently. ‘But he’s a lot more than that. Listen.’

She read the publicity blurb aloud.

“‘Conrad Domitio is one of the best seismologists of the age. But he is not a vulcanologist. When he went along on Professor Roy Blackland’s expedition to Salaman Kao it was his first venture into a volcano’s crater.”’

‘Oh, not another volcano book!’

‘Listen,’ said Jazz, rapidly skimming the handout. ‘This is the good bit.