Sophie Weston - The Prince's Proposal

Look, he said to himself. Either Francesca Heller was what she ought to be as her father’s daughter, a real wily operator. In that case she was not the woman for him. Or she was what she had looked tonight. It was a faint outside chance. No woman of twenty-three was so open, so unguarded, so—he said it to himself deliberately—vulnerable. But if she was—

Ah, if she was, then Conrad Domitio was not the man for her.

Francesca gave up soon after the tall man left her. The crowd was too pressing. She couldn’t find Jazz. She was never going to find a prince she did not know. Especially if everyone else was after him too. She collected her coat and bumbled out into the rainy dark.

Without her glasses, of course, it was not easy to find a cab. She flagged down a Range Rover, a delivery truck and a traffic light showing amber before she connected with a taxi for hire. She gave the driver the address and then fell back against the upholstery and closed her eyes. Tomorrow morning she was going to order three pairs of glasses—one for home, one for the shop and one for her handbag. This evening’s nightmare was never going to happen again.

But it had not all been a nightmare, something whispered. The tall man on the wet balcony. He had not been a nightmare. He had been—exciting.

Yes. Well. There was such a thing as rebound. She had already warned herself once tonight…

That was when it hit her. The difference between expectations and reality—it got you every time. She had expected the evening to end with herself and Barry going back to the riverside flat together. They should have been planning their future. They would have been acknowledged as lovers. She would have belonged somewhere at last.

Instead of which she was sitting alone in the back of a London taxi cab, going through streets she could barely see and certainly not recognise, dreaming about a man she would not recognise if she saw him again.

Well, probably not. Though that air of power was pretty impressive. Maybe that would survive, even when she got her glasses back and could actually see the man’s face. And that aura of leashed energy, the outdoorsy smell of wood smoke and cedar—she would recognise those at fifty paces.

Francesca realised it with a little shock.

‘Wow! Rebound and a half,’ she muttered, trying to laugh at herself.

But it wasn’t funny. Barry’s defection must have left her so vulnerable that she was fantasising about a complete stranger. That was what adolescents did. And Francesca, the world’s most self-contained schoolgirl, had not done it, even when it was normal.

‘Oh, boy. Postponed adolescence strikes at last,’ she said bitterly. ‘Francesca, my girl, you have got to be careful. Or this could get out of hand.’

It was not a good night. She tried to go to bed. But she kept thinking of Barry. And the stranger. And Barry again.

There was a nasty moment when she found her second best pair of glasses behind a sofa cushion. She remembered when he had taken them off, between kisses. She remembered what she had thought they would be doing tonight. By now she and Barry would have been stretched out on that sofa. He would have been playing with her hair, teasing her about what he called her twenty-twenty pernicketyness.

‘Let yourself go,’ Barry would instruct. ‘Stop counting. Free the imagination. Fly with me.’

Fly? Fly? How on earth had she ever thought she could change? She was never going to fly. She did not have the imagination. And her taste in men was terrible, too. Look at how she only had to close her eyes and she smelled wood smoke…

Forget the man on the balcony. Think about Barry. At least you knew him. Well, nearly knew him.

For now that she was on her own she was remembering all the times Barry had appeared to be dating another girl. When he made his move on Francesca he had explained all those incidents away so easily. Now she thought about it, she realised that he must actually have been running the two of them in tandem. God, but her judgement was awful.

She gave up on sleeping and swished round the empty flat in her long crimson housecoat. Her mother had given it to her for Christmas. She did not like it. It was too dramatic. But it was almost the only thing in her wardrobe that Barry had not seen.

Her eyes leaked tears. She brushed them away furiously. She never cried, she reminded herself bitterly.

She was not missing him. She had never known him, so how could she be missing him? What she was missing was tenderness. Well, the illusion of tenderness. No man in his right mind would really feel tenderness for a woman who found it easier to add up than let her imagination fly. Who inherited her looks from a father who looked like a troglodyte. Who wore glasses held together with a grubby plaster.

Even the stranger would not have wanted to talk to her if it had not been too dark to see her face.

No, no, in the race for emotional fulfilment she was a non-starter. And she had just proved it for about the tenth time in her adult life.

‘Get used to it,’ said Francesca aloud. ‘Concentrate on the career. At least you have a chance of getting that right.’

So she was already tidying the tables of books when Jazz arrived the next morning.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get you your prince,’ Francesca announced, even before Jazz had unwound her rainbow scarf. ‘I couldn’t find him.’

Jazz extracted a large latte from a paper carrier bag and eased off its plastic lid. She passed it across. After three months she and Francesca knew exactly how the other liked her coffee.

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said philosophically. ‘I managed to chat up Maurice Dillon. He’s going to do a workshop for new writers for us next month. What about you? Find anyone interesting?’

Francesca shook her head. ‘Only a man who wanted to go out onto the balcony and talk in the rain.’

Jazz raised her elegant eyebrows. ‘Sexy.’

To her surprise, Francesca flushed slightly.

‘Hey, you didn’t do anything I would have done, did you?’ Jazz said, amused.

‘Of course not,’ said Francesca, uncharacteristically flustered.

Jazz laughed aloud.

‘I didn’t mean that. Well, I did, but—Stop laughing at me. Hell, what do I know what you would have done?’

Jazz sipped her own double espresso. ‘Not a lot on a wet night in the open air, to be fair,’ she admitted. She sent Francesca a thoughtful look. ‘It must have been freezing.’

‘Er—yes. Maybe. I—um—I didn’t really notice.’

‘Ah.’ Jazz sipped more coffee. ‘So how long did you stay out there?’

‘I don’t remember.’ A hint of defiance had crept into Francesca’s voice.

‘Ah.’ Jazz sucked her teeth. ‘Fanciable, I take it?’

Francesca thought about warm magnetism and alien lips brushing her cheek. She could not help herself. She gave a little shiver. It was purely involuntary. And she knew Jazz saw it.

‘Fair to middling,’ she said, unconvincingly. ‘Well, what I could see of him, which was about as defined as a Rorschach inkblot. Which reminds me—can I have my spare glasses, please?’

Jazz did not say anything.

‘Look, you can’t think I was seriously attracted. Not to someone I only met once.’

‘Attraction is usually instantaneous,’ pointed out Jazz mildly. ‘Not a lot you can do about it. OK, you can choose whether you go with it or not. Spend the night. Or hold out for the whole white wedding with pageboys and bells. That’s the stuff you get to take decisions about. Attraction just hits you.’

Francesca shivered again. Even her feelings for Barry had not just hit her. Not in the way that Jazz meant. Not the way they hit other people. Barry had had to tell her that she fancied him, laughing. ‘You’re such an innocent,’ he had said tenderly.

She folded her lips together. ‘Not me,’ she said quietly.

Jazz was unimpressed. ‘Which bad fairy came to your christening and gave you immunity?’

‘Listen,’ said Francesca intensely. ‘Until yesterday I thought I was in love with Barry. I’d made up my mind to marry him, for heaven’s sake. I’m not in the market to be hit by attraction.’

Jazz grinned maddeningly.

‘What?’ yelled Francesca, frustrated. ‘What?’

Jazz wiped the smile off her mouth. It stayed everywhere else, though. ‘Whatever you say.’

‘Give me my glasses,’ said Francesca haughtily. ‘I have work to do.’

Jazz did. Francesca stamped off into the stock room, muttering.

Eventually Jazz wandered in after her. ‘I know you didn’t get hold of this prince last night,’ she said. ‘But I really think we could do an exciting panel one evening, if we could get him along.’

Francesca had not forgiven her yet. She pushed her glasses up her nose and sniffed. ‘Cheap sensationalism!’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ said Jazz equably. ‘But I looked at his book last night. Have you read it?’

Francesca stuck her nose in the air.

‘Thought not. Well, it’s a hell of a story as well as being good popular science.’

‘So?’

‘So call him—talk to him—tell him how great our customers are—sell him The Buzz.’

Francesca forgot that she had told the stranger last night that she was going to do exactly that. ‘Why should I?’

Jazz was prepared for that. She whipped out a glossy laminated sheet of paper from behind her back.

‘Take a look at that,’ she said impressively.

Francesca stared. This time she could actually see the photograph. It was beautifully composed in moody black and white. It would have made anyone look spectacular. But in this case the photographer had had plenty to work with.

It was an impressive face. Not classically handsome. Not even mildly good-looking. It was too strong for that, with its high cheekbones, prominent crooked nose and heavy-lidded light eyes. But it was a face you wouldn’t lightly forget.

Francesca had one instant thought: I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him. She shivered, inexplicably.

She turned the sheet over. In addition to the blurb there was another photograph. From the book this time, and in glorious colour, it showed off the man’s spectacular tan. He was posed—hell, not even posed—he was standing in a vertiginous landscape. His shirt had clearly lost most of its buttons. It was open and falling off one tanned shoulder as he brandished an axe above his head, laughing. The snow-covered peaks behind him should have made him look small. They didn’t.

It was not just that Conrad Domitio was unexpectedly tall. Or even that the strongly muscled shoulders looked as if they could shift Stonehenge if they had to. Lots of men were tall and broad-shouldered. It was the lazy confidence. The mobile, knowledgeable mouth. And the laughter in the steady, steady eyes.

Francesca thought suddenly, I can’t deal with a man with eyes like that.

Jazz did not share her reservations. ‘He’s every woman’s dream,’ she said practically. ‘And men are all going to want to be like him. He seems to have got that volcano party down single-handed.’ She read aloud,

“‘Why was it the new kid on the block who took charge? Was it because of rivalry among the others? Most of them had known each other for years and competed for academic honours. Was it because he was younger and fitter? Conrad is thirty-two and a regular rock climber who swims daily. Or was it because he is genetically programmed to take charge?”’

Francesca told herself to stop the adolescent palpitations and get real. This was nonsense and every atom of her experience told her so.