CHAPTER ONE

      ‘TODAY,’ said Francesca Heller forcefully, ‘has been the worst day of my life.’

      She was still rather pale. But, being Francesca, she was already fighting back. Jazz decided that the fight needed support.

      ‘Sure it was. So now you show Barry de la Touche that he can’t get you down. What better way than to go out and have a good time?

      Francesca looked at her in disbelief. ‘You can’t expect me to go to a party after that.’

      Jazz shook her marvellous head of tiny black plaits and refused to back down.

      ‘Yes, I do. You’re a professional bookseller now. You go to a publisher’s party if it kills you.’

      Francesca glared. Jazz was tall, black and gorgeous but Francesca had a glare that would cut steel when she put her mind to it.

      Francesca was not tall. She was small and slim with ordinary brown hair and an ordinary, pleasant face. ‘Invisible in a crowd,’ said Francesca’s elegant mother with resignation, and Francesca agreed.

      But they both underestimated the impact of her eyes. They were huge, wide-spaced and golden brown, fringed with long, sooty lashes. And they spoke. Whatever Francesca might say she was feeling, you could see the truth of it in those toffee-brown eyes. Even masked, as they normally were, by big-framed glasses.

      Currently she was feeling put-upon. But Jazz Allen was her partner in London’s newest independent bookshop, The Buzz. Jazz knew what she was talking about.

      ‘You’re not serious,’ Francesca said. But without much hope.

      ‘Yes, I am.’

      Jazz unwound her long legs from the top of the ladder from which she had been restocking ‘Crime, authors F to G,’ and slid to the ground.

      ‘But you were here,’ said Francesca in despair. ‘You saw.’

      Jazz grinned. ‘Your father’s got a temper on him,’ she said with relish. ‘So?’

      Francesca stared at her. Jazz had the reputation of being tough. But this was armour-plated.

      ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘We didn’t split off onto different planets this afternoon, did we? You did see my father walk in and demolish the man I thought I was going to marry?’

      ‘I saw your father lob a few firecrackers,’ said Jazz serenely. ‘But you were never going to marry that twerp.’

      Francesca shook her head. She had not confided in Jazz but when she left home that morning she had made up her mind to accept Barry’s proposal.

      She said desolately, ‘I meant to.’

      They were supposed to be going out to dinner at one of their favourite restaurants this evening. Francesca had been fondly imagining the candlelit scene. She had even cast the Italian owner to bring out champagne and his concertina while all the other diners applauded. And Barry de la Touche would take her hand, hook her glasses off her nose and look straight into her eyes, in that way he had.

      ‘My bird,’ he would have said. And then, ‘We were meant for each other.’

      But that was this morning’s fantasy. And then her father had walked in.

      It had been one of Barry’s days for working in the stock room. He and Peter Heller had come face to face. Barry, as she could have foretold, was completely outgunned. Peter Heller had been a fifteen-year-old entrepreneur when he escaped from Montassurro. He had survived, and ended up a multimillionaire, by ferreting out his opponents’ weaknesses. Then going for the jugular. Barry didn’t have a chance.

      Her father had produced a string of offences—petty-criminal convictions, a dubious name change, even old school reports. And pointed out that Barry had only started his heavily romantic campaign after he had researched her wealth on the net.

      Francesca had not believed him. Well, not at first. But then Peter Heller had announced that he was disinheriting her and Barry’s romantic attachment dissolved. Fast. Taking with it a whole raft of Francesca’s dreams and most of her self-respect.

      But no one would believe that, of course. Everyone thought Francesca was such a fighter.

      Now Jazz was bracing. ‘You would have thought better of it eventually. There was nothing to Barry, after all. Just Bambi eyelashes and a good story.’