Naked Once More Read Free Page B

more so-called love scene I’ll start giggling, and I won’t be able to stop, and three or four days later somebody will find me lying across the typewriter laughing insanely and they’ll call an ambulance, and as they carry me away… Chris, you did flinch. I saw you.”
    “What do you want to write?” Chris asked.
    “A joke book,” Jacqueline said promptly. “A lunatic farce; a diabolically witty, mordantly humorous work like
Black Mischief
or
Cold Comfort Farm.
Or maybe a fantasy novel.” Her eyelids, lips and feathers drooped pensively. “A nice fantasy novel. Or a mystery story. I’ve always thought I could write a lovely mystery. I have this friend.…”
    Chris didn’t flinch, he cringed. One of Jacqueline’s flaws as a client was that she “had these friends,” who produced, from time to time, suggestions designed to drive an agent crazy. “You mean your agent hasn’t sent you anything from Tiffany’s? Darling, all best-selling authors deserve little trinkets from Tiffany’s.” It was thanks to one such friend that Jacqueline had developed her unholy passion for the Tavern on the Green.
    He listened in tight-lipped patience while Jacqueline rambled on about her friend Catriona, who was a well-known mystery writer, and who felt absolutely confident that Jacqueline could write a smashing suspense novel if she wanted to. Finally he said mildly, “I’m sure you could. Of course you wouldn’t make much money from it.”
    “Oh.” Jacqueline considered this depressing suggestion and nodded reluctantly. “Catriona says crime doesn’t pay—enough.”
    “The successful crime writers, like your friend, do well. But they don’t stay on the top of the
Times
list for six months.”
    Jacqueline’s emerald eyes narrowed, and Chris added hastily, “I know, there are exceptions. I am merely pointing out that for you to give up a sure thing for a questionable possibility would be foolish in the extreme.”
    “But, Chris, I told you, if I have to write the words ‘ruggedly handsome’ or ‘throbbing manhood’ one more time—”
    Chris didn’t interrupt this time. Jacqueline stopped herself on a long indrawn breath. “I knew there was something else. What? What is it?”
    “How would you like to write the sequel to
Naked in the Ice
?”
    Jacqueline’s pent breath erupted in a vulgar gust that fluttered the edges of the paper doily under her Deadly Delight. “That’s it? That’s what you… Thank God! I was afraid you were going to tell me you had only a year to live, or…” Her voice soared suddenly into a high-pitched squeal. “What did you say? Did you say… me… sequel…
Naked
…”
    “You, sequel,
Naked.
”
    He watched it sink in, wondering if he ought to call the waiter and order champagne. The occasion was worthy of commemoration: the first and only time in their acquaintance that he had seen Jacqueline literally speechless. Not to mention the confirmation of something he had only suspected until this moment—that his eccentric, infuriating client’s affection for him was strong enough to outweigh, if only for a few seconds, a proposition that would have deafened many writers to the last words of a dying spouse.
    He knew he didn’t have to tell Jacqueline what a dazzling prize the assignment would be. If there was any book of the past decade that was known, not only to the reading public, but to many who had to move their lips when they read the labels on cereal boxes, it was
Naked in the Ice.
Chris had been impressed by its success, but he had not cared for the book; its distinctive blend of fantasy, prehistory and romance were not to his taste. But four million people had thought well enough of it to buy it in hardcover, and the people who couldn’t even read when they moved their lips had fallen in love with the miniseries, which had swept to fame two young stars. The tragic deaths of Morgan Meredith and Jed Devereaux in a plane crash shortly after the airing of the film had