The Monte Carlo Proposal

CHAPTER TWO

Jack’s Story

MOONLIGHT and roses. Trees waving gently in the Mediterranean breeze. Romantic music playing in the distance.

It was twenty-three-hundred hours and I was standing outside Monte Carlo Casino, ten grand richer than when I’d gone in.

Yes, that was the state I’d reached. Moonlight. Twenty-three-hundred hours. Ten grand.

But what else did you expect? I’m Jack Bullen. King Midas. Whatever I touch turns to ten grand. Or, if we’re talking real money, ten million.

But tonight was only gambling, so I made do with pocket money.

I blame my grandfather, Nick, and his cufflinks. When he gave them to me he said they were lucky and they would help me win. And, dammit, he was right.

I don’t win every single time. It’s not quite as bad as that. But I win often enough to come out richer. And it’s all his fault.

I blame him for a lot more than that. Starting with my father. Nick was a happy-go-lucky fellow, who loved his family, earned enough from his little grocery business to get by, and enjoyed a laugh. So, according to Sod’s Law, he was bound to have a son who thought he was feckless and worked night and day to ‘better himself’.

I don’t know if my father got better, but he certainly got richer. He started work in Grandpa’s grocery and gradually took over, shunting his father aside. When he finally inherited the shop he built it into a chain, and raised me in the belief that my mission in life was to climb ever onward and upward to the glorious heights of tycoonery.

I’d rather have been a vet, and if Dad had lived longer I might have fought it out with him, but he died when I was fifteen and you can’t argue with a dead man. Especially if he’s left you everything.

Every last penny.

Which was unfair on my older sister, Grace, who was left to look after me, our mother being already dead. She didn’t complain, because she’d picked up Dad’s ideas about my dynamic future.

So I ended up doing business courses, computing, economics, just as if Dad were alive, because Grace said so.

As soon as I could touch my inheritance I transferred a fair share to her, but by that time it was too late. I was trapped in business and success.

Oh, yes, I was a success. I made money. The firm prospered. I bought another firm. Before I knew it I was a conglomerate.

I tried to lose money, I swear it. Don’t even ask me how I ended up owning a cable television channel. It was a kind of accident. The channel showed light porn. The screen was always full of nubile girls wriggling around half dressed.

I changed all that. Out went the girls. In came animal programmes, stuff about vets, nature expeditions, deep-sea diving. I bought up the rights to old animal series that hadn’t been seen for years, and the public loved it. Advertisers fought to give me their business.

Suddenly I was the wonder man whose finger on the public’s pulse was never wrong, the visionary who could see past cheap smut to an audience starved of beauty, the marketing genius who could make wildlife profitable.

Actually, I just enjoyed animal programmes.

It was like having a pact with the devil, only this devil was called Grandpa Nick. Wherever he was, he knew the terrible things money and success had done to me. I was out of my mind with boredom, and I swear sometimes I could hear the old man cackling.

There was nothing for me to do. Any fool can make money if they start out with a pile that someone else worked for.

Where were the great challenges in life?

At the moment my biggest challenge was fending off Grace’s attempts to match me with Selina Janson. I usually ended up doing what Grace wanted because I felt so guilty at the way my life had been lived at the expense of hers.

It shouldn’t have happened that way. She’s only ten years older than me, and she could easily have married, especially after I struck out for myself.

When you fly the nest that’s supposed to be it, right? You don’t reckon on the nest flying after you.

But Grace nobly declared that nothing would make her abandon me, and I couldn’t hurt her by saying how much I longed to be abandoned.

So here I was, mid-thirties and still officially sharing a home with my sister. I have my bachelor pad in town, and I’m there most nights, but Grace pretends it’s just the odd occasion.

Maybe that was why she’d redoubled her efforts to marry me off to Selina.

‘I don’t know what you’ve got against that lovely girl,’ she complained to me a few weeks earlier.

‘I’ve got nothing against her,’ I protested. ‘I’ve never had anything against any of the girls you’ve tried to handcuff me to. But if I married every girl I’ve got nothing against, my wives would fill a city and there’d be some sort of scandal.’

‘I do wish you’d be serious,’ she fumed. ‘It’s no way to approach life.’

‘It’s a great way to approach not being married off against my will.’

‘You’ve got to marry some time.’

‘Why? For all you know I might be gay.’

‘Don’t give me that nonsense,’ she snorted. ‘Not after that girl who-’

‘Yes, never mind,’ I said hastily.

‘You need a suitable partner in life, and you should be looking carefully.’

‘Why? I’ve got you looking carefully for me,’ I said, as lightly as I could.

As I knew she would, she missed the irony.

‘Yes, I am, and it takes a lot of trouble to weed out the unsuitable ones.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t weed them out,’ I said meekly. ‘It would probably do me a lot of good to meet someone unsuitable, as an awful warning. It might really teach me a lesson.’

‘Oh, stop playing the fool. I know all about the sort of semi-clad females who float through your apartment-’

How did she know? She never saw them. I’d made sure of that. But Grace had her spies and they could teach MI5 a thing or two.

I couldn’t resist teasing her.

‘They’re not all semi-clad. Some of them wear nothing at-’

‘That’s enough. We’re talking about your future wife.’

‘I was trying not to talk about her. Why Selina?’

‘Because she has the very best connections. Her mother’s related to a title, her father’s one of the richest merchant bankers in town-’

‘And you think I’m so hard up that I need to marry money. Thanks!’

‘Money should marry money. It doesn’t pay to spread it around too thin.’

‘Gracie, darling-’

‘And don’t call me, Gracie. It’s vulgar.’

‘We are vulgar. You talk as though we were heirs to an ancestral fortune, but Grandpa Nick made just enough to get by. Dad worked himself into the grave to make more than he needed, and, heaven help me, I’m going the same way. I’ll swear I’m getting grey hairs.’

‘Where?’

‘Here at the side. Can you see?’

‘No, I can’t,’ she said, giving me the fond smile that reminded me that I did actually like her a lot. ‘You’re too handsome for your own good, and you know it.’

‘I’m still going grey from the treadmill I’m on. If I knew a way to jump off it I would, but I won’t manage that by marrying Selina Janson.’

‘I didn’t mean to make too much of her money,’ Grace said in a relenting tone. ‘It’s simply that she has all the right qualities.’

With difficulty I refrained from tearing my hair.

‘No, Grace, she has only one of the right qualities, and that’s the fact that I have nothing against her. It needs a lot more than that.’

She eyed me suspiciously.

‘You haven’t become entangled with some floozie, have you?’

‘Why floozie?’ I growled. ‘I might have met a nice girl.’

‘Then I’d know about her. Who is she?’

I was about to say that she didn’t exist when some instinct for self-preservation stopped me.

‘I don’t think I ought to tell you any more just now,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘I don’t want you investigating her to find out if she’s “suitable”.’

‘Meaning that she isn’t?’

‘She’s suitable for me,’ I said.

I accompanied the words with a smile which was meant to be knowing, but I had a horrible feeling I just looked foolish. I don’t think Grace noticed. She was seething at my mad dash for independence.

‘Surely you can tell me something about her?’ she demanded. ‘What does she look like?’

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘What else?’

‘She has a perfect figure and she’s very sexy,’ I improvised wildly.

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘Around.’

‘Really, this is very unsatisfactory.’

‘Not to me,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve made arrangements for the summer now, and it’s too late to change them.’

The hairs began to stand up on the back of my neck. ‘What arrangements?’

‘Oh, don’t pretend not to know. We talked about chartering a yacht and you agreed.’

‘You vaguely mentioned a yacht,’ I said, frantically searching my memory, ‘but I don’t think we actually agreed-’

‘I said we should charter a yacht to cruise the Mediterranean and you said, ‘Sure.’ Which is what you always say. Raymond Keller is eager to join us. You said yourself he’s bound to be the next president of Consolidated, and you can get him tied up while we’re out at sea.’

‘You’ve actually invited-?’

‘Only in a vague sort of way. And there are one or two other contacts I’m working on-’

She rattled off a list of names and I had to admit they were well-chosen. All of them useful, all people I’d feel easy with and could make money out of. Grace knew her stuff, which was how she got away with being a bossy-boots.

I was beginning to feel almost relaxed about it when she said, ‘And of course Selena will be there.’

‘What do you mean, of course?’

‘Well, the others will be couples, so naturally-’

I’ll spare you the rest. Enough to say that I made a ritual protest, but gave in when I realised how I’d been backed into a corner. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it without offending someone that it would be inconvenient to offend.

I just wish that some of the financial journalists could have been there to see. According to them I am Master of the Game, he whose will is law. Minions go in fear and trembling of my lightest word.

Hah!

They should have seen ‘Bully Jack’ cave in to Grace, that’s all I can say.

Before I knew it everyone had accepted the invitations I’d never given, including Selina and her parents.

To protect myself, I issued a few invitations of my own. First there was Harry Oxton, who’d been trying to make an impression on Grace for a couple of years. He was a widower, a kindly man who put up with the way my sister used him when she needed an escort and forgot him at other times.

Then there were the newlyweds, Charles and Jenny Stover. I’d been their best man six months ago. When I explained to them that I needed their help, and exactly what kind of help I needed, they laughed and said fine!

Grace looked askance, though whether because Jenny was an old flame of mine or Charles was an old flame of Selina’s I wouldn’t like to say.

But I told her I’d invited them now and it was too late to go back on it. She’s not the only one who can do bland innocence.

But the one that really made her mad was Derek Lamming. His heart was set on Selina, and I think they’d have been married by now if Grace hadn’t stuck her oar in, trying to secure Selina for me.

‘You needn’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,’ Grace fumed to me.

‘I’m sure you do,’ I told her, grinning. ‘But I learned deviousness from you, so naturally I’m good at it.’

‘You do realise we don’t have room for all the extra people you’ve invited, don’t you?’

‘Then we’ll need a bigger yacht.’

That was how we exchanged the modestly luxurious vessel that Grace had chartered for the much larger Hawk.

What can I say about The Hawk? Think Onassis with knobs on. Other yachts had one swimming pool, The Hawk had two. It slept forty in over-the-top decadence.

Every cabin was done in a different style-French Second Empire, Roman villa, Egyptian splendour, Renaissance-all of them with solid gold accessories.

Since I was supposedly the big cheese of the outfit, I had a suite with a sunken bathroom, and a bed that could have slept ten.

Grandpa Nick would have laughed himself to stitches.

At the last minute Grace said worriedly, ‘You won’t do anything to offend Selina, will you?’

‘Grace, I will be the perfect gentleman with Selina,’ I vowed. ‘I won’t try to entice her into the moonlight, I won’t ogle her in a swimsuit, in fact I won’t even look at her in a swimsuit. I won’t try to kiss her, or hold hands with her. I won’t do one single thing that could compromise me into marriage with her. You can count on that.’

‘All right, be difficult if you have to be. You know what I mean. I don’t want to hear any more about this other woman-Cindy, or whatever her name is.’

‘I never told you her name, and I’m not telling you now.’

‘But you won’t invite her to come along with us, will you?’

‘No, I promise I’ll confine my meetings with her to fleeting assignations wherever we drop anchor.’

Grace gave a scream, chiefly because she couldn’t decide if I was serious or not. I decided to leave it that way. ‘Cindy’ might be useful.

I had no idea, then, just how useful.

We set off from Southampton and went across to Cherbourg on the first day, then across the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal to the Mediterranean.

We had a good time, with plenty of dinner and dancing, card-playing, wheeling and dealing-and flirting. I solved that problem by flirting madly with almost every woman aboard. Especially Jenny.

She was safe. I could romance her without fear of being hog-tied. But then Charles got a bit tense-actually said I was overdoing it. He responded by dancing smoochily with Selina for a whole evening. Then it was Jenny’s turn to get tense.

They mended matters by vanishing into their cabin for three days, and emerging wreathed in smiles.

That was how I wanted to look when I found ‘her’. It wasn’t going to happen with Selina. I was beginning to wonder if it would happen with anyone.

In Gibraltar Charles and I managed to jump ship for a few hours, returning with the dawn. He spread tipsy hints about a lady I was supposed to have met ashore, then clapped his hand over his mouth as if realising that he’d said too much.

Grace gave me a look that would have shrivelled a lesser man.

We pulled the same stunt in Naples and Venice. Then it was time to start back down the Adriatic coast, with Grace snapping at me and demanding to know just how stupid I thought she was.

‘If I thought you were stupid I’d be less scared,’ I told her truthfully.

‘Does this young woman really exist?’ she demanded.

‘My lips are sealed,’ I replied solemnly.

‘Then I think it’s time we met her.’

‘Is that the royal “we”?’

‘No, it includes Selina, since you’re playing fast and loose with the poor girl’s feelings.’

‘Grace, for the last time, I will not marry Selina. Is that understood?’

‘We were talking about your lady-friend. Do tell me when you mean to produce her. Perhaps she’ll be at the next port. You can bring her on board and we’ll all have such a jolly time together.’

A master stroke. Game, set and match to Grace.

I had to produce a girl soon.

And Grace knew that I had nobody to produce.

Palermo, Naples, Genoa: all the way up the coast I ducked and dived, with Grace asking, with unbearable sweetness, when she would have the pleasure of meeting my ‘friend’.

When we anchored at Monte Carlo there were still several days left to go, which filled me with gloom. I was wondering how I could arrange an urgent call home and high-tail it out of there.

The day after we arrived I received an unexpected gift. It was a set of solid gold diamond-studded cufflinks, and they came from a man called Hugh Vanner, on The Silverado, anchored just next door.

I couldn’t wait to get rid of them. I’d vaguely heard of Vanner. He was the kind of shifty character who hung around on the fringe of the legitimate business world, picking up what he could get. His methods were those of a slimeball. I sent the cufflinks back with a note saying that I didn’t accept gifts from strange men. It was a safe bet that he wouldn’t get the joke.

We all went to the casino. It was a sedate visit, during which we all behaved sedately and lost sedate amounts of money, then returned to the ship consoling each other for losses that we would barely notice.

Once back on board we all went to our cabins, prior to congregating for a nightcap. I was feeling a bit tense, because Selina had been making significant remarks all evening and I could feel the noose tightening.

The last straw came when a steward informed me that Vanner had called the ship while I was away.

Now I was really paranoid. Looking out, I saw lights on The Silverado, and I had sudden visions of him coming over. I’d been hunted as much as I could stand, and suddenly I went mad.

‘Tell the Captain to have the boat ready to take me ashore again,’ I said. ‘And keep quiet about it.’

Before leaving I changed my cufflinks. It was a chance to test a theory. I’d worn platinum cufflinks for the first visit to the casino, and lost. Now I was wearing Grandpa’s old tatty ones.

My luck turned the moment I went in. I won until I got bored with winning, then strolled out into the gardens. At once I knew I was being stalked.

My boredom with money doesn’t extend to giving it to people who are trying to pilfer it, so I made my move first, pouncing on whoever was crouching in the bushes.

Suddenly I was grappling with a whirling dervish who thumped and kicked with alarming force and precision. The last one caught me straight in the midriff and almost winded me. It was sheer desperation that made me toss the other party to the ground and dive on top.

And there was approximately ninety pounds of slender female writhing beneath me. If I hadn’t been gasping already I had plenty to gasp about now. In self-defence I got to my feet.

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.