"No," Temple said, reassembling her dignity. "I don't think that's my strong point."
A new voice, masculine, insinuated itself into their threesome. "You seem to be standing on your strong points, Red."
Temple whirled. No one called her "Red."
Oh. Of course.
"These shoes were made for kicking," she told Crawford Buchanan, who had changed into an evening vest and jacket, both black to match his oil-slick hair. "And if you don't step back a bit, that's what they're gonna do."
"Tsk-tsk." He minced backward. "And here I was going to get a closeup for Hot Heads." He had to lean closer to whisper, "These romance broads aren't half as photogenic as you, T.B. Most of them fill up the camera and then some."
"Maybe they're fed up with you," she suggested. "Haven't you got anything better to do than hang around and harass women?"
"Hey, it's my job." His long, thick eyelashes flickered. "I get paid to do this."
"That's what is wrong with this country," Temple said, turning her back on both him and the camera.
That didn't stop Crawford Buchanan. Temple watched Kit and Electra bloom in an aura of light as the cameraman panned down Temple's head to her shoes.
"If I had the Midnight Louie shoes," she muttered under her breath, "the Austrian crystal kick would burn out the camera sensor."
"You were saying something about sensuality," Buchanan purred in her ear. Or maybe he growled.
Men did that a lot in some romance novels.
Temple would have loved to G.R.O.W.L. back, but instead she did the mature thing and ignored him, until finally the bright lights drew away and faded.
"Is he gone?" Temple asked her companions.
They nodded.
"Next time he comes around," Electra said, "I'll tell you when he's leaning close again so you can stomp his instep with your steel heel."
"You need to meet a better class of men." Kit focused like a very chic Doberman on a nearby group of people. "Ah. There stands an abandoned husband. Husbands, and men in general, are rare in this crowd; isolation is an occupation for them. Want to do some sleuthing on the sly? Follow me."
Throwing her hands up at Electra, Temple did so. All too soon she found herself confronting one tall man standing like a lonesome pine in a sea of overdressed shrubs.
"Hello," Kit said warmly. "Haven't seen you in ages! Remember the G.R.O.W.L. reception in New York at the romance writers' convention a couple of years ago? Kit Carlson, better known, I devoutly hope, as Sulah Savage."
"Oh, yes," the man said with relief.
Besides being tall, he was pleasant-looking in a low-key way, nice but not exciting, the perfect man to be somebody else's husband. Although he was doing a good impression of a man happily alone in a world of women and content with doing nothing but gawking, he was clearly glad to see a possibly familiar face. He gazed uneasily at Temple, as if he should know her too.
"My, ah, cousin," Kit extemporized, deftly erasing their age difference, and thus enhancing hers.
"Temple Barr. She writes for Women's Work magazine, you know, the mag about rags-to-riches women entrepreneurs. Their circulation is massive. I'm sure they'd love to do a story on your darling wife."
Kit glanced toward an animated knot of women who were either in a feeding frenzy around the chip and dip table, or gathered to worship a face familiar only lately to Temple from the ripped-off back of a paperback book.
"Quite the popular girl," Kit said in her blatantly artificial social voice. A woman would have instantly heard the underlying satire; a man, or at least this man, merely nodded politely. "Temple, this is the man behind the woman behind the bestsellers, Sharon Rose. I know your last name is different. . .
Herbert--?"
"Harvey," he said.
"Oh, sorry! Harvey--?"
His shook his head with a smile. "No. Herbert Harvey."
"Oh."
How unfortunate, Temple thought, to have two first names.
Herbert Harvey nodded shyly at her. "I'm sure my wife would be delighted to have another national magazine article. She was featured in Martha Stewart's celebrity holidays issue. Quite a spread. She had the down-home Fourth of July picnic with old-fashioned bottles of Coca-cola on ice in a washtub and country ham on a checkered tablecloth."
This was not the sort of upscale entertaining Temple expected from a filthy rich, bestselling author.
Then she remembered Kit describing Sharon Rose's books as "nauseatingly" homey and sentimental.
Having been assigned her role and then handed her cue by Kit, Temple wrote and recited her first speech, which was not brilliant.
"Do you often attend these conferences, Mr. Herbert ... I mean, Harvey?"
"That's all right. Everybody's always getting my names mixed up. Just call me Herbert." He sighed and looked over the animated crowd, whose dominant female voices were going a mile a minute. "I just come now and again, when it's convenient. I'm on my way to do some hunting in western Canada."
Now that was more like lifestyles of the rich and famous! Canadian hunting trips, with guide, cost a bundle.
"Where do you and Mrs. Herbert live?"
"Muncie, Indiana. I was an assistant school superintendent there." He looked somewhat lost for a moment. "I'm retired now.
No need to work." He glanced again toward his wife's charmed circle, as if worried.
Temple guessed that Hervey Harbert, or whatever, was still in his forties. His wife's fame and fortune had made his entire career redundant. He stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled expectantly at Temple, waiting for her to toss back the conversational ball. She figured she'd learn more by letting him take the lead, which he did.
"Tell me about your job. Interviewing all those successful women must be interesting work."
"It is." Temple nodded brightly. "Sometimes annoying."
"Annoying?"
"Well, they're so rich and busy, and I'm just a freelance writer. I wish I could write one of these romances--"
"The pay isn't good at the beginning," he warned her. "And it's a lot of hard work in a pretty cutthroat business. Sharon has had to fight for every inch of progress she's made. She travels more than she writes."
"I don't think I'm cut out for romance writing anyway. Crime writing, now's there's an area I might go for. You did hear about the cover model murder?"
Herbert frowned and cleared his throat. "I guess they have to put those guys on the covers to sell books, but it's kind of hokey, don't you think--these prima donna musclemen? Oh, some of them seem decent enough fellows, but the women sure make idiots of themselves swooning over them."
Temple smiled conspiratorially. "I agree! It's embarrassing to see all these middle-aged women chasing the nearest pretty pectoral as if they were mainlining hormones. Shallow and silly. Pure ego-building."
Herbert blinked. He couldn't tell if Temple was putting him on or not. But he laughed, nervously, and that's when a short, plump woman with a really overcooked permanent in a shade of not-too-blond brown materialized by his side, her arm possessively through his. She was smiling, but through her teeth, and she made no effort to conceal her intense annoyance with them both.
"Thank you," she told Temple in steel-wool tones meant to rub her raw. "Thank you, miss, a mere stranger, for keeping my Herb busy while I was chatting with all my fans."
With that she jerked her entwined arm and led Herbert Harvey away like a delinquent labrador retriever brought to heel. He lumbered off faithfully.
Temple felt herself flushing, not for her masquerade, but for Sharon Rose's awful behavior to both of them. The nerve, as if Temple were some vamp trying to lure away a lawfully wedded husband just by talking to the man! As if he couldn't be trusted to be away from her uxorial claws for one minute. Why hadn't wifey-pooh bothered to include Herbert in her adoring circle, if she feared that he couldn't talk to another woman without imminent danger of seduction?