Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Nobody organized special events like the Crystal Phoenix. Fantasy potted palms of white metal and brass ringed the ballroom. The convention decorating committee had taken the decor-- eighteenth-century French palatial, with pale-painted wood paneling and discreet touches of gilt--and swaged it with such airy, fairy fabrics as iridescent netting and metallic lace. Temple definitely felt that a troop of fairy godmothers should assemble soon to inspect the royal newborn and confer good wishes.

But somewhere around this hotel, if not in this crowd, lurked a wicked fairy whose wand had been a fatal arrow. Cheyenne's sleeping beauty would not awaken at the kiss of a lovely princess. Interesting, Temple mused, had anyone tried writing a role-reversal romance version of Sleeping Beauty ? Eeek! She had been reading too many romances for homework lately; she was getting ideas. Her mind should be on mayhem and murder, not tulle and roses and . . . hissss . . . men.

"Those are some shoes." In the hustle of separating Electra from the hair sprays, Kit had not noticed Temple's feet. "They could double as a weapon."

"Steel heels, Weitzman. Clawed cousins to Louie's shoes." Temple spun to show off the wavy prongs of pewter-colored metal on which she balanced. They added kick to her primly styled sixties platinum-metallic suit.

"Where did you get that outfit?"

"A resale shop called Reprize. Some of this ancient stuff is actually neat."

"Some of this ancient stuff, baby, was neat, and new, when I wore it." Kit's wry expression as she viewed the resurrected fashion ghosts of her youth turned into a smile. "I really had concluded that all that stuff from my era was absolutely horrid, but you look so cute in it."

"Don't call me 'cute,' " Temple warned. "That's one of my button-pushing words."

"Oh." Kit grinned. "I see, as in your 'cute, button nose'?"

"Were you always mean?"

"Only since I left Minnesota."

"The real show-stealer to swoon over is Electra."

They turned to their companion, who was obliviously craning her neck to see the crowd as the crowd craned its necks to study her hair.

Instead of wearing her usual muumuu, Electra was swathed in an electric-blue lame pantsuit, and wore shoulder-dusting, pink-fluorescent flamingo earrings.

"She's really serious about this romance-writing bug, isn't she?" Kit asked in a whisper.

"I guess so. Any hope of real money in it for newcomers?"

"Virgins, you mean? Sure. As there is in anything. It's just that so few get it. Why?" Kit cocked her a shrewd look. "Are you thinking of turning your personal woes into bestselling fiction?"

"Except that my story would be sold as 'true horror.' Is there such a category?"

"Not... yet," Kit said. "Although paranormal, or what we call New-Age themes, are hot in romances now."

"What sort of books are those?"

"Oh, vampire heroes, angel heroines, time-travel and futuris-tics, which are set in space."

Electra's flamingo earrings jangled in their direction as she heard her own trigger words. "New Age!

Right up my Ouija board," she said gleefully. "But I'm confining myself to a simple historical romance for the contest. Nothing fancy to distract the judges."

"Good idea." Kit was searching the crowd now. "Keep it simple when you're starting out."

"Maybe it is simple," Temple mused. "Even I had an idea for a romance novel just now."

"Watch out!" Kit made like a goblin, startling Temple into jumping to look behind her. "The big-time romance-writing blues are gonna get you."

"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."