Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

Then Kel kissed me and I found I didn’t care who saw what.

25

The media tried for straight, serious coverage of the pig in the park. There were long shots of the rally with its air of frenzied patriotism, the lights, the shouts, the flags, the people, while blank-faced journalists outlined the events leading up to the mass assassination attempt. Some scud studs even showed up. It wasn’t their fault the copy read like something from National Lampoon.

And when they detailed the Federal agents moving into position barely before the terrorists, their poker-faced delivery only heightened the ludicrousness of the good and the bad lying in the cold practically side by side during the long wait for their differing calls to action.

Lee Greenwood came across well, singing and helping to restore calm in the panic that followed, but the strobe lights, the fireworks, the smoke bombs, and Mrs. Macpherson’s knickers from a variety of camera angles, couldn’t play seriously no matter how hard they tried. There was rather a nice shot of me whacking Dag. I cut that one out. And the one of Kel and I kissing.

The confusing plot and counter plot between Dag and Flynn, with its soap opera overtones was, in the end, too complicated for television sound bites. Flynn’s evangelical persona, combined with his attempts to “free” the American people from Congressional pork-lock, turned him over night into a folk hero. Instead of ending as near martyrs, Congress ended up with Congressional pie in the face.

A major publisher put up Flynn’s bail as an advance against his story and he’d signed the made-for-TV movie rights before the ink could dry on his book contract. Talk show hosts were clamoring for him. Tee shirts, posters, buttons, and bumper stickers with his face popped up everywhere.

There was some criticism, most of it from Congress, directed at the CIA for letting the assassination attempt get so far advanced before stopping it. The rest of the criticism was directed at the CIA for stopping it too soon. It didn’t help that Congress had voted several years earlier to stop funding on an anti-artillery device that would not only have stopped the plot altogether, but saved lives in the Gulf. In the end, no committees were convened to investigate.

Dag and Muir fared less well with the public. Justice had to be served, so justice used them for scapegoats. The role suited them. They looked like criminals, which made it easy for the public to revile them. We worried about the effect on the children, but they took it in stride. Dom made some money selling autographs of his infamous relatives. It was a blessing in disguise that Congress had someone upon whom to vent their spleen, since it looked like it was going to be impossible to find an impartial jury to try Flynn.

Somewhere during the nine-day wonder of it all, Kel went back to work saving the world. I went back to my roach, but it didn’t satisfy me. I’d acquired a taste for excitement. A taste for the spy who kissed me.

I watched my bruises and wounds heal without acknowledging that I was in a holding pattern, waiting and wondering what the spy would do next, now that the fat lady had not only sung, but flashed her knickers to the world. At first I accepted that he’d be busy. The world was a big place with lots of bad guys to defeat. Then one morning, I woke up and found my bodyguards gone, an empty space with a grease spot the only sign of their recent occupation. I felt bereft. I’d become accustomed to their expressionless faces.

Even worse, it forced me to face the fact that deep down my principles and my hormones were fighting each other in a battle that didn’t look like happening. Had that last, blazing kiss been a good-bye?

When the fax machine started printing, I feared the worst. I rolled my chair over and watched as boldly scrawled words gradually appeared. He had a new assignment, foreign and would be out of the country for a time, but he’d call me when he got back.

And if I believed that, I’ll bet he had a bridge he could sell me.

It wasn’t like I’d expected anything permanent from him. We were worlds apart, in excitement and experience, but the least he could have done is offer to have a flaming, passionate affair with me. He had no right to assume I’d turn him down and then leave without giving me the chance to tell him all the carefully thought out reasons why it would never work between us. I was so mad, if he’d shown up and I might have insisted on an affair just to prove him wrong.

But he didn’t. If I hadn’t had the picture of us from the paper, I might have wondered if I’d imagined the whole, incredible adventure.

When I called Marion to tell her my book was ready for her red pencil, she sensed I was a little depressed.

“I think you need to get away for a bit. Why don’t you catch up with your tour?”

“My tour? The one you wanted me to go on six months ago?”

“That’s right.”

“You sent me my tour on without me?” I knew that sounded wrong, but I didn’t know how to make it sound right.

Marion sighed hugely. “Of course not. It was a package deal, several children’s authors were going.” I could hear her flipping through some pages. “Actually, this might be good. This movie producer called. He wants to meet with you about animating Cochran. You could meet him in Vegas.”

“I’m not sure I want to meet someone who wants to animate a roach. Especially in Vegas.”

She ignored that. “They’re in Toledo right now. If you left in the morning you can just make the story hour at the library.”

Didn’t that sound like fun? I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to stay. What