'But he asked for you.'

'He what?'

'We handle publicity for his publisher. They always put his picture on the back cover. At the very last. minute he's decided he wants a new photograph, and he said it has to be done by you.'

'I wish I knew what was going on,' Lee said, feeling frazzled.

'Well, if you take his picture you'll be able to ask him,' Sally said unanswerably.

'All right, but warn him he'll have to hang about. He can try his luck from four o'clock onwards.'

When she'd hung up Lee took out Who's Who, not really expecting to find a talk show host there. But Daniel Raife wasn't just a television celebrity and columnist, it appeared, but a professor of philosophy with a staggering number of degrees. At thirty-seven he'd lived a varied life in which-if his entry could be believed-he'd reluctantly exchanged the life of an academic for the bright lights of the studio.

'Him!' Lee murmured cynically. 'Fame, fortune and getting your own way all the time, but secretly you yearn for the life of the mind. Well, it may fool your public, but you're a fraud, my friend.'

She was rather looking forward to tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWO

From the moment she started work next morning Lee knew that it was going to be a bad day. One of the models was late, one had a head cold, one garment hadn't arrived when she began shooting, two accessories didn't match and the hairdresser and the make-up artist almost came to blows. By three o'clock, when she should have been near the finishing post, she'd barely started.

'All right everybody,' she called. 'Ten-minute break while tempers cool.'

Gillian, her assistant, started going round with cups of coffee. Lee regarded her own reflection wryly. She wore old jeans and a shirt, her hair was drawn well back and held by a ribbon and there was a smudge on her cheek.