Free Exposure by Mal Peet Page B

slimy, probably because his hand is sweaty. He drops it. Something like a knuckly claw is closing around his heart, and for a terrible moment he loses control of his breathing. He tells himself that there is no damn way he’s going to have a coronary until this thing is sorted out, so he puts on his dressing gown and makes his way downstairs to his study, clutching the banister all the way. He goes to his desk and looks up Diego Mendosa’s number. He calls it, waits for the answering message to end, and says, “This is Nestor. Senator Brabanta. I need to know where Otello is. Call me.”
    Diego is standing in the deep shadow of the palms that mark the boundary of the hotel’s private beach. The trees are calmer now; their thick leaves rub together as quietly as fingers. He waits for his phone to bleep and then checks the number that has just tried to call him. Smiling, he picks up his shoes and walks back along the sand, just out of reach of the luminous, turbulent surf.
    Desmerelda gets up to use the bathroom. Returning, she realizes that the storm has passed. The curtains move in time with the sea’s slow breathing. She goes to the window. All is darkness apart from a tattered net of stars and the dim lacework where the waves break onto the beach. She catches a brief scent of something rank — seaweed, perhaps — and turns away.
    Otello is sleeping, facedown, on the bed. She feels that same little stoppage of breath that took hold of her the first time she saw him. Black is a useless word for him. Even in this scarcely lit room, his skin gathers light and transforms it. His cheekbone is shaped by a faint line of indigo. The lamplight on the muscles of his back is both gold and green. The paleness of the upturned palm of his left hand is like a mistake; otherwise his beauty is simply ridiculous. It makes her shudder slightly, and she wraps her arms around herself.
    She is used to getting what she wants, but this is different. She is not in control of this.
    Fear is part — a large part — of the thrill of it. As if she has stepped through a door to find the sky at a new angle and the colors of familiar things different. As if she no longer knows the name of anything. For the first time in her life she wishes she weren’t famous. But she is. They are. Privacy, let alone secrecy, will not be an option. So.
    She picks up the sheet from the floor and drapes it around herself like a cape, then kneels on the bed. The movement brings Otello up through the surface of his sleep. He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes, and as he does so, Desmerelda leans down to him, lifting then releasing the sheet so that it billows, then falls, enclosing them completely. Her face hovers just above his; her eyes have tiny flickers of light in their depths.
    “Hey,” he says.
    “Hey, you.”
    He runs his hand up the outside of her arm.
    “Listen,” she says. “There’s something I want you to do.”
    “Mmm. And what might that be, Señorita Brabanta?”
    “I want you to marry me,” she says.



U MBERTO DA V ENECIA (popularly known as the Duke) is very glad that the private committee room is well soundproofed, because Nestor Brabanta shows no sign of calming down. He won’t sit down, either; he comes back to the table only to bang his fist on it. As chairman of the Rialto board of directors, the Duke has presided over some pretty fiery meetings; he deserves his reputation for soothing diplomacy. But he is beginning to think that the only thing he can do is call the city zoo and get them to send someone over with a tranquilizer gun and the kind of dart that floors a rhino. The other two men present, Ariel Goldmann and Pedro dos Passos, sit staring at their clasped hands like seasick ferry passengers. The mild-mannered Goldmann, apparently appalled by Brabanta’s language, has a face like vanilla pudding. Even so, it is he who tries to interrupt.
    “Nestor. Nestor, please. Drugs? Witchcraft? This is craziness.”
    “You think