Chapter 16





Cole did not look up until he heard his uncle's bedroom door close, and then he tossed the documents he'd been reading onto the coffee table with a sharp flick of his wrist that was eloquent of his black mood.
The sheets of paper landed on top of the National Enquirer—right beside a picture of the woman who'd been jilted by her fiancé.
Right beside a picture of Diana Foster.
Cole lurched forward, picked up the paper, and read the short article with a feeling of grim sympathy for its victim; then he tossed it back where he found it, and his thoughts returned to Cal.
Cole was moodily contemplating his alternatives when a movement on his left drew his attention and he looked toward the kitchen doorway, where Letty was standing with a mug in her hand and a hesitant smile on her face.
For as long as Cole could remember, whenever he disagreed with his uncle, Letty Girandez, who was a terrible cook, had appeared soon afterward with something for Cole to eat and drink—a gesture of comfort from a kindly woman who knew she was a bad cook. In her early sixties, Letty had a plain, round face that managed to convey her inner gentleness and a soft, Spanish-accented voice that lent her an aura of quaint gentility. Cole's expression softened as she made her way across the living room and put the steaming mug on the coffee table.
"Hot chocolate?" he guessed. Letty's prescription for a bad mood was always the same: hot chocolate for evening and lemonade for daytime. And cake. Chocolate cake. "Where's my cake?" he teased, reaching for the mug, knowing he was going to have to drink the entire cup to avoid hurting her feelings. The hot chocolate was traditional, and since Cole had experienced precious little family tradition in his life, he held it in particular reverence.
What familial warmth he'd known, he had mostly found here, with his grandfather's brother and his housekeeper. Letty turned and headed for the kitchen. "There is some chocolate cake left over from yesterday. I bought it at the store."
Although that last information made the cake more, not less, desirable, Cole wasn't hungry. "If you didn't bake it, it isn't worth eating," he teased, and she beamed at the compliment, then turned and started back to the kitchen. "Stay and talk to me for a while," he said.
Letty sat down on the chair his uncle had occupied earlier, but she did it rather gingerly, perching on the edge of the seat, as if she felt she shouldn't be there. "You should not argue with your uncle," she said at last.
"You've been telling me that for twenty years."
"Does your uncle's desire to see you married very soon seem unreasonable to you?"
"That's one way of describing it," Cole said, struggling to keep the bite from his voice.
"I think he believes if he does not force you to marry, then you never will."
"Which is none of his business."
Letty lifted her face to his. "He loves you."
Cole took another swallow of his hot chocolate and set down the cup with angry force. "Which is no consolation."
"But it is true, even so."
"Love is not an excuse for blackmail, even if he's bluffing."
"I do not think he is bluffing. I think your uncle will leave his half of your company to Travis's two children if you do not marry."
A fresh surge of fury rocketed through Cole at that. "I don't know how he could possibly justify that to himself, or to me!"
The remark was rhetorical and he hadn't expected an answer, but Letty had one, and he realized that she was absolutely right, that she had seen through all the bluster and excuses, straight through to Calvin's real motivation: "Your uncle is not concerned with money now; he is concerned only with immortality," Letty said as she straightened a precariously high stack of reading material on the end table. "He desires immortality, and he realizes that immortality can only be his through his son."
"I am not his son," Cole pointed out impatiently.
Letty gave him one of her sweet smiles, but her reply was quietly emphatic. "He thinks of you as such."
"If immortality is what he's after, then Travis's two kids have already provided it for him. Travis and I are both his great-nephews. Even if I had children, they'd be related to him in exactly the same way that Travis's are."
Letty bit back a smile. "Travis's son is lazy and sullen. Perhaps he will outgrow that someday, but for now your uncle does not desire to risk his immortality on such as Ted. Donna Jean is shy and timid. Perhaps someday she will show spirit and courage, but for now…" she trailed off, leaving Cole to conclude the obvious—that his uncle did not wish to "risk" his immortality on Donna Jean, either.
"Do you have any idea what brought on his sudden obsession with immortality?" Cole asked.
She hesitated and then she nodded. "His heart is growing weaker. Dr. Wilmeth comes often now. He says there is nothing more that can be done."
Cole went from shock to denial in the space of moments. He already knew it was futile to try to get Cal to go to Dallas to see other doctors. Once before, after months of arguing, Cole had finally accomplished that, only to have them all concur with Wilmeth. From then on, Cal had refused to even discuss having another consultation.
Across from Cole, Letty drew a deep, unsteady breath and looked at him with her brown eyes filled with tears. "Dr. Wilmeth says it is only a matter of time before…" She broke off, then got up and rushed from the room.
Leaning forward, Cole braced his elbows on his knees, overwhelmed by a terrible sense of fear and foreboding. With his shoulders hunched and his hands loosely linked, he gazed at his uncle's vacant chair while memories of the cozy nights and animated discussions they'd shared over the past three decades drifted through his mind. It seemed as if the only domestic warmth and happiness he'd ever known had been contained in this one shabby-cozy room. All of that would die when Cal died.
If Letty was correct, that time was not far away. His mind went black when he tried to contemplate a life without trips here to see his uncle. This man, this ranch, they were the original fabric of Cole's life. He had discarded the cowboy boots and jeans of his youth for supple loafers of Italian leather, custom-made suits tailored in England, and handmade shirts of Egyptian cotton, but underneath all that exterior polish, he was still as rough and rugged as the denim jeans and scarred leather boots he had worn. In his youth, Cole had hated his roots. From the day he went to Houston to college, he'd worked diligently to banish all traces of the "cowboy" he'd been. He'd changed the way he walked and the way he spoke, until there was no trace of the horseman's loping gait or a west Texas drawl.
Now fate was threatening to take away the last link he had to his roots, and the adult that Cole had become wanted desperately to preserve everything that was left.
Cal's threat to leave his half of the company to Travis and his family was forgotten as Cole tried desperately to think of some action that would forestall the inevitable, that would breathe life into his uncle and brighten his last remaining years. Or months. Or days. Cole's thoughts revolved in an unbroken circle of futility and helplessness. There was only one thing he could do for Cal that would make his remaining days happy.
"Son of a bitch," Cole said aloud, but the curse was one of resignation not defiance. He was going to have to marry someone, and marriage in a community-property state like Texas brought with it a whole new set of financial risks for him. Whoever the "lucky" woman was, Cole decided sarcastically, a sense of humor and docile disposition were at the top of his list of requirements for her. Otherwise, he could envision a somewhat heated scene when she realized she was going to be required to sign a prenuptial agreement.
He considered hiring an actress to play the part, but his uncle was too clever and too suspicious to fall for that. No doubt, that had been why he was insisting on seeing the marriage certificate. Luckily, the old man wasn't also insisting on the birth of a boy child before he turned over his share of a company that was rightfully Cole's in the first place. The fact that he hadn't made that a stipulation, too, was proof he wasn't as sharp as he used to be.
He wasn't as well as he used to be, either.
Swearing under his breath, Cole straightened and reached for the mug of now cold chocolate, intending to take it into the kitchen. His gaze fell on the folded newspaper on the top of the pile. Diana Foster's face smiled back at him. She'd had all the promise of beauty to come when she was sixteen, but the longer he looked at her stunning features and confident smile, the harder it became for him to reconcile this glamorous businesswoman or the one he'd watched on CNN with the endearingly prim and quietly poised teenager he remembered. In his mind, Cole envisioned the loyal, intelligent, entrancing adolescent who'd perched on a bale of hay, either watching him in silence or chatting with him about everything, from puppies to politics.
Tonight, when his uncle first commented on the fact that a woman from Houston had been "dumped" by her fiancé, Cole hadn't realized who she was. After he'd read the story in the tabloid, the reality of Diana's embarrassing plight registered on him. Now he again felt a pang of sympathy and indignation for the girl he had known. With her looks and wealth, her kindness and intelligence, he had assumed that she'd enjoy all the best life had to offer. She'd deserved that. She had not deserved to be made a national laughingstock by Dan Penworth.
With a weary sigh, Cole dismissed that subject from his mind and stood up, no longer able to suppress his own concerns by concentrating on the fortunes of a beguiling teenager with unforgettable green eyes who'd become the head of a major company and the subject of an embarrassing scandal instead of the pampered fairy-tale princess he'd hoped she'd become.
Life, as Cole well knew, rarely turned out the way one wanted it to or hoped it would. Not his life, or Diana Foster's… or his uncle's.
He picked up the mug of cold chocolate and carried it into the kitchen; then he carefully poured out the remnants and rinsed the mug so that Letty wouldn't discover how he felt about hot chocolate and be hurt by the truth.
The truth was that he hated hot chocolate.
He also hated marshmallows.
He particularly hated illness and doctors who diagnosed problems without offering a cure.
For that matter, he wasn't particularly enthusiastic about a sham marriage that was doomed to failure before it began.
It had occurred to Cole that the most likely, and most agreeable, candidate for his wife was not the "princess" whom his uncle had referred to earlier that night, but Michelle. Besides genuinely caring for Cole, she had no problem with his hectic work and travel schedule. In fact, she'd been very eager to adapt to it—and that was going to be far more important to Cole in this "marriage." Considering his circumstances, his pressing need, and the haste required of him, Cole decided he was damned lucky to have such a viable candidate.
He didn't feel lucky, though, as he headed down the hall to the bedroom he'd used since he was a boy whenever he spent the night at his uncle's. He felt depressed. He was so depressed, he actually felt sorry for Michelle, because he knew damned well she'd agree to the bargain. He knew it just as he knew that she'd be making a mistake, because she'd be settling for what little of himself he had to offer, and that wasn't very much.
His last relationship, with Vicky Kellogg, had failed for exactly that reason, and he hadn't changed since then, nor did he intend to. He was still married to his business, just as Vicky had accused him of being. He was still contemptuous of the aimless thrill-seeking that Vicky and her friends had enjoyed. He still traveled a great deal, which had annoyed her, and he was still incapable of prolonged periods of unbroken laziness. No doubt, he was still the "cold, callous, unfeeling son of a bitch" she'd called him when she moved out. The point that she hadn't understood was that Cole was directly or indirectly responsible for the job security and investment security of more than a hundred thousand of Unified Industries' employees.
The bed beneath him felt lumpy and narrow as he shoved the old chenille bedspread aside and stretched out between fresh white sheets that smelled of sunlight and summer breezes. Against his bare skin, the thin cloth felt weightless and baby soft from Letty's countless washings.
Linking his hands behind his head, Cole stared at the ceiling fan revolving slowly above him. Slowly, his depression began to recede, along with all thoughts of marrying Michelle or anyone else. The idea wasn't just obscene; it was absurd. So was the notion that his uncle might not live until the end of the year.
Cole had been working eighteen hours a day for months; he'd taken a rare day off today to fly down here from Los Angeles only to have weather problems. The stress and weariness from all that, combined with the discovery of his uncle's worsening health, had all combined to warp his thinking, Cole decided, as his eyes drifted closed and an odd sense of confidence and well-being began to assert itself.
Cal was going to live for another ten years, at least. True, he hadn't looked robust tonight, but as Cole tried to assess the individual changes that age and illness had wrought by comparing the Cal he remembered to the man he was now, the changes weren't nearly so alarming as they'd seemed at first. He thought back to bygone days when he'd watched Cal mending fences in the blazing sun or cantering into the corral behind dusty steers he'd rounded up and driven in from the pasture. With his Stetson and boots adding inches to his height, he'd seemed like a giant to Cole when he was little, but when Cole reached his full height of six foot two, he'd been at least three inches taller than Cal.
The reality was that Cal had never been a big man with a powerful physique like Cole's; he'd been lanky and lean, with a wiry strength and endurance that served as well as bulky muscle for the heavy work around the ranch. He hadn't shrunk six inches and wasted away to a skeleton, as it sometimes seemed to Cole that he had. When his arthritis bothered him, as it obviously had tonight, he shifted his shoulders forward, which distorted his posture and cost him an inch or so from his natural height.
His hair hadn't suddenly turned white; it had been white for as long as Cole could remember—thick and white with close-cropped sideburns that framed a tanned, narrow face with a square chin and pale blue eyes that seemed to look out at the world from a different perspective; sharp eyes that gleamed with intelligence, humor, and hard resolve. His face had lost its tan, and his eyes looked out from behind bifocals now, but they weren't faded and dull, and they missed nothing.
True, his body had lost some of its strength from age and lack of exercise, but his real power had always come from his mind. And as Cole had discovered tonight, his mind was as sharp and fit as ever.
In the next few days, Cole would find solutions that would suit his uncle and himself and solve everything. In the morning he would start a vigorous search for some sort of new or updated treatment for his uncle's condition. New medical treatments were being discovered every day, and old, effective ones that had been discarded were being rediscovered. If he'd known sooner that his uncle's heart condition wasn't staying the same or even improving, he'd have been looking hard for solutions already.
He had always found solutions, Cole remembered.
Finding solutions to seemingly insoluble problems was one of the things he did best. It was a knack that had helped bring him wealth and success beyond even his own wildest dreams.
Sleep pressed down on his eyelids as he lay in the plain, unadorned bedroom where, as a boy, he had dreamed of his life as a man. There was something about the monastic simplicity of the small room that had encouraged him to dream big dreams in his youth. Now, in his adulthood, the room soothed and lifted his spirits. Cole owned homes and apartments all over the world, all of them with spacious bedrooms furnished with large beds in a variety of shapes, but he was already falling asleep more quickly here than he'd been able to do elsewhere in years.
He decided the room itself still had some sort of mystical, uplifting effect on him, much as it always had.
Peace settled over him and followed him into his dreams, just as it always had when he slept here.
The window was open and a sliver of moonlight filtered through the sheer curtains, turning them into shiny silken webs that drifted weightlessly on a flower-scented breeze. The air seemed fresher here, just as it always had.
In the morning, when he was well-rested, he would be better able to think and plan and solve. For now, the walls of the room, with their familiar framed pictures, seemed to surround him and shelter him, just as they always did whenever Cole slept there.
On the nightstand beside the bed, an old alarm clock ticked with the loud, steady rhythm of a heartbeat, lulling him further asleep, reminding him that time was passing and things would look better in the morning, just as they always did whenever Cole slept there.
Sometime later, Cole rolled onto his stomach, and the sheet lifted magically, covering his bare shoulders, just as it always seemed to during the night, whenever Cole slept there.
Beside the bed, Calvin Downing gazed down at his sleeping nephew, frowning at the deep lines of tension and weariness etched at the corners of Cole's eyes and the sides of his mouth. He spoke to the sleeping man, his voice lower than the whisper of the curtains drifting against the window, his words low and soothing, tinged with gruff emotion, just as they always were whenever he came in to check on his nephew and felt the need to tell him in his sleep what he could not say to him while he was awake. "You've already accomplished what most men only dream of doing," Cal whispered. "You've already proved to everyone that you can do anything you set out to do. You don't have to keep pushing yourself anymore, Cole."
The sleeping man stirred and turned his head away, but his breathing remained deep, peaceful.
"Things will look better in the morning," Calvin promised him softly, just as he always did whenever Cole slept there. "I love you, son."

Chapter 17




Traffic on the interstate between Houston Intercontinental Airport and downtown Houston was heavy for five p.m. on a Saturday, but the chauffeur maneuvered the long black Mercedes limousine skillfully from lane to lane in a graceful, daring dance of speed, power, and timing.
Heedless of the driver's efforts on his behalf, Cole sat in the backseat, poring over a thick, detailed analysis of the complexities involved in having Unified participate with other corporations in a collaborative effort with the Russians to put a gas pipeline through to the Black Sea. He did not look up until the car glided to a stop beneath the green canopy at the entrance of the Grand Balmoral Hotel and a uniformed doorman appeared beside his window. Reluctantly, Cole put the report in his briefcase and got out.
Condé Nast Traveler had described the fifteen-story Grand Balmoral as an outstanding example of hushed, old-world opulence on a grand scale combined with impeccable service, but as Cole strode across the vast circular lobby with its dark green marble floors and soaring Grecian columns, his thoughts were on Russian railroads and Russian winters, and not the glittering crystal chandeliers above him or the luxurious gilt-edged sofas upholstered in ivory brocade that were organized into inviting seating groups all around him.
On the right of the lobby was a grand staircase that swept upward to a wide mezzanine that circled and overlooked it. In preparation for the White Orchid Ball's Camelot theme, the mezzanine was being turned into a mythical forest by dozens of workers who were scurrying about, draping tiny white lights and artificial snow over what appeared to be hundreds of full-size trees. Diverted from his thoughts by the activity above him, Cole frowned in the general direction of the distraction as he headed for the carved mahogany registration desk.
The hotel's manager spotted Cole and hurried down the steps to introduce himself; then he insisted on escorting Cole to the Regent Suite as soon as he'd finished registering. "If there is anything we can do to make your stay with us more pleasant—anything at all—please let me know, Mr. Harrison," he said as he bowed himself out the door.
"I'll do that," Cole said absently, as unimpressed by this special deferential treatment as he was by the magnificent five-room suite with its mauve-and-gold Louis XV furnishings and spectacular view of the Houston skyline. He spent a good part of his life conducting business in luxury hotels all over the globe, and in little more than a decade, he had come to expect the best—and to take it completely for granted.
Having refused the manager's offer to have a maid unpack for him, Cole handed the departing bellman a tip for carrying up his luggage; then he took off his jacket and tie, loosened the top buttons of his white shirt, and walked over to the bar in the living room, where he fixed himself a gin and tonic. He carried it past the fireplace to a pair of doors that opened out onto a balcony and stepped outside. The outdoor temperature was in the mid-nineties, but the humidity that normally made Houston into a steam bath during the summers was absent, and Cole stood at the railing looking out across the city he had called home during college. He'd been to Houston on business a few times in the intervening years, but he'd never spent the night there, and perhaps for that reason, he was suddenly struck by the enormous difference between the style of his departure from Houston fourteen years ago and that of his "homecoming" today.
He had left Houston by bus the day after he graduated from college, carrying all his worldly possessions in a nylon duffel bag and wearing a pair of faded jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of worn-out, scuffed boots. He had arrived today by private jet, wearing a $7,000 Brioni suit, $600 Cole-Haan loafers, and carrying a $1,500 briefcase. When his plane taxied to a stop in the hangar, a chauffeur had been waiting beside a limousine with its engine idling, ready to whisk him to the Balmoral. He was as accustomed to VIP treatment wherever he went as he was to private jets, penthouse suites, and come-hither looks from glamorous women.
He thought back to that ten-hour bus ride from Houston to Jeffersonville and remembered it as clearly as if it were last week. The day after his graduation, he'd boarded the first bus north to his uncle's ranch (the bus had been a concession to thrift-minded Cal, who, despite his lucrative oil wells, still regarded plane travel as an inexcusable waste of good money). On the day he boarded that bus, Cole's practically only remaining possessions were the clothes he was wearing.
Beyond that, all he owned were the few items in his duffel bag—and his dreams. The duffel bag was small and plain, but his dreams were big and elaborate. Extremely big. Extraordinarily elaborate. Seated beside an old man who belched at regular intervals, Cole had gazed out the window at the River Oaks mansions parading past, and he had indulged himself with fantasies of returning to Houston someday, rich and powerful.
And now he was.
Lifting the glass to his mouth, Cole took a swallow of his drink, amused by the irony of the situation: today was certainly the ultimate realization of that long-ago fantasy, but it no longer mattered to him. He was so completely absorbed in other more far-reaching, significant issues that it didn't matter to him. He had proven himself, won out against all the odds, and yet he was still striving, still working incredible hours, still driving himself as hard as ever. Harder.
As he gazed out at the haze hanging like a dingy apron around the soaring high-rises, he wondered what all his striving was really for. In Denver, the annual shareholders meeting of Alcane Electronics was taking place, and if Cole's negotiators weren't successful in swaying them, Cole was going to have a proxy fight on his hands to take over that company. In California, his lawyers, top executives, and a team of architects were conducting a series of meetings about several office complexes he was building in northern California and Washington State to house the various companies that made up the technological division of Unified.
And if his uncle's health didn't improve… that was unthinkable. After his conversation with Letty he had talked to Cal's doctor, who had told him that while Cal's condition was an unpredictable one, Cole should be prepared for the worst at any time.
Cole glanced at his watch and saw that it was six-thirty. He had to appear downstairs for a television interview at seven-thirty, and the Orchid Ball's charity auction was scheduled to begin at eight p.m. That left him with a full hour in which to shower, shave, and get dressed, which was more than he needed. He decided to phone one of his executives at the attorneys' offices in California and find out how things were progressing.

Chapter 18




With bright, artificial smiles affixed to their faces, Diana's family and two of her friends stood off to one side of the Balmoral's crowded lobby, struggling valiantly to appear to everyone as if everything were perfectly normal while they watched the revolving brass doors at the main entrance for a sign of Diana. "The decorations are certainly lovely!" Diana's mother remarked halfheartedly.
The others glanced with forced interest at the Balmoral's lobby, the grand staircase, and the mezzanine. The main lights had been dimmed, and the entire hotel seemed to have been transformed into a dense forest of shadowy trees with tiny twinkling lights glittering among branches covered with artificial snow. Ice sculptures depicting medieval knights and their ladies adorned snow-covered "ponds," and waiters dressed in medieval attire, bearing pewter goblets of wine, skirted snowdrifts and moved among the crowd, while the Houston Symphony Orchestra played "I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight."
"It does look a lot like the opening scene from Camelot, " Corey put in. She glanced at her husband. "Doesn't it?"
Instead of replying, Spence slid his arm around her waist and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Don't worry. Everything's going to be fine, honey."
"Diana said she'd be here at seven-fifteen and it's seven-thirty," Corey told him, "and Diana is never late." Corey's mother looked around the lobby and saw that the crowd was beginning to drift toward the mezzanine, where the main events were to take place. "Maybe she decided she just couldn't come, after all," Mary Foster said.
Corey's fixed smile gave way to alarm. "Canceling out at the last minute is the worst thing she could do."
"She'll be here," Spence reassured both women. "Diana's never run away from anything in her life."
"I couldn't blame her if she ran away from this," Corey said. "Diana values her privacy and her dignity above everything, and as a result of what Dan did, her dignity has taken a public flogging. In her place, I don't think I'd have the courage to show up here tonight."
"Yes, you would," Spence said with absolute conviction.
She shot him a startled look. "Why do you think that?"
"Pride," he said. "Outraged pride would force you to appear here and face them all down. Pride is all she has left right now, and her pride will demand that she appear at the ball with her head high."
"She'll be here," Doug Hayward agreed.
"As a matter of fact," Spence said suddenly, "Diana has just arrived." He looked at Corey with a smile and added, "And she's done it in grand style."
Baffled, Corey turned. She saw Diana walking calmly through the crowd with her head high, seemingly unaware of the people who turned to stare at her. Corey was so proud of her sister, and so startled by her appearance, that she temporarily forgot about Dan Penworth and the broken engagement.
Normally, Diana opted for subdued elegance rather than glamour at formal affairs, but not tonight. With a stunned smile of admiration, Corey took in the full impact of Diana's ravishing purple gown. Fashioned like a fitted sarong with a deep slash at the side, the gown fell from narrow straps at the shoulders into panels of purple that clung gently to her graceful hips and ended in a narrow swirl just above her toes. Instead of the sleek chignon she normally wore her hair in, she'd let it fall in a cascade of waves that ended at her shoulders—its lustrous simplicity providing an enticing contrast to the sexy sophistication of the gown. Corey gave Diana a fierce hug. "I was so afraid you'd decide to stay home tonight," she whispered.
"I never considered it," Diana lied, returning Corey's hug and smiling reassuringly at her mother and grandparents. She was so nervous and so unhappy and so touched to see her family and Doug and his date waiting for her like an honor guard to see her through the ordeal that she felt perilously close to tears, and the evening wasn't even underway yet.
"You're gorgeous," Spence decreed gallantly, giving her a brotherly hug, "and so's the gown."
"It's lucky that your meetings in New York ended a day early so you could go with us tonight."
It wasn't luck at all that had brought Spence back to Houston in time for the ball; it was Diana's plight that made him cancel the last day of meetings, but Corey wisely chose not to add to Diana's concerns by telling her that.
Doug Hayward stepped away from his date and studied Diana with unabashed admiration. "You look fantastic," he said. He pressed a kiss to Diana's cheek, then clasped her hands in his and stepped back, his smile giving way to a troubled frown. "Your hands are like ice," he said. "Are you sure you want to face everyone, including the media, in one big group tonight?"
Touched by the depth of his concern, Diana pinned a bright fixed smile on her face. "I'll be fine," she assured her former childhood friend. "These things happen to lots of people. Engagements get broken and people marry other people instead. Although," she added with an attempt at humor, "it usually happens in that order instead of the reverse." Instead of amusing him, her joke made him wince, and she squeezed his fingers in a gesture of profound affection and gratitude. He hadn't intended to go to the Orchid Ball at all since, as the junior senator from Texas, he had his hands quite full, but when he discovered that Diana intended to brave it alone in what was going to be her first public appearance after Dan's defection, he'd insisted on going and being seated with the Fosters at their table. He was doing that, Diana knew, partly to lend her moral support and partly as a way of using his considerable social influence among Houston society to help negate the effect of Dan's humiliating actions. "Thank you for caring so much," Diana said with a catch in her voice. "It seems as if you're forever giving Corey and me advice and bailing us out of one jam after another."
"Most of the time it was my advice that got Corey into a jam in the first place," he teased. "You, on the other hand, rarely asked me for advice and never got into any trouble that I can recall."
The last part of that was true, but Diana refused to let him make light of the value of his friendship. "You are very softhearted and very sweet," she said with simple candor.
He dropped her hands and stepped back with an expression of comic horror. "Are you trying to ruin my carefully constructed tough-guy image? My political opponents will make me look like a wimp if they know how sweet and softhearted I really am."
Corey heard him, but she was worriedly studying Diana's face. At close range, she could see that despite Diana's artfully applied makeup and luminescent complexion, her face was abnormally pale and her eyes lacked any luster. They looked wounded and dull. Spence had evidently noticed it, too, because he waved off a passing waiter and walked over to one of the bars that had been set up. A minute later, he returned with two glasses. "Drink this," he instructed. "It will put some color in your cheeks and give you a little courage."
Diana accepted the glass and took a tiny sip, then shook her head, trying to force herself to face a problem she'd been avoiding. There was no way of knowing what was going to happen an hour from now, when she walked into the ballroom with her family and Doug and his date, Amy. Some of the people at the ball tonight would be friends of hers, and if they asked about Dan, their interest in Diana's plight sprang from genuine concern and affection. That was not going to be true in the majority of cases at the ball, however. There, she would be bound to encounter hundreds of distant acquaintances and curious strangers who would watch her every move, searching for something to gossip about with their friends tomorrow, and some of them would relish her misery.
Diana had tried very hard to avoid making enemies throughout her life, but she knew there were those who envied the Foster family's success, and there were those who simply relished other people's unhappiness.
"The press is going to be swarming all over you tonight," Corey said grimly.
"I know."
"Stay close to Spence and me. We'll shield you the best we can."
Diana gave a wan smile. "Does Spence carry a gun?"
"Not tonight," Corey joked. "It makes a bulge in his tuxedo."
Diana managed another smile, but she lifted her gaze to the mezzanine, surveying the crowd up there with all the enthusiasm of a woman facing a firing squad at the top of the stairs. "I wish I hadn't agreed to model that necklace for the auction, before all this happened," she said. "I'll have to go up there in a few minutes so they can put it on me."
"Oh, God, I forgot all about that!" Corey moaned. "I noticed you weren't wearing any jewelry tonight, but I was so pleased to see how glamorous you looked in that purple gown that I forgot you were scheduled to model those damned amethysts."
For over a hundred years, the White Orchid Ball, known sometimes simply as the Orchid Ball, and the charity auction that was a part of it, had been the most illustrious social event of the year for the Texas aristocracy. It was steeped in traditions that had originated when the invited guests were cattle-and-oil barons and prosperous industrialists who arrived in gleaming carriages and waltzed with their ladies beneath crystal chandeliers ablaze with candles. In its present form, it was no longer restricted to a few dozen of Texas's most fabulously wealthy and socially elite families, but its traditions had remained intact and it was widely acknowledged as one of the most successful and acclaimed charity fund-raisers in the world.
Diana had been invited to model one of the donated items to be auctioned, and having previously agreed to do it, that was an honor and ritual that she couldn't now reject without bringing even more gossip down on her head. Diana knew that. So did Spence and Corey.
"Finish your drink," Spence insisted. "Two more swallows."
Diana complied because compliance was easier and she needed to conserve all her strength to face the evening's ordeal.
Knowing how concerned Diana always was for his comfort, her grandfather deliberately tried to divert Diana's attention from her plight by bringing up his own. Running his finger around the starched collar of his tuxedo shirt, he said, "I hate wearing this damned monkey suit, Diana. I feel like a damned fool every time I have to put one on."
Diana's grandmother gave him a reproachful look. "Stop cursing, Henry. And your tuxedo looks very nice on you."
"It makes me look like a damned penguin," he argued.
"All the men are wearing tuxedos tonight."
"And we all look like penguins!" he countered grumpily, and to stop her from arguing about that, he turned to a more pleasant subject and looked hopefully at Diana. "I think we should do another issue featuring organic gardening. Organic gardening is always popular. What do you think about that, honey?"
Diana couldn't seem to concentrate on anything except the ordeal that loomed in front of her. "That's fine, Grandpa," she said, even though they'd featured organic gardening twice already that year. "We'll do that," she added absently, which made her mother and her grandmother look at her in amazement. "I'd better go and sign out that necklace," Diana said reluctantly. "It's a good thing I'm not in a spending mood tonight," she added with a lame attempt at humor. "First I forgot my purse and had to go back for it." She lifted up her small, oval Judith Leiber evening bag to illustrate. "Then, when I got here, I couldn't tip the parking attendant because I discovered I forgot to take any money with me. All I have is a driver's license and compact in here. Oh, and I remembered to take lipstick. But I brought the wrong color."
Everyone smiled at her predicament as she turned to leave—everyone except Rose Britton, who continued to stare at Diana's retreating form, her forehead wrinkled in a thoughtful frown. Finally she turned to the others and announced in a dire tone, "I think Diana has finally reached her limits, and I'm worried about her."
"What do you mean?" her husband asked.
"I mean that she has been acting very strangely," Mrs. Britton said in her blunt voice, "and she was doing it before Dan dumped her."
"I haven't noticed anything strange, Mother," Mrs. Foster said, wincing at her mother's choice of descriptions for what Dan did.
"Then let me give you some examples. Diana has always been the most organized, methodical, punctual, dependable person on God's green earth. Every Friday, at seven-thirty a.m., she has a massage and then a manicure, and every Thursday afternoon at four p.m., she has a meeting with the production staff." She paused to make certain that everyone was in complete agreement with what she'd said so far, and when she saw that they were all listening attentively, she presented her proof: "Two weeks ago, Diana forgot her massage appointment. The following week, she forgot about the production meeting and forgot to tell her secretary that she'd scheduled an appointment with one of our bankers instead! I know, because her secretary called me at home, looking for her."
Spence suppressed a grin at what he regarded as needless concern. "Everyone forgets an appointment now and then, particularly when they're very busy, Gram," he said reassuringly. "According to what Corey has told me, Diana has been under intense pressure trying to run the magazine and implement expansion plans and still stay ahead of the competition. Given all that, an unimportant thing like a massage and manicure would be easy to forget."
"Two months ago," Gram added doggedly, "she also forgot my birthday party!"
"She was working late at the office," Mrs. Foster reminded her mother. "When I called her there, she rushed right over."
"Yes, but when she got here, she'd forgotten my present!—and then she absolutely insisted on going to her apartment to get it."
"That's not unusual for Diana, Gram," Corey said. "You know how considerate she is and how much thought she puts into the gifts she buys for people. She insisted on going back to get your gift because she was determined to give it to you on the right day."
"Yes, but when she got to her apartment, it took her nearly an hour to find my present because she couldn't remember where she'd put it!"
Doug exchanged a look of masculine amusement with Spence before he said, "That's because she probably bought it for you a year ahead of time, Mrs. Britton. Last August, I bumped into her at Neiman's and she told me she was doing her Christmas shopping."
Corey smiled. "She always makes her Christmas list out in August and finishes her shopping in September. She says everything is picked over after that."
"She always comes up with perfect gifts," Doug put in with a reminiscent smile. "Last year I gave her a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates and a bottle of champagne, but she gave me a cashmere scarf that I'd mentioned liking. I'll bet that when she found your birthday gift and brought it over, Mrs. Britton, it was exactly what you wanted."
"It was a box of cigars!" she informed him.
Doug's eyes narrowed in sudden alarm, but Mr. Britton only chuckled and shook his head. "She'd ordered the cigars for me, to give me on my birthday. She always wraps her gifts as soon as she gets them, and she just grabbed the wrong present because she was in a hurry to get back to your birthday party."
Mrs. Britton shook her head, refusing to be pacified. "A few weeks ago, when Diana got back from that big meeting with our printers in Chicago, she took a cab straight from the airport to the office."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Her car was at the airport. If you ask me, she's been working much too hard for much too long," she said flatly.
"She hasn't had a vacation in at least six years," Mrs. Foster said, feeling guilty and more than a little concerned. "I think we ought to insist that she take a month off."
"Diana is okay, I tell you, but she ought to have a vacation, just on principle," Grandpa pronounced, concluding the worrisome discussion.

Chapter 19





The official press area was cordoned off with a velvet rope on the far side of the mezzanine above the lobby, not far from the ballroom where the auction items were on display. In keeping with his promise to Unified's public relations department, Cole presented himself to the members of the press and did his best to look delighted to be there. He said he would grant brief interviews to the local reporters from CBS and ABC, then posed for pictures and answered routine questions for the reporter from the Houston Chronicle and the local stringer from USA Today.
The ABC interview was the last. Standing beside Kimberly Proctor, with the round light of the Minicam aimed straight at him like an unblinking Cyclops, Cole listened to the attractive blonde enthuse about the one-hundred-year history of the White Orchid Ball and some of the traditions behind the auction; then she waved the microphone in his face. "Mr. Harrison, we've all been told by the committee that you've donated the most valuable of all the items in tonight's auction. Just how much is the Klineman sculpture worth?"
"To whom?" Cole countered dryly. Privately, he'd always thought the modernistic piece was a monstrosity, but he'd bought it at a bargain and now it was worth five times more than he'd paid.
She laughed, "I mean, what is it appraised for?"
"A quarter of a million dollars."
"You're a very generous man!"
"Tell that to the IRS, won't you?" he said wryly; then he terminated the interview himself by giving her a brief smile and a curt nod before he stepped out of the camera's range. The tactic surprised her and she followed him. "Wait—I—I was wondering if we could get together later—for a chat."
"I'm sorry," Cole lied politely, "but you'll have to contact our PR department and schedule an interview."
"I wasn't actually thinking of an interview," she said, gazing directly into his eyes and softening her voice. "I thought perhaps we could have a drink somewhere—"
Cole cut her off with a shake of his head, but he softened the automatic rejection with a politely regretful smile. "I'm afraid I don't have even fifteen minutes to myself before I leave Houston tomorrow."
She was lovely, well-spoken, and intelligent, but none of that mattered to Cole. She was a reporter, and if she'd been the most beautiful, brilliant, desirable woman on earth, with the purest motives in the world, he still would have avoided her like the plague. "Perhaps another time," he added; then he stepped around behind her and out of the area, leaving her to interview more eager candidates who were lined up on the other side of the velvet rope.
"Mr. Harrison!" someone else in the press area called, but Cole ignored that reporter and kept walking as if he'd never heard of anyone by that name, stopping only to accept a glass of champagne from a waiter.
By the time he had made his way around the perimeter of the mezzanine to the opposite side, where the festivities were scheduled to take place, at least a dozen people had nodded greetings at him and he'd returned them without having the slightest idea who any of the people were.
Ironically, when he finally did recognize two faces in the crowd, they belonged to the only two people who tried to avoid greeting him—Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hayward II. In fact, they swept past their former stable hand with their heads high and their eyes like shards of ice.
Cole paused outside the doorway of the room where the most expensive of the items to be auctioned were on display, and he heard his name being whispered occasionally as the patrons of the ball identified him, but the name that seemed to be most frequently on everyone's lips was Diana Foster's. Only tonight, she was being generally referred to as "Poor Diana Foster," and by women who occasionally sounded more malicious than empathetic to Cole.
From his point of view, the White Orchid Ball fulfilled three distinct and different needs—the first was to provide an opportunity for the wives and daughters of the very rich to get together in elegant surroundings, to show off their newest jewels and latest gowns, and to gossip about each other while their husbands and fathers talked about their golf games and tennis matches.
The second purpose was to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The third was to offer Houston's financially affluent and socially prominent citizens an opportunity to demonstrate their social consciousness by outbidding one another for dozens of extravagantly expensive items that were donated by other members of the financially affluent and socially prominent.
Tonight's Orchid Ball was bound to be an unparalleled success in all aspects, Cole decided.
Armed security guards were positioned in front of the doors to the room where the auction items were on display, and an argument broke out right beside him as a photographer in a red-and-white-checked shirt tried to sidle past one of the guards. "No one but guests are allowed in here after seven o'clock," the guard warned, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I'm from the Enquirer," the photographer explained, trying to keep his voice low and still be heard over the roar of the crowd. "I'm not interested in the stuff they're auctioning off, I'm interested in getting a picture of Diana Foster, and I saw her up here on the balcony a while ago. I think she went in there."
"Sorry. No one but guests for the auction are allowed in there now."
The full realization of Diana's sordid plight filled Cole with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. He'd seen her on television, and he knew she was a grown woman now, but in his mind, he still thought of her as an ingenuous teenager, sitting Indian fashion on a bale of fresh hay, her head tipped to the side as she listened intently to whatever he was saying.
The doors to the ballroom where the banquet and auction were to take place were still closed, and Cole glanced impatiently at his watch, anxious to get in there and to get the whole thing over with. Since that was impossible, and since he had no desire to strike up a conversation with any of the people who seemed to be trying to catch his eye, he stepped into the shadow of a copse of trees, surrounded and obscured by their glittering branches, and lifted the glass of champagne to his lips.
In the years since he'd worked in Houston and lived in the Haywards' stable, he'd attended hundreds of black-tie affairs all over the world. He was frequently bored at them, but he was never uncomfortable. Houston was the exception. Something about being at a function like this in Houston made him feel like an impostor, a fraud, an interloper.
From his vantage point inside the whimsical forest glade, he idly watched the crowd without consciously admitting to himself that he was watching specifically for a glimpse of Diana… And then the crowd parted and he saw her, standing beside a wide pillar near the elevators about fifteen yards from him.
A sharp jolt of recognition was immediately followed by relief and then pure masculine admiration as his gaze drifted over "Poor Diana Foster."
Instead of the wan, humiliated creature he'd feared he'd see, Diana Foster had lost none of the quiet, regal poise he remembered her having. Draped in a gown of royal purple silk that clung to her full breasts and small waist, she moved serenely through the artificial twilight of a make-believe forest, untouched by the clamor and bustle all around her—a proud young Guinevere with delicate features, a small chin, and large, luminous green eyes beneath thick russet lashes and exotically winged brows. Her coloring was more vivid now, Cole thought, and the tiny cleft in her chin was nearly invisible, but her hair was the same—heavy and lush, glistening like polished mahogany with red highlights beneath the light of the chandeliers. A splendid necklace of large, square-cut, deep purple amethysts, surrounded by diamonds, lay against her throat, a perfect complement to the gown. She belonged in striking gowns and glittering jewels, Cole decided. They suited her far better than the pleated pants and conservative blazers she used to prefer.
He stood in the shadow of the trees, admiring her surface beauty but far more intrigued by the indefinable, but unmistakable "presence" that made Diana stand out so clearly, even in the shifting kaleidoscope of movement and color that swirled around her. It was as if everything and everyone except Diana was in motion, from the twinkling tree limbs shifting in the subtle currents of air conditioning, to the men and women who moved about in a blur of vivid hues and animated voices.
She was listening attentively to a man who was speaking to her—a man who Cole was nearly certain was Spence Addison. Addison moved away from her, and Cole stepped out of the shadow of the trees and stopped, willing her to look his way. He wanted her to recognize him; he wanted her to give him one of her unforgettable smiles and to come over to talk to him. He wanted all that with a surprising amount of anticipation.
It was possible she'd snub him as the Haywards had done a few minutes ago, but somehow he didn't think she would. Until now, Cole's youthful dream of a triumphant return to Houston had seemed meaningless to him, which was why even Cole realized how incongruous it was for him to suddenly want the satisfaction of having Diana Foster take notice of him tonight—or, more correctly, of the man he had become.
Based on the icy stares he'd gotten from Charles and Jessica a few minutes ago, Cole doubted that they'd been eager to tell anyone how successful their former groom had become. In that case, there was a possibility that Diana had no idea whatsoever that Cole the stable hand—who'd enjoyed her girlhood conversations and shared her sandwiches—was the same Cole who had just been named Entrepreneur of the Year by Newsweek magazine.
The ballroom doors were thrown open, and the entire crowd seemed to shift in unison, obscuring his view as people began making their way into the ballroom. Rather than have Diana disappear into the crowd or enter the ballroom through the doors closest to her before he could speak privately to her, Cole started toward her, but his progress was hampered by the surge of people moving in the opposite direction toward the ballroom. When he finally cleared the last human obstacle, only a hundred or so people were lingering on the mezzanine, but one of them was talking to Diana, and it was Doug Hayward.
Cole slowed to a stop and stood off to the side; then he raised his glass to his mouth, hoping Hayward would walk away. He had no way of knowing if Charles Hayward's attitude toward Cole was now shared by his son, but Cole didn't want to risk having that mar his first meeting with Diana in more than a decade.
Hayward wanted to escort her into the ballroom, but to Cole's relief, Diana refused. "Go ahead without me," she told him. "I'll be along in a minute. I want to get some fresh air first."
"I'll go with you," Hayward offered.
"No, don't, please," Diana told him. "I just need to be alone for a few moments."
"Okay, if you're sure that's what you want to do," Hayward said, sounding reluctant and frustrated. "Don't be long," he added as he started toward the open ballroom doors.
Diana nodded and turned, walking swiftly toward a door with an Exit sign above it.
Cole had enough experience with women to know when one was on the verge of tears, and since she'd told Hayward she wanted to be alone, he felt he should allow her that privilege. He started to turn toward the ballroom, then stopped, assailed by an old memory—Diana telling him about her fall from the horse: "I didn't cry… Not when I broke my wrist and not while Dr. Paltrona was setting it."
"You didn't?"
"Nope, not me."
"Not even one tear?"
"Not even one."
"Good for you," he'd teased.
"Not really." She'd sighed. "I fainted instead."
As a child, she'd been able to bravely hold back her tears of pain and fright, but tonight, as a woman, she was apparently hurt beyond all endurance. Cole hesitated, torn between the male's instinctive urge to avoid any scene involving a weeping woman—and a far less understandable impulse to offer her some sort of strength and support.
The latter impulse was slightly stronger, and it won out: Cole headed slowly but purposefully for the doors beneath the Exit sign; then he made a brief detour for champagne, which he felt sure would buoy her up a little.

Chapter 20


Outside, the long, narrow stone balcony was deserted and poorly lit by a few small, flickering gas lamps that created tiny pools of feeble yellowish light surrounded by dark shadows. In Diana's desolate mood, the lonely gloom of the balcony was infinitely preferable to the romantic excitement of the mythical forest that the decorations committee had created, and she was spared the painful irony of having to listen to the orchestra playing "If Ever I Would Leave You."
Hoping to be out of sight of anyone else who might decide to go outside, Diana turned right and walked as far away from the doors as possible, stopping only when she came to the point where the balcony ended at the corner of the building. Standing at the white stone balustrade, she flattened her palms on the cool white stone and bent her head, staring blindly at her splayed fingers, noticing how blank and plain her left hand looked without Dan's engagement ring on it.
Two stories below, a steady procession of headlights glided along the wide, treelined boulevard in front of the hotel, but Diana was oblivious to everything except the bewildered desolation she felt. In the last few days, her emotions had veered between the lethargic helplessness she felt now and sudden bursts of angry energy that made her into a whirlwind of mindless activity. Either way, she still couldn't seem to absorb the reality that Dan was married. Married. To someone else. Only last month, they had talked about attending tonight's ball together and he'd reminded her repeatedly to arrange for a seat for him at her family's table.
On the boulevard below, the sudden screech of car brakes was accompanied by an ear-splitting symphony of honking horns. Jarred from her thoughts, Diana braced for the sound of clashing metal and breaking glass, but when she looked toward the intersection, there'd been no real accident. She was about to look away when a black Mercedes convertible like Dan's glided toward the hotel, its yellow turn indicators blinking as it neared the entrance. For a heart-stopping second, Diana actually believed it was Dan in that car; and in that magic fraction of time, his arrival seemed plausible… He'd come to explain that there had been some sort of colossal mistake.
Reality crashed down on her as the sports car swooped closer to the green canopy at the hotel's entrance and she saw that the Mercedes was dark blue, not black, and the driver was a silver-haired man.
The swift plunge from soaring, unexpected hope to the grim truth sent Diana spiraling even further into a pit of misery. Through a haze of unshed tears, she watched the car's passenger door open, and a stunning blonde in her mid-twenties swung her long legs out. Diana studied the girl's short, tight dress, noticing her aura of sexy confidence, and she wondered when Dan had also begun to prefer sexy young blondes to conservative thirty-one-year-old brunettes like Diana. Based on the newspaper pictures, she was sickeningly certain his new wife was ten times prettier and more voluptuous than herself. No doubt Christina was also more feminine, more fun, and more adventurous, too. Diana was certain of all that, but she wasn't certain exactly when Dan had begun to feel, to notice, that Diana wasn't enough for him.
She wasn't enough…
That had to be true; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to toss her aside as casually as he'd toss out the trash. She wasn't enough for him, and the crushing humiliation of it made her stomach churn. Before Diana, Dan had always dated women who were glamorous, tall, and curvaceous— sophisticated debutantes in their twenties and thirties who were eternally witty and religiously dedicated to nothing more than looking good and playing hard. Diana, on the other hand, was dedicated to her work and to the growth and prosperity of the family enterprises. In fact, the only thing Diana had in common with Dan's other women was that she'd also been a debutante. Beyond that, the contrast was as glaringly evident as her shortcomings. She was only five feet four inches tall, her hair was an ordinary dark brown, and she was far from voluptuous. In fact, while the scandal was erupting over breast implants, she'd teased Dan about being glad she hadn't had the surgery. Instead of laughing, he'd remarked that some of the implants were safer than others, and that she could still have one of the safer ones if she wanted to.
In her mood of dismal self-loathing, Diana now wished she'd gone through with the surgery. If she were any sort of a woman, she would have concentrated harder on her looks instead of settling for a "natural" look and counting on intellect instead of beauty to keep her man. She should have had her hair streaked, or frosted, or maybe cropped as short as a boy's with shaggy bangs. Instead of a long gown like the one she was wearing, she should have opted for one of those skintight, thigh-high couture dresses that were so in fashion right now.
The bang of a metal door slamming closed made her look around in wary alarm toward a tall man in a tuxedo who had just emerged from the hotel. Her relief that he was apparently one of the ball's guests, rather than a reporter or mugger, was immediately supplanted by irritation that he was moving in her direction, instead of away.
Cloaked in shadow and silence, he kept coming toward her, his step slow, purposeful. His arms were bent at the elbows, and he was holding something in each hand. For a split second her fevered imagination conjured up a pair of revolvers in those hands; then he passed through a pool of gaslight and Diana saw that in his hands he was holding…
Two glasses of champagne.
She gaped at them, and then at him as he closed the remaining distance between them. At close range, he was easily six feet two inches tall, with wide shoulders and a hard, stern face defined by a square chin, an iron jaw, and straight, thick dark brows. His shadowy face was darkly tanned, but his eyes were light and disconcertingly amused as they gazed into hers.
"Hello, Diana," he said, in a deep, resonant voice.
Diana tried to smooth her features into a semblance of polite confusion when what she wanted to do was stamp her foot and tell him to go away. Good manners, however, had been fed to her along with baby pabulum and she was incapable of unprovoked rudeness. "I'm sorry," she said, monitoring her voice for signs of impatience, "if we've met, I don't recall it."
"We've definitely met," he assured her dryly. "Many times, in fact." He held out a glass to her. "Champagne?"
Diana refused it with a shake of her head as she studied his face, more convinced by the moment that he was playing some sort of game with her. Although she preferred men with refined features and lithe builds to men like this one who exuded brute strength and overpowering masculinity, she knew she wouldn't have forgotten this man if she'd met him. "I don't think we have," she said with polite firmness, putting an end to the game. "Perhaps you're mistaking me for someone else."
"I'd never mistake you for anyone else," he teased. "I remember those green eyes and that sorrel mane of yours very clearly."
"Sorrel mane?" Diana uttered; then she shook her head, weary of the game. "You definitely have me confused with someone else. I've never met you before—"
"How's your sister?" he asked. The stern line of his mouth relaxed into a lazy smile. "Does Corey still like to ride?"
Diana gave him a long, uncertain glance. Either by accident or design, he was standing just beyond the reach of the gas lamp, but he was beginning to sound—and seem— familiar. "Are you a friend of my sister's, Mr.—?"
He finally stepped forward into the light, and in a burst of shock and delight, Diana recognized him. "That's very formal," he teased, his familiar gray eyes smiling down at her. "You used to call me—"
"Cole!" she breathed. She'd known he was expected to appear at tonight's function, and she'd been very much looking forward to seeing him again until a few days ago, when her life had been torn apart and everything else had faded into the background. Now she couldn't seem to adjust to the shock of seeing him.
Cole saw the pleasure that lit up her face when she recognized him, and it warmed him with astonishing intensity, softening for a few brief moments the cold, hard streak of cynical indifference that was his norm. Regardless of what the Haywards may have told her about the reason for his abrupt departure from their employ, regardless of the intervening years, Diana Foster's friendship for him was still there, unspoiled and unchanged.
"Cole? Is it really you?" Diana said, still reeling from shock and delight.
"In the flesh. More accurately, in the tuxedo," he joked, holding the glass of champagne toward her again. She hadn't wanted it from a stranger, he noted, but she took it from an old friend, and as he gazed down at her lovely, upturned face, he was flattered and pleased. "I think this calls for a toast, Miss Foster."
"Make the toast," she said. "I'm still too shocked to think of one."
He lifted the glass. "Here's to the luckiest woman I know."
Diana's smile faded and she shuddered. "God forbid!" He obviously didn't know what had happened to her, and she quickly tried to pass off her reaction with a casual shrug. "What I meant was that I've been luckier—"
"What could possibly be luckier than narrowly escaping marriage to a spineless son of a bitch?"
That remark was so outrageous and so unquestioningly loyal that Diana felt twin urges to laugh and cry. "You're right," she said instead. To avoid his gaze she took a quick sip of her champagne; then she hastily changed the subject. "When the news got out that you were actually going to appear tonight, people were very excited. Everyone is dying to get a look at you. I have so many questions to ask you— about where you've been and what you've done—that I hardly know where to start—"
"Let's start with the most important question," he interrupted firmly, making Diana feel like a child again, confronting a much older, wiser male. "How are you holding up through all this?"
Diana knew he meant the gossip that was all over the ballroom about her broken engagement. "I'm doing just fine," she said, frustrated by the slight quaver in her voice. She thought she heard the door open further down the balcony, and she lowered her voice in case someone had come out. "Fine."
Cole glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the sound. Illuminated by the Exit sign over the door was a man in a red-and-white-checked shirt who jumped back into the shadows when Cole looked in his direction. Cole's first impulse was to attack the spying reporter; his next impulse was to make use of him. Cole decided on the second alternative for the moment. With his free hand, he reached out and tipped up Diana's chin. "Listen carefully, and don't move."
Her eyes widened in instant alarm.
"There's a tabloid photographer watching us, waiting to grab a picture of you. I suggest we give him a picture worth splashing across the front page of their next issue."
"What?" Diana whispered in panic. "Are you crazy?"
"No, I've simply had more experience than you with negative press and prying photographers. He's not going to leave until he gets some sort of picture of you," Cole continued while, from the corner of his eye, he watched the reporter step out of the shadows and lift his camera again. "You have a choice. You can let the world think of you as a discarded woman, or you can let them see me kissing you, which will make them wonder if you ever cared about Penworth at all and if I've been your lover all along."
Diana's mind was whirling with alarm and horror and glee, as well as the effects of two drinks in less than an hour on an empty stomach. In the brief moment she hesitated, Cole made the decision for her. "Let's make it convincing," he ordered softly as he set down both of their glasses. His free hand then slid around her waist, curving her body into his arms.
It happened too quickly to resist, and then it seemed to happen in slow motion as Diana felt her legs press into his thighs and her breasts against his chest, followed by the sudden shock of his warm lips covering hers.
He lifted his head a fraction, his eyes looking into hers, and she thought he was going to let her go. She had the feeling he intended to let her go. Instead, his hands shifted, one of them drifting upward over her bare back, while the other tightened, and he bent his head again. Diana's heart began to pound in erratic, confused beats as his mouth settled firmly on hers, slowly tracing each soft curve and contour of her lips. His tongue touched the corner of her mouth, and her body jumped in surprise. One part of her brain ordered her to pull free immediately, but some deeper, more compelling voice rebelled at such an unjust reaction to his gallant efforts.
His tender efforts.
His persuasive efforts.
Besides, she realized, the photographer might have missed his first few shots. Diana acted on the side of justice and prudence and slid her hands up his jacket and tentatively, uncertainly kissed him back. The pressure of his mouth increased invitingly as his hand slid up and curved around her nape, his fingers shoving into her hair.
A loud burst of music and thunder of applause inside the ballroom announced that the formal festivities were already underway in the ballroom and snapped them both back to the present. Diana pulled away with a self-conscious laugh, and he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, gazing down at her with his dark brows drawn into a slight frown. Cole looked to see if the photographer was still present and was glad to see that he had apparently gotten his shot and left.
"I—I can't believe we did that," Diana said nervously, trying to smooth her hair as they walked toward the door into the hotel.
He shot her a sideways glance that was filled with a meaning she didn't understand. "Actually, I wanted to do that years ago," he said, reaching out and opening the heavy door for her.
"You did not." Diana rolled her eyes in smiling disbelief.
"The hell I didn't," he said with a grin.
Inside, the mezzanine was nearly deserted. Conscious of missing lipstick and mussed hair, Diana stopped when they came to an alcove where the rest rooms were located. "I need to make some repairs," she explained. "Go ahead without me."
"I'll wait," Cole stated irrefutably, and he stationed himself at a nearby pillar.
Startled by his gallant determination to stay near her side, Diana tossed him a hesitant smile and vanished into the ladies' room. Several of the stalls were occupied, and as she walked up to the dressing table to smooth her hair, a lively discussion was underway between two of the occupants: "I don't know why everyone is so surprised," Joelle Marchison told her companion. "Anne Morgan said Dan told her months ago that he wanted to break his engagement to Diana, but Diana wanted to marry him and she kept begging him to stay with her. Anne said that marrying someone else and letting Diana find out about it in the newspapers was probably the only way that Dan could break free of her once and for all."
Rooted to the floor, Diana listened to a chorus of fascinated exclamations from the other stalls and felt tears spring to her eyes. She wanted to shout at all of them that Anne Morgan was a jealous, spiteful liar who'd been in love with Dan herself and had lost him to Diana, but even if she had had the nerve, she was afraid she'd lose control and start to cry. The door to Joelle's stall started to open, and Diana darted into an empty stall and stayed there until everyone left, wounded by the unprovoked malice of women whom she had never harmed in any way; then she walked back to the vanity and tried to dab at her eyes without ruining her makeup.
Outside the ladies' room, Cole was being treated to a recitation of the same information by two of the women who'd been in the ladies' room and who were now imparting the news to their friends: "We just heard that Dan Penworth has wanted to get rid of Diana for ages, but she wouldn't let him go!"
"It serves her right," one of them announced. "The media has always treated her like a princess. Personally, I am sick to death of hearing about how wonderful that magazine is and how successful she is, and how gracious, and all that bullshit."
The other woman was kinder. "I don't care what you say; I pity her, and so do a lot of people."
Partially concealed by the pillars at the side of the alcove, Cole heard every word, and he marveled at the viciousness of the female sex toward their own, and then he wondered which would hurt Diana more—their spite or their pity. He had a feeling she'd prefer their spite.

Chapter 21


Cole knew the instant he saw Diana's pale face that she'd heard something of what her "friends" were saying in the ladies' room, and because he couldn't offer any comfort, he offered his arm instead. When they reached the ballroom doors, they were closed and the opening speech was underway.
Frowning, she drew back, loath to draw more notice by entering the ballroom noticeably tardy and with Cole. "I suppose your table is in the front?"
As the donor of the most expensive item to be auctioned that night, Cole was to occupy the seat of honor at the head table, just below and in front of the auctioneer's podium. "Table one," he confirmed. "Front row center."
"Our table is in the third row." She sighed. "Why couldn't at least one of us have been seated at the back of the room? There's no way we can slip in there unnoticed." Anxious to get inside before they were any later, she reached for the big handles on the heavy doors, but he laid his hand on her arm to stop her from pulling them open.
"Why try to be invisible? Why not let them think what everyone who reads the Enquirer is going to think in a day or two—that you don't give a damn about Penworth and you're interested in me, not him."
"No one who knows me is going to believe that!" she cried, almost wringing her hands in despair. His whole face tightened. "You're right. How stupid of me. I forgot that this is a gathering of the rich and useless, who would never believe you'd switch from one of their own to an ordinary, common man—"
Diana glared at him, confused and frantic and dumbfounded. "What are you talking about! There's nothing ordinary or common about you."
She meant it, Cole realized with a surprise that was outweighed by self-disgust at his ridiculous outburst. "Thank you," he said with an assessing smile as he studied her flushed, upturned face. "At least anger put the sparkle back in your eyes. Too bad my kiss couldn't have accomplished that."
Diana made the mistake of looking at his mouth, then had to look away before she could concentrate on the issue. "I'm not accustomed to kissing men I hardly know, particularly when someone else is watching me."
"You've gotten awfully finicky," he joked. "You used to kiss stray kittens and mongrel pups all the time."
The analogy was so absurd that Diana laughed. "Yes, but only when I thought you weren't watching me."
In the ballroom, polite applause heralded the end of the opening speech. Cole pulled open the heavy doors, put his hand beneath her elbow, and escorted her forward. Murmurs erupted throughout the ballroom as one thousand startled people observed the unexpected arrival of their guest of honor—a notoriously illusive billionaire recently listed by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of the World's Fifty Most Eligible Bachelors—who strolled nonchalantly into their midst with his hand possessively cupping the elbow of Diana Foster—Daniel Penworth's recently discarded fiancée.
Cole escorted Diana to her table in the third row and seated her there in the vacant chair between Spence and Diana's grandfather. He nodded politely to everyone, but he winked at Corey, smiled warmly at Diana and briefly touched her shoulder, then strode off to his own table in the front row.
Diana watched him for a moment, impressed and amused by his supreme indifference to the excited curiosity his appearance was generating. Keeping her expression pleasant and neutral, she looked at Doug and his date, Amy Leeland, who were seated across from her to the left; then she glanced to the right at her mother and grandparents. Corey was one seat away, between Spence and Doug, and her eyes were filled with questions, but her expression was perfectly composed.
They were all dying of curiosity, Diana realized, but they all knew the first rule of social survival—always present a calm, united front. In keeping with that rule, Spence, Corey, and Doug smiled at her as if there were nothing in the least extraordinary about Diana arriving conspicuously late on the arm of a man whom they hadn't seen in over a decade and who treated her with possessive familiarity.
Diana's mother and grandfather had no idea at all who he was, but they followed suit.
Diana's grandmother, who had begun ignoring social rules at approximately the same time she attained the age of seventy, decided to ignore this one, too. She stared at Cole Harrison's back with a perplexed frown, then leaned forward in her chair and demanded of Diana in a loud stage whisper that got the attention of three people seated at the table behind her, "Who was that man, Diana?"
Anxious to avoid a discussion that would be heard by others, Diana said hastily, "That's Cole Harrison, Gram. You know—he's the man who donated the Klineman sculpture that you were admiring earlier."
Rose Britton was aghast at that notion, and in her advancing years, she'd also developed a disconcerting desire to state the entire truth, regardless of the consequences. "I did not admire it," she protested in an indignant whisper that was overheard by two more people at the table behind her. "I said," she clarified, "that it was hideous."
She glanced at the others in an innocent invitation to argue the merits or lack thereof of the sculpture, but everyone launched into diversionary small talk to avoid doing exactly that. "Well, it is," she told Diana as soon as she looked her way. "It looks like a huge pipecleaner doll!"
Diana was anxious to explain to her that Cole Harrison was the same Cole who'd worked at the Haywards' when Diana was a teenager, but she was afraid to do it now, for fear that the elderly lady might then begin reminiscing about the food they'd sent over to him and be overheard. Cole had gallantly come to her rescue tonight, and Diana was determined to protect his pride and his privacy in return.

Chapter 22






To Diana's intense relief, the minor flurry created by their late and conspicuous arrival soon died down. Waiters began serving the first course of the dinner that was included in the $1,000 cost of a ticket to the ball, and the events of the last half hour finally began to sink in.
She could hardly believe the forceful, sophisticated male in the elegant black tuxedo who'd materialized out of the shadows on the balcony was actually the same jean-clad youth who'd talked with her while he curried the Haywards' horses… and teased her while they played cards… and greedily dug into whatever food she brought along.
She reached mechanically for a crusty roll and broke it open, her hands then going still… The Cole she'd known before had always been hungry, Diana remembered fondly. A smile touched her lips—judging from the adult Cole's tall, muscular physique, he'd undoubtedly been hungry because he'd still had some growing and "filling out" to do.
A politely insistent voice near her ear intruded on her reverie as two bottles of excellent wine appeared in her peripheral vision. "Would you prefer red wine or white wine, miss?"
"Yes," she murmured absently.
The confused waiter hesitated, looked helplessly at her and then at Spence, who was on her left and who came to the waiter's aid. "Perhaps both," Spence suggested blandly.
Another waiter followed in his wake and slid a bowl of shrimp bisque in front of her; animated conversations and bursts of laughter swirled around her, blending with the soft clink of flatware against china, but Diana noticed none of that. Cole had changed a great deal, she decided as she absently spread a rosette of butter onto the roll, then laid it on the plate without touching it and reached for a glass of wine instead. She picked up the one closest to her hand, a chardonnay, smooth and mellow.
The years had not mellowed Cole, she thought a little sadly, just the opposite. As a youth, he'd had an aura of hard-bitten strength, but he'd seemed approachable and kind, even gentle at times. Now there was a cynical edge to his voice and a coldness in his eyes—she'd witnessed both when she objected to entering the ballroom with him. He was battle-hardened, toughened. But he was still kind, she reminded herself. When the photographer had appeared on the balcony, he was kind enough to rush to her rescue. He was also quick enough and smart enough to instantly devise a plan that turned a negative situation into one that would work in her favor. To accomplish that, he had kissed her…
Diana's hand shook as she reached for her wineglass again and took another hasty swallow. She should never have let that happen! What a foolish, uncharacteristically impulsive thing for her to do. And what a kiss! Soft at first… awkward for her as she came into unexpected closeness with the legs and chest and mouth of a stranger— an old friend, whose mouth had covered hers with casual expertise and then with teasing insistence… and then with increasing demand. He'd lifted his head, ended the kiss, stared into her eyes… and then he'd kissed her again… almost reluctantly, and then almost… hungrily.
Diana's cheeks reddened with embarrassed heat, and she drained the rest of the chardonnay, trying to steady her nerves. She shouldn't have let that second kiss happen. Other women got jilted, and they didn't throw themselves into the arms of the first available man who offered sympathy.
Or did they?
Now that she thought about it, maybe they did!
In fact, now that she thought about it, she realized she was overreacting to everything and making far too much out of a simple, meaningless kiss enacted purely for the benefit of a spying reporter. While she was obsessing on a kiss, Cole had probably forgotten the entire trivial incident. For all she knew, he had escorted a woman to the ball who was with him now. Either way, he was undoubtedly being showered with attention at the head table and having a perfectly pleasant time.
She tried to resist the impulse to find out for herself and failed. Cole's table was two rows in front of Diana's and a little to the left, directly in front of the auctioneer's podium, which was on a raised platform. By looking slightly to the left or the right, she could see between the shoulders of the group at the next table and see most of the people at Cole's. Casually, she lifted her glass to her lips and looked to the right. The head table was larger and seated more people, two of whom made Diana's heart sink the instant she saw them.
Franklin Mitchell was the chairman of this year's ball, and he and his wife were naturally seated at the head table—but so was their son, Peter, and his wife, Haley, formerly Haley Vincennes. The other couple were friends of Peter and Haley's. The elderly woman with blue-tinted white hair, with her back to Diana, was undoubtedly Mrs. Canfield, whose ancestors had founded the White Orchid Ball. The balding man beside her had to be her son Delbert, a middle-aged bachelor.
Franklin Mitchell said something that got a loud burst of laughter from the others at the table, and Diana shifted her gaze to the left. Conner and Missy Desmond were also at the table, and everyone was laughing except—Diana's searching gaze collided with a pair of piercing gray eyes that locked on to hers, refusing to break the glance. Clearly disinterested in both his meal and the people at his table, he was leaning back in his chair, openly watching her, his expression strangely speculative.
Diana couldn't imagine why he was looking at her that way, but a polite smile seemed appropriate and she gave him one.
He answered with a slow nod and a smile that was as warm as it was bold, but what disturbed Diana was the odd, almost calculating look in his eyes.
Hastily, she yanked her gaze from his and joined the conversation at her own table, but her mind was on Haley Mitchell and what she was likely to say to Cole if she'd seen him arrive with Diana. Haley thrived on vicious gossip; she created it and then used it like a weapon against anyone she didn't like, and there were many she didn't like—nearly all of them women.
She particularly despised Diana because one evening several years earlier, when Peter was still single and particularly drunk, he'd stood up during a wedding reception where he was a groomsman and Diana was a bridesmaid, and instead of proposing a toast to the bride and groom, which everyone thought he was going to do, he proposed marriage to Diana. She had tried to pass it off as a joke, and everyone else let it go at that—except Peter himself and Haley, who'd been in love with him for years.
He'd married Haley soon after that, but Haley never forgot that she was Peter's second choice, and Peter never forgot that Diana had turned him down. Haley despised Diana with a jealous loathing that seemed to grow stronger with each year, as did the rumors that Haley's marriage was in trouble. Diana knew beyond a doubt that if Haley imagined there was anything between Cole and Diana, she'd launch a hate campaign right there at the table in front of him.
That possibility added yet more stress to the evening that lay ahead of her, and Diana couldn't cope with it. Instead, she looked across the table at Doug and Amy and asked what plans they'd made for the rest of Amy's visit in Houston; then she picked up a fresh glass of wine and forced herself to concentrate on every word they said.
She was so determined to participate and distract herself that she didn't notice that Spence, who was on her left, had a clear view of Cole and that he was watching the other man in frowning silence. Corey noticed his grim preoccupation, however, and when the main course was being cleared away, she leaned close to him. "What's wrong?" she whispered.
He waited until a waiter had finished filling his coffee cup, then tipped his head toward the head table. "Harrison's looked over at Diana several times tonight, and I don't like it."
Corey was surprised but far from displeased. In Diana's present predicament, Corey thought that a little flattering attention from a highly desirable male couldn't do anything but help lift her status and bolster her pride tonight. "Why don't you like it?"
"Because I don't like Harrison."
"Why not?" Corey asked, stunned.
He hesitated for a suspiciously long time, then tried to dismiss the matter with a shrug. "Among other things, he has a reputation for being devious and single-minded. Diana is in a very vulnerable state right now, and her guard is down."
"Spence, Cole is an old friend, and you're being overprotective!"
Laying his hand over hers, he gave it a reassuring squeeze "You're right."
Corey would have pursued the subject, but she was prevented from doing that by the auctioneer, who'd walked onto the stage to open the auction. He rapped his gavel on the podium, and excitement surged through the huge ballroom, silencing conversations and causing everyone to turn and look in his direction.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he proclaimed, "when we're through here, you'll have an additional half hour to enter your final written bids on those items being offered at the silent auction in the Empire Ballroom. That brings us to the moment you've all been waiting for. Without further delay or further comment, I invite you to open your hearts and your checkbooks, and to remember that every dollar of the proceeds from this auction will go directly to cancer research. Now, if you will refer to the individual catalogs at your table, you will find a complete listing of the items being auctioned off, along with a description of each."
There was a general rustling as people reached for their catalogs. "I know many of you are eager to get to the Klineman sculpture," he said, and jokingly added, "in an effort to minimize your wait and heighten your tension and desire, we have placed that article partway down the list at number ten."
Laughter rippled around the room, and he waited until he had everyone's complete attention before he spoke again. "Item one," he proclaimed. "This is a small pencil sketch by Pablo Picasso. Who will open the bidding at forty thousand dollars?" An instant later, he nodded with satisfaction. "Mr. Certillo has offered forty thousand dollars. Do I have forty-one thousand dollars?" Within a few minutes, the sketch was sold for $66,000, and the next item was introduced.
"Item two is a splendid Tiffany lamp, circa 1904. Who will offer fifty thousand dollars?…"

Chapter 23






The "honor" of being seated at the head table was one that Cole would have gladly forgone. His official host was a tall, distinguished-looking, gray-haired man named Franklin Mitchell, who was the vice chairman of a family-owned oil company and a conceited, superficial pain in the ass. Mitchell's guests were his wife, his son and daughter-in-law, and a young couple named Jenkins, who appeared to be close friends of the son's. The six of them represented the sort of arrogant superciliousness that Cole most despised.
The other two couples at the table were a portly bachelor in his fifties named Delbert Canfield and his ancient mother, whom he dutifully referred to as "Mama," and Conner and Missy Desmond. The Desmonds were an attractive, middle-aged couple who made a brief, valiant effort to find some sort of common ground with Cole. Unfortunately their personal interests seemed to be limited almost exclusively to their golf handicaps, their tennis games, and their friends. Since Cole was neither interested in nor conversant in those three topics, conversation lagged and then collapsed.
Rather than waste an evening listening to idle gossip and meaningless small talk, Cole simply ignored his table companions and put his time to better use. For a while he thought about Cal's illness and his outrageous demand that Cole marry within six months, and occasionally he allowed himself a glimpse of Diana to see how she was holding up; then he turned his thoughts to problems he could actually solve.
By the time the first course was being cleared away, he had mentally outlined his agenda for the annual meeting of his board of directors and had decided to declare a stock dividend in advance of the meeting to ensure his proposals were ratified.
During dessert, while Mitchell boasted about his strategy for getting himself elected president of River Pines Country Club, Cole silently mapped out his own strategy for putting Cushman Electronics at the top of the computer-chip industry.
The auction was well underway, and Cole was working out alternative uses for his newly acquired subsidiary, in the event their new chip didn't live up to its promise, when he realized that Franklin Mitchell was talking to him. Having failed to engage Cole in conversations on topics ranging from Cole's ancestry and personal background to his opinion about the Houston Oilers' chances of making it to the Super Bowl next year, Mitchell had evidently decided to introduce hunting as his next subject. "Have you done any shooting, Cole?"
"Some," Cole replied, stealing a glance at Diana and then reluctantly turning his attention to Mitchell. For some reason, she looked far more tense now than she had an hour ago.
"I ought to invite you to our ranch to hunt deer. Splendid place—fifty thousand acres."
He lifted white brows as wide as Cole's thumb in expectation of a reply to an invitation that hadn't actually been one. It was a subtle verbal trap that Cole had witnessed before, and it was invariably used by narcissistic asses like Mitchell who had to constantly prove their social superiority in any gathering that included a newcomer. Since he hadn't actually invited Cole to the "splendid" ranch to hunt deer, any form of polite, positive response that Cole made would immediately reduce him to the status of a hopeful supplicant. In view of all that, Cole had no qualms about expressing his real opinion. "Frankly, I don't see any point in freezing my ass off in the woods at dawn, hoping against hope that a deer will pass by."
"No, no, no. We don't do that. We have feeders all over the ranch—the deer go there to be fed every day."
"You mean, you just hang around the feeders until the deer come to eat," Cole speculated straight-faced, "then while they're peacefully munching their grain, you jump out and blow a hole through them, and afterwards, you cut off their heads and hang them over the fireplace?"
Mitchell looked irate. "It's not the way you make it sound."
"Really, how is it, then?"
"Are you against shooting?" he retaliated, growing angry at the implied criticism of his sport and casting a look over Cole that clearly questioned his masculinity.
"Not at all. But I eat what I shoot."
Mitchell relaxed a little. "Good, good; so do we. Always. So, what do you shoot?"
"Skeet," Cole replied, and was instantly annoyed with himself for taking out his disdain for the rich and lazy on a man who wasn't worth his time. Mitchell's wife and daughter-in-law were surprisingly amused by Mitchell's obvious discomfiture, but Delbert Canfield and his mother regarded Cole in wary, awkward silence after that. The Desmonds had been talking to each other about the sailing lessons they were taking and were unaware that anything unusual had transpired.
The ninth item had sold for $190,000, and the auctioneer's voice suddenly rose with excitement, providing a welcome diversion for the occupants of the head table. "This next item needs no further description," he said, beaming with anticipation as he strode to the center of the low stage. He swept the velvet draperies back, exposing the Klineman sculpture that Cole had donated, and a sigh of admiration and expectation rippled through the audience. Conversations broke off as would-be owners gazed at the huge bronze figure and decided how high they were willing to go.
"This is the moment many of you have been waiting for, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own this magnificent sculpture from a master who is lost to the world now. Bidding," he said, "will begin at two hundred thousand dollars, and bids will be taken in five-thousand-dollar increments only." His brows lifted, and a self-assured smile crossed his face as he gazed out upon the audience, letting the excitement build for a few moments; then he said crisply, "Who would like to open the bid—" A hand lifted somewhere in the audience and he nodded instantly. "Mr. Selfer has opened the bidding at two hundred thousand dollars. Do I have—yes, two hundred five thousand dollars from Mr. Higgins. And two hundred ten thousand dollars from Mr. Altour, thank you—"
"Two hundred and fifty," Franklin Mitchell called out.
Cole suppressed a smirk at the idiocy that prompted an offer of $250,000 for a four-foot-tall hunk of metal that looked like bronzed bananas and body parts to him.
"Two hundred and seventy," someone else shouted.
The auctioneer began to beam. He looked inquiringly to Mitchell.
"Three hundred," Mitchell said, thereby sinking to new depths in Cole's personal estimation.
"Three hundred thousand dollars, and we've only just begun!" the auctioneer enthused, gauging the heightened tremors of determination in the room with the accuracy of a human seismograph. "Don't forget, this is for charity, ladies and gentlemen—"
"Three hundred and ten," someone else bid.
"Mr. Lacey has bid three hundred ten thousand dollars," he announced, then quickly added, "and Mr. Selfer has reentered the bidding." He paused for the signal and nodded approvingly, "at four hundred thousand dollars! Mr. Selfer has bid four hundred thousand dollars! Do I have four hundred ten thousand dollars? Four hundred ten thousand dollars?" He searched the room. "Fair warning, ladies and—" He interrupted himself with another quick nod and smile to say, "We now have four hundred ten thousand dollars. We're at four hundred ten thousand dollars. Do I have four hundred twenty thousand dollars?"
In the end, the Klineman went for $470,000. While the audience cheered, the delighted new owner wrote out his check and handed it to one of the auctioneer's assistants; then he got up and went to the head table to shake Cole's hand. The handshake was more than a mere gesture of gratitude; it was one of several traditions left over from long-ago White Orchid Balls, and it symbolized an acceptable transfer of ownership and responsibility at that moment from the item's donor to its new owner.
As the new owner walked proudly away, the former owner looked at his watch and tried to hide his bored impatience by perusing the colorful brochure that cataloged the items being auctioned. There were four more major art items left, Cole noted, plus a dozen pieces of expensive jewelry and furs that were listed under the category "For the Ladies." On the inside cover was a two-page explanation of the history and traditions of the hundred-year-old White Orchid Charity Ball, and Cole read the enthusiastic narrative with growing amusement.
According to the brochure, the early balls were never open to the public, but limited only to prominent Texas families. Among the interesting little insights included was the information that from the inception of the auction to the present day, those items meant specifically for the feminine gender, such as jewelry and furs, were always modeled by the ladies, for the ladies.
In an effort to atone for upsetting Mrs. Canfield and Delbert earlier, Cole laid down the brochure and gestured toward it with a forefinger. "Based on what I read in here, you have an interesting set of customs associated with this ball, Mrs. Canfield."
Delbert's mama looked wary but hopeful at his sudden change in attitude. She was at least eighty, with bluish white hair, the complexion of a china doll, and a bosom that was weighted down with ropes of pearls. "Many of them go back a hundred years," she said.
Cole nodded encouragingly. "According to the brochure, items of special interest to women, such as jewelry and furs, are always modeled by other women who attend the auction, rather than simply being put on display."
"There's a delightful logic behind that tradition," she told him, warming to her subject with girlish delight. "You see, in the early days of the ball, it was assumed that whatever jewelry or fur a lady chose to 'model' was something that she—and therefore the others at the ball—expected her husband to buy for her."
"It sounds like a sort of gentle extortion," Cole suggested with a trace of a grin.
"That's exactly what it was!" she confirmed with shameless glee. "Oh, and it did run the prices of things up wonderfully for charity's sake. Why, when Delbert's father and I were first married, I chose an enormous ruby brooch to wear. Naturally, I assumed Harold would know the tradition, but he didn't, and I didn't get the brooch that night. I was ever so disappointed, and embarrassed, too."
"I'm sorry," Cole said because he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Not as sorry as Harold was the next day," she countered with a gruff smile. "Why, I couldn't hold my head up around my friends for an entire week."
"That long?" Cole joked.
She nodded. "That's how long it took Harold to find another ruby brooch in New York and have it sent here."
"I see."
With that, Cole ran out of small talk. He opened the brochure and scanned the remaining items, trying to calculate how much longer it would be before he could leave the ballroom and return to the pile of pressing work spread out on a coffee table in his suite upstairs. Under the heading "For the Ladies," he counted twelve items, all jewelry and furs. Next to each item were the words "Shown by…"
The last item in that category captured his attention. It was donated by a local jeweler and was being "shown by" Miss Diana Foster. According to the brochure, the item was "A splendid necklace and earrings of perfectly matched deep purple amethysts surrounded by 15 carats of fine white diamonds and set in 18-karat gold. From the collection of the late Countess Vandermill, circa 1910."
Cole lifted his gaze from the brochure and looked at Diana. She was talking to Corey and looked perfectly composed, but she was noticeably paler than she'd been earlier. He knew how miserable she'd felt about making a conspicuous entrance, and he knew how much she must be dreading having to model that necklace.
Missy Desmond was looking at her own brochure and evidently reached the same conclusion. "Poor Diana Foster!" she exclaimed. "I wonder why she didn't ask them to find someone else to model that necklace."
Cole thought the answer to that was obvious: since Diana's name was already in the printed brochure, she wouldn't have been able to withdraw without calling it to the attention of one thousand people.
Across the table, Haley Mitchell, who had felt more than a little slighted that Cole Harrison had apparently recognized Diana Foster from their teenage acquaintance but not herself, watched his gaze stray yet again to Diana, and so did her husband, who'd been drinking steadily from the moment the meal began. Leaning sideways, Peter whispered, "Diana seems to have made a new conquest. Harrison can't keep his eyes off of her."
"Just like you can't," Haley snapped back, incensed that her husband had dared to mention Diana's name to her and even more enraged because what he said about Cole Harrison was true. Turning to Missy Desmond, she said, "The reason Diana Foster didn't let someone else model that necklace is because she couldn't bear to pass up being in the spotlight, not even for five minutes." She leaned forward and included her friend, Marilee Jenkins, in the conversation. "Have you noticed that tonight she's playing the martyr? Just look at that brave little smile she's wearing."
"I feel rather sorry for her," Mrs. Canfield admitted. "What Daniel Penworth did to her was inexcusable."
"No, it was unavoidable, " Haley argued. "Diana was like a noose around his neck. He didn't love her, and he tried to let her down gently, but Diana wouldn't give up. People think that Diana is sweet and kind, but the truth is she doesn't care about anybody or anything except herself and that stupid arts-and-crafts magazine that she runs."
Marilee Jenkins seconded all that with a nod. "I don't blame Dan one bit!"
Cole waited for someone else at the table to come to Diana's defense. Mrs. Canfield looked uneasy and Missy Desmond looked bewildered, but no one spoke a word in Diana's behalf. The auctioneer announced that the first of the ladies' items was about to be auctioned, and Cole deliberately turned his shoulder to his dinner partners.
A few tables away, a slender redhead arose to applause and began to model a magnificent diamond necklace she was wearing. She carried the whole thing off with the ease and aplomb of someone who knew she was born to be admired and "on display," smiling as she moved about the crowd, and her husband opened the bidding. As soon as her husband bid, another man at their table instantly topped his bid, grinning as he deliberately forced the husband to go higher. After that the bidding was rapid, frequently accompanied by bursts of laughter around the room, which made Cole correctly assume that the husband's friends were cheerfully forcing the husband to pay more and more.
Cole rather enjoyed watching the game, which was played with gusto as each wife and girlfriend arose to model her desired auction item, and each man involved bore the expense forced on him by his friends, who bid against him with blasé humor. His gaze kept straying to Diana's table, wondering how she was reacting, but as each item was awarded to the lady who was already wearing it, he noticed that her expression grew subtly more somber and tense.
When the time was finally nearing to auction off the necklace she was wearing, she began to fidget with it, her long fingers curling around it and then slowly flattening over it as if she wanted either to hide it or tear it off. Her entire body seemed to freeze as the auctioneer proclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen, the next item to be auctioned off is an extraordinary example of the workmanship of a bygone era—a remarkably fine amethyst-and-diamond necklace, being shown by Miss Diana Foster."
Cole understood why she would naturally dread being the focal point of so many fascinated gossips, but not until she actually slid back her chair to stand up did he belatedly realize that her embarrassment was going to be compounded a hundred times by the conspicuous absence of Dan Penworth, who should have been bidding on that necklace. He watched her rally and manufacture a smile as she arose, and at the same time he heard whispers erupt around the room.
At the table behind him, a man jokingly remarked that Dan had probably married his Italian girl to avoid the cost of Diana Foster's necklace, and everyone laughed.
Cole felt anger and protectiveness begin to simmer inside him—emotions that leapt into steady flame as the clueless auctioneer beamed at Diana and then at the crowd in obvious expectation that her own man would open the bidding. "Opening bid will be fifteen thousand dollars. Do I have fifteen thousand dollars?" He paused, bewildered by the awkward silence. "This necklace is a bargain at twice that amount. "Will someone give me ten thousand dollars?" His expression cleared and he nodded. "Yes, thank you, Mr. Dickson…"
The bidding paused at $13,000 so that a prospective purchaser could have a closer look at it. "Poor Diana," Mrs. Canfield said, addressing her remarks to Cole. "I knew her papa very well. He'd have bought her that necklace just to put an end to this."
"Diana needed to be knocked down a peg or two, and everyone knows it," Haley Mitchell argued. "She's a conceited bitch."
Franklin Mitchell had the grace to look a little embarrassed at his daughter-in-law's language, if not her venom. He glanced at his inebriated son as if he expected him to say something, but when Peter spoke, it wasn't to contradict his wife. "Diana has always had a very high opinion of herself," he informed Cole.
"It's the truth," the senior Mrs. Mitchell said coldly.
Unaware of the very personal reasons the people at his table had for disliking Diana and relishing her plight, Cole mistakenly assumed everyone else in the ballroom was just as heartless and just as vengeful.
In his mind he saw a lovely, dainty teenager holding out a sack filled with food, her smile sunny and soft as she contrived to give him food and simultaneously spare his pride. "Could you possibly find some room for some of these canned peaches, Cole? My grandmother loves cooking and canning, but we're running out of storage space in the pantry… I hope you can help us eat some of Gram's potato salad and chicken; she made enough for an army last night!" He remembered other things, such as how perfectly neat and clean she always seemed to be, from the tips of her polished loafers to the tips of her fingers, their nails neatly filed but never polished.
Interlaced with his reverie was the auctioneer's voice: "I have thirteen thousand dollars—Do I have fourteen thousand dollars? I have thirteen thousand dollars."
"Peter," Haley said suddenly, her voice filled with excited malice. "Buy that necklace for me. I want it."
"Final warning, ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer intoned.
Peter Mitchell looked at Diana, who was two tables away "modeling" her necklace, and he called out in a loud, slurred voice, "Wait—we'd like a closer look!"
Cole watched Diana turn and move obediently toward their table. He already knew that Diana had originally believed her faithless fiancé would be buying the necklace for her tonight. Now it suddenly occurred to him that she'd undoubtedly bought the purple gown she was wearing because it set the amethysts off to perfection.
He watched Diana's smile wobble as she paused across from him and subjected herself to Mitchell's leering at her breasts; he saw her fingers lift to the largest stone at the bottom of the necklace to show it to him—the long, slender, womanly fingers that had once been a girl's hand holding out offerings to him.
Mitchell reached for it, deliberately brushing his knuckles over the soft skin above her bodice. In a swift but subtle countermove, she stepped back, reached behind her nape, unclasped the necklace, and held it out to him in her hand.
Her fixed smile never wavered, but as Mitchell reached for the necklace, her gaze recoiled from his hand, bounced to Cole's face, then quickly darted away. In that one brief, unguarded moment while her gaze encountered his, Cole saw something that drove him to an instant and monumental decision.
Maybe he had a latent and heretofore unrecognized urge to play the knight in shining armor for some damsel in distress, or maybe his next action was merely the civilized version of a prehistoric male swinging his club at an adversary to prove his superiority. Maybe he was subconsciously aware that fate was offering him an opportunity to solve not only Diana's problems but his own. Perhaps it was a combination of all three.
But whatever his motives, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, even before Mitchell looked over at the auctioneer and announced, "I'll make it fifteen thousand dollars."
"Twenty-five," Cole snapped before the other man had drawn a breath.
The auctioneer looked stunned but ecstatic. "Ah-ha! We have a new and serious bidder in the competition," he informed the audience with a triumphant smile. "Mr. Harrison has just jumped the bid by ten thousand dollars," he continued, attracting the attention of people who hadn't been particularly interested in the necklace until then, "and he hasn't yet had a close-up view of this unique piece! Miss Foster," he said to Diana, "will you please allow Mr. Harrison a moment to inspect the extraordinary quality and color of the stones, as well as the superior craftsmanship of the necklace itself."
With a smile that clearly showed relief, Diana hastily obeyed the suggestion to move around the table to Cole. When she reached his chair, she held the glittering necklace out to him in her hand, but Cole ignored it completely and looked at her face instead. With a warm, teasing smile, he said, "Do you like it?"
Diana saw the amusement glinting in his silvery eyes, and she sensed instinctively that he was deliberately prolonging the moment and playing to their audience, but she was desperately anxious to get out of the spotlight, rather than share in the increased glare that came as another hundred pairs of eyes swiveled toward Cole Harrison. Diana didn't care who bought it; she only wanted the ordeal to end. "It's beautiful," she proclaimed with an emphatic nod.
Cole leaned back in his chair, shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and his smile turned lazy, as if he had all the time in the world to ponder his purchase and was actually enjoying the audience's attention. "Yes, but do you like it?"
"Yes, honestly! It's splendid." In the sudden hush of curiosity stealing over the ballroom, Diana's breathlessly emphatic declaration rang loudly enough to cause a ripple of good-natured laughter.
"Then, you think I should buy it?"
"Of course, if you have someone to give it to."
The auctioneer sensed instinctively that the audience's interest had peaked and would soon begin to ebb. "Mr. Harrison," he asked, "are you satisfied with your inspection, sir?"
Cole's smile turned openly admiring as he studied Diana's face. "Extremely satisfied," he said, plainly referring to Diana and not the necklace.
"Then the bidding will continue," he told the audience. "Mr. Harrison has offered twenty-five thousand dollars. Do I have thirty thousand dollars?" He looked expectantly to Peter Mitchell, who nodded.
He looked around the room to see if anyone else signaled, and when they didn't, he looked to Cole. "Mr. Harrison?"
If Diana hadn't been so unhappy and so tense, she'd have laughed at Cole's infectious grin as he casually held up four fingers, jumping the bid to $40,000 as nonchalantly as if it were forty cents.
"Forty thousand dollars!" The auctioneer crowed. "Mr. Harrison had bid forty thousand dollars, and all of it is destined for charity. Mr. Mitchell?" he urged. "Will you make it forty-five?"
Haley Mitchell nodded yes to her husband, but Peter Mitchell hesitated, glowering at Cole. In response, Cole relaxed further back in his chair and quirked a challenging brow at him. "No," Mitchell bit out.
"Fair warning," the auctioneer called. "Sold!" he proclaimed. "For forty thousand dollars to Mr. Cole Harrison!" Turning toward Cole, he added, "I know I speak for all the patrons of the White Orchid Ball when I say that we are deeply grateful for your extraordinary generosity to our very worthy cause tonight, Mr. Harrison. And may I also say," he joked, "that I sincerely hope the lucky lady who receives that necklace not only appreciates your generosity but also your excellent taste!"
"I hope she does, too!" Cole replied, evoking a burst of laughter as he grinned with a relaxed affability that was in complete opposition to the chilly indifference he'd displayed all night. Then he added, "Let's see what she thinks—"
The audience warmed instantly to this fascinatingly intimate glimpse of the enigmatic tycoon whom one columnist had described as having a circuit board for a brain and a computer for a heart. They watched, captivated, as he slid his chair back and slowly stood up.
Diana was so upset at being kept in the limelight that she tried to step backward as soon as he lifted the ends of the necklace from her outstretched palm. Cole prevented her escape by stepping forward, draping the necklace around her throat, and reaching behind her neck to close the heavy clasp.
Diana stared at him in wide-eyed confusion.
He looked back at her in expectant silence.
The audience erupted with laughter and applause, and in the back of the room, cameras lit up like a swarm of startled lightning bugs.
"Well?" Cole teased, thereby confirming to everyone within hearing that she was definitely the lucky lady. "What do you think about my taste?"
Diana suddenly concluded that he was pretending to give her the necklace, just as he'd pretended to kiss her outside on the terrace earlier that night to fool the photographer. Presenting her with the necklace was merely a very clever— and very kind—public ploy to help her save face. "I think you have wonderful taste," she assured him with belated enthusiasm. I think you are a magnificent fake! she thought with amused admiration.
"Are you impressed enough to dance with me?" he challenged, positively exuding sophisticated charm. "I hear music in the next room." Without waiting for an answer, he took her elbow and propelled her past a maze of tables and delighted guests, toward the adjoining ballroom. Their audience realized the show was over and began a slow exodus to the next room.
They were halfway across the ballroom when Diana stopped short. "Wait," she said with a sheepish smile, "I want to introduce you to the rest of my family! After what just happened, they'll be dying to meet you." She turned around and began slowly wending her way through the emerging crowd.

Chapter 24



In the time it took to reach her family's table, Diana began to feel distinctly lightheaded and a little giddy. For days, she'd faced the world at work and at home, and had hidden her private pain over Dan. On top of that, she'd had to brace herself to face the nightmare of this auction… but the auction was suddenly over, and it hadn't been a nightmare because Cole had turned it into an entertaining drama with a Hollywood happy ending.
The abrupt, unexpected release of so much pressure and stress came as a shock to her entire nervous system. She felt weightless without the heavy emotional armor she'd had to wear for nearly a week. Buoyant.
A few hours ago, she'd been Daniel Penworth's cast-off fiancée, the object of pity and ridicule. A few hours from now, the press was going to portray her in a new role with Cole Harrison—probably as his lover. That was so incredible that she felt a sudden urge to giggle.
Somehow she managed to keep her face straight and introduce Cole to her grandparents and mother, but the feeling of giddy mirth was swelling inside her as she watched them react in their own individual ways to what Cole had done:
Corey's greeting was filled with laughing approval, and she gave him a quick hug. Mrs. Foster was less effusive but very friendly. Spence and Grandpa smiled politely and shook Cole's hand. Grandma stared into his eyes as if she were trying to assess his soul. Amy Leeland actually blushed when Cole smiled at her.
Doug Hayward was not only antagonistic, he was openly insulting. He stood up and shoved his hands into his pants pockets to avoid shaking Cole's hand. Without taking his contemptuous gaze from Cole, he explained to Amy, "Harrison used to work at our stable, mucking out stalls. Now he donates artwork at charity balls." To Cole he added, "It's amazing how far a man can actually climb in America, isn't it, Harrison?"
Cole's jaw hardened and his eyes turned cold.
The inexplicable hostility between the two men was palpable, and Diana's family automatically turned to her to intercede. No matter how awkward or volatile the social situation, Diana could always be counted on to step in and defuse it with her special gifts of diplomacy, sensitivity, and humor.
This time, however, Diana seemed unwilling or unable to do that. Instead, she beamed a bright smile at the two men, who were glaring at each other like silent duelists awaiting the signal to begin pacing off, and she gaily announced, "I can see how anxious you both are to catch up on old times, but you'll just have to wait because Cole and I are leaving." With that, she swept up a plain black handbag from the table, linked her hand through Cole's arm, and turned with enough momentum to partially pull Cole with her.
Feeling that courtesy required some form of parting remark from him, Cole looked over his shoulder and saw Hayward stalking away. "Diana has agreed to take her life in her hands and dance with me," he explained to her family.
The group at the table watched with a variety of reactions as the couple departed. With the exception of Diana's grandmother, everyone seemed to think the evening was a triumph that would mark a complete turning point in Diana's unhappy personal life. "Mr. Harrison was exactly what Diana needed tonight to help her get over Dan. She has her pride back now, and she looks happy again."
"Diana is a survivor," Spencer put in.
"Diana is practical," Grandpa added. "She knows Dan wasn't the man for her, and she's putting him behind her already."
"Diana is a fighter and she's brave," Corey agreed.
"Diana," Grandma contradicted flatly, "is at the end of her rope!"
"Nonsense, Gram," Corey said, partly because she didn't want to believe that. "She's always been independent and self-sufficient. She's calm… she's grace under pressure, and…"
"And," Grandma interrupted triumphantly as she produced the ultimate proof of Diana's mental state, "she's just walked off with my black purse!"
That particular revelation caused the entire group to turn in alarmed unison and gape at the departing Diana. As all of them knew, Diana's fastidious attention to detail was unflagging; her flair for style was as legendary as her ability to be perfectly groomed and coordinated no matter how difficult the circumstances. Lying on the table was Diana's little purse—a glittering Judith Leiber evening clutch shaped like a jeweled sugarplum, with a silver stem and green leaves. The fact that she had actually walked away in a glamorous purple gown with a matronly black handbag dangling over her forearm was so completely out of character that the entire family felt deep tremors of genuine alarm.
"As you can see," Grandma sadly declared, "Diana has finally reached her limits. There's the proof."

Chapter 25




"If you're really going to dance with me," Cole joked when they neared the entry to the adjoining ballroom, "I suggest you have something to drink first." He stopped at a banquet table with an untouched place setting, lifted a bottle of champagne from the cooler in the center of the table, and poured some champagne into an unused glass. "Alcohol acts as an anesthetic," he told Diana with a grin as he handed her the glass, "and dancing with me could be a painful and dangerous experience."
Diana took the glass, so relieved that her personal ordeal was over and so grateful for his kindness and ingenuity that she would have danced with him if her feet were bare and he was wearing golf cleats. No longer were women eyeing her with pity or disdain. In fact, she noted with amusement, they weren't looking at her at all—they were looking at Cole, and Diana couldn't blame them. With his thick black hair, piercing gray eyes, and tall, athletic physique, Cole Harrison was magnificent.
The same male qualities that had made all the girls fantasize about him long ago were even more pronounced now. There had always been a rugged strength and latent sexuality about him, but now it was enhanced by an aura of cool sophistication and indomitable power.
Walking into the adjoining ballroom, she sipped the champagne, enjoying the looks of confusion on the faces of the same acquaintances who earlier had eyed her with pity or satisfaction.
The orchestra was playing a popular slow song as they neared the dance floor, but when Diana started to put the glass of champagne down on a table, he shook his head. "Finish it."
"Are you really that worried about stepping on my feet?" she asked, her smile filled with a mixture of gratitude, relief, and laughter.
"Certainly not," he teased. "I'm worried that you'll be so tense and stiff that you'll step on my feet."
With a laugh, she drained the glass and tucked her hand through his arm, drawing him close in an unconscious gesture that seemed a little possessive to Cole and pleased immensely. He was about to negotiate one of the most important "business deals" of his life with a lovely, unsuspecting woman who needed to trust him enough to accept his bizarre offer.
When he slid his arm around her on the dance floor, Diana gazed up at him, her features soft and warm with gratitude. "Cole?"
He returned her smile, but the gray eyes that regarded her from beneath half-lowered lids seemed preoccupied, thoughtful. "Hmmm?"
"Has anyone ever told you that you are very sweet and very gallant?"
"Certainly not. Generally, I'm described as cold, calculating, and ruthless."
Diana was aghast at the injustice of that. With her heart filled with gratitude and her head swimming from all the wine and champagne she'd drunk to reinforce her courage, Cole Harrison seemed completely wonderful and omnipotent—a mighty defender who'd charged to her rescue, vanquished her foes, and saved her from humiliation. He was gallantry and daring in a world filled with cowardice and malice. "How could people possibly think such awful things about you?"
"Because they're completely true," he stated with calm finality.
Diana's reply was an irrepressible giggle. "Liar."
He looked stung. "Now, that is one thing I am not."
"Oh." Trying unsuccessfully to bite back a smile, she decided he was joking because he was embarrassed by her praise, and she switched the topic. "Who did you really buy this necklace for?"
Instead of answering, he gazed at her in speculative silence for so long that Diana began to wonder uneasily if he'd had a recipient in mind, or if he'd actually spent $40,000 on a necklace merely to bolster her status tonight. His next words relieved her mind. "The necklace is a wedding gift for my future wife."
"How wonderful! When are you getting married?"
"Immediately after I propose."
He sounded so matter-of-fact that Diana couldn't resist teasing him. "Either you're very certain she'll say yes, or else you're hoping to sway her with this necklace. Which is it?"
"I'd say it's a little of both. I'm hoping to sway her with this necklace, and I'm fairly certain she'll say yes, once I explain the wisdom and benefits associated with such an arrangement."
"You sound as if you're proposing a business merger," Diana advised him with a surprised smile.
Cole quickly reviewed the plan he'd conceived in the last half hour and made his final decision. In a deceptively casual tone, he said, "The last time I asked someone to marry me, we were both sixteen. Obviously, I need to practice my technique, Kitten."
Diana was a little disconcerted to discover that Cole Harrison hadn't been nearly as decisive and knowledgeable about women as she'd thought he was when she was sixteen and crazy about him. Most of all, she was touched by the name he'd called her. Kitten. The old nickname he'd occasionally used for her seemed poignantly familiar at that moment—a reminder of a time when she chatted with him while he worked in the Haywards' stable surrounded by the sweet smell of fresh hay and oiled leather, their desultory conversation punctuated by the muted shuffling of horses' hooves. Her life had been so simple then; her future had seemed so bright and full of exciting possibilities. "Kitten…" she whispered softly, her eyes shadowed with the realization that those old promises of a bright future hadn't worked out at all the way she'd imagined.
Sensing the sudden dipping of her mood, Cole maneuvered her smoothly off the dance floor. "Let's go somewhere else and work on my proposal technique. Our audience is too big in here."
"I thought you wanted an audience for us."
"They've seen all they need to see."
He pronounced that with the arrogance of a royal decree, and with his hand beneath her elbow, he maneuvered her off the dance floor and out of the crowded, noisy room.

Chapter 26


"Where are we going?" Diana asked, laughing as he led her toward the elevators. It felt better and better to laugh. Tomorrow, reality would crush her again like a boulder, but for tonight, Cole and the wine and the necklace were all combining to provide an unexpected respite from the misery, and she was determined to enjoy it. "How about Lake Tahoe?" Cole suggested as he pressed the elevator button. "We could get married, go for a swim, and be back here in time for brunch tomorrow."
Diana assumed he was practicing his proposal on her again, and she took pains to hide her amusement at his blunt haste and his unromantic attitude. "Tahoe's a little too far," she said breezily. "Besides I'm not dressed for it."
She glanced down ruefully at her gown, and Cole's eyes followed her gaze, drifting over the creamy gentle swell of her breasts above the bodice of her gown, then dipping to her narrow waist. "In that case, there's only one other place that offers the sort of atmosphere and privacy required for what I have in mind."
"Where is that?"
"My suite," he said as he ushered her into the crowded elevator and slid a key into the slot beside the top button marked Penthouse.
Diana fired him a glance of real concern, but there were people from the ball in the elevator and she couldn't possibly argue in front of them. When the last elderly couple got off on the floor beneath his, however, she turned to him and shook her head. "I really shouldn't disappear from the ball like this, particularly not with you, not with—"
"Why not with me, in particular?" he asked coolly.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened into the penthouse's black marble foyer. Instead of getting out, Cole braced his hand against the door to prevent it from closing. A little dizzy from the champagne and the elevator's swift ascent, Diana felt an inappropriate urge to giggle, not cower, at his forbidding expression. "You've been so busy helping me save my reputation that I'm not sure you've realized the jeopardy you've put your own in. What I meant before was that I shouldn't have disappeared with you without first telling my family why you really bought this necklace. Furthermore, if any of those pictures of us make the news, and people know you're about to be married, you're going to look like a man without integrity."
Cole felt a sudden urge to laugh. "You are worried about my reputation?"
"Of course I am," Diana said primly, stepping out of the elevator and into the private vestibule of his suite.
"Now, that," Cole said with a grin, "is a first. In fact," he added, as they entered the suite's living room and he switched on the tiny lights concealed in the cove of the ceiling, "I have a feeling tonight is going to be a night of several firsts."
He glanced over his shoulder at Diana, who had stopped near the coffee table in the middle of the living room. She was watching him, her head tipped to one side, her expression more puzzled than wary. Puzzled was good, Cole decided. Wary was bad. He walked over to the bar and removed a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. Alcohol in the bloodstream of a woman who was already delightfully rosy from gratitude and relief would help keep her wariness under control.
" 'Firsts'?" she repeated. "What is there that you haven't done until tonight?"
"For starters," he said lightly, "I've never stood outside on the balcony of this suite with a woman." He popped the cork on the champagne and plunged the bottle into the ice bucket on the bar. "Shall we make that another first?"
Diana watched him unbutton his tuxedo jacket and loosen his bow tie; then he tucked the ice bucket into the crook of his elbow and, with a champagne flute in each hand, paused to flip a wall switch with his elbow, which made the heavy draperies in front of the balcony doors glide apart. Superimposed over that image was a memory of him in faded jeans and shirt, currying a horse with one hand and reaching for a bridle with the other while he carried on a conversation with her about her schoolwork. Even then, he'd always seemed to be doing several things at once. He stepped aside, waiting for her to precede him onto the balcony, then handed her the drink he'd poured.
He'd noticed her smile as he opened the balcony doors. "Have I done something amusing?"
Diana shook her head. "I was just thinking that, even in the old days, you always seemed to be able to do several things at the same time and completely effortlessly. I always admired that."
The compliment was so surprising to Cole, and so pleasing, that he couldn't think of a reply, and so he watched in silence as she stepped past him onto the tiny patio.
Walking over to the railing, Diana gazed out at the glittering carpet of Houston lights far below while soft music drifted from the stereo in the living room and her mind drifted inexorably to Dan.
Cole joined her, but angled his body so that he was facing her, with his elbow propped on the railing. "I hope you're thinking of Penworth, and not me, with that woebegone expression on your face."
Chafed at having been described as woebegone, Diana proudly lifted her chin. "We haven't spent much time together in the last year, and I've practically forgotten him already."
Instead of replying, Cole merely raised his brows and regarded her in skeptical silence, managing to convey not only his disbelief but also his disappointment in her obvious unwillingness to confide in him. After the way he'd come to her rescue tonight, Diana knew he deserved more than a brush-off for an answer. "That was a lie," she conceded with a shaky sigh. "The truth is that I've accepted what happened as being final, but I feel… furious. I feel furious and humiliated."
"Of course you do," Cole said with amused sympathy. "After all, you've just been dumped by the scum of the earth."
Diana's jaw dropped. She stared at him in angry shock. And then she burst out laughing.
Cole's answering chuckle was rich and deep as he slid his arm around her, pulling her close to his side. The soft, fine fabric of his jacket brushed her bare skin as he curved his arm around her shoulders, his fingers sliding warmly up and down her arm. Even though she was merely a stand-in for his soon-to-be fiancée, it was still nice to know that someone—someone tall and handsome and very special— seemed to find her appealing enough to want to spend time with her tonight. Appealing and worthwhile. Not like Dan, who'd— She lifted the glass to her mouth and took a long swallow to chase away the thoughts of Dan.
She remembered that Cole wanted to perfect his proposal technique, and that reminded Diana that she was still wearing the necklace. "I'd better take this off before I forget and leave with it," she said, reaching behind her neck for the clasp.
"Leave the necklace alone," he instructed. "I bought it for you."
Her hands stilled at his tone. "No, you bought it for the woman you intend to marry—"
"That's what I just said."
Diana gave her head a shake to clear it. Turning so that she could see his face, she shoved her hair back off her forehead and ruefully admitted, "I've had much more to drink tonight than I normally would have, and I seem to be having trouble following the thread of our conversation. It's as if you're talking in riddles."
"In that case, I'll make it clearer. I want you to marry me, Diana. Tonight."
She grabbed the high railing and gave a shriek of laughter. "Cole Harrison, are you drunk?"
"Certainly not."
She studied him in adorable confusion. "Then… am I drunk?"
"No, but I wish you were."
Finally, she loosened her grip and turned to him with a wobbly smile. "You can't really be serious."
"I am very serious."
"I don't want to s-seem ungrateful or critical," she said in a laughing voice, "but I f-feel I ought to warn you that you're now carrying gallantry too far."
"Gallantry has nothing to do with it."
With unemotional objectivity, Cole observed Diana's struggle to regain control over her hilarity. She was so damned lovely, he thought. The newspaper picture of her had probably come from a magazine press kit, and it hadn't done her justice. It had been a moderately glamorous business photo of a smiling, confident woman, but the real-life Diana was far more arresting. The photo hadn't even hinted at the entrancing warmth of her sudden smile, or the red highlights in her glossy hair, or the jeweled sparkle of her thick-lashed green eyes. As far as he could recall, the tiny cleft in the center of her chin had been completely missing.
She could hardly keep her face straight as she said, "Either you are carrying pity for me to an unbelievable extreme, Mr. Harrison, or else you're not playing with a full deck."
"I am neither dim-witted nor crazy," he stated, "and pity has nothing to do with my reasons for wanting this marriage."
Diana searched his shadowy face for some indication that he was joking, but his expression was completely unemotional. "Am I honestly supposed to take you—I mean, this proposal—seriously?"
"I assure you, I'm completely serious."
"Then, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
He held out his arms in a gesture of complete cooperation. "Ask me anything you like."
She tipped her head to the side, her face a mirror of confusion and disbelief overlaid with amusement. "Do you happen to be under the influence of any mind-altering drugs?"
"Absolutely not."
"Am I supposed to believe that—um—you fell in love with me when I was a teenager, and you've—ah—carried a torch all this time, and that's why you want to marry me now?"
"That scenario is as ludicrous as the one before it."
"I see." She was absurdly disappointed that he hadn't had even a tiny crush on her when she had been insane about him.
"Would you rather I'd lied about having a crush on you?"
"No. I'd rather you tell me your reason for wanting to marry me," she said flatly.
"There are two reasons: I need a wife, and you need a husband."
"And that," Diana speculated dryly, "makes us perfect for each other?"
Cole looked down at her glowing eyes and smiling mouth and had an impulse to bend his head and slowly kiss the smile from her lips. "I think it does."
"I don't know why you need to get married," Diana said tightly, "but believe me, marriage is the last thing I need."
"You're wrong. Marriage is exactly what you need. You've been publicly jilted in the world press by a jerk, and according to what I read in the Enquirer, your magazine has been under a competitor-driven media attack for nearly a year over your personal state of 'unwedded bliss.' Now that's going to escalate. What did the headline in the Enquirer say… ?" He paused, then quoted, " 'Trouble in Paradise—Diana Foster Is Jilted by Fiancé.' " Shaking his head, he said bluntly, "That's bad press, Diana. Very bad. And extremely damaging for business. By marrying me, you could save your pride and also save your company from the negative effects of those headlines."
She gazed up at him as if she'd just suffered a mortal blow from the last person she expected to hurt her. "How pathetic and desperate I must seem to you if you could even suggest such a thing and believe I'd go along with it."
She shoved away from the railing and started to turn toward the doors into his suite, but Cole caught her arm in a gentle but unbreakable grip. "I'm the desperate one, Diana," he said flatly.
Diana stared at him dubiously. "Just exactly what makes you so 'desperate' for a wife that any woman will do?"
Instinct and experience told Cole that a little tender persuasion could vastly further his cause, and he was prepared to resort to that, but only if logic and complete honesty weren't enough to persuade her. In the first place, she was vulnerable right now, and he didn't want to do or say anything that might make her ultimately regard him as a possible substitute for the love, and lover, she'd lost. Second, he had no intention of complicating their marriage with any messy emotional or physical intimacy.
And so Cole ignored the instinct to reach up and brush back a wayward lock of shiny dark hair from her soft cheek, and he squelched the temptation to tell her that she was a long way from being just "any" woman to him or that she was as close to his ideal of femininity as any female could be.
He was not, however, morally opposed to diluting her resistance with as much alcohol as he could pour down her. "Finish your champagne, and then I'll explain."
Diana almost started to argue but decided to compromise and took a sip, instead.
"My problem," he explained calmly, "is an old man named Calvin Downing, who is my mother's uncle. When I wanted to leave the ranch and go to college, it was Calvin who tried to convince my father I wasn't thumbing my nose at him and everything he represented. When my father couldn't be persuaded to see things that way, it was Cal who loaned me the money for tuition. Just before my senior year of college, a drilling company ran a test well on Cal's ranch and it came in. It wasn't a gusher, but it made him about twenty-six thousand dollars a month. And when I graduated and went to Cal with a wild scheme for making money that no banker would agree to finance for me, it was Cal who handed over all his savings to help me get started. From the time I was a kid, Cal believed in me. When I started dreaming of making it really big and getting rich—it was Cal who listened to my dreams and believed in them."
Fascinated by his candor and unable to see how such a kind and caring old man could now be the source of Cole's unnamed "problem," Diana sipped her champagne waiting for him to continue, but he seemed content to watch her instead. "Go on," she urged. "So far he sounds like the last man in the world to cause a 'problem' for you."
"He thinks he's solving a problem, not creating one."
"I don't understand. Even if I hadn't had so much wine and champagne tonight, I don't think I'd understand."
"You don't understand because I haven't told you that part, which is this: After I graduated, my uncle gave me all his savings from the well on his land, and then he borrowed another two hundred thousand dollars against it, so that I could start my own company. Naturally, I insisted on signing a legal note for the money and on making him a full partner in the business."
To the best of her recollection, the article in Time magazine about Cole Harrison's spectacular business successes placed his net worth at over five billion dollars. "I assume you repaid the loan?" she prompted.
He nodded. "I repaid it—along with interest calculated at the rate in effect at the time, as agreed in the note." A wry smile softened his granite features. "Among my uncle's eccentricities is a streak of stinginess a mile wide, which made his willingness to hand over all his money to finance my business plan even more meaningful. To illustrate my point, despite Cal's wealth, he still clips coupons from the newspaper, he still fights with all the utility companies about his bills, and he still buys his clothes at Montgomery Ward. He is so bad that if his phone service goes out for a few hours, which happens several times a year, Cal deducts one day's charges from his bill."
"I didn't know you could do that," Diana said, impressed.
"You can," Cole said dryly. "But they'll turn your phone off until you pay up."
Diana smiled at the colorful description he'd provided of a stubborn, elderly man with a big heart and a tight fist. "I still don't understand how your problem is connected with him."
"The connection is that Cal was a full partner in my original business, and I—who owe my current success to his past moral and financial support—could never bring myself to hurt or offend him by asking him to sign papers dissolving the partnership, not even after I repaid his loan with full interest. Besides, I would have trusted him with my life, and so it never occurred to me that he would balk at turning over his stock when I asked him to do it, let alone consider signing it over to someone else."
Diana was astute enough as a businesswoman to immediately grasp the devastating impact of such an action, but she couldn't quite believe that the man Cole had described would be capable of such treachery. "Have you formally asked him to sign over his shares to you?"
"I have."
"And?"
A grim smile twisted Cole's lips. "And he's perfectly willing to do that, except for one small problem that he feels I'm obliged to solve for him before he can justify giving my company's stock back to me."
He paused and Diana, who was helplessly enthralled, said, "What problem?"
"Immortality."
She gaped at him, caught between laughter and confusion. "Immortality?"
"Exactly. It seems that in the last six or seven years, about the time he turned seventy and his health began to fail badly, Uncle Calvin acquired a strong desire to immortalize himself by leaving behind a brood of descendants. The problem is that besides me, he has only one other blood relative, my cousin. Travis is married to a woman named Elaine and they are both very nice but far from brilliant, and they have two children who are neither nice nor brilliant, and Cal can't stand either one of them. Because of that, Cal now wants to see me married so that I can produce clever babies to carry on the family line."
Still unable to believe she understood what he was trying to tell her, Diana said, "And if you don't do that, then what?"
"Then he will leave his share of my corporation to Elaine and Travis's children, Donna Jean and Ted, who are both in college." He paused to take a swallow of his drink as if he wanted to wash away the bad taste of the words. "In that event, Elaine and Travis would become my business partners with enough shares between them to control the company on behalf of their children until Donna Jean and Ted come of age. Travis already works for me, as the head of Unified's research and development division. He's loyal and he does his best, but he doesn't have the brains or imagination to run Unified, even if I were willing to hand it over to him, which I assuredly am not! His kids lack his loyalty and their mother's common sense and kindness. In fact, they're greedy, egotistical schemers who are already planning how to spend my money when they get their hands on it."
Diana bit back a helpless grin at his plight: Cole Harrison, the invincible wheeler-dealer, the lion of Wall Street, was being held over the proverbial barrel by a frail, elderly uncle—an uncle who was probably getting senile. "Poor Cal," she said on a smothered laugh. "What a dilemma. One great-nephew has no business acumen, but he has a wife and children. The other great-nephew is a brilliant entrepreneur, without a wife or children—"
"And without the slightest desire to ever have either," Cole added, summarizing his own attitude. Satisfied that she'd grasped the full situation, he lifted his glass in a sardonic toast to her insight.
His unequivocal wish to remain not only single but childless was obscured for the moment by Diana's helpless amusement at his disgruntled tone. "You do seem to be in a remarkable fix," she said with a wayward smile.
"Which, I gather you find entertaining?"
"Well, you have to admit it is just a little… er… gothic," Diana managed unsteadily.
"At the very least," he agreed grimly.
"Although," she continued with an irrepressible grin, "in gothic romances, it's the heroine who gets coerced into a marriage she doesn't want. I've never heard of a hero who got himself into such a position."
"If your intention is to cheer me up, you're not succeeding," he said bitterly.
In fact, he looked so chagrined by her description of his "unhero-like" predicament that Diana had to look away to hide her laughter. She was so amused that it took several moments before she realized how presumptuous and offensive his proposed solution actually was. "And so," she concluded, trying to sound as calm and detached as he had earlier, "when you saw me tonight, you remembered I'd been jilted, and decided I'd be eager to marry you and help solve your problem—particularly if you bought me a necklace to help me save face."
"I'm not that selfish—or that vain, Diana. I know damned well you'd throw my proposition in my face, except for one thing."
"And that is?"
"By marrying you, I'd be offering myself as a solution to your problems."
"I see," Diana said, though she didn't see at all. "Do you mind explaining how?"
"Simple logic. Even though you've been publicly jilted, you can save your pride if you marry me immediately. Tomorrow, the newspapers will be filled with pictures of us kissing on the balcony tonight and the story of my buying you this necklace. If our marriage is announced the next day, people are going to assume that we've had something going all along and that you probably did the jilting, not Penworth."
Diana shrugged to hide the sharp stab of anger and hurt she felt at his callous summation of her own predicament. "I don't have that much pride to save, not if it requires anything as outrageous and rash as what you're suggesting."
"No, but you do have a business to save. The shield of being engaged for the last two years was already wearing thin. Now that that is gone," Cole finished, "your competitors will double their attacks and the media will collaborate in publicizing all the furor and hype for their own benefit."
Anguish and anger turned her green eyes stormy an instant before her long lashes swept down, concealing her emotions from Cole's view—but not in time to prevent him from noting that her reaction to the mention of Penworth's defection wasn't nearly as violent as her reaction to this very viable threat to her company.
Despite her delicate features and fragile, feminine beauty, Diana Foster was apparently a woman who put business first. If nothing else, Cole decided as he watched the breeze ruffle her dark auburn hair, they certainly had that in common.
While he gave Diana time to consider what he'd said, he tried to put together what little he knew about the business that meant so much to her, but there wasn't much. Based on the bits and pieces he'd read or seen on the news this week, all he knew was that the company was founded by the Foster family.
The business had apparently begun as a Houston catering service for the very rich—one that specialized in "natural" foods presented in lavish ways, but using only handmade or homegrown ornamentation. Somewhere along the way, that practice had been dubbed the Foster Ideal, and it had ultimately resulted in a magazine called Foster's Beautiful Living. He'd seen a copy at the airport magazine stand earlier that week, shortly after he'd seen Diana on CNN, and he'd leafed through it. Amid all the glossy photographs of brightly painted furniture, stenciled walls, and tables covered with hand-decorated linens and laden with gorgeous food and stunning homemade centerpieces, the philosophy of the magazine—and the basis for the Foster Ideal—seemed to be that by returning to basics, a woman could and would achieve personal satisfaction, a sense of vast accomplishment, and domestic tranquillity. Beyond that, all he noticed was that the photography had been superb, and that Corey Foster Addison was responsible for it.
That hadn't surprised him, since his every recollection of Corey as a young girl included a camera. He had, however, felt a certain amused irony over the fact that the founder and publisher of that homey, back-to-basics magazine was, in reality, a pampered Houston debutante—one who had once admitted to him, while seated on a bale of hay and grimacing at a smudge on her hand, that she'd never been a tomboy because she didn't like getting dirty.
He glanced sideways at her moonlit profile, and he marveled at the stupidity that had prompted Penworth to prefer an eighteen-year-old Italian model over Diana Foster. Even when she was a teenager, Diana had sparkled and glowed with wit, intelligence, and gentleness. As a woman, her vivid coloring, lovely figure, and innate poise made her stand out like a queen among peasants.
Cole had been with enough models to know that they were boringly obsessive about every molecule of their skin and hair, and that the bodies that looked so beautiful in designer clothes and magazine centerfolds felt like skin stretched over a skeleton in a man's bed.
Penworth was a fool, and he had blown his chance.
Cole Harrison was not a fool, and he was not going to blow his.

Chapter 27


Deciding that Diana had now had ample time to face reality as he'd portrayed it, Cole said quietly, "I wasn't trying to hurt or embarrass you, I was only trying to describe your situation as it actually exists."
She swallowed audibly and looked down at her hands; one held her champagne glass but the fingers of the other one were clutching the railing so tightly that her knuckles were white, and when she realized Cole had noticed that, she automatically loosened her grip. She didn't like having her emotions exposed to anyone's eyes, even his, Cole realized. That was something else they had in common, and it pleased him because what he wanted from her was a completely impersonal partnership, a businesslike arrangement with no emotions to deal with while it existed, or while it was being dissolved.
On the other hand, her continued silence was not what he wanted, and he deliberately forced her out of it. "Diana, if you're blaming me for something, then blame me for being blunt, but not for creating your unhappiness."
She drew a deep, steadying breath, but there were angry tears in her voice. "Why should I blame you for stating the problem in all its ugly reality?"
"I didn't merely state the problem," Cole pointed out gently. "I also offered you a perfect solution. Me."
"Yes, you did, and I do appreciate the offer—honestly I do…"
She trailed off, and Cole realized that although his solution still struck her as bizarre and impossible, she was being careful not to hurt his feelings. The knowledge made her seem very sweet in his estimation, and very naïve, because his feelings were not involved in this bargain. He preferred to live his life in a permanent state of unemotional objectivity.
"The problem is," she began again in that same soft, gentle voice, "I can't quite see the logic in exchanging a fiancé I loved but who didn't love me for a husband I don't love and who doesn't love me either."
"That's what makes it so perfect!" Cole said, putting his hand on her arm as he pressed his point. "Our marriage won't be complicated by messy emotions."
She put down her glass and wrapped her arms around herself as if she were chilled by his attitude, dislodging his hand in the process. "Are you really as cold and unfeeling as you sound?"
Gazing into her beautiful, upturned face with her breasts only inches from him, Cole felt anything but cold. For the first time since he'd conceived his hasty plan tonight, it occurred to him that sexual desire for her could actually become a complication. He circumvented the obstacle by silently vowing to avoid all serious intimacy with her. "I'm not cold," he said aloud. "I'm being practical. I have a pressing problem that acquiring a spouse would solve for me, and you're in exactly the same predicament. Our marriage won't be complicated by messy emotions; it will be a friendly business arrangement, terminated at the end of a year by a quiet, congenial divorce. We're the perfect solution for each other. If you were superstitious, you could say this was fate."
"I don't trust fate. I used to believe Dan and I were fated for each other."
"There's a major difference between Penworth and me." Cole said with a bite in his voice. "I don't break my word when I give it."
It was at that moment, with his steely eyes boring into hers and his deep voice resounding with conviction, that Diana truly accepted that he was in absolute, dead earnest about all this. She was still reeling from the shock of that when he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger; he forced her to meet his compelling gaze. "During the year we're married," he stated, "I give you my word that I will conduct myself publicly as if I were the most devoted and faithful of husbands. I will not knowingly do anything to cause you even a moment of the humiliation or anger that Penworth has brought you. In fact, I will do everything in my power to ensure you never regret our bargain in any way," he finished and then set down his champagne glass.
There is no bargain, Diana's mind warned her in a whisper, but the silent argument was being overturned by the effect of a somber handsome face, a deep, hypnotic voice, and a powerful male body that loomed before her, tall and strong—a man who was offering to shield her from the world with a pair of broad shoulders that looked as if they could shoulder all her burdens. The combination of all that was becoming dangerously, sweetly appealing, particularly because he wasn't talking about love or even affection.
"In the eyes of everyone," he continued, his low voice gaining force, "you will appear to be my cherished wife, and during the year we're married, you will be that."
Cherished… An antiquated word… sensitive and sentimental… unlike anything Dan had ever said to her. And totally unlike anything she'd have expected Cole to say.
His hands slid up her arms then down, velvet manacles pulling her closer to him, deeper into the sensual spell he was weaving with the help of a great deal of French champagne and wine laced with romantic Texas moonlight. "Naturally," he continued with gentle firmness, "I will expect the same promises from you. Is that agreeable?"
Diana couldn't believe she was seriously considering going through with this, not even when she felt herself nod slightly.
"I haven't agreed to the whole plan," she warned shakily, "only to the conditions."
His right hand left her arm and came to rest lightly against the side of her face, tipping it up to his. "Yes, Diana," he said with a knowing smile, his fingers spreading over her cheek, "you have. You just haven't said the words yet." His eyes and his voice were casting a spell. "By tomorrow, all your worries and all of mine can be over. All you have to do is say you agree, and I'll have my plane ready to take off for Nevada in an hour."
If he'd kissed her then, she would have bolted; if he'd released her from the gentle hold of his hands, she'd have run for her life. But when he slid his hand around the back of her nape and pressed her face against his chest in a strangely paternal gesture, Diana's remaining resistance suddenly collapsed. He was offering her, personally and professionally, a safe haven for a year… He was offering her his protection… He was offering to rescue her from humiliation, anxiety, and stress.
He was offering all that to Diana, who had been exhausted, disillusioned, and angry earlier, but who was now beginning to enjoy the increasingly delicious mindless languor induced by more alcohol than she normally consumed in an average month and by a man who made everything seem simple and easy. Cole was offering to rescue her and cherish her this very night. All she had to do was nod her head and it would be over.
Above her, his voice was a whisper lightly stirring her hair. "We can leave in an hour and be back here in time for breakfast."
Diana swallowed and closed her eyes, blinking back sudden tears that turned the small gold studs on his shirt into blurry little knots. She tried to say something, but the words lodged in her throat behind a huge lump of fear and hope and relief.
"All you have to do is give me your word that for a period of one year, you will do exactly what I'm offering to do— which is to give a convincing performance for all the world to see that we are truly and happily married."
Diana finally dragged sound through the giant constriction that seemed to start in the pit of her stomach and reach to her chin. "We don't even live in the same city," she protested weakly.
"Which makes our pretense that much easier to maintain. Our separate business interests require me to maintain a Dallas residence, while yours require you to keep your residence in Houston. Since the two cities are only a forty-five minute commute by plane, people will simply assume we're commuting."
Diana smiled a little, her cheek pressed against the starched pleats of his shirt. "You make everything sound so simple."
"Because it is simple. All we have to do is maintain a spirit of friendly collaboration. During the year we're married, you'll occasionally need me to escort you to some function or another, and I'll arrange my schedule to be there for you. Just give me as much notice as you can."
Diana thought that over as best she could; then she leaned her head back and studied him with a hazy smile. "No matter where it is, and even if it involves the press? I know you hate reporters, but the media is important to our business."
Despite her unsteady condition and the bizarre offer he was coercing her into accepting, Cole noted with amused admiration that his intelligent future wife was warily trying to close up loopholes before she agreed. He nodded. "No matter where it is," he agreed, "and I'll expect the same from you. Fair enough?" Cole waited expectantly for her to agree.
Instead she lifted her head and peered hard at his face, obviously trying to compensate for the poor light and the dulling effect of the champagne on her senses. "Do you have any other terms?"
The last thing Cole wanted to do was get mired down in details and lose the forward momentum he'd been steadily gaining. "We can talk about all the little details tomorrow. Do we have a deal?" Again he waited for her to agree.
His future wife bit her lip, considered that for a moment, and ruefully shook her head. "I think now would be better." she stated; then she gave him a tiny smile, as if to apologize for putting him to so much trouble. "That way, we won't have any miscon—misunderstandings," she amended when the right word eluded her.
Cole couldn't suppress his admiring grin. Even when she was under extraordinary pressure, Diana Foster was neither a fool nor incautious. He was beginning to understand how she had become such a formidable force within her own industry. "All right," he conceded, "here are the only major terms we need to agree upon: First, at the end of one year, we will obtain a quick, quiet divorce with neither of us making any sort of financial claims against the other. Agreed?"
She winced at the word "divorce," and Cole felt a tiny pang of guilt for making her first marriage one that was a sham. On the other hand, she had as much to gain from this marriage as he did, and far less to lose. Since Texas was a community-property state, and since Cole was far wealthier than she, he had much more to lose if she tried to renege on the postnuptial agreement that would have to be drawn up immediately after their marriage.
"Agreed," she whispered solemnly.
Cole's voice gained force and his mind shifted to travel arrangements. "Beyond that, I'll only ask for two other concessions. First, neither of us will ever reveal to anyone that this marriage was merely a convenient business arrangement. Second—"
"No."
"What?" He stared at her in disbelief. "Why not?"
"Because I'll have to tell my family. I'll have to tell my sister. You know—Corey?" she provided helpfully, and Cole suddenly suspected that she was either far more tipsy, or far more nervous, than he'd supposed a few minutes ago.
"I know Corey," he gravely assured her.
Behind her back, he lifted his wrist and tipped the face of his watch to the light from the doorway. It was ten minutes past eleven. The pilots of his Gulfstream jet were staying at a motel near the airport and they both carried pagers. His limousine was on twenty-four-hour call. If the wedding chapels in Lake Tahoe didn't stay open all night, he knew they did in Las Vegas. The logistics were not a problem. Diana was.
"I'll have to tell my whole family. And Spence, too. He's part of the family."
"What if I refuse to agree?"
She rolled her eyes at him in amused superiority. "We can't very well expect them to believe we took one look at each other tonight, fell in love, and eloped, now can we?"
"They can't prove it isn't true. Let's stick with that story, anyway."
She stepped away from him and lifted her chin to its haughtiest and most obstinate angle. "I will not upset my family with a lie, and I will not knowingly make a promise I can't keep."
She meant every word, Cole realized. Obviously, Texas's Businesswoman of the Year hadn't sacrificed her scruples or her youthful idealism during her climb up the ladder of success, and his voice was gruff with pleasure and something that felt like pride. "In that case, I concede."
"You—do?" Diana was feeling more dazed by the moment at everything he said and did. One moment, he was offering her marriage as coolly as he'd offer to hold the door open for a stranger, and the next, he was yielding a point to her with a distinct warmth in his eyes. Trying to shake off the heady effect of the alcohol and his silvery gaze, she said, "You said there were two other concessions—"
"The second concession is that you agree to accompany me to my uncle's ranch sometime during the next week or two and spend a few days there, allaying any suspicions or fears he may have about our sudden marriage."
"I probably have some meetings." She frowned, a troubled goddess with the summer breeze blowing her hair and ruffling her gown. "I always have meetings. I suppose I could rearrange my schedule and either visit your uncle next week or the week after."
"That settles it then," Cole said briskly.
She was so nervous, her voice actually shook. "I— Shouldn't I have terms?"
"Tell me what they are as you think of them. I've already promised to do everything I reasonably can to cooperate." Convinced that the moment was now exactly right to stop talking and put the plan into action, Cole walked into the suite, phoned his pilots at their motel, and then ordered his limo to be brought to the front of the hotel. After that he dialed his secretary's number in Dallas and gave the sleepy but stalwart woman a set of instructions that snapped her awake and made her stammer.
"Everything is arranged," he said as he walked back out on the balcony. He lifted the bottle of champagne out of its icy nest and refilled both glasses. "The limo is waiting downstairs, and my plane is being refueled. This definitely calls for a toast," he added, holding a glass toward her.
Diana looked at the glass in his hand and her faltering courage collapsed. "I can't!" she cried, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. She'd spent the time while he made phone calls trying desperately to decide whether her misgivings were based on good judgment or whether her panic was the result of the same cowardly, conservative streak within her that she hated and that frequently paralyzed her and caused her to pass up unique business opportunities.
Wordlessly, he put both glasses on the table with an ominous little clink, then took a step toward her. "What do you mean, you 'can't'?" he demanded.
Diana jumped backward out of his reach. "I can't! Not tonight." Her voice was shaking so hard that she scarcely recognized it, and she bumped into the railing in her desperation to escape from what she perceived to be a threat. "I need time!"
He was blocking the path into the suite, and Diana started to sidle behind one of the balcony's chairs, but the urgency and regret in his deep voice checked her in midstep and made her fear of him absurd. "Time is the only thing I can't afford to give you, Diana."
Diana heard all sorts of confusing signals in that sentence—from a desperate attempt at bribery, to an effort to salvage his pride by impressing her with his wealth. "With everything you have to offer," she assured him as she reached behind her neck and unclasped the heavy necklace he'd bought earlier, "you'll find lots of women who will jump at your suggestion in the hope it might lead to permanence—including some in the ballroom downstairs."
"I imagine you're right," he said, his voice suddenly flat. "Possibly I was reaching far above myself, but I would have liked the wife in this scheme to be a woman I'm proud to have share my name, which happens to limit my choices to one—you."
He said it so coolly that it took a moment for Diana to hear the meaning behind the words. "Why me?"
"A variety of reasons," he said with a shrug. "Not the least of which is that despite your lofty social status, you also knew me when I was paid to muck out horse stalls, and you don't seem to find that repellent."
His blunt reference to his lack of social status, combined with his earlier attempt to bribe her, made Diana's chest ache. Tears stung her eyes as she gazed at the powerful, dynamic man before her who, for some reason, was oblivious to his own worth. His face was almost too rugged to be handsome, and yet it was one of the most attractive faces she'd ever seen. Masculine pride and granite determination were sculpted into every hard angle and plane on his face. Cynicism had etched lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, but in the strength of his features, Diana saw the mark of battles fought and won, of lessons learned the hard way. And there was no overlooking the sensuality in the mold of his mouth, not even when it had a sardonic twist, as it did now. If he hadn't had money, women would still have thrown themselves at him—and yet, for some unfathomable reason he was willing to settle for an empty marriage and a life without children.
She herself had been little more than a child when she first started visiting him at the Haywards', and he'd seemed to enjoy her company very much. He'd even gotten her a stuffed toy kitten for her sixteenth birthday, she suddenly remembered, and while she'd been melting with joy, he'd leapt to the conclusion that it wasn't good enough. "You've probably had dozens of really exotic stuffed animals."
Cole had been her friend, her fantasy lover, her mentor. Tonight he had been her knight in shining armor.
How foolish she was being now, to mistrust him and turn down an opportunity that was heaven-sent.
Guilt swelled in her chest and she wondered when she had become jaded and cynical. "Cole," she whispered, and watched his expression soften at the sound of her voice. "I'm sorry—" She held out her hand in a gesture of conciliation, but his gaze riveted on the forgotten necklace in her palm, and his expression turned to stone.
"Keep it!" he said shortly. "I bought it for you."
"No—" she began awkwardly; then she wished she'd had that other glass of champagne for courage when she saw the ominous expression in his eyes. "What I mean is, could you possibly repeat all those excellent reasons you gave me earlier?"
Cole saw the yielding softness in her eyes, and somewhere deep within him, he felt the faint stirrings of an emotion so long dead, or so foreign to him, that he didn't recognize it. And even so, it made him smile.
It made him reach out and lay his palm against the side of her cheek and tenderly smooth a lock of gleaming russet hair off her warm cheek.
"I can't decide," she told him a little shakily.
"Diana," he whispered, "you've already decided."
Diana's senses were beginning to reel with the shock of her decision and the touch of his hand. She tried to make a joke of it. "I have? What did I decide?"
His eyes gleamed with laughter, but his tone remained solemn. "You decided you'll marry me in Nevada tonight."
"I will?"
"You will."

Chapter 28


"I will… I will…" Diana turned her head on the pillow, but the words followed her, echoing as if from the distant end of a long tunnel, combining with odd images that tumbled around in her brain in a shifting kaleidoscope of disjointed events and unrelated noises. I will… I will. … In her dream, the two words were overlaid by the incessant drone of jet engines, the muted ringing of a telephone, and the shadowy, indefinable presence of a dark male, a looming, powerful figure that she sensed in her dream but could not see. His presence gave her twin sensations of being in grave danger and of being safe; the voice she heard was not his voice, and yet he seemed to control her answers.
"Will you?" Now the voice was hers—a whisper in the dim glow of a soft light near an unearthly bed that seemed to float as she lay upon it. He was standing beside the bed, leaning over her, his hands braced on the pillow beside her head, resisting her. "No."
Her hands were on his shoulders, and she pulled him closer, watching his eyes begin to smolder. Roaring engines drowned his voice as his sensual lips formed a soundless word. "No."
She slid her hand around his nape, and the banked fires in his eyes leapt into flames. She was in control now, she knew it, she gloried in it. "Yes…" she whispered, and his scorching gaze dropped to her lips.
She was in control as his mouth covered hers, exploring… tantalizing, then slowly opening on hers, urging her lips to part, his tongue probing between them, forcing entrance.
He was demanding control, taking it away from her, and she moaned in protest even while she crushed her lips to his and fought to subdue his tongue with her own. Large hands covered her breasts, fondling them possessively; then his mouth seized her nipples, drawing them taut, and she cried out. She couldn't lose control, wouldn't, must not! He knew she wanted to hold back, he knew it, but he shoved his hands into the sides of hair, turning it into a tangled mess. His ravenous mouth left her breasts, only to invade her mouth again while his body moved on top of hers and his hips began to move sensuously.
She tried to resist the erotic demands, the heat, the pressure of him, but he wouldn't let her, and her legs parted as his hands lifted her buttocks and his rigid erection unerringly found the wet warmth at the entrance to her body. He thrust into her, his mouth devouring hers… and then it began—the slow, demanding thrusts that steadily increased in power and force, driving her to a terrifying precipice. She fought it, tried to recoil from it.
He knew she was fighting her own desire, but he wouldn't leave her alone. Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled onto his back, his body still joined fiercely to hers. He curved his hands around her hips, forcing her into a tempo that made her forget that her hair was a tangled mess and her breasts were too small and her hip had a scar on the side of it.
She rode him and rode him because he wouldn't let her stop. Because she couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop. Wild now. She was wild and sobbing with need, and his hips were moving with hers, hands caressing her breasts, fingers squeezing her taut nipples. She cried out as explosions racked her body, and he arched his back while deep spasms drove him higher and deeper into her. Engines screamed and the bed crashed to earth, rocking her violently off him; his arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her, while blue lights flew past the windows with dizzying speed. Eerie lights.
Blue lights… revolving around and around… spinning past.
Diana tossed her head on the pillow, afraid of the lights, trying to escape the clutches of the demon lover who had taken much more than she meant to offer.
She tried to turn and run, but an entity was guarding her, preventing her from moving—a terrifying, four-legged beast as black as the hounds from hell. Its fangs were huge; its ears were pointed and stiff; its body was gaunt from starvation. Satan from Rosemary's Baby. She was Rosemary!
In her dream, Diana screamed with fear, but the actual sound was only a parched whisper: "No!"
Propelled by terror, Diana broke free of the nightmare and opened her eyes. Pain stabbed through the sockets of her eyes and embedded itself in her brain as she blinked dazedly at a spacious, but wholly unfamiliar bedroom. The sound of a door opening made her jerk her chin in that direction, which caused the pain to worsen, the room to revolve, and her stomach to lurch alarmingly. A man whom she suddenly identified as Cole Harrison was strolling into her bedroom as casually as if he had a right to be there. "Easy now," he told her in an amused voice as he moved toward her with a tray in his hand. "Don't make any sudden movement."
Diana couldn't seem to think beyond the misery of her entire body. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a small croak. She swallowed and tried again. "What— happened… to me?"
"It's only a theory, but your nervous system is probably under assault by a buildup of acetaldehyde," he provided with cheerful sympathy as he put the tray on the nightstand. "In severe cases, that causes blurred vision, headache, nausea, trembling, and dry mouth. At least that's the theory we're working on at Unified's pharmaceutical division. In layman's terms, you have a colossal hangover."
"Why?" Diana whispered, closing her eyes against the glare of bright orange liquid in a tall glass on the nightstand.
"Too much champagne."
"Why?" she said again. She wanted to know why she was here, why he was here, and why she'd made herself sick, but her brain and her mouth refused to function properly.
Instead of answering, he sat down on the bed, causing her to moan aloud when the mattress shifted and she rolled a little sideways. "Don't try to talk," he said with stern authority that contrasted with the gentleness in his movements as he slid his left arm beneath her shoulders, lifting her slightly upright. "This is buffered aspirin," he said, giving her two white tablets. Diana's hand shook as she took them from him and pressed them awkwardly between her lips. "And this," he added as he lifted the glass of orange liquid from the tray and held it toward her lips, tipping it carefully so she could drink, "is orange juice with a little 'hair-of-the-dog.' "
Diana's stomach lurched violently at the thought of dog hairs in her orange juice, but before she could react, he tipped it up, forcing her to swallow; then he eased her back down onto the pillows. "Go back to sleep," he said gently as her eyes closed. "You'll feel much better when I wake you up later."
Something cold and soothing was pressed against her forehead. A washcloth.
Cole Harrison was a kind, caring man, she thought. She needed to tell him that. "Thank you for helping me," she murmured as his weight lifted from the mattress and he stood up.
"As your husband, I consider it my duty to nurse you through any and all hangovers."
"You're very nice."
"I was hoping you'd still think so this morning, but I had some doubts."
The carpet muffled his footsteps as he walked away, and she heard the door close softly behind him as she lay there, waiting for the anesthesia of sleep. For several moments, his parting remarks were merely a baffling joke she tried to ignore, but they'd evoked stubborn images that began marching insistently behind her aching eyes. She remembered being at the Orchid Ball and drinking wine and champagne… and an amethyst necklace, and more champagne. She remembered going up to Cole's suite… and more champagne… and a limousine ride to Intercontinental Airport… and the cabin of a private jet, where she drank more champagne. She remembered another limo ride through a city ablaze with lights…
The images slowed and sharpened into better focus. She'd gotten out of the car and walked into a place with an arched trellis covered with fake flowers. A short, bald, smiling man had talked to her while she leaned her head back and mentally removed those awful flowers, replacing them with fresh ivy vines.
Swallowing against a surge of nausea, Diana tried not to think about the bald man and the flowered trellis, but the tableau seemed to be etched into her aching brain, a foggy, strangely ominous vignette—and yet, he'd seemed a pleasant enough man… He'd walked Cole and her to the door when they left. He'd waved to them and called out something to her as the limousine started to roll away from the curb. She'd leaned out of the window and waved back at him as he stood in the doorway beneath a pink-and-green neon trellis, with blinking neon bells above it and some words below it.
Words below it.
Words…
Words, in scrolling pink-and-green neon letters.
 
Wedding Chapel
 
The man in the doorway had been calling out, "Good luck, Mrs. Harrison!"
Reality struck Diana with enough force to set off fresh explosions of pain in her head and a holocaust in her stomach. "Oh, my God!" she moaned aloud, and she rolled over, pressing her face into the pillow, trying to blot everything from her mind.

Chapter 29


When Diana awakened again, someone had opened the heavy draperies, letting filtered sunlight into the room through the filmy sheers, and a telephone was ringing somewhere in the suite.
For several moments, she lay perfectly still, her eyes closed, taking cautious mental inventory of her body's condition, afraid to move lest her nerves begin to jangle and her head pound as it had earlier. She still felt shaky and her head still ached, but her skull no longer felt as if it were going to split in half.
Having dealt with the physical side of her situation, she reluctantly allowed herself to contemplate the outcome of her first true bout with inebriation.
She had married Cole Harrison.
Her heart began to hammer as the reality of that reckless, irrational act clamored in her brain. She was married to a stranger! He was a heartless opportunist who'd taken advantage of her state of mind last night and convinced her that marrying him would also benefit her, not just him.
She was clearly insane. So was he.
She was a fool. He was a monster.
She needed to be locked up in an asylum.
He needed to be shot!
Somehow, Diana forced herself to break off her unjustified mental tirade and block out the guilt and panic that were causing it.
She had not been completely irrational last night, and Cole had not coerced or forced her into marriage. As calmly as she could, Diana reviewed everything she could remember about his reasoning and her reactions.
In the bright light of day, without the lulling effects of champagne, it was obvious that Cole had amazing powers of persuasion. It was equally obvious that she'd let emotion and sentimentality drive her to do something that was incredibly impulsive. But the more she thought about it, the more Diana realized that the logic behind their agreement was still sound.
Last night, Cole had been the pawn of a well-meaning old man named Calvin, who was jeopardizing the business empire Cole had built. This morning, Cole was victor, not victim, and the uncle he loved was going to be a very happy man.
Last night, the credibility and the financial future of Foster Enterprises had been in jeopardy, and Diana had been the object of scorn and pity—the discarded fiancée of a wealthy Houston socialite. This morning, Foster Enterprises was secure and Diana was the "cherished wife" of a handsome billionaire tycoon.
Diana felt vastly better, though she was not looking forward to trying to convince her family that Cole wasn't some sort of manipulative monster and that she hadn't lost her senses.
To escape thinking of that scene, she tried to remember more about what had happened after Cole's plane took off from Las Vegas, but her memory was fuzzy. She remembered being impressed when she first saw the interior of his plane, and she remembered asking Cole if they could go to Las Vegas instead of Lake Tahoe, because she'd already been to Lake Tahoe. From then on, things began to blur and meld with her dreams. She wasn't certain whether her disjointed memories were real or only part of the vivid dreams that had pursued her while she slept, and she wasn't up to thinking hard enough to solve the mystery.
Rolling over, she shoved back the sheets and was surprised to discover that she was naked. Considering how inebriated she'd been last night, it was amazing that she'd managed to unfasten her gown and get undressed herself. It occurred to her that Cole might have had to undress her, but that mortifying possibility was more than she could bear to contemplate at the moment. It was then that Diana realized she had nothing to wear except the purple silk gown she'd worn last night. The dining room at the Grand Balmoral was a favorite for Sunday afternoon dinner, and the prospect of walking through the hotel lobby in that gown, added to everything else that lay ahead, was enough to make her lie back for a moment in exhausted dread. She couldn't phone her family and ask them to bring clothes to the hotel, because she didn't want to explain about this whole escapade while she was in Cole's suite. With a sigh of resignation, Diana climbed out of bed.

Chapter 30


Cole looked up when she emerged from the bedroom with her hair still wet from her shower and her slender body completely engulfed in one of the hotel's thick terry-cloth robes. Her bare toes peeped from beneath the hem of the robe, which should have stopped at mid-calf, and the shoulder seams fell to her elbows. Last night, Cole had thought she couldn't possibly look more desirable than she had in that provocative purple gown, but he'd been wrong. Wrapped in an oversize robe, with her face scrubbed free of makeup and her thick russet hair falling damply at her neck, Diana Foster had the dewy freshness of a rose at dawn.
He laid the Sunday Houston Chronicle on the coffee table and stood up. "You're looking better," he told her.
She gave him a weak smile. "I've decided to be very brave and try to go on living."
Chuckling at her quip, he gestured toward a linen-covered table laden with platters of food. "When I heard you turn on the shower, I phoned room service and had them send up some food."
She looked at the eggs and bacon and pancakes and shuddered. "I'm not that brave."
Ignoring her protest, Cole walked over to the table and pulled out a chair for her. "You have to eat."
She sighed, but she padded over to the table, slid into the chair, and unfolded her napkin.
"How do you feel?" Cole inquired, sitting down across from her.
"The same way I look." As she spoke, the oversize robe slipped off her left shoulder, leaving it bare, and she pulled it back in place.
"That good?" he said.
The warmth in his deep voice and the bold admiration in his eyes did astonishing things to Diana's heartbeat, a reaction that was so unexpected and so strong that her cheeks grew hot. With a faint smile, she quickly dropped her gaze from his and reminded herself that he was merely playing a part, living up to his promise to make her happy during the tenure of their bargain. A bargain—that was all it was to him, and to her. The problem was, she didn't know how she could possibly make her family understand that.
She reached for a slice of dry toast and lapsed into silence, trying to anticipate the scene with her family later. Cole had insisted on being with her when she told them they were married, and she appreciated his honorable desire to buffer, or share, the results of an action he had instigated. She didn't expect them to make any sort of angry scene, but Grandma in particular was likely to have some strong opinions and she wasn't likely to withhold them on Cole's account or Diana's.
Cole watched her expression grow increasingly somber as each minute passed. "Can I help?" he offered finally.
She glanced up with a guilty start. "I'm afraid not." When he continued to regard her in waiting silence, Diana conceded to his silent instruction and told him what was worrying her. "I just don't know how to explain to my family that I married a virtual stranger on an impulse and for purely practical reasons. I mean, once they calm down, they'll begin to understand. Not agree probably, but understand."
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is that I'm dreading their reaction when they discover what we did. I'm going to give them the shock of a lifetime."
"Not necessarily."
"What do you mean?"
"You made some phone calls from my plane."
Diana gaped at him. "Who did I call?"
"Marge Crumbaker."
Relief restored a little color to her cheeks. "Marge is an old family friend." In case he'd forgotten, she added, "Marge used to be the society columnist for the Houston Post, but the Post went out of business. So in this instance, that's good."
"When you finished telling her the news, you called Maxine Messenger."
"That's bad." Diana's heart sank at the mention of the Houston Chronicle's society columnist; then she brightened. "Did I ask Maxine to keep it confidential?"
"I'm afraid not," Cole replied, intrigued by the play of emotions across her expressive face. "There wouldn't have been much point in asking her to keep it confidential, anyway."
"Please don't tell me I called anyone else."
"Okay."
She stared at him through suspicion-narrowed eyes "I did call someone else, didn't I?"
"Eat something. You'll feel better."
She picked up her spoon, nudged a red cherry off the top of a half grapefruit, and lifted a bite toward her lips.
"Who else did I call?"
"Larry King."
Denial and self-disgust reduced her voice to a choked whisper. "Are you telling me," she enunciated in dire tones, "that I actually called CNN in the middle of the night and asked to talk to Larry King?"
"I'm afraid so. He wasn't there, however."
"Thank God!"
"So you talked to some man in the newsroom instead."
She shook her head, groping desperately for a reason to be optimistic, and she hit on a lame one. "I have a common name, and besides, my grandfather is the one who's popular with men. I'm associated with the magazine and most of our readers are women. There's no way that newsman at CNN would have recognized little old me by name or reputation."
"Possibly not," Cole said. "But he recognized 'little old me' by name and reputation."
"You should have stopped me!" she moaned. "You should have taken the phone away. No, you should have pushed me out of the plane. At least if I were dead, my body wouldn't feel as bad as it does."
Unable to suppress a grin, he nodded at the plate of food in front of her and refused to say another word until she complied with his order. "Finish your grapefruit and have some more orange juice and a little of that egg."
She gazed at the three items and shuddered a little. "Everything looks so… so yellow. The grapefruit, the egg, the orange juice. The color is hurting my eyes."
"That's what happens when you drink too much."
"Thank you for that unnecessary lecture on a subject for which I can now qualify for a Ph.D."
"You're welcome," Cole said with unshakable good humor. "Eat some toast. It's brown, so it shouldn't hurt your eyes."
"It has butter on it, and that's yellow."
"Stop it, Diana," he said on a chuckle. "I don't feel so great either, but I refuse to get sick on my first morning as your husband."
"I'm sorry." She picked up a piece of toast and looked at him, her expression so troubled that Cole felt genuinely sorry for treating her concerns lightly and for trying to avoid more questions. "What's wrong?" he said gently.
"Tell me the truth—when I was calling those people, did I sound happy? Or intoxicated?"
"You sounded happy and like you'd possibly had a little to drink," Cole said diplomatically, "but I doubt they'd think much about that. Brides frequently have a little too much champagne on their wedding night."
"A little too much?" Diana repeated with shame. "I was disgustingly drunk—"
"You weren't disgusting," Cole argued with a tiny smile tugging at the left corner of his mouth.
Somewhat reassured, but undeterred, Diana added, "I was insensible—!"
"Not entirely," he gallantly contradicted.
"I drank so much I must have passed out in the plane." She nibbled tentatively at the toast, then took a full bite before putting the slice back down.
"No," he argued reassuringly, "you fell asleep after a long, stressful evening."
"Why, it's a miracle I didn't throw up—!" Unconsciously, Diana paused, expecting him to deny that as well.
Instead, he quirked a brow at her. Silence. Assent.
"Oh, I didn't!" she breathed, dropping her face into her hands.
"You felt better afterward," he pointed out kindly.
She let her hands fall away and drew in a deep breath. "Did I do anything else?"
"You told me a few very funny jokes." He helped himself to some eggs.
"I had strange dreams all night—they were so vivid they were more like hallucinations—but I can't remember all of them, and I'm not sure if what I do remember actually happened, or if it was part of those dreams. What I mean is, have I forgotten anything else that's important?" She picked up the slice of toast, but instead of taking a bite she looked directly at Cole.
Define 'important, ' Cole thought, remembering the way she had ensconced herself in his lap shortly after takeoff on the way back to Houston. While the jet hurtled skyward, she had laughingly told him nursery rhymes with silly, altered endings that made the rhymes seem hilarious.
He remembered the way she had pressed her lips to his for a small kiss, and later when he deepened the kiss, she had slid her hand beneath his tuxedo jacket and curved it around his neck, tentative at first, and then yielding, and then holding his mouth locked to hers. While the plane streaked through the predawn sky at cruising altitude, he had struggled to keep things from getting too far out of hand, while his delectable wife engaged in playful, inebriated, and astonishingly effective tactics aimed at seeing how far his control could be stretched before it broke.
He lost a little of it at thirty-two thousand feet, and stretched out on the sofa, bringing her down on top of him. This morning, he was having problems trying to forget things that she couldn't remember at all. On the other hand, her lack of recall was for the best, since there would never be a repetition of that. "Nothing worth remembering," Cole said.
"I know I did something else. I remember watching the casinos go by from the car and thinking how brilliant the lights were and how exciting it all seemed." She took another bite of the toast and realized she was feeling a little bit better.
She saw Cole's expression shift from gravity to poorly concealed amusement, and in her anxiety, she crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. "I did something while we were there, didn't I?" she demanded. Her fevered imagination conjured up an image of an inebriated woman in a purple gown trying to climb on stage and dance with the showgirls. Or, dear God, were they strippers? "Whatever I did, it was awful, wasn't it?" she said weakly.
"That depends. Are you morally or religiously opposed to gambling?"
"No."
"Then it wasn't awful."
Diana threw up her hands in joyous relief and cast her eyes heavenward. "I gambled!" she cried.
In the space of a few hours Cole had seen her switch from solemnity to panic to relief to humor, and it occurred to him that no matter her mood, he thoroughly enjoyed her company. He always had. With a sideways smile, she picked up her fork and took a bite of scrambled egg. "How did I do?"
"Not bad."
"I lost," she concluded with a muffled laugh, her happiness and her appetite remarkably unspoiled by that discovery. When Cole nodded, she reached for the orange juice and drank a little. "How much did I lose?"
"At the roulette table? Or at baccarat? Or at the slot machine?"
She put the glass down, nonplussed. "I lost at all three?"
"Yes, but I stopped you before you got into a high-stakes poker game," he added as he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.
"How long were we at the casino?"
"Not long—a half hour."
"Then I couldn't have lost very much," Diana said, but something in his carefully noncommittal expression made her pause. "How much did I lose?"
"About three thousand dollars."
She was appalled, but she nodded and said very formally, "I'll write you a check."
"That's not necessary."
"I insist. A lady must always pay her own gambling debts," she quoted with humorous finality, as if she'd learned it in finishing school.
She wasn't merely beautiful and intelligent and witty, she was obstinate as hell, Cole realized. But then, so was he. "And a gentleman always pays for the honeymoon," he countered firmly.
Unfortunately, by referring to a thirty-minute stop in a casino as a "honeymoon," he had inadvertently made a mockery of the word and a mockery of the abrupt, unromantic wedding that preceded it. He realized this as soon as he'd said it, and so did Diana. Her smile faded, but he noted that she didn't grow angry or hurt. She simply… readjusted to reality.
"I wish you hadn't let me make those phone calls from the plane," she said instead.
"I didn't stop you because it was to your benefit and to your company's benefit for the public to find out as soon as possible that you'd married me." He hadn't stopped her because of that and also because her phone calls to the media had eliminated any possibility that she could back out of their bargain this morning. On this point, however, he wisely kept his thoughts to himself, and she cooperated by changing the subject to something more neutral.
"At least I understand now why I kept dreaming of slot machines. Except that in my dream, the slot machine was gigantic—taller than you and at least five feet wide."
"That wasn't a dream."
"Really?" she said with well-bred interest, but it wasn't a question, it was a courteous statement. She had retreated behind a wall of pleasant reserve, which was her norm, and Cole switched his thoughts to business details, which was his.
"We have some practical details to discuss, but we can do it on the way to see your family."
She nodded, looked at her watch, and got up. "It will be five o'clock by the time we get there. Corey had to retake some shots for the magazine, so the crew should be wrapping up when we get there."
With her hand on the bedroom door she stopped and turned. "Last night I walked off with my grandmother's purse instead of my own. Since I didn't have any identification with me, how did we get married?"
Cole was pouring coffee into his cup and he glanced up, his expression wry. "Actually that caused a minor problem for a few minutes, but the wedding chapel belongs to a man and his wife. She recognized you, and with the help of an extra hundred dollars, her husband agreed that was proof enough of your true identity."
Diana accepted that with a nod, her thoughts turning to the problem of clothing. "It's a good thing I left my car with the valet last night, or I wouldn't be able to get into my apartment to change clothes."