“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?” DlANA 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.
r /> “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.