Remember When

  On a table beside the sofa her pager was beeping and the light on her answering machine was flashing. She went directly to the pager. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said, dialing the telephone with one hand and holding her pager in the other. “There’s a call on here from Cindy Bertrillo, who handles public relations for us,” she explained.

  “Why don’t I make the drinks,” Cole suggested.

  She sent him a brief smile of gratitude, listening to the phone ringing. Tipping her head toward the right, she said, “There’s a liquor cabinet in the island in the kitchen. Plain Coke for me, please.” No one answered at Cindy’s house, so she hung up the phone and pressed the playback button on the answering machine.

  She had eleven messages, ten of which were from friends and acquaintances wanting to ask her about Cole Harrison. The last few calls referred to a newscast at six P.M. that showed a videotape of Cole Harrison presenting her with the forty-thousand-dollar necklace. She skipped through those as soon as she got the gist of the call.

  The last one was from Cindy Bertrillo, twenty minutes ago: “Diana, this is Cindy. I just got back from my sister’s in Austin, and I had some really weird calls from the media on my machine. I tried to reach you at your folks’ house, and they said you were on your way home. I need to give you the press release on the new Holidays by Hand kits we’ll be offering soon, so I’ll run over there now and tell you about the messages in person. I didn’t say anything to your parents,” she added with a smothered laugh, “but wait until you hear the stories that are going around! If you aren’t there, I’ll leave the press release with the doorman. Bye.”

  The buzzer at the door sounded before Diana could touch the rewind button, and Diana braced herself. Cindy and she traveled together whenever Diana did television or radio appearances, and they had more than a formal employer-employee relationship; they had become friends over the years. Cindy knew perfectly well that Diana had been engaged to Dan for two years; she also knew the names of most of the men Diana had gone out with before that, and Cole Harrison hadn’t been one of them.

  Cindy rushed in like a fresh breeze, tanned, smiling, and brimming with inexhaustible energy. “The rumor mill has outdone itself,” she announced cheerfully, shoving her sunglasses up onto her head and following Diana over to the sofa. Diana was too tense to sit, and Cindy was clearly too wound up to sit, so they faced each other across the cocktail table as Cindy burst out with her news: “You are not going to believe this!” she began. “What did you do last night—dance with Cole Harrison, or did you just smile at him?”

  “Yes,” Diana said weakly, unable to summon the courage to make her announcement a moment sooner than she had to. “I mean, I did both.”

  “Well, wait until you hear what the press is making out of that!” she said, choking back a laugh so she could go on. “The business editor at the Chronicle, an Associated Press reporter, and a producer at the Financial News Network all left messages on my machine wanting confirmation of the rumor that Foster Enterprises wants to merge with Unified Industries!” She threw her hands up in laughing disbelief. “That’s as absurd as a guppy trying to merge with a shark!”

  She saw Diana’s gaze shift toward the kitchen. “Wait, you haven’t heard the best part,” she said. Diana’s attention returned to her, and she announced with a laugh, “Some woman, who said she was you, called CNN and Maxine Messenger and said she’d just married Cole Harrison! Can you believe it?”

  “No,” Diana admitted truthfully. “Not yet.”

  “The producer at CNN said the woman sounded like she might have been drinking. Also, all four of our local stations want the true story. Now, what shall I say when I call them back?”

  In the doorway, Cole watched with amused admiration as a becoming pink blush tinted Diana’s porcelain cheeks, then deepened when Cindy said, “Shall I call the rumors of your marriage to Harrison ‘ludicrous’ or ‘simply ridiculous’? Or do you want to take a softer approach?”

  A deep baritone voice made Cindy’s head jerk toward the doorway as a dark-haired man raised his glass to his mouth and suggested blandly, “Personally, I’d take the softer approach.”

  Shock momentarily overcame her manners. “You’d what? Who are you?”

  The glass lowered, revealing a very familiar face. “I am the shark who married the guppy last night,” he said drolly.

  Cindy sank down on the arm of the sofa. “Hanging is too good for me,” she murmured in a small, meek voice.

  She recovered and stood up as he came to stand beside Diana and slid his arm around her waist. “I’m Cindy Bertrillo,” she said gravely, offering her hand across the table. “I used to be public relations director for Foster Enterprises.”

  Cole had expected Diana to voice some sort of sharp reprimand, which was what he would have done in similar circumstances, but as he silently shook the publicist’s hand, he wasn’t completely indifferent to her misery or her humor.

  Diana and Cole spent a few minutes bringing Cindy up to date with the fact of their marriage, after which the publicist turned her considerable talents toward dealing with a public announcement. It soon became apparent that the best method for all concerned was to give a short press conference midmorning the following day. Although the publicist never said it, Cole sensed that, from a public relations standpoint, she was delighted to have Diana free of the stigma of Penworth’s desertion, and she positively lit up when she realized that Diana and Cole had known each other for years.

  When the meeting was concluded, Diana showed her out. Then Diana walked into the kitchen, where Cole was filling a water glass from the faucet. “Where would you like to sleep tonight?” she asked.

  His gaze swerved to her. “What are my choices?”

  “Here,” Diana said innocently, “or the Balmoral.”

  “Here.”

  She nodded. “Why don’t you call your pilots and tell them of the change of plans and then bring your suitcase up, and I’ll get the guest bedroom ready.”

  Chapter 39

  FOR SOME REASON, MEMORIES OF last night’s dream began to play through Diana’s mind as soon as she went to work putting fresh sheets on the bed in the guest bedroom. It had seemed so real, and yet . . . not. That strange, floating bed, the demon lover who made her behave in ways she never normally would. Insistent mouth—gentle hands . . . tender . . . rough.

  She shook her head and reached for a pillowcase, embarrassed by the direction of her thoughts, but as she shoved a pillow into the case, the memories came back again, hovering at the edges of her mind. Blue lights. Small room, low ceiling, filled with steam or smoke or something that made everything look gray. Gray.

  Behind her, Cole strode silently into the room, carrying a black garment bag in his right hand and a briefcase in his left. “Could I—”

  With a stifled cry, Diana whirled around, her hand clutching a fistful of silk shirt over her heart, then she laughed. “Oh, it’s you . . .”

  He eyed her worriedly as he put his briefcase down at the foot of the bed. “Who were you expecting—Jack the Ripper?”

  “Something like that,” she said dryly, pulling the spread up and then folding a corner back.

  “Am I making you nervous?” he asked.

  She turned and watched him slowly strip off his jacket, hypnotized by the unexpected intimacy of the ordinary act. “No, of course not,” she untruthfully assured him. His eyes held hers as he dropped the jacket over a chair, loosened his tie, and pulled it free of his shirt collar. For one anxiety-filled moment, Diana thought he was going to undress right in front of her.

  A knowing smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he loosened the top button of his white shirt. “I am making you nervous.”

  She thought quickly for something to blame her reaction on, and came up with a partial truth. “It has nothing to do with you, really. While you were getting your luggage out of the car, I started thinking of a dream I had last night. It was—well—a very um . . . graphic . . . dr
eam in some ways. It seemed so real.”

  He unbuttoned the second button on his shirt, an odd gleam lighting his eyes. “What sort of a dream was it?”

  “Do you remember an early thriller movie called Rosemary’s Baby?”

  Cole thought back and remembered something about demonic possession, and then he nodded. “The woman in it was drugged and then forced to have sex with the devil.”

  Diana nodded and turned away, snapping on the lamp beside the bed. “Well,” she explained as she turned and headed toward the door, “last night, I was that woman.”

  Cole’s fingers froze on the third button of his shirt.

  Blithely unaware of the verbal blow she had just delivered, she sailed out of the room, turning in the doorway with her hand on the light switch. “Your bathroom is right through there. Can I get you anything before I go to bed?”

  “A large bandage might be nice,” he said sardonically.

  Diana’s eyes widened, sweeping quickly down the length of him, from his broad shoulders and white shirt to his black trousers and black loafers. “For what?”

  “For my ego, Diana.”

  Diana’s brain simply shut down. It blocked the pathways between hearing and logic. She nodded and backed out of the room. “Well. Good night.”

  * * *

  Safe behind the door of her own bedroom, Diana, like an automated machine, went about the routine of getting ready for bed. In the shower, she mentally recited the names of all the articles in the last three issues of Beautiful Living. As she blew her hair dry, she felt a compulsion to remember all the names of the students in her seventh-grade class. As she put on her pajamas, she began preparing her Christmas list.

  As she walked over to her dresser to change the wake-up time on her clock radio, she burst into tears.

  Snatching a handful of tissues from a box beside her bed, she marched over to the chaise longue at the far end of the room, flopped onto it, and gave free rein to the tears that had been building up inside her for days. For the first time since she’d picked up the Enquirer and read about Dan’s marriage, she gave in to self-pity. She wallowed in it. With her hands over her face and the tissues pressed to her eyes, she drew her knees up against her chest and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

  She thought about the way Dan had complimented her mind and her looks and used silence to criticize her body and her performance in bed. “Bastard,” she whispered, crying harder.

  She thought of the years she’d wasted, trying to juggle her schedule to suit his, only to have him marry a child bride. “Monster!” she wept, rocking back and forth.

  She thought of her insane marriage to Cole Harrison, and she cried harder. “Lunatic.”

  She thought of herself during her own wedding, swaying drunkenly on her feet and leaning back trying to mentally redecorate an arched trellis, and she moaned. “Idiot!”

  She thought of Cole this morning, gallantly nursing her through a hangover and grinning good-naturedly as he recounted her drunken antics of the night before.

  She thought of the dream that wasn’t a dream, of a bedroom in shades of misty gray aboard a private jet as it hurtled through the sky and finally slammed onto a runway, racing past blue lights.

  She thought of a man who tried to refuse her idiotic attempt at seduction. And didn’t. He’d made it very clear, and she’d agreed, that sexual and emotional intimacy were not to be part of their agreement. Then at the first possible moment, she’d thrown herself at him, and because Cole had always been kind, he’d overridden his personal aversion to the idea and made love to her.

  In return for his kindness, his thoughtfulness, his self-sacrifice, she had just delivered the ultimate insult by likening his lovemaking to a terrifying scene out of Rosemary’s Baby. He had so much pride and he was so sensitive to the disparity between their backgrounds that he must have been twice as much hurt by her remark as he’d been by her having forgotten the incident.

  A fresh stream of guilty tears poured from her eyes, and Diana leaned her forehead on her knees, her shoulders shaking with shame and sorrow.

  She wept until her head ached and the well of tears and regret finally ran dry; then she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. The minutes ticked past as she stared thoughtfully at the picture on the wall across the room, reevaluating the past and considering new plans for the future. She was going to hire more management personnel, delegate responsibility, and take time for herself—beginning with a long, relaxing vacation of about eight weeks. She’d go to Greece, she decided, take a luxury cruise around the islands, visit friends in Paris, explore Rome, see Egypt. She might even have a meaningless sexual fling. Maybe two. By contemporary standards, she was practically a nun. She was entitled to all of that, more than entitled. She would be careful not to violate her agreement with Cole by embarrassing him in any way.

  Cole. She thought through that situation for another minute, then got off the chaise longue and resolutely went to her closet for a robe. She owed Cole the most abject, sincere apology.

  * * *

  With his shoulder propped against the wall and his jaw clenched, Cole listened to the heartbroken sobs coming from the next room, punishing himself with the sound of her weeping. He was a pariah, Cole thought with a blaze of self-loathing, a devil who destroyed anyone he touched. He was a Harrison; he wasn’t fit to be around decent people. He’d had no right to think he could climb higher than any of the other Harrisons. He could make money, buy better clothes, clean himself up, get rid of his accent, but he couldn’t get rid of the filth of Kingdom City that was stuck to his soul—it thrived in his genes.

  There were any number of women he could have made his bargain with, actresses, waitresses, or one of the bored, brittle socialites who were as morally and spiritually bankrupt as he was. Diana Foster wasn’t one of them; she was special. Exquisite. Alluring. Untouchable.

  Irresistible . . .

  He’d had no right to go near her last night, let alone convince her to marry him, and he’d been a filthy bastard to have sexual intercourse with her. He’d never meant for that to happen. He’d convinced himself it wouldn’t happen. His convictions and self-control had lasted less than one damned day! He’d said she’d hurt his ego. He had no right to an ego where she was concerned.

  He thought of her accomplishments and he was so damned proud of her it made his chest ache. He looked around at the sound of a soft knock on the door. “Cole, may I speak to you for a minute?”

  He told her to come in, and she entered his room wearing a simple white silk robe with her monogram in navy blue on the pocket, a handkerchief clutched in her hand, and Cole’s long-dead conscience reared up with a vengeance. Twenty-four hours ago, she walked into a hotel with the proud carriage of a queen. After one day of marriage to Cole Harrison, she looked like a woebegone waif. A year from now, if she stayed married to him, she’d probably look as bedraggled and hopeless as his mother.

  “Diana—” he said, his voice carefully expressionless.

  She shook her head to silence him and her hair glowed like copper in the lamplight. “Please sit down,” she said shakily, walking over to a pair of overstuffed chairs angled toward each other with a reading lamp between them. “I have some things I need to tell you,” she said, waiting until he’d sat down beside her.

  She was going to try to call the whole deal off. “I think I already know what you want to say,” he said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees.

  “First of all, I want to apologize for the childish way I’ve behaved about this whole thing. I’ve been absurdly concerned about what people will think, and I’m ashamed of that. I’m very proud of being married to you, and beginning tomorrow, no one will have reason to ever think otherwise.”

  Cole stared at her pale face, his dark brows drawn into a frown of utter disbelief.

  She lowered her eyes to her lap and studied her folded hands; then she looked up and met his gaze directly. “Next, I want to tell you how much I regret what
happened in the plane last night.”

  “I don’t want to run the risk of looking too far afield for explanations,” he said wryly, “but is it possible that last night happened because we are attracted to each other? I sure as hell wanted you. And I know you wanted me.” The sudden glamour of his lazy smile was almost as effective as his admission. “In fact,” he said softly, “I have it from an unimpeachable source that you used to want me, a long time ago.”

  She stood up slowly and so did he. “I refuse to regret or apologize for what happened last night,” he said. “We wanted each other. It was as simple as that. We’re about to spend a week together. We’re married.”

  Diana felt herself falling under the spell of that rich baritone voice.

  “More importantly, we like each other, and we’re friends. Is there any part of that you don’t agree with?”

  “No,” she said, searching his somber face. “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that you consider having a real honeymoon with me when we’re at the ranch. Don’t answer me now,” he said. “Think about it. Will you?”

  Diana hesitated. “Yes.”

  “In that case,” he said, pressing a brotherly kiss to her forehead, “I suggest you get out of here, before I decide to try to rush you into another major step in your life.”

  Chapter 40

  COLE HAD BECOME ACCUSTOMED TO being watched by members of both sexes if they recognized him when he walked into an office building, but he had never been subjected to a frank scrutiny anything like the one he was treated to when he arrived at Foster Enterprises that morning. Within minutes, it became obvious that Diana had a much freer relationship with her staff than he had with his own, and it was also apparent that she was far better liked by the people who worked for her than was usual. Particularly in his case.