Remember When

  Cole was used to being treated with awe, with fear, and even with veiled hostility, but he was always treated with respect, and he was never, ever treated with relaxed cordiality, let alone impertinence. Diana introduced him to everyone in all the departments, where Cole was subjected to everything from stern admonitions to take care of Diana to smiling remarks about the difference in their height ensuring that he would be head of the family to flagrant comments about his physical attributes. At first he was astonished, and then he found it amusing. A perky twenty-year-old in the layout department complimented his tie, and a wheelchair-bound artist asked him how long he had to work out each day to stay in such great shape. When they left the sales department, another woman made a remark about his build that made him glance at Diana in disbelief.

  “What did she just say?” he demanded in a whisper.

  Diana kept her laughing face lowered. “She said you have ‘great buns.’ ”

  “That’s what I thought she said.” After a moment he glanced at her. “The woman in the last department—the one with the ink on her hands—liked my tie. Thank you for loaning it to me.”

  That morning he’d realized the only tie he’d brought along as a spare had a black background, not dark blue, as he’d thought. Diana solved the problem by going into her bedroom and emerging with a tie box. “I loved this when I saw it,” she explained, “so I bought it for—someone.”

  Cole assumed from her pause that she’d bought it for Penworth, and even though it was a little brighter than the conservative ones he normally wore, he was glad to have it.

  “It isn’t a loan, it’s a gift,” Diana said simply. “And it wasn’t for Dan. When I see things I like, I buy them to have on hand.”

  The press conference was scheduled to take place in Diana’s large office, where thirty reporters and photographers had already crowded. Outside the door, Diana stopped and turned, straightening the knot in his tie in an ordinary wifely gesture that seemed so much more intimate under their unusual circumstances. “Perfect,” she announced.

  Cole thought she looked “perfect” in her lemon silk dress with its jaunty white collar and wide white cuffs, and the bold admiration in his gaze told her that. The unspoken compliment made her fingers curl inside his handclasp as she stepped forward and opened the door to her noisy, crowded office.

  The first thing Cole noticed was that Diana’s grandparents, her mother, and Corey were near the front by her desk. It was a show of family solidarity that shocked and touched Cole as he walked to the front of the room while cameras flashed and Minicams whirred.

  The next thing he noticed was that the atmosphere at this press conference was vastly different from that of any other of his experience. There was no hostility or suspicion in evidence. Instead of shouting loaded questions at him that were filled with innuendo, they joked about his longstanding bachelorhood and teased Diana about a woman’s right to change her mind—a remarkably gallant way of ignoring Penworth’s defection that surprised and pleased Cole. Diana bore it with unflappable serenity, her smile never wavering.

  “How long have you known each other?” someone called.

  “We first met when Cole was in college,” Diana replied, each of them taking a turn with an answer, as Cindy had suggested they do.

  “When’s the honeymoon?”

  “Later this week, when we can both clear our schedules,” Cole answered, referring to their trip to visit Cal.

  “Where are you going?”

  Diana opened her mouth to reply, but Cole interceded. “You are the last people on earth we’d tell,” he replied with a joking affability that was in complete opposition to his hostile reputation with the press.

  The whole thing went off without a hitch until the very last question was called out to Cole by a thin, bespectacled man in the first row. “Mr. Harrison, would you care to comment on the rumor that the Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing an investigation into possible improprieties in connection with the Cushman deal?”

  He felt, rather than saw, Diana stiffen, and Cole had an almost uncontrollable impulse to yank the little weasel off his feet and throw him through the window. To everyone’s astonishment, particularly Cole’s, it was Diana’s grandmother who waded in with her verbal fists raised. “Young man,” she warned the forty-year-old journalist in an irate voice, “I can tell you’ve been eating chemical fertilizers on your food and they’re affecting your disposition!”

  The entire room erupted with laughter that lingered as the news people filed out of Diana’s office. Cole’s limousine was waiting outside to take him to the airport so that he could be at his Dallas office for a meeting in an hour and a half. He was furious with the reporter and touched by the presence of his temporary relatives, particularly Diana’s grandmother. He looked at the Fosters and was at an utter loss for what to say. For lack of knowing any other way to handle it, he sent a general smile in their direction; then he leaned down and pressed a brotherly kiss to Diana’s cheek. “I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  He closed the door behind him, leaving the family alone in Diana’s office. Henry Britton was the first to speak. “I wonder,” he said, staring thoughtfully at the closed door, “how long it’s been since anyone spoke up for that boy.”

  * * *

  Corey stayed behind to help Diana straighten up her office. Spence’s negative remarks about Cole’s allegedly questionable business practices revolved in her mind in tandem with the reporter’s alarming reference to an SEC investigation.

  She picked up a gum wrapper and a scrap of paper from the pale blue carpet. As she pushed four chairs back into place at the far end of the room, Diana walked over to her desk and perched a hip on the edge of it, watching her. “Corey?”

  Corey looked up with a bright smile as she carefully lifted one of the pieces of Steuben crystal from Diana’s collection, a beautiful peacock, off a bookshelf and returned it to its rightful place in the exact center of a small conference table. “Hmm?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Corey stepped back to check the position of the peacock in relation to the crystal candy bowl and moved the bowl two inches to the left. “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I’m the compulsive organizer, remember? You’re the gerbil who likes clutter.”

  Corey jerked her hand away from the pieces of glass candy she’d been about to sort by shapes and swung around. “It’s just that reporters always make me feel uneasy.”

  “Particularly,” Diana speculated with a knowing smile, “when they make insulting innuendoes about your new brother-in-law?”

  “Particularly then,” Corey admitted with a sigh. She couldn’t bear to tell Diana that Spence had his own doubts about Cole’s integrity, but she couldn’t leave Diana without some sort of warning either. “Spence said yesterday that Cole has made a lot of enemies over the years.”

  “Of course he has,” Diana replied without concern. “The only way to avoid making enemies is not to succeed in anything.”

  That made perfect sense, but what impressed Corey most, as she looked at Diana, was her sister’s ability to be calm and logical at such a time. Perched on the edge of her desk with every shining hair neatly in place and her trim figure set off by a bright silk dress, she looked more like a fashion model than a CEO.

  She had founded a thriving corporation and she managed to run it without losing any of her femininity or humanity.

  Corey smiled and spoke her thought aloud. “You do us women proud, Sis,” she said softly, then she vanished with a cheerful salute.

  * * *

  When she left, Diana stared dreamily into space, remembering the tender, unforgettable things Cole had said last night and thinking of the honeymoon that would begin on Thursday. By the time she surfaced to reality and glanced at her watch, she realized she wouldn’t have time to call Doug until after the production meeting. She didn’t want him to hear about her marriage on the news; she wanted to tell him herself.
br />   Doug was pacing back and forth in her office when she returned from her meeting, and judging from the ominous look on his face, he was not happy for her. As a precaution, Diana closed her office door, and the instant the latch clicked into place, he exploded in a low, incensed voice, “Of all the stupid, irrational—I can’t believe you actually married that—that piece of slime! You’ve lost your mind! God, I could shake you!”

  Diana had intended to try to reason with him, but she was so annoyed by his description of Cole that she walked behind her desk instead. In angry silence, she stood there while Doug paced back and forth in front of her, raking his hands through the sides of his hair like a man demented. “You have to unload him, now. Today. Make an announcement that he drugged you, do anything, but get away from him and stay away from him. He’s not fit to be in the same room with you. Shoveling manure is all he’s fit to do!”

  “Why, you snob!” Diana burst out.

  “If despising a corporate mobster makes me a snob, then I guess I am one.”

  “How dare you talk like this!” Diana burst out. “Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  Instead of quieting him down, her obstinance sent him over the edge. Slapping both hands on her desk, he leaned across it, his teeth clenched. “I am your friend. Now, do this for me—get rid of that sonofabitch!”

  “You’re being completely irrational.”

  He started pacing again. “What does it take to make you understand?” He stopped and turned to her again. “His days of wheeling and dealing on the stock exchange are over! The SEC is going to shut him down, and that’s only the beginning. When the federal government is done with him, he’ll go to jail where he belongs, just like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. The state of Texas will shut him down here, too. When everyone is finished with him, he’s going to be a broke ex-convict!”

  Diana was shaken, but she managed to sound reasonably calm. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the Cushman deal was dirty. He’s a cheat and a manipulator. He’s an animal!”

  “Tell me why you’re saying this. Give me one piece of evidence, instead of just gossip.”

  “I can’t!” he bit out.

  “Then, please,” she said softly, holding out her hand to him, “don’t start believing in rumors. Trust my judgment. Be happy for me.”

  At last, he calmed down, but his sudden sadness was worse than his anger. “Diana, I would have walked in front of a truck for you if you’d asked me to do it, but I cannot be happy for you, and I cannot help you if you stay married to him.”

  “I intend to stay married to him,” she said with a quiet conviction that surprised even her.

  His face paled as if she had slapped him. “That bastard really has a way with females of all ages, doesn’t he? Even you. He can get you to do anything.”

  Diana assumed Doug had known that all of Diana’s teenage girlfriends had crushes on Cole, and she refused to respond to that or his parting shot. Her throat hurt with tears as her lifelong friend stalked to the door of her office.

  “Doug?” she said, her voice strained with hurt.

  He turned, his face set. “Yes.”

  “Good-bye,” she whispered achingly.

  Chapter 41

  COLE COULD HARDLY BELIEVE IT had been only a few days since he’d walked through the doors of Unified’s executive office building. He had married Diana Foster. He had actually done that. The thought made him smile as he walked past the startled receptionist.

  To add to his feeling of unreality, everything seemed to have changed since he last was here. When he drove onto the grounds a few minutes ago, the manicured grass suddenly reminded him of emerald velvet, and the lake, shimmering blue crystals. He’d commented on the remarkably fine day and unusually bright sky to his chauffeur, and although the driver agreed at once, he had been shocked that his normally silent employer had taken a moment for idle conversation.

  They didn’t really notice the difference in the surroundings, Cole knew.

  Because they hadn’t just married Diana Foster. They didn’t know how sweet she was, or how funny, or how brave and beautiful. Their wives had probably never packed up snake repellent to take on a camping trip or sobbed during their own wedding and then sat on their lap and told them jokes in a plane. Their wives had probably never worn a royal purple silk gown and walked through a ballroom like a queen, then gotten tipsy on champagne and called CNN to announce their marriage. . . .

  An executive staff meeting was just breaking up as Cole walked past secretarial cubicles and neared his office. A dozen of his executives filed out of the conference room, including Dick Rowse and Gloria Quigley from public relations, and Allan Underwood, the vice president of human resources. They looked at him with uncertain smiles, and finally Allan Underwood broke the ice. “What a surprise!” he said to Cole, referring, Cole knew, to his marriage to Diana. The others immediately chimed in with a chorus of remarks.

  “Congratulations, Cole.”

  “It’s great!”

  “So nice!”

  “Terrific!”

  “Wonderful.”

  Cole was in a hopelessly lighthearted mood. “Oh—so you all like my new tie that well?”

  “Your new what?” Gloria said blankly.

  “My tie,” Cole said, but he couldn’t quite control the smile that lifted a corner of his mouth or gleamed in his eyes. “It’s brighter than the ones I usually wear.”

  “I meant your new—”

  “Yes?”

  “Wife.”

  “Oh, yes,” Cole replied, losing the battle to hide his smile. “She gave me the tie.”

  He turned and headed off to his office.

  Behind him the executives gaped at each other. “Was he serious about the tie?” Underwood asked the others.

  Gloria rolled her eyes at him. “No, it was a joke!”

  “Cole never jokes,” Dick Rowse said.

  “He does now,” Gloria said and sauntered down the hall to her own office.

  * * *

  “Congratulations, Mr. Harrison,” Cole’s secretary said with a formal smile as she followed him into his office, notepad in hand. “I’m a great fan of the whole Foster family,” Shirley Forbes confided.

  “So am I,” Cole said with an answering smile as he opened his briefcase on the desk and began removing the files he’d taken with him. Unable to dwell any longer on Diana, he turned his attention to pressing business matters. “Tell John Nederly I want to see him.”

  Shirley nodded. “He’s called twice already, asking to see you.”

  “Congratulations on your marriage, Cole,” Nederly said as he walked in. “My wife called me with the news an hour ago. She’s excited about the prospect of meeting Miss Foster someday. She’s a big fan.”

  Cole wasted no time on niceties. “Close the door,” he replied curtly. “Now, what the hell is going on?” he demanded, leaning back in his chair and studying one of Harvard Law School’s most gifted graduates with a frown of extreme displeasure. “This morning a reporter informed me during a press conference that I’m under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

  Nederly shook his head. “You’re not.”

  Cole’s frown cleared, but only for a moment.

  “The SEC has asked the New York Stock Exchange to investigate the Cushman buyout, which is the first step, and that’s what’s happening now.”

  “Then what?”

  “The SEC reports directly to Congress so they have oversight powers, which means that regardless of what the NYSE finds, the SEC will review it and make their own decision.

  “If they think there’s evidence of probable wrongdoing, you’ll be subpoenaed to appear at a hearing before an administrative law judge of the SEC. If the SEC judge rules against you, he’ll turn it over to the federal courts, and you’ll probably be subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. There’s no way of knowing what they’ll try to charge you with—stock manipulation is a sure thing, so is
general fraud. They won’t hit you with providing false information unless they can prove we falsified the testing information.”

  “Tell me something,” Cole said in a low, furious voice, “don’t you think the last part of that recitation is a little premature?”

  Nederly looked down at his suit and flicked a speck off his trouser leg. “Maybe I was showing off my superior knowledge,” he tried to joke.

  “Or?” Cole snapped.

  Nederly sighed. “Or maybe I don’t have a good feeling about this, Cole. The NYSE investigation is moving forward at an unusually fast pace, and I’ve already heard a rumor from a semireliable source that the NYSE investigation is just a routine formality. The SEC already thinks there’s reasonable cause to subpoena you before their own judge.”

  “What ‘reasonable cause’?” Cole said scornfully.

  “One week, Cushman’s stock is selling at twenty-eight dollars a share and rising because they’re working on a new microprocessor. The next week rumors start circulating all over Wall Street and the media that the new chip is unreliable. The stock drops to fourteen dollars, and you offer to buy the whole company. It looks suspicious as hell!”

  “Let’s not forget I paid nineteen dollars a share, not fourteen dollars.”

  “Which you had to do in order to buy the entire company. I’m not denying that Cushman’s shareholders got a good deal when you exchanged their stock for ours. They got an even better deal because you arranged a tax-free exchange.”

  “Then what the hell are they bitching about?”

  “I said, it looks bad on the surface.”

  “I don’t give a damn about how things look—”

  John shook his head, his expression solemn. “I think you’d better start.”

  “Is that your best legal advice?”

  “There’s nothing else you can do right now.”

  “Like hell,” Cole said in a savage voice; then he pushed his intercom button. “Shirley, get me Carrothers and Fineberg in Washington on the phone. I’ll talk to either one of them.”