Diana’s gaze automatically followed her motion, and she tipped her head back. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“—‘Amazing’?” Corey said, shooting a hesitant look at Spence as he slowly stood up beside her. “Is that what you think it is?”
It happened then, the thing that Diana had subconsciously feared for hours—she started to laugh and she couldn’t stop. “Cole wouldn’t have laid a hand on Barbara! He lived in daily fear of us coming on to him. Remember how hard we all worked to get him to notice us?”
“I remember,” Corey admitted, but her brows remained pulled together in a watchful frown.
“It’s so funny . . . so hideously funny.”
“Is it? Funny?” Corey said cautiously, but she was beginning to believe Diana was thinking far more clearly than she’d first imagined when she saw her curled up in that chair.
“Yes, it is!” Diana said, nodding emphatically. “It’s hilarious. I know, because I was the one who kept the bets.”
“What bets?”
“The bets!” she laughed. “Everyone, including Barbara, put money into a box, and the first one to get Cole to kiss her was the winner.” Diana laughed harder. “I was the treasurer. And no one won!” Suddenly she turned her face into the chair and the laughter turned to wrenching sobs. “No one won!” she sobbed. “They’re destroying him . . . and no one ever won!”
Chapter 55
DIANA TRIED TO CALL COLE at home the next morning, but the man who answered his phone said that Mr. Harrison was at work. At his office Mr. Harrison’s secretary said he wasn’t in. Diana arrived at the obvious conclusion that she was a very dispensable commodity to men, and that Cole had just been amusing himself when they were together with Cal, playing with marriage. When other matters in his life became pressing, either he didn’t want to be bothered with her or he forgot that she existed! Her brain accepted that, but her heart rejected it and went on aching.
Somehow she made it through the day at work. In keeping with her resolution to delegate more responsibility, she spent most of the afternoon working closely with two of her executives, to be certain they were all thinking alike. No matter where she went or whom she saw in the building, she maintained a cheerful and pleasant face. Cole’s name and his current predicament actually came up several times in her presence, but it was simply a thoughtful effort by the people who worked for her to avoid acting as if he had either done something wrong or else died.
In retrospect, it was comical that she’d thought Dan’s defection such a disaster. This was a disaster.
She left the office at five-thirty and, at her family’s insistence, she drove to their house for dinner. Being there was even harder than being at the office. Unlike her employees, her family didn’t hesitate to voice their opinions about Cole’s situation or to insist that Diana talk about it, although Corey and Spence remained silent and supportive. Even Glenna had an opinion to express, but she, too, was part of the family. Besides, she was a flagrant eavesdropper. Everyone was sitting outside by the pool before dinner, when Glenna came out to tell Diana that she had an urgent call. The entire family brightened, thinking it was Cole.
“It’s a reporter,” Glenna said, holding a cordless phone in her hand with the hold light flashing.
“I don’t want to talk to any reporters,” Diana replied, and added to her family, “I don’t know how they’re getting this number, but we’re probably going to have to change it.”
“He wants to ask you about your divorce.”
Everyone stopped talking and stared at the housekeeper. “My what?”
“He says he wants a comment from you on the ‘grounds’ you’re going to use.”
Diana took the phone, said hello, and then listened for a moment. “Where did you hear that?” she demanded. “Well, I don’t think it’s actually ‘public knowledge,’ Mr. Godfrey,” Diana replied, slowly standing up, “because I don’t know anything about it. Good-bye,” she said, but a small feeling of hope was slowly dawning in Diana’s heart. She turned and ran to the nearest television set with her family in close pursuit. The screen lit up just in time for a local Houston newscast team to confirm what the newspaper reporter had just told Diana.
“There’s been a side development in the Cole Harrison-Unified Industries uproar,” the woman on the screen told her male counterpart. “Diana Foster, his wife of less than two weeks, is filing for divorce on unspecified grounds.”
“That didn’t last very long,” he said to the camera.
His coanchor nodded. “Sources close to Cole Harrison confirmed the rumor less than an hour ago. It seems that Diana Foster has chosen to disassociate herself and her company from the scandal brewing in Washington over Harrison’s takeover of Cushman Electronics.”
Henry Britton looked almost accusingly at Diana. “Is that what you’re going to do, Diana?”
Diana slowly shook her head, her eyes glowing with relief and happiness. “That’s what Cole wants me to do. Charles and Doug Hayward warned me to get rid of Cole so the scandal won’t spill over onto me. Now Cole is trying to make sure it won’t.”
Corey looked at her husband and quietly pointed out, “So much for the theory that Cole married her to help his public image. He just blew it to pieces for her.”
Diana didn’t hear that; she was thinking and planning.
“What are you going to do?” Gram asked, but Mary Foster already knew the answer to that. Putting her arm around Diana’s shoulders, she said with a soft laugh, “Diana is going to Dallas.”
Diana was definitely going to Dallas, and for a woman who once couldn’t function without a detailed schedule or leave on a short trip without lining every article of clothing with tissue paper, she accomplished that feat with amazing expediency. With Corey and her grandmother helplessly standing by, she stuffed whatever clothes she had at the house into two suitcases she owned; then she threw all her toiletries in on top of them. “That’s that,” she said, closing the last piece of luggage. After that she phoned her two top executives and told them they were in charge and to call her at Cole’s numbers if they had questions or problems.
She took care of the items on her filled calendar by turning to Corey and saying, “Tell Sally to cancel all my appointments.”
“What reason should she give everyone?”
“Tell everyone,” Diana said as she dragged the two heavy cases off her bed, “that I’m in Dallas. With my husband.”
By seven forty-five, Corey had dropped her off at the airport and Diana was in line to board her eight o’clock flight when she realized that the man who was sprinting past the rows of gates toward her was Spence. “Give this to Cole,” he said, taking an envelope out of his pocket. “Tell him I said it’s a belated wedding present and to use it if he absolutely has to as an equalizer.”
“What is it?” Diana asked, moving forward as the boarding process continued.
“It is the end of Doug’s political career,” Spence said somberly.
Chapter 56
THE MAN WHO ANSWERED THE intercom and looked at her through a tiny camera located at the gate of Cole’s estate was surprisingly easy to convince that Mrs. Harrison should be allowed to surprise her husband by being admitted without advance notice. In fact, the middle-aged man was positively beaming with delight as he showed her through the silent house to the back door that opened onto the patio surrounding the mammoth free-form swimming pool.
Cole was standing alone in the dark, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, his head tipped back as if he were looking up at the stars. Diana opened the door and silently slipped outside, watching him, trying to think where to begin when all she wanted to do was fling herself into his arms. She’d rehearsed a dozen opening speeches on the flight there, all of them designed to let her stay and face his trouble together with him. She’d thought of pleading, of reasoning, of demanding. She’d considered trying tears to weaken his resistance. But when the moment was finally upon h
er, she couldn’t seem to begin. She took a step forward and saw him stiffen with resistance the instant she spoke. “Cole?” He didn’t even turn his head or look at her. “What are you doing out here?”
“Praying.”
Tears stung her eyes when she remembered the way he had dismissed the idea as the last resort of fools—dreamers who won’t face the fact that they cannot have something. “What are you praying for?”
“I’ve been praying for you,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Diana walked into his arms. They closed around her, yanking her against him, while he buried his lips in hers. When he finally ended the kiss, he kept her crushed against his length, his jaw resting against her head, as if he were afraid to let her go for fear she would vanish. Content to stay there, she rubbed her cheek against his hard chest. “I love you.”
His hand slid up her back in a caress, and he brushed a kiss against her temple. “I know you do. The proof is in my arms.”
“I know why you’re having so much trouble with the SEC. Charles Hayward told me.”
He went very still. “He told you what?”
“I went to see him last night. He told me you got Barbara pregnant and she had to have an abortion. She can’t have children because of complications from it. She’s been in and out of intensive therapy programs for years.”
“He told you all that,” Cole said, leaning back and studying her with puzzlement and disbelief, “and you came here, to me?”
She smiled at him in the moonlight and nodded; then she cuddled closer in his arms again. “I know it isn’t true.”
“Because you believe in me?” he speculated, confused.
“Yes. And because back then we all had bets about who would get you to kiss them.”
A low chuckle rumbled in Cole’s chest beneath her ear. “And no one won,” he stated, understanding at once where she was going with that. With a smile in his voice, he whispered, “How much did you bet?”
His wife opened his shirt button and pressed a playful kiss on his chest. “Nothing. I only make idiotic bets in Las Vegas.”
They were on their way to the bedroom when Diana remembered what she’d brought to give him. “What’s this?” Cole asked, setting her suitcases at the foot of his bed. She handed him an envelope and a hand-decorated sack. He opened the envelope first and then the sack. Spencer Addison had sent him a brief history of Doug Hayward’s drunk-driving arrests, the last of which was while he was in law school and had resulted in serious injury to the face of the female passenger with him at the time.
Rose Britton had sent him a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies.
* * *
Even after they had made love, Diana couldn’t sleep. With her head resting in the crook of his arm, she stared out at the colorful waterfall beyond the bedroom’s glass wall.
“I used to wear you out,” Cole teased gently. “Now you lie awake pretending to sleep. That doesn’t bode well for the next fifty years.”
“What’s going to happen at the SEC hearing?”
She sounded wide awake and very worried. “Would it do any good to tell you not to worry?” he asked.
“None at all.”
He hesitated, hating to talk to her about the details of the snare that held him powerless right now, but she had a right to know and to understand. Based on his recollection of her camping trip stories and the way she ran her business, she had a greater fear of the unknown than of a visible threat.
“I know how stupid this sounds,” she murmured in the darkness, “but you had a thriving company without the Cushman microprocessor. After everything that’s happened, I wish you could just give it back to them along with their whole company.”
“I didn’t buy Cushman to get their chip. Intel is the leader at the high end. The low-end market is already being carved up into smaller and smaller pieces by a lot of foreign producers. In my opinion, the world doesn’t need another computer-chip provider.”
Diana rolled over onto her side and propped her head on her hand, facing him. “Then why in God’s name did you go to all that trouble to buy them?”
“I wanted some patents they held and didn’t know how to use. They owned a tiny piece of a puzzle that we needed in order to produce the most desired commodity in the world right now. We had everything else put together.”
“Which is?”
“Which is an ultra-long-life battery that would power laptop computers and cellular phones for days instead of hours. Everyone is working on one, and everyone is getting closer, including us, but whoever brings that battery to market first wins the game—and the stakes are almost beyond comprehension. The scientist who’s heading the project for me used to work for Cushman and he knew about the patent. He works off-site, in secret, in a lab he runs with a few assistants who don’t completely understand what he’s doing. Neither do I, for that matter. His assistants think he’s working on a super-thin computer/monitor television set, which he is—in his spare time.”
“Could you possibly sell Cushman back their chip and keep the patents?” she asked helpfully.
“Not a chance,” Cole said sardonically. “They don’t want that chip. Based on what I learned from a friend the other night, Cushman wants the profits we’ll make from that battery. The only chance they have of getting their hands on those profits is if they can convince the court that I cheated them by forcing the value of their stock down before I bought it.
“The patents were and are a matter of public record, so they can’t accuse me of having insider information or anything like that.”
Diana smoothed her fingers over the muscles of his stomach and chest. “What do you need to get out from under this right now?”
“I have a team of lawyers working on it. We’ll find a way,” Cole said with absolute conviction.
Satisfied that he would, Diana curled up against him and promptly fell asleep.
Cole was awake until dawn, because he already knew there wasn’t going to be “a way.” His lawyers had already told him to expect to be charged with fraud and to stand trial. Nothing short of a miracle would keep that from happening, he thought grimly. But then, Diana was lying in his arms, in his bed . . . and that was a miracle. She had come to be with him when everything she heard and saw should have made her run like hell. That was a bigger miracle.
Chapter 57
AT NOON THE NEXT DAY—two days before Cole was to leave for his hearing in front of the SEC administrator—he made certain he wasn’t being followed and took Diana with him to see Willard Bretling’s laboratory.
Located in an old part of the city, it looked like a derelict warehouse surrounded by old Cyclone fencing and guarded by snarling dogs. The few cars that were parked outside looked older than the building.
Inside, it was antiseptically clean with every kind of state-of-the-art electronics equipment.
“This is right out of—of a James Bond movie,” Diana exclaimed excitedly. Willard Bretling was thin and tall with slightly bent narrow shoulders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a perpetual, absentminded frown. He was standing at a table in a corner of the lab, arguing with his two assistants about how to use their new toaster oven.
“Ah, Cole!” he exclaimed. “Do you know how these damned things work?” He apologized to Diana, who was trying not to show her reaction to his dilemma. “Such knowledge is limited to those with lesser minds than ours,” he said. He smiled at her, and it was the first time Cole had ever seen the eccentric old man grin.
“If that’s the case,” Diana said, downplaying her own excellent mind, “it should be right up my alley.” The most important scientific brain in the world stood back and watched—his Pop-Tart in hand—in tense expectation as she fiddled with a knob and pressed a lever. Nothing happened.
“Useless gadget,” Bretling stated.
“There we go,” Diana declared. She pressed down all the way on the lever, and the smell of a new electric appliance being put into use emanated from it.
“W
hat did you do?” Bretling demanded, looking a little affronted.
Diana leaned very close to him and put her hand on his sleeve; then she whispered in his ear as if she had sensed how sensitive he was about being made to look foolish.
He’d left Cushman Electronics because they’d made him look foolish by refusing to let him work on his patents and ultimately assigning him to work under a younger, less gifted scientist. Diana’s simple action made the temperamental Bretling into a teddy bear, right before Cole’s amused eyes.
While Bretling wandered around the lab, he chatted endlessly with her. Cole couldn’t imagine what they had to talk about. He could barely spend an hour with the man without feeling as if his brain were overloaded with scientific mumbo jumbo.
On a table off to their left was another of Bretling’s pet projects, an ultrathin television set with a perfect picture that Cole was determined to announce very soon and thus put to shame Mitsubishi’s latest introduction. At the moment, Unified Industries’ candidate for Television of the Century was a flickering, white screen.
Tables at the far end of the gigantic room were cluttered with rows of would-be ultra-long-life rechargeable batteries.
Willard Bretling watched Cole’s restless movements from the corner of his eye; then he looked at Diana as he said, “Your husband is not a patient man. He is a man of vision, though.”
Diana nodded, watching Bretling’s arthritic fingers handle a wire as fine as a human hair. “He thinks very highly of you, too.”
The fingers stilled, faded blue eyes stared sharply over the rim of his glasses. “Why do you say that?”
Diana told him all the things Cole had told her on the way there, and he seemed genuinely astonished. “He thinks you are going to ‘save the universe’ with that battery someday very soon,” Diana said.
“The thin television first, then the battery,” the old man announced stubbornly. “The Japanese already have one out, but the picture is not the same as a regular set. Ours will be.”