“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, expec
ting 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.