Remember When (Foster Saga 1)

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.