TROUBLE IN PARADISE
DIANA FOSTER IS JILTED BY FIANCÉ
Below the headline was a huge picture of Diana’s handsome fiancé, Dan Penworth, who was lying on a beach beside a curvaceous blond. The caption read, “Diana Foster’s fiancé, Dan Penworth, honeymooning with his new bride, 18-year-old Italian model and heiress Christina Delmonte.” Sally scanned the story, her stomach churning. “Yesterday, in Rome, Christina Delmonte got the ‘scoop’ on Foster’s Beautiful Living magazine’s publisher, Diana Foster. . . . Lately, the Foster Empire has been under siege from rival magazines who’ve scoffed at Ms. Foster’s steadfast avoidance of matrimony and motherhood while her magazine preaches the bliss and beauty to be found in both. . . .”
“That weasel!” Sally breathed. “That sneak, that—” She broke off as Corey walked into the office, looking rushed but blissfully unaware of any disaster.
“I think we’ve got the problem with the layout settled,” Corey said, peering at Diana’s averted face and then at Sally’s stricken one. “What’s wrong?”
In answer, Sally held out the newspaper, and Corey took it. A moment later, she hissed, “That bastard! That—”
“Coward!” Sally provided.
“He’s a scumbag,” Corey added.
“A jerk—”
“Thank you both,” Diana said with a teary, forced laugh. “At a time like this, loyalty counts for a lot.”
Corey and Sally exchanged sympathetic glances; then Sally turned and left, closing the office door behind her, and Corey headed for her sister. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, wrapping her in a fierce hug.
“Me, too,” Diana said, sounding as meek and bewildered as a child who has been punished for something they didn’t do.
“C’mon,” Corey urged, turning Diana away from the window and toward her desk. “Get your jacket and purse and let’s get out of here. We’ll go home and break the news to Mom and Gram and Gramps together.”
“I can’t leave early.” Diana managed to lift her chin a notch, but her eyes were still wounded and glazed with shock. “I can’t run away. By tonight, everyone in the office will have seen or heard about that article. They’ll remember that I left early, and they’ll think it’s because I couldn’t face people.”
“Diana,” Corey said very firmly, “there cannot be any other president of a large company who is as thoroughly liked and as much admired by their employees as you are by yours. They’ll feel terrible for you.”
“I don’t want pity,” Diana said, getting her voice under control and her features into a semblance of their normal expression.
Corey knew it was useless to argue. Diana had a great deal of pride and courage, and both those things would force her to brave out the day no matter how shattered she was. “Okay, but don’t work late. I’ll phone Mom and tell her we’ll both be home for dinner at six-thirty. With any luck we’ll be able to break the news to the family before they’ve heard it elsewhere.”
She half expected Diana to proudly decline that offer of support, but she didn’t. “Thanks,” she said.
Chapter 14
BY THE TIME SHE LEFT the office that night, word had already spread, making her the object of pitying glances from her employees, the security guards in the lobby, and even the parking lot attendant. While Corey waited outside in her car, Diana went into her apartment to change clothes. Her answering machine was full of messages from reporters, from friends, and from distant acquaintances who rarely called—all of them, Diana was certain, eager for more of the juicy details. She was furious with Dan and thoroughly humiliated.
As soon as Diana and Corey walked through the doorway of the River Oaks house, it was obvious from the indignant, dismayed expressions on the faces of their mother and grandparents that the rest of the family had also heard the news. “We heard it on the television, just before you got home. I can’t believe Dan did this—not this way, not without a phone call or a telegram to let you know,” Mrs. Foster said as they waited in the dining room for dinner to be served.
Diana stared bleakly at her hands, twisting the four-carat diamond engagement ring on her finger. “Dan called from Italy the day before yesterday, but we were on deadline and I couldn’t take the call. Last night, we worked until midnight, and with the time difference, it would have been perfect for me to call him when I got home, but I fell asleep sitting up in bed, with my hand on the phone. This morning, I woke up late, and as soon as I got to work, I got involved with a half-dozen crises. He probably wanted to tell me about this, but I was too busy to call him back,” she said bitterly. “It’s my own fault for finding out about his marriage in the newspaper . . .”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, young lady,” Diana’s grandfather exclaimed loyally as he shifted in his chair, his left leg stiff from recent surgery. “He was engaged to you when he married someone else. He ought to be horsewhipped!”
“I never liked Dan Penworth!” Corey’s grandmother announced.
Diana appreciated their steadfastness, but she was perilously close to tears. Oblivious to the fact that she was not easing Diana’s burden, her grandmother continued bluntly, “Dan was too old for you, among other things. Why, what does a forty-two-year-old man want with a twenty-nine-year-old woman, anyway, I ask you?”
“Very little, obviously,” Diana said bleakly, “and I’m thirty-one, not twenty-nine.”
“You were twenty-nine when you got engaged,” her grandmother argued.
“His new wife is eighteen. Maybe that will be his lucky number.”
“Diana,” Mrs. Foster interceded gently, “I don’t know if this is the time to be philosophical or not, but I always wondered if the two of you were right for each other.”
“Mom, please. You were very much in favor of Dan for a son-in-law when we got engaged.”
“Yes, I was. But I began to have my doubts when you kept him dangling for two years.”
“Dangling!” Diana’s grandmother put in. “I’d like to see that young man dangling from the end of a rope for what he’s done!”
“The point I was trying to make,” Mrs. Foster said, “is that if two people truly love each other—if everything is really ‘right’ and there are no obstacles to getting married, it seems to me they should be in a little more of a hurry to be married than Diana was. I married your father within weeks of meeting him.”
Diana managed a wan smile. “That’s because he didn’t give you a choice.”
She sat at her place at the table, shaking her head as dinner courses were served. Her stomach was churning, and the others seemed to understand. “I wish I could just go away for a month until all this dies down,” she said when dessert was over.
“Well, you can’t,” said Gram with unintentional ruthlessness. “That scoundrel pulled this trick only a few days from the Orchid Ball. It’s a ritual that we all attend, and if you don’t go, people will say you didn’t show up because you were heartbroken!”