Diana felt physically ill at the thought of being subjected to public scrutiny at Houston’s biggest, most lavish social event. “They’ll think that no matter what I do!”
“A pity you couldn’t arrive at the ball on the arm of a new fiancé!” said her grandfather with uncharacteristic impracticality. “That would stop the tongues from wagging!”
“Why don’t I just show up with a new husband,” Diana said, choking on an anguished laugh, “and make them all think I jilted Dan.” Sliding her chair back, she said, “I’m going to change clothes and go for a swim. I think I’ll spend the night here.”
Corey’s husband, Spence, was out of town, and Corey joined her in her after-dinner swim. Later, as they reclined in a pair of chaise longues beside the pool, Corey watched Diana’s profile as her expression grew increasingly pensive. “I didn’t expect you to get over today’s news in a few hours, but you look as if Dan’s defection is upsetting you more now than it did earlier.”
“Actually,” Diana admitted without shifting her gaze from the starry sky, “I was worrying about business, not my personal life. More correctly, I was worrying about the damaging effect of my personal life on our business.”
Shifting onto her side, Corey propped her head on her hand. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t wanted to worry you with company economics when we agreed, at the outset, that you’d handle the artistic end and I’d handle the money side. . . .”
“What’s wrong—with the money side, I mean?” Corey prompted when Diana fell silent.
“As you know, we’ve come under fire several times this year because I don’t personally live up to the ‘Foster Ideal.’ Each time it has happened, there’s been a minor fall-off in advertisers and our new-subscription rate has flattened out or declined a little. We’ve rebounded every time, but thanks to Dan, there’s going to be much more fallout this time.”
“I think you’re overestimating the influence and readership of the Enquirer,” Corey scoffed, but her voice lacked conviction. Diana was an astute businesswoman, perhaps even a gifted one, and although she was cautious, she never looked for trouble where none was to be found.
“There were several calls on my answering machine tonight. I listened to them while I was changing clothes after dinner. The story made CBS’s and NBC’s six o’clock news.”
Corey’s heart sank and she was filled with anger and regret for this assault on her sister’s privacy and pride. Avoiding the personal implications for Diana, she tried to focus on the business ones that seemed to be concerning her sister far more at the moment. “And you think all this publicity about your fiancé breaking off your engagement will affect the magazine?”
“He didn’t break off our engagement, Corey. He dumped me for someone else. Our readership is almost entirely female, and our entire success has been built on our readership’s belief that the Foster way is the right way—that it brings beauty and harmony to the home and tremendous personal gratification to the women who try it.”
“Well, it does do those things.”
Diana rolled onto her side, finally facing Corey. “Tell me something, if you were a female who wanted to bring new spirit into her family life, would you be inclined to put your faith in the promises of a woman who just got jilted for an eighteen-year-old blond Italian model? Our competition is going to toss every sort of fuel onto the fire to keep this little scandal alive. I mean the fact that I am single, childless, and without a home of my own wasn’t so inexcusable as long as I was engaged to Dan. The implication was that I intended to practice what we preach in Foster’s Beautiful Living. Now, because of what’s happened, we’re going to look as if we’re trying to put some sort of money-making fantasy over on an unwitting segment of the population, namely women. Our profits are going to dive, you watch.”
Corey couldn’t begin to try to judge the effect of Diana’s personal loss on the bottom line of the corporation’s profit-and-loss statement; her brain rebelled at the effort, and her artistic nature cried out its artist’s protest that beauty and emotion always took a backseat when accountants got involved. Moreover, she was starting to suspect that Diana was more deeply alarmed about the magazine than about the loss of the man she supposedly loved. “Tell me something,” Corey said hesitantly. “What worries you more right now—your unfaithful fiancé or company finances?”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
“I—I’m worried about business,” Diana admitted.
“In that case, maybe you were lucky you didn’t marry Dan.”
“Because he probably would have cheated on me after we were married?” Diana assumed bleakly.
“No, because I don’t think you were really, deeply in love with him. I’ve been thinking about Spence and about how I’d feel if he did to me what Dan just did to you. I’d be demented with pain and rage, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the business.”
She expected Diana to argue or protest, and she didn’t feel reassured when Diana did neither. Instead her sister sat up, drew her knees against her chest, and wrapped her arms around them as if she were drawing into a tight, protective ball. “I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone the way you love Spence.”
Corey stared at her with growing concern.
That very first afternoon they’d met—when Diana returned from Europe to find she’d acquired a stepmother, a stepsister, and a set of grandparents—she’d responded to Corey’s cool greeting with quiet warmth, instead of the temper tantrum Corey had expected from what she’d been sure was a “spoiled, rich brat.”
Now, as she looked at Diana’s beautiful profile, she remembered the words Diana had said long ago on that very first day. “You come with a grandma, too?” Diana had asked, after complimenting the hand-painted sweatshirt that Corey had thought she’d deride. When Corey described her grandparents, Diana had raised her eyes and hands skyward and turned in a slow circle. “A sister, and a mom, and a grandma, and a grandpa! This could be very cool!” It had certainly been “cool” for Corey; Diana had seen to that. Diana, with her fragile beauty and dazzling smile and innate gentility, had paved the way for Corey, standing by her at every turn. Diana was and had always been the most loving, supportive person Corey had ever met.
The idea that Diana’s self-confidence and self-esteem were somehow low enough to make her doubt her capacity for loving was more than Corey could stand. It bothered her far more than Dan Penworth’s defection or the possible business consequences of it. “Diana,” she said very clearly and very firmly, “what you just said is garbage!”
“Maybe not.”
“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it! Has it occurred to you that you’ve been too busy since Dad died to do anything but work? That you haven’t actually dated all that many men? That maybe, just maybe, you settled for ‘liking’ Dan instead of ‘loving’ someone else?”
Diana lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug. “Whatever I did wrong, it’s going to hurt us badly at the magazine now.”
“You were going to marry the wrong man; that’s what you did wrong.”
“I wish I were married to the right one now.”
Chapter 15
DAMMIT, COLE!” CALVIN EXPLODED AS he shoved himself out of his chair and stomped across the small living room to the fireplace. “You’re wastin’ my time trying to talk about proxies and shareholders, when the only thing I’m interested in holding is your baby in my arms! I don’t think that’s asking too much from you—not when you consider all I’ve done for you.” With ruthless determination and flawless timing, he switched tactics from coercion to guilt, while Cole listened in impassive silence and growing anger to a genuine tirade that far surpassed all previous discussions on this particular subject.
“Why, if it weren’t for me, you’d be living out at your pa’s place, just like his pa did and his pa before him, trying to eke out a living chasin’ steers. Instead of that, you do your chasin’ in a Rolls-Royce and a private jet.
” Jabbing his forefinger into his chest for emphasis, he continued, “I’m the one who always believed in you, Cole. I’m the one who encouraged you to go to college. I’m the one who went to bat for you with your pa, and when he wouldn’t listen, I’m the one who gave you all my money from my wells so you could get a good education!” In the midst of his angry monologue, Cal stopped and headed for the kitchen. “It’s time for my medicine,” he announced, “but I’m not finished. You stay right where you are until I get back.”
Cole watched him pick his way around an old overstuffed chair and a lamp table piled with magazines and said nothing. Cole hadn’t had a good day, and so far, the evening wasn’t an improvement. He’d finished his business on the West Coast several hours earlier than he’d expected, and in the happy expectation of having extra time with his uncle, he’d phoned one of his pilots and instructed him to fuel the plane and be ready to leave for Texas ahead of schedule. From then on, nothing had gone well.
The air was unstable, the flight was incredibly rough, and air traffic control advised them to go around a massive storm front over Arizona. Their new course took them an hour out of the way, which necessitated an unscheduled fuel stop in El Paso, where unusually heavy air traffic resulted in another hour’s delay. Two hours behind schedule, Cole’s pilots now began their final approach to Ridgewood Field, and Cole tried for the sixth time to reach Cal so that his uncle could pick him up at the airport. For the sixth time, he got a recording that the phone was out of order.
Since phone service in Cal’s area was frustratingly undependable, and since Cal frequently struck back at the phone company by deducting one thirtieth of his monthly charges for each day his phone was unreliable, Cole assumed the phone company had retaliated as it usually did—by cutting off his service.
When he got off the plane, the heat and humidity seemed to plaster around him like plastic wrap, and Cole resigned himself to renting a car at the minuscule airport and driving out to the ranch.
Ridgewood was forty-five miles north of Kingdom City, which, in turn, was forty miles east of Cal’s ranch. Built thirty years before and situated in the middle of nowhere, Ridgewood Field was primarily used by drilling companies who flew in special equipment for repairing the oil and gas wells that dotted the landscape. Most of the other planes that jolted down its washboard runway belonged to Texan Airlines, which flew in twice weekly with special air freight and an occasional passenger on board.
In addition to one concrete runway that was in bad repair, Ridgewood Field offered air travelers a white metal building that served as a terminal. Inside the terminal, which was not air-conditioned, amenities were limited to two rest rooms, one coffee counter, and one battered metal desk where stranded passengers could attempt to rent one of Ridgewood Field Car Rental’s two available cars from a cheerful heavyset woman who was also the waitress and whose name tag identified her as “Roberta.”
Roberta wiped her hands on her apron and took a rental agreement out of the desk while she politely inquired as to Cole’s choice of rental cars. “Do you want the black one with the bad muffler, or the black one with the bad tires?”
Cole stifled an irate retort and scribbled his name on the rental agreement. “I’ll take the one with the bad muffler.”
Roberta nodded approvingly. “The air conditioning works in that one, so you won’t swelter while you’re getting where you’re going. Good choice.”
It had seemed so to Cole, too, at the time, but not now. When Cal returned to the living room and started pressing his point even harder, Cole began to wish he’d taken the other car and had a nice blowout on the way here to delay him.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Cal announced as he lowered himself into the chair across from Cole’s. “You bring me a wife who’s fit and willing to bear your children, and I’ll sign those shares over to you on your first wedding anniversary. Otherwise, I’m going to leave all my worldly goods to Travis’s kids. That’s my deal; take it or leave it.”
In stony silence, Cole returned his stare and began to slowly tap a rolled-up magazine he’d been reading on his knee. At thirty-six, he controlled a multinational corporation, 125,000 employees, and an estimated twelve billion dollars. Everything in his business and personal life was under his complete control . . . everything except this one seventy-five-year-old man, who was now actually threatening to leave half of Cole’s company to Travis, who wasn’t capable of running a small subsidiary of it without Cole’s constant supervision. Cole didn’t actually believe that his uncle would betray him by giving away half the corporation that Cole had slaved to build, but he didn’t like the sound of his uncle’s threat. He had just convinced himself that Cal was bluffing when he belatedly noticed that the fireplace mantel, which had always held a half-dozen framed family photographs, was now filled to overflowing with another dozen photographs—and all of them were of Travis’s family.
“Well?” Cal said, abandoning his anger and leaning forward in his eagerness. “What do you think of the terms of my deal?”
“I think,” Cole snapped, “that your terms are not only ridiculous, they’re crazy.”
“Are you saying that marriage is ‘crazy’?” Cal demanded, his expression turning ominous again. “Why, the whole damned country is falling apart because of your generation and its lack of respect for good old ‘crazy’ notions like marriage and children and responsibility!”
When Cole refused to be lured into that debate, Cal gestured toward the large scarred coffee table, which was cluttered, like every other table in the room, with dozens of magazines that Letty, his housekeeper, fought a losing battle to keep orderly. “If you don’t believe me, just look at what’s in those magazines. Here,” he stated, snatching up a copy of Reader’s Digest from the pile on the end table beside his chair. Reader’s Digest was a particular favorite of his. “Look at this!” He waved the small magazine with its blue cover and bright yellow print toward Cole; then he tipped his head back, in order to read through the lower part of his bifocals, and recited the titles of some of the articles: “?‘Cheating in Our Schools—A National Scandal.’ According to that article,” he said, glaring at Cole as if it were his fault, “eight out often high school students say they cheat. It says in that article that moral standards are so low that many high school children no longer know the difference between right and wrong!”
“I don’t see what that has to do with the topic at hand.”
“Don’t you, now?” Calvin retorted, closing the cover and tipping his head slightly back, peering again at the writing on the cover of the magazine. “Then maybe this article is more to the point. Do you know what it’s called?”
The answer being obvious, Cole simply stared at him in resigned expectation.
“The article is called ‘What Women Don’t Know About Today’s Men.’?” Tossing the magazine on the table in disgust, he glared at Cole. “What I want to know is what is the matter with you young people that suddenly men don’t understand women and women don’t understand men, and none of you understand the need to get married and stay married and raise good, god-fearing children?”
Cole continued to tap the magazine on his knee while his anger continued to mount. “As I think I’ve mentioned to you in the past when you’ve brought all this up, you are hardly in a position to lecture anyone on the merits of marriage and children, since you’ve never had a wife or a child!”
“To my everlasting regret,” Calvin countered, undeterred as he shoved some magazines aside and pulled out a recent copy of a tabloid. “Now, just look at this,” he said, pointing a bony finger at the front page and holding it in front of Cole’s face.
Cole glanced at the tabloid, and his expression turned derisive. “The Enquirer?” he said. “You’re subscribing to the Enquirer?”
“Letty likes to read it, but that isn’t the point. The point is that your generation has lost its collective mind! Just look at the way you young people do things. Look at this beautiful young woman. She?
?s famous and she’s a ‘Houston socialite,’ which means she’s rich.”
“So what?” Cole said, his angry gaze fastened on his uncle’s face and not the newspaper.
“So, her fiancé—this Dan Penworth—just dumped her for an eighteen-year-old Italian girl who’s lyin’ on a beach with him, half-naked.” When Cole continued to ignore the tabloid, Cal let it drop to his side, but he wasn’t ready to drop his argument. “He dumped her without telling her, while the poor thing was planning her wedding.”
“Is there a point to all this?” Cole demanded.
“You’re damned right there is. The point is that Penworth is a Houston boy, born and raised, and so’s the girl he jilted. Now, when Texans start mistreating women and stomping all over traditional values, the whole damned country is as good as down the toilet.”
Cole reached behind his head and wearily massaged the muscles in the back of his neck. This discussion was going nowhere, and he had a critical business issue to discuss and settle with Cal, if he could only sidetrack him from his absurd obsession with Cole’s marital state. In the past, Cole had always managed to accomplish that, but Cal was far more determined today than ever before, and Cole had an uneasy premonition that this time he was going to fail.
It occurred to him then that Cal might actually be getting senile, but he rejected that almost at once. Cal’s personality wasn’t changing. He’d always been as stubborn and as tenacious as the proverbial bulldog. As Cole had explained to John Nederly earlier in the week, nothing had ever swayed Cal from his course. When oil was first found on his land, he’d announced that money wasn’t going to change his life, and, by God, it hadn’t—not one bit. He still pinched pennies like a pauper, he still drove a twenty-year-old truck with a stick shift, and he still wore faded jeans and plaid shirts every day of the week except Sunday, when he went to church; he still pored over the Sears Roebuck circulars and still insisted that cable television was an expensive fad that was destined to fail. “Look,” Cole said, “I’m not going to argue with you—”