He got hold of it, yanked the door open, and held his hand out to Diana to help her down. Like the elegant young woman she was, his wife accepted his hand, daintily removed her derriere from a tear in the vinyl seat as deep as a canyon, and then gracefully alighted.
Pausing for a brief moment to brush the dirt off her clothes, she flashed a warm smile at Cal, who was standing at Cole’s elbow; then she looked at Cole with a sheepish smile. “We do.”
Cal gave a sharp bark of laughter.
* * *
“This is my house,” Cal explained, ushering her in the front door and insisting that she sit on his chair because it was the most comfortable; then he rushed off to the kitchen to get her a glass of fresh lemonade. Neat stacks of magazines and books on a vast array of topics were everywhere, and on the coffee table, in plain view, he had carefully placed the latest copy of Foster’s Beautiful Living.
Diana could hardly believe that the gallant, endearing man who beamed at her as if she were the sunshine of his life was the same ferociously determined man who had forced his powerful nephew into marriage by blackmailing him with half of his own corporation—albeit for “Cole’s own good.”
“We’ll just stay here for a little while,” he explained, handing her a glass of lemonade and then standing in front of her as if she might need help drinking it. Finally, apparently satisfied that she could handle it, he sat down across from her on the sofa beside Cole and continued with the schedule for the day. “In a little bit, we’ll go over to the other house. We’ll eat supper there, and then you and Cole will stay there and I’ll come back here.”
Diana had come to adore him in less than five minutes. “Oh, but I thought we were going to stay with you,” she said, shooting a confused look at Cole, “so we could get to know each other while I’m here.”
“The other house is right here on the ranch,” Cal assured her, positively beaming with pleasure that she wanted to see more of him.
After showing her around his home, he decreed that it was time to leave.
* * *
Cal’s house was on flat ground in a wide clearing, situated for convenience not the view, but the other house, a mile further down the road and around a sharp bend, was positioned for view and setting, and it had both. “How beautiful!” Diana exclaimed as she slid out of Cole’s station wagon.
Perched on the edge of a wooded hilltop that faced out across a shallow valley was a cozy house of stone and rough-cut cedar surrounded on three sides by a huge cantilevered deck that hung suspended in midair over the edge of the hill. Inside, it was rustic, with a huge fireplace at one end and rows of sliding doors at the other that opened onto the deck. Two large bedrooms opened off the living room, and the kitchen looked out over the hills in the opposite direction from Cal’s house.
“This is Letty,” Cole said fondly, leading a plump woman with her hair pulled back in a bun out of the kitchen and into the living room. Letty seemed almost as happy to know Diana as Cal was.
“Supper will be at six,” she said, already retreating back into the kitchen. “It is nothing fancy. And nothing like the beautiful pictures in your magazine, either.”
“I’m not much of a cook,” Diana admitted.
“Good,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.
Diana turned around and through the doorway saw Cole putting her suitcases at the foot of a king-size bed. He turned and caught her watching him, and a bolt of electricity seemed to shoot from his body straight into hers. He’d put his arm around her shoulders in a casually possessive gesture when he’d introduced her to Cal. But nothing in that gesture, or anything else he’d done, indicated what he felt about whether this was going to be a honeymoon or not.
She wasn’t certain if that meant he took for granted that it was, or that he wasn’t overly concerned one way or another.
All that began to change when dinner was over.
Chapter 48
SUNSET HAD PAINTED THE SKY in wild streaks of lavender, purple, and red by the time they’d finished dinner and Letty had cleared away the plates.
The initial nervousness that Cal had displayed when she first got there had vanished. In its place was the assumption that she was part of the family and always would be. Besides making Diana feel like a fraud, it led to several questions about motherhood, such as how she would run her company and still have a baby. To make matters worse, she had the distinct feeling that Cal was aware that she’d not considered any of that and was suspicious about why not.
Annoyingly, Cole didn’t seem to suffer any of her guilt or self-consciousness. In fact, he was making her uncomfortable, and she had a feeling he was doing it deliberately. While appearing to pay attention to the conversation, his heavy-lidded dark silver eyes were making a leisurely appraisal of her features that made Diana self-consciously reach up to lift a strand of hair off her cheek.
He was leaning back in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his feet crossed at the ankles, ignoring the sunset in favor of her. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he was emanating an aura of predatory virility that was tangible enough to cut with a knife.
And to cap everything off, both men were completely unself-conscious about other things that made Diana acutely uneasy, things that seemed to creep into the conversation with nerve-racking regularity. Diana’s simple compliment about the hand-wrought-iron table they were sitting at led Cal to provide her with the information that Cole had actually had a king-size bed shipped down four days ago to replace the double-size one that had been in the bedroom. And then he remarked that among other new furniture that had arrived by truck was the big L-shaped sofa in the living room, which had more pillows on it than any three beds he’d ever seen.
When she said that she thought the landscaping around the house was very pretty, she discovered that Cole had had an army of workmen up there manicuring the place until an hour before she arrived. “It wasn’t fit to bring a bride
to,” Cal informed her. Then he tipped his head to a double chaise longue on the deck a few yards away. “Cole had that sent down from Dallas for your stay,” he confided. “I’ve never seen the likes of it, have you?”
She turned and looked at the double chaise and nodded with a smile. “Once before.”
“Shows you what I know. Looked to me like he was putting a bed right there on the front porch! I’ve seen beds on porches before,” he joked, “but they usually have box springs tossed out beside them, along with an old wringer-washer.”
Diana’s heart jumped. Maybe it did look like a bed.
“Cal,” Cole said mildly.
Diana thought his objection to the topic of beds too late and too little.
If she agreed to “honeymooning” here, which she had rather expected to do, she’d envisioned something that started a little later and progressed a little slower.
At exactly 8:30 Cole looked at Cal and Cal looked at his watch, quickly stood up, and announced, “Well, it’s time I get back to work.” Since he didn’t have work, and since it was only now fully dark, Diana leapt to the obvious conclusion that Cole thought it was time to use one of the many new, fully padded, horizontal surfaces in the house, and Cal wanted them to get busy making him a great-great-nephew.
Diana stood up almost as abruptly as he did. “I think I’ll take a shower and change into something . . . cleaner!”
Cole watched her back through the door, puzzled by her reaction to being alone with him. He was certain she intended to go to bed with him. He was fairly certain . . .
He wasn’t certain at all.
A few minutes later, he went into the kitchen for a glass of iced tea and noticed his bedroom door was open. One of her suitcases was missing and the bathroom she was using was the one in the second bedroom. He tipped the pitcher up, considering the ramifications of that. Separate bathrooms in Diana’s circle, and his own now, were a practical and convenient accoutrement. She was being civilized and sophisticated. Or shy. Or evasive.