Remember When

'Would you rather I'd lied about having a crush on you?'

'No. I'd rather you tell me your reason for wanting to marry me,' she said flatly.

'There are two reasons: I need a wife, and you need a husband.'

'And that,' Diana speculated dryly, 'makes us perfect for each other?'

Cole looked down at her glowing eyes and smiling mouth and had an impulse to bend his head and slowly kiss the smile from her lips. 'I think it does.'

'I don't know why you need to get married,' Diana said tightly, 'but believe me, marriage is the last thing I need.'

'You're wrong. Marriage is exactly what you need. You've been publicly jilted in the world press by a jerk, and according to what I read in the Enquirer, your magazine has been under a competitor-driven media attack for nearly a year over your personal state of 'unwedded bliss.' Now that's going to escalate. What did the headline in the Enquirer say. ?' He paused, then quoted, ' 'Trouble in Paradise—Diana Foster Is Jilted by fiancé.' ' Shaking his head, he said bluntly, 'That's bad press, Diana. Very bad. And extremely damaging for business. By marrying me, you could save your pride and also save your company from the negative effects of those headlines.'

She gazed up at him as if she'd just suffered a mortal blow from the last person she expected to hurt her. 'How pathetic and desperate I must seem to you if you could even suggest such a thing and believe I'd go along with it.'

She shoved away from the railing and started to turn toward the doors into his suite, but Cole caught her arm in a gentle but unbreakable grip. ' I'm the desperate one, Diana,' he said flatly.

Diana stared at him dubiously. 'Just exactly what makes you so 'desperate' for a wife that any woman will do?'

Instinct and experience told Cole that a little tender persuasion could vastly further his cause, and he was prepared to resort to that, but only if logic and complete honesty weren't enough to persuade her. In the first place, she was vulnerable right now, and he didn't want to do or say anything that might make her ultimately regard him as a possible substitute for the love, and lover, she'd lost. Second, he had no intention of complicating their marriage with any messy emotional or physical intimacy.

And so Cole ignored the instinct to reach up and brush back a wayward lock of shiny dark hair from her soft cheek, and he squelched the temptation to tell her that she was a long way from being just 'any' woman to him or that she was as close to his ideal of femininity as any female could be.

He was not, however, morally opposed to diluting her resistance with as much alcohol as he could pour down her. 'Finish your champagne, and then I'll explain.'

Diana almost started to argue but decided to compromise and took a sip, instead.

'My problem,' he explained calmly, 'is an old man named Calvin Downing, who is my mother's uncle. When I wanted to leave the ranch and go to college, it was Calvin who tried to convince my father I wasn't thumbing my nose at him and everything he represented. When my father couldn't be persuaded to see things that way, it was Cal who loaned me the money for tuition. Just before my senior year of college, a drilling company ran a test well on Cal's ranch and it came in. It wasn't a gusher, but it made him about twenty-six thousand dollars a month. And when I graduated and went to Cal with a wild scheme for making money that no banker would agree to finance for me, it was Cal who handed over all his savings to help me get started. From the time I was a kid, Cal believed in me. When I started dreaming of making it really big and getting rich—it was Cal who listened to my dreams and believed in them.'

Fascinated by his candor and unable to see how such a kind and caring old man could now be the source of Cole's unnamed 'problem,' Diana sipped her champagne waiting for him to continue, but he seemed content to watch her instead. 'Go on,' she urged. 'So far he sounds like the last man in the world to cause a 'problem' for you.'

'He thinks he's solving a problem, not creating one.'

'I don't understand. Even if I hadn't had so much wine and champagne tonight, I don't think I'd understand.'

'You don't understand because I haven't told you that part, which is this: After I graduated, my uncle gave me all his savings from the well on his land, and then he borrowed another two hundred thousand dollars against it, so that I could start my own company. Naturally, I insisted on signing a legal note for the money and on making him a full partner in the business.'

To the best of her recollection, the article in Time magazine about Cole Harrison's spectacular business successes placed his net worth at over five billion dollars. 'I assume you repaid the loan?' she prompted.

He nodded. 'I repaid it—along with interest calculated at the rate in effect at the time, as agreed in the note.' A wry smile softened his granite features. 'Among my uncle's eccentricities is a streak of stinginess a mile wide, which made his willingness to hand over all his money to finance my business plan even more meaningful. To illustrate my point, despite Cal's wealth, he still clips coupons from the newspaper, he still fights with all the utility companies about his bills, and he still buys his clothes at Montgomery Ward. He is so bad that if his phone service goes out for a few hours, which happens several times a year, Cal deducts one day's charges from his bill.'

'I didn't know you could do that,' Diana said, impressed.

'You can,' Cole said dryly. 'But they'll turn your phone off until you pay up.'

Diana smiled at the colorful description he'd provided of a stubborn, elderly man with a big heart and a tight fist. 'I still don't understand how your problem is connected with him.'

'The connection is that Cal was a full partner in my original business, and I—who owe my current success to his past moral and financial support—could never bring myself to hurt or offend him by asking him to sign papers dissolving the partnership, not even after I repaid his loan with full interest. Besides, I would have trusted him with my life, and so it never occurred to me that he would balk at turning over his stock when I asked him to do it, let alone consider signing it over to someone else.'

Diana was astute enough as a businesswoman to immediately grasp the devastating impact of such an action, but she couldn't quite believe that the man Cole had described would be capable of such treachery. 'Have you formally asked him to sign over his shares to you?'

'I have.'

'And?'

A grim smile twisted Cole's lips. 'And he's perfectly willing to do that, except for one small problem that he feels I'm obliged to solve for him before he can justify giving my company's stock back to me.'

He paused and Diana, who was helplessly enthralled, said, 'What problem?'

'Immortality.'

She gaped at him, caught between laughter and confusion. 'Immortality?'

'Exactly. It seems that in the last six or seven years, about the time he turned seventy and his health began to fail badly, Uncle Calvin acquired a strong desire to immortalize himself by leaving behind a brood of descendants. The problem is that besides me, he has only one other blood relative, my cousin. Travis is married to a woman named Elaine and they are both very nice but far from brilliant, and they have two children who are neither nice nor brilliant, and Cal can't stand either one of them. Because of that, Cal now wants to see me married so that I can produce clever babies to carry on the family line.'

Still unable to believe she understood what he was trying to tell her, Diana said, 'And if you don't do that, then what?'

'Then he will leave his share of my corporation to Elaine and Travis's children, Donna Jean and Ted, who are both in college.' He paused to take a swallow of his drink as if he wanted to wash away the bad taste of the words. 'In that event, Elaine and Travis would become my business partners with enough shares between them to control the company on behalf of their children until Donna Jean and Ted come of age. Travis already works for me, as the head of Unified's research and development division. He's loyal and he does his best, but he doesn't have the brains or imagination to run Unified, even if I were willing to hand it over to him, which I assuredly am not! His kids lack his loyalty and their mother's common sense and kindness. In fact, they're greedy, egotistical