Cole followed right behind her, but when they neared the doorway, Diana's grandmother issued an invitation in the form of a gruff challenge: 'Do you intend to at least stay for Sunday dinner, young man?'
Diana refused in an attempt to spare Cole any more of an ordeal. 'Not today,' she said. 'Another time, maybe,' but to her surprise, Cole turned to Gram with an equally challenging smile and said, 'I wasn't aware that I'd been invited.'
'You are now,' she announced.
Mary Foster seconded the invitation with quiet firmness. 'Please have dinner with us.'
Henry made it unanimous, though his voice was gruff. 'You haven't had any of Rose's cooking in a long time.'
'Thank you,' Cole said to all of them. He glanced at Corey, and he thought he saw in her eyes a tentative offer of friendship. 'In that case, I'll be happy to stay.'
Diana decided it was still best to take Cole outside so that her family could talk freely among themselves and come to terms with her unorthodox marriage. They had already begun to change their attitude in the living room and the proof was their invitation to Cole to stay for dinner. She had every reason to think that the meal would be a pleasant one for Cole, but since he had had no way of knowing that, she'd been both surprised and pleased when he accepted their invitation.
Chapter 34
Outside, the worktables and equipment had all been put away, and without their presence to distract the eye, the back lawn had been restored to its normal state of manicured, semitropical splendor.
Palm trees surrounded by fragrant gardenias leaned gracefully over chaise longues at poolside, their giant fronds rustling softly in the breeze. Stately clumps of crepe myrtle dripping with blossoms added dignified splashes of light pink and white, while the pink and red asters covered themselves in exuberant glory and the hibiscus bushes flaunted exotic flowers the size of salad plates in colors ranging from tangerine to yellow to red.
Since Diana knew that men were usually enthralled by her grandfather's workshop, with its array of tools, equipment, millwork, and fine woods, she took Cole there first. He pretended to be interested in everything she showed him, but she could tell that he wasn't, so she invited him to stroll through the greenhouse and then the cutting gardens tucked into the back corners of the lawn.
When he still seemed distracted, she decided that the scene in the living room had darkened his mood far more than he'd let show. In view of some of the things that had been said, she couldn't blame him. Deciding to bring it out in the open, Diana stopped on the lawn near the pool. Leaning her shoulders against a palm's smooth, thick trunk she said simply, 'I'm sorry about what was said inside. Please try to make allowances for my grandfather's age.'
'I did,' he said dryly.
'But you're still embarrassed,' Diana surmised.
He shook his head. 'I'm not embarrassed, Diana.'
'Are you angry?' she asked, studying his features for a clue.
'No.'
'Then what are you?'
'I'm impressed.'
'By what?' Diana asked, taken aback.
'By you,' he said solemnly.
She rolled her eyes in laughing disbelief. 'For a man who's impressed, you've been looking awfully grim.'
'Probably because it doesn't happen very often, and I'm not used to the feeling.'
He was serious, Diana realized, and she was momentarily speechless with pleasure and surprise.
'By the way,' he added, 'that isn't my 'grim' look.'
'It isn't?' she said, still glowing from the compliment. 'What's your 'grim look' like?'
'I don't think you want to know.'
'Oh, go ahead. Let me see it—'
Cole was so unaccustomed to being treated with teasing impertinence that it startled a shout of laughter from him, and Diana thought there was a rusty quality to it.
'You haven't asked me what about you impressed me.
She pretended to ponder that. 'Well, I know it wasn't Grandpa's workshop. You called a beautiful piece of mahogany 'a board.' And I don't think you know a hybrid rose from a hibiscus either.'
'You're right on both counts. But I do know a little bit about business. I realized your magazine was a success, but I had no idea you'd managed to create national personalities out of your stepmother and her parents. At the very least, that's an amazing feat!'
'I didn't create personalities for them,' Diana said with a shake of her head and a wry, affectionate smile. 'They were unique when I met them, and they haven't changed a bit. They were forerunners of a coming trend.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'About a month after my father and stepmother were married, they took Corey and me to Long Valley, and I met my grandparents for the first time. Although I wasn't familiar with the term at the time, they were the consummate 'do-it-yourselfers.' During the day, my grandfather was a surveyor for a town with a population of about seven thousand. But he spent his evenings and weekends in his garden, where he experimented with ways to grow the biggest and best flowers and vegetables in west Texas without resorting to chemical fertilizers or insecticides.
'When he wasn't poring over seed catalogs or searching through books for new or ancient methods of controlling garden insects and diseases, he spent his time in the little workshop behind their house, where he built everything from dollhouses and scaled-down furniture for Corey, to wooden jewelry boxes and rocking chairs for my grandmother. I loved everything about my grandfather's workshop, from the wood shavings on the floor to the smell of the wood stains he used. I remember on that first visit, I stepped on a little piece of wood about an inch square lying beside his workbench. I picked it up and started to toss it into a trash can beside his workbench. He laughed and stopped me and asked me why I wanted to throw away a kiss. I was fourteen at the time and although he was only in his late fifties, he seemed very old to me. So when he described a little chunk of soft wood as a kiss, I was horribly afraid that he was old and—' With her forefinger Diana made a circular motion near her ear, a child's pantomime for
'But he wasn't,' Cole ventured with a smile, enjoying her tale and the way the sun glistened in her hair and the way her eyes glowed when she spoke of the people she loved. She was part of America's aristocracy, but there was a wholesomeness and gentleness about her that had always appealed to him—now more than ever, because he realized how rare that combination really was.
'No, he wasn't crazy. He picked up a little carving knife and whittled it into a rounded triangle; then he reached on the shelf and tore off a piece of old silver foil. He wrapped it in the foil and dropped it into my palm. And there it was— a Hershey's 'kiss.' One with no calories, he told me, laughing. There was a bowl of them, I later realized, on a coffee table in the living room.'
'How did your grandmother and mother fit into the picture?' Cole asked when Diana turned aside to study a large gardenia bush beside them.
She glanced at him, then returned her attention to the fragrant bush. 'My mother worked as a secretary for a manufacturing company when my father met her, but she spent her free time as my grandmother did— cooking and canning and baking to her heart's content.'
She snapped off a stem from the bush and turned back to him, her hands cupped around a mound of glossy, dark green leaves with one perfect blossom in the center that looked as soft and white as whipped cream.
'Go on,' Cole urged, watching her lift the blossom to her nose.
'My grandmother used the fruits and vegetables that my grandfather grew, and she experimented with
