Remember When

She flinched and looked away. 'You don't realize how damaging my mistakes have been, or how many I've made.'

'Tell me what they were and let me be the judge of that. I promise to be impartial.'

Diana was glad of the opportunity to spend time with him, getting reacquainted, but she wished he weren't so insistent about this topic. With a reluctant sigh, she leaned her shoulders against the trunk and gave in. 'You got the gist of it in there. I passed up some wonderful opportunities over the years because I didn't want to take a chance—I was afraid of growing too fast.'

Cole gazed down at her upturned face, marveling that Diana seemed as genuine and unaffected now as she had been when she was sixteen, and almost wishing that she wasn't. This marriage of theirs was not foolproof, and he didn't want to succeed in what Penworth had failed to do— turn her into a cold cynic.

'I think,' she joked, 'I'm seeing your grim look right now.'

'No,' he replied with a half-smile. 'That was my impressed look again.' Before she could question him about its cause, he replied to her earlier comment. 'Businesses fail all the time because someone lets their dreams outpace their financial resources. It's much wiser to err on the side of conservatism.'

'I erred on the side of foolishness. The largest of my mistakes was waiting until two years ago to market our own line of gardening and crafts products. When we finally did that, they sold like we were giving them away.'

'You must have had reasons for waiting, reasons that seemed sound at the time,' Cole pointed out.

'I did. Basically, I was concerned about quality control and start-up and warehousing costs. When we finally launched the product line, it was a huge success, which means we lost a lot of revenue while I was dragging my feet.'

'That's hindsight,' Cole scoffed.

Diana refused to be patronized. Crossing her arms over her chest, she countered tartly, 'Would you have waited and deliberated while all the competition was getting a head start?'

At the beginning of the discussion Cole had promised to be truthful. He kept that promise. 'No,' he admitted.

'There, you see? You have daring and foresight.'

'No, I don't 'see.' There's one major difference between my circumstances and yours. When I started Unified Industries, I had sufficient money behind me and more available if I needed it.'

She brightened, but just a little. 'I did other things I wish to heaven I could undo.'

'Like what?' Cole persisted, reacting to some inner need to give her honest consolation even though he knew he was prying.

'As I said in the living room, I practically gave away shares in our new company to raise money to get us started, and later to keep us going.'

Cole felt a sudden desire to reach out and touch her cheek, and when he answered her, his voice was unaccustomedly gentle. 'I'm amazed that at twenty-two you could talk a bank into investing in your scheme, let alone round up individual investors.'

Diana shrugged. 'The bank wasn't taking much of a risk, because we put this house up as collateral.'

Refusing to let her denigrate her accomplishments, Cole said, 'Really? Then how did you get private investors to put up their hard-earned cash on a high-risk, no-potential-profit deal?'

'Oh, that,' she said with a rueful laugh. 'I packed up my briefcase with official business plans and projections and called on my father's friends. They all thought we were probably going to fail, but they felt sorry for me, so they patted my head and gave me five thousand or ten thousand— figuring all along that they'd at least end up with a tax loss they could use to offset profits on their income taxes. In return for that, I gave them stock certificates in the new company.' She sighed and looked away. 'In short, I gave away so many pieces of our business that when they were added up, we were down to fifty percent for ourselves.'

'Diana, did you have any other choice?'

'If I had dreamed how profitable and successful we'd be now—'

'I'm talking about before, when you were starting up,' he said sternly. 'Did you have any other way to raise the money you needed?'

She hesitated and then shook her head. 'None.'

'Then stop blaming yourself for not being psychic and give yourself credit for overcoming hundreds of hurdles all by yourself—hurdles that would eliminate all but the most gifted and flexible entrepreneurs!'

Diana gazed up at his stern, handsome face and realized he was completely serious. 'Coming from you, that's high praise indeed.'

He grinned then. 'Just remember that. I can't have my wife going around belittling her accomplishments. It might reflect badly on my judgment,' he joked, 'and cause Unified's stock to drop.'

'And Wall Street to collapse,' Diana put in, her spirits lifting crazily beneath the warmth of his sudden smile.

Chapter 35

Standing at the kitchen sink, where she was tearing red leaf lettuce into small pieces, Corey studied the couple in the backyard. She was so absorbed with the scene and its possibilities that she jumped when her husband came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. 'Where is everyone?' Spence asked.

'I suggested they relax before dinner. Glenna and I have everything under control in here.'

'I tucked the girls into bed and gave them a kiss from Mommy. That's where I'd like to be—' he whispered as he nuzzled the side of her neck, '— in bed. With you.'

Corey turned her face up for his kiss just as the housekeeper bustled into the kitchen, and they automatically moved apart like guilty teenagers. 'Go ahead with what you were doing,' Glenna said. 'Don't let me interrupt. I'm just trying to get a six-course meal for seven people on the table.'

Scowling, Spence watched her bustle off. 'Why does she always say something that makes me feel guilty?' Automatically, he picked up a knife and began slicing green peppers into thin strips. 'She's been doing that for fifteen years.'

Corey smothered a laugh, but her attention was on the scene beyond the window. 'She does it because it works so well. You're helping with the salad, aren't you?' She handed him a clean dish towel. 'If you tuck this into your waistband, you won't get anything on you.'

The former star quarterback from Southern Methodist University eyed the towel askance. 'Real men don't wear aprons,' he joked.

'Think of it as a loincloth,' she suggested.

They worked in companionable silence for several moments, both of them watching the couple in the backyard. Diana was leaning against a palm tree and Cole was in front of her, with his hand on the trunk above her head. Whatever she was saying to him made him laugh. 'When we were teenagers,' Corey said with a reminiscent smile, 'I was so completely infatuated with you that I didn't understand why all the other girls thought Cole Harrison was so incredibly sexy.'

'But now you do?'

Corey nodded. 'I'd love to photograph him someday. He has a marvelous face—it's all hard planes and tough angles.'

'He doesn't look like GQ or Brooks Brothers material to me.'

'Oh, he isn't! There's way too much raw masculinity about him for a men's clothing model. There's almost a. a predatory quality about him.'

She dropped a fistful of curly lettuce into the bowl and picked up some long, damp spinach leaves, shredding those as she continued thoughtfully.

'I'd photograph him in a setting that suits his looks.'

Spence scowled out the window, piqued by Corey's fascination and lavish praise of another man's face. 'What sort of setting?' he asked as he began slicing a red onion.