by Linda Cajio
“Diana,” Griegson began in a soothing voice, “wait a minute. I really do want to help you. I can calm down the others and make sure they don’t start any false rumors. My column may contain occasional ‘rumors,’ but you know they’re only facts leaked by the companies themselves. All I’m asking in return for the favor is that you answer a few of my questions. It will be good publicity for you.”
Not giving Diana a chance to reply, Adam said, “I’ll bet many a sucker has heard that before. But it is up to Ms. Windsor to decide who she will—or won’t—talk to.”
“Who the hell are you? Her bodyguard?” Griegson asked indignantly.
“It certainly looks that way,” Diana said without rancor.
“And, as your new bodyguard, I suggest we get moving,” Adam said, noticing several reporters closing in on them from the left. “The rest of the press is heading back this way.”
“Bandits at two o’clock,” Diana said, pointing out two more on their right.
“Surrounded by the Indians!” Griegson said gleefully, and began laughing.
One glance at Diana’s worried face, and Adam knew she’d be scalped by those “Indians.” He wondered what Sir Morbid would do to rescue the princess from fire-breathing dragons, then realized there was only one answer to that question.
He pushed Diana away from him and “accidentally” bumped into Griegson. With a loud squawk Griegson tripped, and banged into the buffet table. The buffet table, in turn, shuddered backward several feet across the marble floor. Unfortunately several plates and glasses decided to stay where they were. As they crashed on the floor, drawing everyone’s attention, Adam stepped over to Diana and took her arm again. Her mouth was open in an O of astonishment.
“Let’s go!” he ordered, pulling her away from Griegson.
Coming out of her shock, she half-ran with him past the rest of the surprised reporters and behind the buffet table to the nearest exit. In the ensuing commotion, nobody tried to stop them.
“Thank you,” Diana said breathlessly as the double steel doors banged shut behind them. “I think.”
“Believe me, you’re welcome,” Adam said, staring down the long, cinder-brick-lined corridor.
“I’m not very good with reporters,” she admitted. “And I have no idea where we are. I came in through the hotel lobby to the reception.”
Adam nodded, having used the same entrance. In the distance he could hear voices and the clatter of dishes. “This way sounds like the kitchen,” he said. “We ought to be able to get out through there.”
“But I really should say goodbye to a few people.”
He turned to her in shock. “After what I just went through to rescue you?”
Diana groaned at the idiotic words that had just emerged from her mouth. She’d only been thinking of several people with whom she hadn’t yet spoken. Somehow she wasn’t managing to look like a mature, normal woman with this man. Shrugging, she said, “I guess we did say our goodbyes, didn’t we?”
“Damn straight we did.”
Adam knew he should have curbed the impatience in his voice, but an unreasonable anger was building up inside him. He’d made a complete fool of himself in there by bumping the reporter into the buffet table. He’d never done anything like that before. His brother would probably disown him for humiliation by association. When Dan had asked him to come along with him today, Adam had only thought it would be interesting to see how a reception for a computer was conducted. If only he’d known what kind of trouble he’d be getting into.…
Damn his curiosity! He never should have approached Diana in the first place. He just couldn’t understand his attraction to her, or his urge to protect her. Maybe agreeing to be this Sir Morbid—whoever he was—had brought out an old-fashioned streak of chivalry in him. Modern men didn’t go around rescuing women on first meetings. The whole thing was so damned bizarre.
Suddenly Diana started to chuckle. “What you did to poor Jim Griegson! I know at least a dozen company presidents in there who are probably wishing they’d been the one to push him into the table. Jim’s announced quite a few projects and rumors in his column that they’d love to strangle him for. Not all company ‘leaks’ are from top management, and most of Jim’s aren’t.”
“I take it he’s not a popular guy,” Adam said, beginning to feel a little less angry. After all, none of what had happened was Diana’s fault.
“Jim’s extremely popular,” she corrected him. “Everyone reads his column first in CompuWorld every week. They just hate to see themselves in his hot seat. I know I do.”
“After what just happened, you’ll probably be feeling the flames in his next column,” Adam said with a wry smile.
“Along with himself falling into the buffet table.” She chuckled. “I doubt he’ll even mention it.”
“Good.”
“Well, I guess we should get going,” she prompted.
He nodded. As they continued down the corridor, he told himself Diana was just a naïve programmer who’d never gotten used to the publicity her work generated. She really had needed rescuing today, and he’d been stuck as rescuer. No big deal. After all, it was only one rescue.
In the kitchen they found their way blocked again.
“Sorry. Can’t go through here,” a burly waiter said as he stood in the center of the aisle. The chefs and assistants glanced in their direction, but returned to their work when they saw someone was dealing with the intruders.
“Give us a break, pal,” Adam said in frustration. Not again, he thought.
“Sorry.”
Adam ground his teeth together in aggravation. Then an idea popped into his head. He leaned forward and said in a low voice. “You’d really be doing Ms. Streep a favor by letting her out through the kitchen. The reporters out there saw through her disguise and now they’re on to her. She has to get to a producers’ meeting right away.”
“Ms. Streep?” the waiter said with a gasp. “You mean Meryl Streep, the actress?” He peered intently at Diana.
Adam smothered a grin when she looked as surprised as the waiter. Diana certainly didn’t know how to give an Academy Award performance.
“She’ll be staying here while they film her latest picture in San Francisco,” Adam added, hoping the waiter would believe him. “I’m sure the hotel’s management would appreciate your helping us out.”
Evidently the mention of the management was the deciding factor for the waiter. With a final, somewhat puzzled glance at Diana, he stepped aside and said, “Just go straight through and turn right. The door will let you out in the back parking lot.”
“Thank you,” Diana murmured as they hurried past the man.
“You’re welcome, Miss … Streep,” the waiter called out.
Dragging Diana with him, Adam started running. He was positive he wouldn’t be able to contain his laughter until they were out of hearing distance. Diana was already giggling.
When the second set of double steel doors they’d encountered that day clanged shut behind them, Adam halted their escape run. He collapsed back against the doors, laughing.
“Meryl Streep!” Diana said, leaning next to him against the doors. “You really ought to warn a person before you turn her into a movie star.” Considering her less-than-spectacular performance since she’d met Adam, she hoped she hadn’t scared him away. Aside from needing his face, she really liked him. Vowing to act her age with him from now on, she continued, “I was so shocked when you said ‘Ms. Streep,’ I thought I’d give it all away!”
“You almost did with that look on your face,” he said, chuckling. “Fortunately the thought of getting into trouble with higher-ups meant more to that guy than letting a couple go through the kitchen.”
“You know, this was exactly like the adventure games I do. You had to figure out logically how to get us past one blockade, and then the next. It even had a touch of a maze when we went down the corridor, made a turn, and ran up against another obstacle in the form of a waiter
. And you got us past that one too.”
With a charming grin she added, “You’re going to make one heck of a Sir Morbid.”
Adam groaned to himself as her smile triggered very unknightly urgings inside him. Diana might think he’d make a great Sir Morbid, but he had the uneasy feeling that he was going to have one hell of a time with his sword.
Two
“Lousy knights in shining armor,” Diana muttered, glaring at the offending article in her latest issue of CompuWorld. “The fairy tales never said those clowns probably charged the princesses for hazardous duty after rescuing them.”
She set her jaw as she read part of Jim Greigson’s “The Last Byte” column again. “One of the highlights of the Omega reception was our own Princess Di, Diana Windsor, seen in a cozy tête-à-tête with Starlight Software President Dan Roberts’s brother, Adam. Later Adam whisked her away for more ‘private discussions.’ Bet great things start happening to Starlight. But, folks, will they be in the boardroom or the bedroom?”
Darn that Jim Griegson, Diana thought as she slammed the magazine down on her desk. She folded her arms across her chest, leaned back in her swivel chair, and stared at the white ceiling of her workroom. She knew Jim had done this just to be nasty.
And darn that Adam Roberts, too, she thought furiously. She hadn’t recognized his name at the reception, but she had heard of Starlight Software. Starlight had made several offers to buy her and her programs during the past year. Angelica, her cousin, lawyer, intermediary, and agent, hadn’t liked Starlight’s high-powered tactics and had broken off negotiations with them. Brother Adam was obviously an attempt to circumvent Angelica and get directly to her, Diana decided.
Absently adjusting her glasses on her nose, she sighed almost regretfully. She’d liked Adam Roberts. Truly liked him. He’d been charming, yet commanding and quick-witted when the situation had needed it. She’d felt … warm and safe with him. And there had been something special about him that affected her senses as no other man had. All week his image had continually intruded on her thoughts, interfering with her concentration on her work, leaving her oddly restless at night and barely touching her meals. She’d actually been impatient to see the snake again!
“So much for an IQ of one hundred seventy,” she muttered in disgust. “You’ve got to be the dumbest bunny walking this earth!”
In her zeal to get him to pose for Sir Morbid, she’d never seen how she might have been playing into his hands. She admitted that in spite of just turning twenty-eight, she still needed street smarts in some areas. It was simply that she never thought about people having ulterior motives when they did things. She always did something because she wanted to. In Adam’s case, she’d never once considered she had put him in a position where he could ask a favor of her.
Well, he had a surprise coming when he did. Reporters had always intimidated her, because she’d never felt at ease around them. She wasn’t even at ease with regular industry reporters, whom she knew fairly well. She’d never had the knack, as some did, for saying a lot while not saying anything at all. But saying no to a software company’s management was easy. She’d been doing it for over five years, since she’d first struck out on her own. Now she had the freedom to create her games as she liked, then sell them on the open market to the highest bidder.
She and Adam had arranged, after escaping the hotel, for him to come to her house on Saturday. That was today, and Adam still had never asked exactly what she wanted him to do.
Of course he wouldn’t, she thought. She could ask him to high-jump to the moon, and he’d probably do it just to keep the lines of communication open. It was too late to cancel their work session. Besides, she still needed Sir Morbid’s face. Being forewarned, though, she could handle Adam. And his brother.
Frowning a little, Diana wondered why the brother hadn’t approached her at the reception in the first place. He was the logical one to do it. Why had it been Adam? He couldn’t have known she’d wanted his face for her Sir Morbid. Even she hadn’t known that until the moment she’d seen him. If she’d learned anything from the old BASIC language, it was that an if statement had to be followed by a logical then statement. It made no sense for Adam, who wasn’t even in the business, to approach her about Starlight Software, when his brother was the president of the company. It made no sense for Adam to have approached her at all. Adam Roberts was definitely an if without a then.
She shrugged, dismissing her confusing thoughts. It really didn’t matter who did the approaching. What did matter was that Adam and his brother thought she was easy prey. Obviously her reputation as a hermit had them thinking that she was vulnerable to a sneak attack. Well, she could be just as sneaky.
Her Sir Morbid wasn’t turning out to be quite as she had envisioned, she thought, smiling crookedly. Still, it would be interesting to discover exactly how he intended to extract a victory.
Very interesting.
After parking the car in the gravel area in front of Diana’s garage, Adam climbed out of his Trans Am and slammed the door.
For a moment he stared at Diana’s modern red-wood-and-glass house nestled in the wooded hills above Berkeley, California. It was a stunningly beautiful piece of tri-level architecture, with deep, sloping roofs, picture windows, and a wraparound deck that blended with its natural setting. Smiling, he silently saluted the architect who had designed the house with such care and created such harmony.
His smile faded as he thought about the house’s owner. His brother had said Diana was successful, and as an architect Adam knew she had to be very successful to own a house like this. Diana had continually surprised him at their first meeting, and it looked as if their second would be no different. Since Monday, images of her had been popping into his head at the oddest times. She’d been funny, offbeat, and intriguing.
He frowned, remembering how overly interested his brother had been in Diana. After Adam had told Dan he’d be seeing Diana on Saturday, Dan had called daily to check if the meeting was still on. Yesterday afternoon he had called four times. There had been a kind of worried excitement in his voice. He had even called that morning. “Just asking,” he’d said.
Adam wondered why his younger brother was so obsessed about the meeting with Diana. Dan acted as if Diana were the divine head of the church, and not a naïve, shrimp-sitting possible virgin.
But if Dan was so interested in Diana because of her games, Adam told himself, then he’d have to get them without his older brother’s help. Adam’s own business with Diana was personal, and he planned to keep it that way.
With that thought he crossed the drive and walked up the three deck steps to the front door. He had to ring twice before Diana opened it.
“Hi. Come on in, and we’ll get started,” she said before he could say hello. She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “My workroom’s in the back.”
As he followed her into the two-storied foyer, Adam grinned at her enthusiasm and at the glimpse he’d had of the front of her T-shirt. The University of California logo barely hid her unencumbered breasts, and her nipples were small pebbles against the thin knit. Her rich brown hair was in a loose ponytail that was rapidly becoming looser as it drooped on the nape of her neck. He let his gaze drift farther down to the back of her tight jeans and her slender bare feet. She looked downright earthy, and far removed from the “behind the times” innocent of Monday.
He sobered when he realized he would be in close proximity to her for hours. Why did she have to be so damned shapely? The knights of the Round Table would have tossed chivalry out on its ear if all the ladies of the realm had been built like Diana. He sensed, though, that his first impression of her as a naïve virgin was a more accurate one. He only hoped his willpower held up.
Wanting to dampen his growing awareness of her, he said, “This is a beautiful house, Diana. Who …”
His voice trailed away when they reached the threshold of her workroom in the back lower level. Adam stopped dead. As he gaze
d in astonishment at the room’s contents, he wondered if he were about to enter the twilight zone. Frankenstein’s laboratory had never looked so wild. The workroom was enormous, running the width of the house, and contained the largest collection of computers he’d ever seen. There had to be at least twenty of the machines in all sizes sitting atop various desks and tables along two walls. Even a couple of commercial arcade games—big, boxlike things about six feet tall, with glowing screens to tempt players to part with their quarters—competed for space. The other two walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books. The electronic jungle was so overwhelming that the double sliding glass doors along the back actually looked squished.
As his first surprise wore off, Adam became aware that there was order amid the chaos. The books and magazines weren’t just shoved any which way into the bookcases, but were neatly shelved. The manuals on the tables and desks were primly stacked or standing between book-ends. Although wires seemed to snake everywhere, they were neatly bound together in an effort to keep them under control. In fact the room and its contents were scrupulously clean, and everything seemed to have a place.
“Don’t worry,” Diana said, chuckling. “Nothing bites.”
“I hope not,” Adam said, cautiously entering the room. “Do you actually use all of these?”
“I only use these for most of my preliminary work,” she said as she crossed the room to where three computers sat bunched together on an oversized table. A single swivel chair with rollers sat in front of it. “The others are different models currently on the market or outdated older ones that I don’t have the heart to get rid of.”
“My brother would think this was computer heaven,” Adam said, still trying to take it all in.
She turned around, her eyebrows raised above the top of her glasses. “Oh? Your brother likes computers?”
He laughed, remembering how Dan had always been hunched in front of a computer when he was a teenager. “He loves them. He has his own software company in Seattle. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called Starlight Software.”
