“Sure thing, jelly bean. Could you fix it in a French braid like last time?” Denise asked, settling herself in easy reach of Diana’s hands. “My hair looked really super—and Johnny liked it too.”
“Sure thing, jelly bean,” Diana echoed Denise’s words. She started to brush Denise’s hair with deft fingers. “Hold still, now! This takes intense concentration.”
Silence and peace settled over the house after the two girls finally left for the evening. Carrie perched in a rocking chair while Diana still laid claim on the couch. They decided to watch a horror movie on the television, and for some minutes, tried to devote all their attention to the screen. But the effort proved to be futile and with a disgusted sigh, Carrie switched off the set and turned to Diana, pulling her chair around as she did so.
“I talked to Alex today,” she told Diana as she relaxed into a rocking pattern. “I asked him if you’d gotten in touch with him since the accident and he said that aside from a card he received, he hadn’t heard from you at all. You promised me you would go and talk with him about resigning.”
“I did.” Diana held up one finger as she talked. “But I didn’t promise when I would talk with him. I want to wait for a while. There’s no chance of me going back to Mason Steel, so it really doesn’t matter when I talk to him. I just need time.”
Carrie leaned forward in her chair. “Alex didn’t even know where you were staying. He was worried sick about you! Couldn’t you at least call him and tell him how you’re doing? That wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”
“Yes,” she stated baldly. “Carrie, I didn’t resign from Mason Steel because of the work load. I resigned because I couldn’t face Alex day after day.” She stared into Carrie’s eyes as she spoke in a low voice. “Carrie, I just realised in the long hours at the hospital how much I love Alex. I’ve never loved anyone in my life before. I feel like I’ve been hit with a sack of bricks! I need time—time to be by myself, because I don’t know who I am or what I consider important any more.” She spread out her hands in a gesture of confusion as she shook her head. Carrie listened intently, her face puckered into a concerned frown. She didn’t seem surprised by what Diana had just confided.
She said, “Why don’t you tell Alex how you feel? I think you would be surprised by what he would have to say. Please, Diana, you really should air everything out with him.”
Diana shook her head. “I promised I would see him and talk to him. Let me take things at my own pace. I can’t promise anything else right now. Please, Carrie, let’s just leave it at that.”
Carrie nodded. She sighed, “All right, Diana. I won’t say anything else.” She was hesitant to ask the question hovering in her mind, but finally did. “You never talked about the night of the accident and Alex won’t speak of it, either. Did something happen at the Paynes’ party like you suspected, or did everything go pretty smoothly?”
Diana’s face hardened as she heard Alicia’s witch-like laughter floating down the hall, again reliving the anguish of that night. “Oh, everything went smoothly all right,” her lips curled sardonically, as she uttered this. “Everything was just dandy.” And with that statement, Diana refused to talk about it.
* * *
The slow weeks of recovery gradually turned into months as winter began to make its cold and snowy white appearance. As soon as Diana was into a leg brace and out of the casts, she moved into her apartment again, in spite of all the protests that arose in the Stevens household that she stay yet another week.
She spent most of her time lounging in her apartment or taking slow walks in the neighbourhood at the advice of her doctor. She couldn’t help but think of Alex and what he must be doing each day. She couldn’t help but wonder if he missed her half as much as she missed him. There were no phone calls from him. There were no letters, or any attempts at communication at all. Gradually Diana grew to believe that he didn’t even care. She never considered how he would be reading her silence.
Terry and Brenda were worried about her; she could tell by the way they called her almost every day, or how they stopped over with an odd gift of fruit, or a dinner casserole. She was touched by their show of concern, gratefully appreciating every kind and thoughtful gesture, but she stayed silent, wrapped in her own thoughts and daydreams. She was in a cocoon of introspective contemplation. The outside world barely entered into her sphere of thought. She realised in a dreamy sort of way that soon she would have to give some thought to her financial future and what she would like to do with her career, but it hardly made a ripple in the pool of her consciousness. It didn’t matter; something would turn up. She was well qualified for a variety of jobs and people with her kind of degree were in demand. She’d take care of it later.
One day she stared at herself in her bedroom mirror and decided suddenly: she would see Alex today, talk with him and try to finally get him out of her life. It was done with no conscious effort, as though she had known all along that it was going to be this day. There was no inward struggle; all of that had gone before. She had no doubt that she would keep loving him for the rest of her life, for it was as impossible to comprehend an end of the emotion as it was for her to comprehend the finality of her own death.
However, Diana didn’t have any illusions about the talk. She truly believed that there could be no reconciliation for her love. She knew no other way of existence beside the solitary one she now led. She couldn’t allow herself to believe in anything else.
After calling Carrie and confirming a visit for the afternoon, she readied herself and quietly left the apartment.
Chapter Ten
A tall and very slim woman made her way down the sidewalk towards the large steel building that was Mason Steel. She was raven-haired and very striking, drawing looks on that cold and snowy afternoon without even noticing them. It was the unconscious air of dignity and grace that drew attention to her almost painfully thin figure. She limped ever so slightly and yet moved with a fluidity of action that was pleasing to behold. She entered the building swiftly, totally immersed in her own world, uncaring about the outside one.
Diana was stopped several times as she tried to approach the elevator. People from all over the ground floor were pleased to see her, eagerly asking if she was back to work, when she would be back to work, how she was feeling, why she had been away so long. Diana gathered from passing comments that Alex had deliberately kept her resignation a secret as he gambled on whether she would come to talk with him about it or not.
She answered all the questions patiently, considerately spending time with each well-wisher before trying to head to the elevator once more. She was in no hurry; she knew that she would be talking with Alex sooner or later that afternoon. All would come in good time.
In the elevator, Jerry was exuberantly excited to see her, telling her, with a trace of glumness, that things “just ain’t been right at all” without her. “You sure are thin, Miss Carrington,” he grumbled, shaking his head as he eyed her. “Just like Mr. Mason. He’s been missing you somethin’ awful. Every day he gets quieter and quieter. Now he hardly ever says a thing. Boy, he sure looked tired when he first came back to work! Of course, he’s lookin’ better now, but he still don’t look the same, like he used to. He’s—harder set in his expressions. He don’t laugh as much, neither.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jerry,” she said as she watched the light move on the list of floors. She glanced at him. “But I hardly think that it’s because of me; the accident was very severe. Mr. Mason nearly didn’t make it. He’s probably still recovering. I know I am.” Diana was conscious of how true her words really were, more true than Jerry could know. She would be recovering for a long time, a very long time.
Jerry looked skeptical, but refrained from saying anything as the doors opened and Diana left the elevator. He waved goodbye as the doors closed and she waved back, then headed down the hall.
Carrie was in the office rummaging around in the file cabinet when Diana opened the office door
. She looked up, then straightened when she saw who it was.
“You’ve really come,” she stated with satisfaction. “I was afraid you would change your mind and call me back. I’d told Alex that you promised to come and talk to him someday, but he was beginning to disbelieve me. I’ll go and let him know you’re here.”
With that, not waiting for a reply, Carrie whisked over to the door and went into the room, shutting the door behind her. Diana stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, then she shrugged off her coat and sat down on the couch. Her heart was pounding. She cursed herself for being a dozen different kinds of fool, but it didn’t help her shaking hands or the flush that crept up her face, outlining the edge of her cheekbones.
After a minute or so, Carrie was back informing Diana that Alex would be with her in a moment. He was finishing up a call to California and would send for her when he was free.
Diana’s dreamy calm that had been so much a part of her for the last few months deserted her completely and she was seriously considering a mad dash to the door when the other door flew open and Alex stood in front of her. She sat looking at him, not moving or speaking, just staring and taking in every detail of his appearance. He was thinner. There were hollows in his cheeks that hadn’t been there before and his facial expression was harder and more sombre, with an air of remoteness that had not been a part of his personality when she had first met him. A small thin scar ran across the side of his face from the temple to the jawline, its rather pinkish newness a silent testimony of the recent crash.
Diana looked at it and started to shake, her mouth trembling as her eyes filled. She shook her head at him in a mute apology for all that had gone before. He had been watching Diana very hard and closely and when he saw the bright gleaming in her eyes, he moved quickly. “Come on,” he murmured, helping her to stand and walking between her and Carrie as they headed into his office. He closed the door and moved away from Diana, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his slacks and inhaling deeply. Diana limped over to a chair to lean against its support, looking around the room in an effort to regain her composure. It was exactly as she remembered it, down to her desk in the corner of the room. She stared at it.
“Have you found someone to replace me yet?” she asked. The effort at speech steadied her somewhat.
“No. I’m hoping to talk you into coming back.” Alex spoke to the carpet. He was in his usual position against the front of the desk, very still and waiting.
She shook her head at that. “Oh, no,” she said quietly. It was a very final tone. “No.”
Alex asked suddenly, “Are you going to have a limp for the rest of your life?”
She smiled a little. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like I am, when I’m especially tired, or my leg is really troubling me. But I don’t think I’ll have the limp much longer. I really am better—I hardly limp at all if I’m not tired, or if I don’t walk too much. Soon you won’t be able to tell at all.”
Alex was shaking his head from side to side as Diana told him this. “You know,” he said when she had finished, “I wasn’t going to mention the accident at all. But when I saw you sitting on the couch, it all seemed to bring everything back so clearly, like a nightmare that one remembers unexpectedly. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I’m sorry, Diana.”
“Sorry for what?” she asked gently. “Sorry for digging all of it up again? I’m not. It—helps to talk to you about it. No one else really understands just what kind of a night that was—the cold, the wet, the fury of the storm. That awful, lasting darkness. I was so afraid you’d been killed. All I could see was a still dark figure that wouldn’t answer when I called your name.”
Alex whitened until Diana began to fear that he would pass out. His hands were clenched tightly along the rim of the desk top. “You mean to say you were conscious that night after the crash?” Diana nodded, looking surprised. She had assumed that Alex knew that. He looked at her, meeting her gaze, and his eyes were sick. “Oh, my God!” he breathed softly. “We were there for hours before anyone found us. The one thing I’ve been telling myself all this time was at least you couldn’t know what happened, at least you’d been unconscious, oblivious to any pain. And you were awake the whole time?”
“Oh no,” she hastened to assure him, to ease some of the awful tension in his face. “I was conscious for a very little while. Most of the time I didn’t know what was happening. Really. It wasn’t all that bad.”
Alex said softly, “You’re a liar, Diana. But thank you.”
There was a silence, one that each of them found hard to break, one heavy with things unsaid and things needing to be said. Alex stirred. “May I ask why you won’t come back?” he asked with absolutely no expression on his face. Only his eyes were alive, still burning with an intensity that Diana could feel until he once again switched his gaze to the carpet. She tried to speak and had to laugh. It was an unsteady sound.
“I had everything rehearsed, everything,” she said, moving over to the window. The view was dizzying and she looked away. “I knew what I wanted to say and just how I was going to say it. And then I was going to walk out, leave and never come back. That was my plan ‘A’. I don’t have a plan ‘B’, Alex. I just don’t know what to say.” She fell silent.
Alex whispered, a curiously intense and desperate sound, “Try.”
She looked up sharply. “Yes, I do owe you that.” She took a deep breath, trying to form her thoughts into words. “Do you remember when we talked a while ago in here? It seems a lifetime ago. I told you that I was looking for something but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know how to look for it, how to achieve it—do you remember it?”
Alex smiled for the first time. “The bright and shining ideal.”
“Yes, that was it. Oh, Alex, I’ve been so incredibly stupid! Here I was searching and searching for something that had been right under my nose the whole time. I think it really hit home when I saw you with Alicia that night.” Alex made a sharp sound and would have spoken except for Diana’s interruption. She said quietly, “Please. I know I don’t deserve it, but just listen to me for a minute. I promise, I’ll listen to anything you have to tell me when I’m done. Please!” Alex stayed silent and Diana said, “Thank you. Always in my life, I would steer clear of emotional involvement. If you think of my past, you can understand why. Whenever I felt an attraction for someone of the opposite sex, I would view it as a threat to myself. You see, then, when I was struggling to survive, to make something of myself, I realised that deep down, I was looking for someone to come and take away all my problems and to make the world a place of sunshine and roses. I’d never known love, what it was really like. I just assumed that this was love, and if this desire that I felt when I was depressed and discouraged was love, then I wanted no part of it. It could destroy everything good and strong that I admired in myself, leaving only self-contempt.
“That’s why I didn’t recognise what I felt for you until that night of the car accident. Also, it’s why I couldn’t name my emotions until the day in the hospital when they told me you were going to live. I cried, cried so hard, and kept thanking God over and over again that you were still a part of this world. It didn’t even matter that you weren’t a part of my world. I just needed to know you were alive.”
She moved over to a chair and sat down, absentmindedly rubbing her tired and aching leg. She finished simply, “In hospital I realised just how much I love you, Alex. I—I think I’ve loved you ever since you fixed me hot chocolate and told me to go to bed. No one’s ever cared for me like that before. It just took me so long to understand how life can be so much more rich, more full. I’ve discovered a whole new depth of emotion that I’d never known could exist, and I thank you and love you for it.”
She was looking down at her hands and didn’t see him move until he was right beside her.
Alex knelt down on the floor and took her face in between his hands very gently. He searched her eyes with his as he whispered, �
��Diana. Oh God, Diana, do you know what you’re saying?”
She nodded, her eyes overflowing, wetness splashing his wrists. “I know,” she whispered back. “It’s taken me all this time to get up the courage to tell you those three simple words. I love you.”
Alex covered her lips with his own as she formed the words without sound. He savoured the feel and the movement, brushing their softness over and over. His actions were like those of a starving man who had just been given a glimpse of a table laden with sustenance. His eyes were closed and his fingers trembled.
Diana reached up an unsteady hand and stroked his thick hair hesitantly. She was shaking violently and she felt weak, defenseless, as if the slightest blow or word would crush her as easily as she might crush an eggshell.
She made an attempt to continue. “You know, when I saw you with Alicia, I suddenly saw myself in a very different light. She looked so—warm and desirable. I began to see how I would look in about thirty years or so, all thin and shrivelled up, alone and unwanted. I wasn’t a very pretty picture to myself. I think that’s what I was running from most of all. But I just couldn’t escape from myself.”
“Hush!” Alex put a finger against Diana’s lips. He caressed them tenderly. “Hush now, it’s my turn to speak. Diana, listen to me very carefully.” He turned her head with lean fingers and made her look at him. “I was unzipping Alicia’s dress because she said the zipper was stuck, that’s all. I know it sounds suspicious, it did to me too, and all I wanted to do was to hurry and get her out of there. So I helped her with it. She was changing in the adjoining room. I wasn’t expecting her to turn around and let the dress fall down. That’s when you came into the room.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on your face as you saw Alicia and me together. Diana, so help me God, I never wanted her that night. How could I? My thoughts were all of you.” He touched her hair, her face and her neck with such a loving look that Diana caught her breath, afraid to believe what he was saying.
A Deeper Dimension: A Vintage Contemporary Romance Page 17
