Diamond Girl

by Diana Palmer

  “Isn’t there?” Kenna asked. “Why?”

  “Because he was married once,” he said flatly, meeting her level gaze. “She died, and he’s never gotten over it. I should have told you that before...”

  “Regan told me,” she interrupted. “Everything.”

  He blinked. “He doesn’t talk about it to anyone, he never has,” he said on a frown.

  “I’m not just anyone, Denny,” she said with a smug grin.

  He sighed angrily and rammed his hands in his pockets. “How about having lunch with me tomorrow? I need to talk to you.”

  “All right, boss,” she agreed.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said uncomfortably. He glanced past her and saw Margo and Abbie coming out of the kitchen. “We’ll talk later. Watch yourself.”

  “Oh, I let other people do that,” Kenna said demurely, avoiding his gaze. She smiled at Margo. “I hope you have a good trip,” she said.

  Margo glanced uncomfortably from Kenna to Denny and frowned. “I’m sure I shall,” she said. “However, it will only be for a week.”

  “I thought you said two weeks,” Denny remarked.

  Margo smiled sweetly. “Perhaps you didn’t listen, darling,” she said, her dark eyes flashing.

  Denny scowled. “Perhaps you didn’t tell me you’d changed your mind...darling,” he returned.

  “I think we should go,” Margo said curtly. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Cole. I hope to spend more time with you when I return. Regan, Miss Dean,” she added, nodding at each in turn. She glanced toward Denny and swept out the door.

  “See you tomorrow,” Denny told Kenna and Regan. “Bye, Mom,” he added, pausing to hug his mother. “See you. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Anytime, son,” Abbie murmured absently, watching him hurry out the door with a frown. “Now, what’s going on?” she grumbled, glaring toward Regan.

  He arched both eyebrows innocently. “How should I know?”

  “You know everything,” Abbie returned. “Especially where Denny’s concerned. Spill it, Regan, what’s going on? Is it something to do with you and Kenna? Is he jealous? Is he going to marry Miss de la Vera?”

  “No, I don’t know, yes, probably, your guess is as good as mine,” Regan rattled off, catching Kenna’s arm. “That answers your barrage of questions, Abbie, and you can spend the rest of the afternoon fitting it all together. Kenna and I have to go. Thanks for the coffee. Ciao.”

  Kenna barely had time to call goodbye and add her thanks to his before he dragged her out the door and shoved her into the car.

  “Do you mind?” she gasped, rubbing her arm.

  “Sorry, honey, but if we’d stayed a minute longer, the Spanish Inquisition would have been in session.” He grinned, starting the Porsche. “You know Abbie by now, don’t you? She smells a scoop.”

  “That’s right, she met your father when she was working as a newspaperwoman, didn’t she?” She grinned. “I’d forgotten.”

  “She never does. And she could pry information out of a clam with a plastic dipstick.” He pulled out of the driveway, tooting his horn just as his father had, in the old family tradition. “What was Denny whispering in your ear?”

  “He’s taking me to lunch tomorrow to warn me off you,” she said with a wicked grin. “He’s afraid you’re going to corrupt me and lead me into a life of sin.”

  “I’d love to,” he said, with a wistful glance in her direction. “Your place or mine?”

  “You just got through saying that you don’t seduce virgins,” she said.

  “Damn,” he grumbled. “I forgot.”

  “I’ll keep reminding you, so that you don’t have lapses,” she promised.

  He laughed softly as he lit a cigarette and smoked it quietly. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I like riding around,” she confessed, settling comfortably in her seat.

  “So do I. We’ll ride, then.” He turned on the radio. “Classical, soft rock, hard rock, easy listening?” he asked.

  “Soft rock,” she said immediately.

  He pushed one of the preset buttons and laughed at her expression. “I’m only thirty-five,” he reminded her.

  She blinked. She hadn’t really thought of him in terms of age until now, but come to think of it, he didn’t look old. Mature, yes, masculine, yes, but not old.

  “Ten years older than me,” she murmured.

  “And Denny,” he added, smiling. “Though he gets mistaken for twenty-two.”

  “Why did you want to be a lawyer?” she asked, curious.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I suppose it had something to do with a library full of Perry Mason novels. I like details, I like finding hidden things.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I like the challenge, I suppose.”

  “Why criminal law?” she persisted.

  “Because it’s the most challenging field,” he said immediately. “Life and death.”

  “Yes, it’s that,” she agreed, recalling cases she’d typed for him, transcripts she’d copied, all the bits and pieces of information that filled a plea, and that might save a man’s life or keep him out of prison.

  He glanced at her. “Why did you want to be a legal secretary?”

  “I needed a job, and I was tired of working for a bank,” she replied with a smile. “Numbers aren’t really my forte. But I liked law, and Denny had a one-girl office where I’d mostly be my own boss.”

  “And then he took in a partner...” he murmured drily.

  “You were horrible to me!” she said, glaring toward him. “Absolutely horrible. I don’t know how I managed to get through those months without writing out my resignation on your desktop in red lipstick.”

  “I hoped you would,” he said quietly. “You bothered me. Frumpy outfits and all, you really got to me.”

  “Denny said the secretary you had in New York was a real dish,” she murmured, glancing sideways.

  “She was. And if she’d stood in the middle of the floor naked, I’d have walked past her on my way to court without blinking an eye.” He crushed out the cigarette. “I’ve been more involved with work than women since Jessica died.”

  None of it was making sense, and she stared at him pointedly, trying to make the pieces fit.

  “You have a delicious young body,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I didn’t need a program to tell that it hadn’t been out on loan to anyone who asked.” He sighed deeply as they wound down a picturesque country road, his eyes dark and curious as they swept toward her and away again. “I was curious about you, about why you deliberately downplayed your looks.”

  “You were just plain hostile,” she corrected. “I felt the same way about you, and I wasn’t curious about your looks, either.”

  He chuckled softly. “What looks?”

  “There was an actor when I was a kid, who played in a Western TV series,” she told him. “He was uglier than sin, but he had a way with women that made him the hottest property going.” She smiled in his direction. “Of course, he didn’t have big feet.”

  “My curse,” he admitted. “I was always falling over them when I was a boy.”

  “Now other people fall over them,” she murmured, and reminded him about the client who tripped over Regan’s large feet and fell headfirst into a potted palm.

  He laughed with her. “I thought the leaves suited him, at the time.” The smile faded as the music began to change to a slow, sensuous tune that set a new mood. He glanced at her. “Denny’s interested.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “Margo knows, too. She doesn’t like it.”

  “And you thought she was mercenary,” she murmured.

  “Nobody’s perfect. An heiress, no less. A very possessive heiress, and unless I miss
my guess, she’s going to try to add my stepbrother to her acquisitions.”

  “Would you really mind, knowing what you do about her?” she asked curiously.

  He didn’t answer that. His fingers went to his pocket, produced another cigarette and lit it. “Don’t jump at anything Denny offers, will you?” he asked quietly. “You’ll throw the game if you give in too soon.”

  “God forbid,” she said. She leaned back in the seat and glanced at his set features. “How soon is too soon?”

  “Let him sweat for a week,” he suggested.

  “Margo will be back in a week.”

  He took a long draw from the cigarette. “So she will.” He turned up the radio. “Do what you please, Kenna. I’ve set the scene. The rest is up to you.” His jaw was set and he looked grim. “You could do worse than Denny, if he’s what you really want.”

  Her eyes narrowed as they studied his profile and she felt a cold, dull emptiness inside. He’d already said that he had nothing to offer her except an affair. And she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could survive one with him. She wouldn’t be able to let go. Never having was better than letting go, she supposed. It looked as if it would have to be.

  He’d admitted being interested in her physically, but why had that made him so hostile? And what had he meant about being more involved with work than women—that he didn’t have affairs? And was that why he was antagonistic toward Kenna? Her mind felt as if it were on a merry-go-round trying to find answers.

  She turned her face toward the window, feeling lost. She’d felt so close to him. She’d learned things about him, she’d begun to like him, genuinely like him. Now it was all over, and he’d done his improvement bit, and he was going on to bigger and better things. And Kenna was to go after Denny and take him away from Margo and live happily ever after. The end. Except that this wasn’t the right fairy tale, either.

  She closed her eyes and let herself drift with the music. The laughing camaraderie they’d shared earlier seemed to have died completely, leaving a grudging truce in its place. The taciturn man at her side looked like a man who’d never smiled in his life. And what frightened her was that he might be setting a pattern for the future. At least be my friend, she pleaded silently. Be my friend, Regan, don’t walk out of my life. Before they reached the city, tears were threatening behind her closed eyelids.

  Chapter Seven

  The office felt different when Kenna walked in the next morning. She was wearing the tailored navy suit Regan had bought for her with a white V-necked blouse and a navy-and-white scarf to set it off. She looked jaunty and young and on top of the world, despite her sleepless night.

  Denny was pacing the floor when she walked in. He turned and stared at her, running his eyes up and down her slender body.

  “I just can’t get over the change,” he remarked as she walked slowly, gracefully, to hang up her coat, using all the tricks Regan had gone to such pains to teach her.

  She smiled at him. “You’ll get used to it,” she assured him. Her eyes went to the closed door of Regan’s office, and her heart jumped at the thought of seeing him this morning.

  “He’s gone,” Denny said flatly, watching her curious gaze.

  “Gone?” she echoed. Her eyes widened, and she felt cold all of a sudden.

  “To New York for the week,” he informed her with a smile. “One of those spur-of-the-moment decisions he makes. No warning, no nothing, I found a note on my desk.”

  She searched his eyes. “Did he leave one for me?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope, I figured he’d already told you. How odd that he didn’t.”

  She avoided his suspicious appraisal and sat down at her desk. “Did Margo get off all right?”

  “Margo?” He grimaced. “Yes,” he said darkly, “she took off in a cloud of smoke.”

  She lifted her eyes, surprised at the venom in his tone. Denny was never sarcastic. “That sounds strange.”

  He looked down at her broodingly, his arms folded over his chest, his blond hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed through the open curtains. “We had a knock-down, drag-out fight, if you want to know,” he told her. “Over you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Me?”

  “She thought I was paying you too much attention.” He smiled at her, a new kind of smile, teasing and flirtatious and interested. “And I suppose she was right.”

  Her eyebrows arched. She lifted her eyes to his and lowered them quickly. “I’m flattered,” she replied. That was all she was, unfortunately, not thrilled half to death as she would have been a month, even a week, ago.

  “I’d never have known you were the same woman,” he continued. “Everything about you has changed all of a sudden. Regan’s influence?”

  She smiled. “He has a way with him,” she murmured demurely.

  His face clouded. “Yes, I know. And a way with women, period,” he added coldly. “I could never keep track of them until he married Jessica. He draws them like honey.”

  That hurt. She wondered if he meant it to, or realized how successful the remark was. Now she’d spend the whole week thinking about Regan with other women in New York, and she’d never sleep a wink tonight.

  “He’s rich,” she remarked.

  “Yes, he’s that,” he agreed. “And macho. Regan’s always had everything he wanted.”

  She read the hurt in that cold statement, and she felt a surge of compassion for him. “Growing up in his shadow wasn’t easy, was it?” she asked.

  He laughed shortly. “That’s an understatement. No matter what I ever did, Regan did it better. His grades were higher, his athletic prowess put me in the shade, he could make Dad sit up and take notice if he made a suggestion about the corporation....” He shrugged. “I’m jealous of him, you know. Men like Regan make up their own rules as they go along. He’s one of a kind.”

  She agreed with that in her heart. He was one of a kind, and she didn’t think she’d ever stop wanting him. But Regan had nothing to offer her.

  She glanced up at him. “Does that lunch invitation still stand?”

  “Of course.” He grinned. “I’ll take you to Tonie’s for spaghetti.”

  “I love spaghetti.” She sighed.

  “I know, that’s why I suggested it. I hate to mention mundane subjects, but how about getting the mail and let’s answer it? I’ve got a case at ten.”

  “Sure thing, counselor,” she murmured sweetly, and got up to go get it. His eyes followed her all the way out the door.

  The morning went by quickly, especially with Denny and Regan both out and the phones ringing constantly. Kenna finally got a minute to put Regan’s mail on his desk, and she found herself standing by it for a long time, just staring at the huge swivel chair that barely contained his massive bulk. She missed him. The color had gone out of the world for her, and she wondered absently if this was going to set the pace for the rest of her life. Surely she could forget him. After all, what she’d felt for Denny had already begun to fade quietly away to leave affection in its place. Perhaps it would be that way when she finally got over Regan. When she was 106 years old or so.

  Denny was back right at noon, and she rode down to Tonie’s with him in his blue Mercedes.

  * * *

  The restaurant was crowded, but they were seated in a tiny alcove, where they ate spaghetti and garlic bread and drank a pot of coffee between them.

  Denny talked about the office and his father’s corporation. And it seemed that Regan wasn’t the only one worrying about what would happen when Angus retired.

  “Regan would never be satisfied running the corporation,” Denny said. “He likes what he does too much. On the other hand,” he added with a bitter laugh, “Dad doesn’t think I could handle it.”

  “Have you ever considered asking him to let
you into the administration for a while, on probation?” she asked. She smiled at him impishly. “And show him what you can do?”

  He brightened. “What a thought. No, I hadn’t.” He pursed his lips. “It would mean giving up the practice, of course, and Regan would probably go back to New York and take up his own again. I’ve always had the feeling he threw in with me to give me a head start, anyway.”

  Kenna could have bitten her tongue out. Now she’d just put her job in jeopardy. If Regan went back to New York, she surely wouldn’t be asked to go with him, and it would be the end of seeing him every day.

  “You’re white as a sheet,” Denny observed, frowning. “What is it, are you sick?”

  She swallowed down a sip of hot coffee. “Just indigestion,” she countered. “That sauce was spicy!”

  “I know what you mean.” He studied her. “Of course, you’re upset,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t have a job, Kenna. You could always come to the corporation with me.” He grinned boyishly. “You’d love it. It’s full of potted plants and light. You’re always complaining that my office looks dark and dead.”

  She managed a wan smile for him and tugged at her scarf with restless fingers. “I suppose I could,” she murmured, hurting as she thought of Regan moving out of her life forever. Even though it might be the best thing that could happen, the thought brought a pain like nothing she’d ever felt.

  “How involved have you gotten with my stepbrother?” he asked gently, and looked genuinely concerned.

  Her eyes lifted. “Well...”

  “Don’t let him cut you up,” he said softly. “He’s a sausage grinder. Nothing and no one means a damned thing to him since Jessica was killed. He only goes through the motions of living.” He set his cup down. “They had to drag him away from the graveyard,” he added, remembering. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t know people could grieve that much...” He put down his napkin, unaware of the pain in Kenna’s eyes. “We’d better get back. Want to stroll through the park on the way? I think there’s some kind of folk concert going on.”

  “I’d like that,” she agreed. Anything to get her mind off Regan. She smiled at him. “I’d really like that.”