For All the Wrong Reasons (42 page)

Michael grinned. “Funding's not a gift, but he's looking to capitalize us in return for a forty percent stake at three million dollars.”

They ate a delicious dinner and got quietly drunk. Diana alternated her sake with green tea, but it didn't puncture her high much. At that price they would be able to commission good writers, good illustrators, good marketing men and a competent sales force. There would be no overhead, as a floor at JanCorp was part of the deal.

“He said he'd watched how we grew this place from the ground up, and then rebuilt after the IPO thing,” Michael told her, clicking his porcelain sake thimble against hers. “He thinks with some real money we can spread our wings. And I agree with him.”

“Me, too,” Diana said.

“Look.” Michael stared across at her, his dark eyes warm. “We've wasted a lot of time in pointless sniping. We make an excellent team. We need to concentrate on that.”

“I agree. You built something pretty amazing, and you gave me a chance to be part of it. I'm grateful for that,” Diana half whispered. Tears were prickling in her eyes; she attributed it to the sake.

“I'd like us to be friends,” Michael said. “This will be hard work. We'll be in it together.”

“Sure. We should spend some time together. If you have an evening free from Tina.”

“For you, anytime,” he said.

Diana looked at his broad chest, the thickness of his thighs spread over the bench, the hardness of his muscles sliding under the skin.

“This is going to be great,” she said.

And it would be. The question was, why did she want to cry so badly?

They talked for four hours. Diana watched Michael blazing with excitement, scribbling his plans on the backs of napkins. She was amazed at how badly she wanted this to work. He promised her a raise, even a small slice of the company. But what she wanted was a final opportunity to prove she could do it.

She would go from being a director of a mom-and-pop operation to a hotshot executive.

My God, Diana thought, catching herself. I'm actually thinking like a businesswoman. It was no longer about recovering her former status. Not even about showing up Felicity and Natasha. This time it was about who she had decided to be.

I love him for giving me this chance,
Diana thought.

Michael rolled up his sleeves suddenly. His forearm, tanned and covered with wiry black hair, gripped the pen like it was a dagger. Diana gazed at his muscular upper arms, his biceps pushing out at the thick cotton of his shirt. Brad's arms were skinny compared to Michael's. He was much prettier, of course. His features were more even, his teeth straighter, his nose had never been busted up in a fight.

Diana felt her pussy mercilessly tighten and slick up. The wave of desire for him was so intense she wanted to run to the bathroom and stroke herself, just for a little release. But she had decided to try and be friends. Blushing, she pushed herself up.

“Could you run me home?” she murmured.

THIRTY-NINE

Diana flung herself into her work.

It wasn't difficult to do. Expanding Imperial was harder than it looked, even for Michael. She hunted for new talent with a bigger budget; she had to meet headhunters, design salary packages, and reassure all their smaller buyers that the new company would look after them. But her work was as nothing compared to the eighteen-hour days Michael was putting in. Sometimes he slept in their chaotic new offices. It was the company's big chance, and Michael wasn't going to let it slip. He took her for breakfast, took her for lunch, sometimes to dinner, and told her his plans. She knew Brad resented the time she spent with him. But business, for Diana, came first.

“You said you needed time to consider,” Brad complained one night over dinner in Martha's Vineyard. “When are you going to find the time, exactly? It's Cicero this, Cicero that. I practically have to schedule an appointment with Ellen just to get in to see you.”

“I know.” Diana put her soft, manicured hand over his. She hadn't been back to his bed since that drunken night. She told him she wanted to wait until marriage. She couldn't quite make the jump, couldn't quite commit. Daily she asked herself what was wrong with her. He was the absolute top prize on the New York dating scene since poor, doomed JFK Jr. had married Carolyn Bessette. Diana attended operas, jetted off to gamble in Atlantic City, took ski breaks in Aspen; she knew Westchester Airport, where Brad's father kept the family jet, better than Grand Central Station. Claire and Elspeth cooed over each fresh triumph, each new paparazzi shot in the papers. They were hovering like friendly hawks, trying to find something that would motivate Brad to produce a ring. If they only knew he'd proposed months ago, Diana thought, I would never get a second's peace.

“It's not forever. It's just while the merger gets off the ground.”

Art Jankel had allotted them the ninth floor of the JanCorp colossus on Sixth Avenue. Covered all the way up in polished black marble, the JanCorp building dominated midtown, it had fountains and a tree in the lobby itself. The driven, somewhat anal, JanCorp executives who rushed in and out in their three-thousand-dollar suits, clutching their briefcases and notes, were shocked to pass the Imperial crew slouching into work at ten in Metallica T-shirts and baggy jeans.

“It better not be forever. Because I don't have that long to wait,” Brad said, giving her his full-wattage white smile. “There
are
other candidates for your position.”

“Hundreds, I expect.”

“It's just that none of them have your style.” Brad sighed. “So tell me how next week's looking. Can you squeeze me in between power breakfasts?”

She tried. But mostly she kept breakfasts for Michael.

Building up Imperial was becoming one of the most enjoyable experiences of her life. Funny, Diana thought, looking back, when she'd had such mean little pleasures—always being the best dressed, first on the guest list, the girl with the coolest backstage pass and hottest Prada backpack—she had never known what real satisfaction felt like, what it meant to look down from her sky-high offices in a palette of forest green, cream and chocolate toward downtown and remember how she had cleaned an airless, cramped little apartment just to help grind out the rent. The “joy” of snagging a rich husband could not be compared to the thrill she got from finding the right marketing guy, or a retired sales king who was so pumped up to get a second chance that at fifty-five he outworked every twenty-four-year-old in the industry.

“You shouldn't seem surprised that you're doing well,” Michael told her one afternoon. They were standing outside Yankee Stadium, looking up at the giant bat dominating the forecourt. Michael was determined to get her to understand baseball. He bought her great seats just behind home plate and forced her to eat hot dogs and down Coors Light; he loved the way she refused to dress down, even for a game. Every other chick in the place wore sweatshirts and chinos, casual gear for a New York spring. But not Diana. Today she was in a long pink linen skirt with crisp pleats and a tiny shell top in rose cashmere with a matching cardigan. She was completely made-up, of course, though she kept it light; clover on her cheeks, a light gloss on her lips, and a touch of bone-white eyeliner under soft beige shadow that made her look bright and alert. Not forgetting the breath of perfume; lily of the valley, he thought; and the string of real pearls around her neck. Her dark hair, sleek and glossy, fell gently just to her shoulders, flipping up at the ends. “You have a great knack of putting things together. Putting the right
people
together is half of what business is.”

“And what's the other half?” Diana asked, watching a young man the teenage girls were calling out to as though he were a rock star of some kind. He was swinging that baseball bat around in the air like it was a cheerleader's baton. She had no idea how they ever hit the ball with those things. It was a bit like rounders, only boys played it.

“Coming up with the right product. Which is where I come in. You need a vision. I don't care if you're manufacturing toilet paper: you better be passionate about toilet paper. And you better come up with a better-sold, better-presented, more comfortable goddamn toilet paper. Because that'll make you a millionaire.”

“Do we have to sit here and talk about lavatory paper?” Diana asked plaintively. “I'm trying to eat.”

Michael took a gigantic bite of his hot dog, smothered with chillies and onions and mustard.

“Pretty good, huh?”

“Not really.” She nibbled at a corner of her bun.

“You're lame.” Michael pointed at the young man with the bat. “That's Derek Jeter. He's one of their best—”

“Batsmen.”

“Hitters. And that's Roger Clemens. Best pitcher in baseball, but he's been having a lousy year.”

“Cricket's much more relaxing.”

“Yeah, eleven guys standing in a field and nothing going on.”

“Nonsense.” She glanced over at him and saw the dark pants and plain white shirt on the barrel chest, the lust for life that he evinced every day. “Cricket is like war. You and Sam watch your enemy slowly being demolished. He comes back with a new force, you cut the legs out of that one. It can be vicious. Exhilarating.” She shrugged. “Unless you support England, in which case it's usually embarrassing, but even they can surprise you with a mammoth win.”

“I'll take your word for it.” Michael dragged his eyes away from Diana's chest. “Tell me how the Count Cloud Nine series is coming along.…”

She relaxed as they talked through the business of the week. Nobody could hear what they were talking about, no corporate spy could spill their plans to Blakely's. They were not going to let Ernie Foxton win this time.

And he would come after them. If they gave him an inch.

Michael told her not to worry about Ernie. He said he had it taken care of. And Diana had learned that when Michael said something was getting done, it got done. His word was more than a promise, it was a fact. So she put Ernie out of her mind.

“I'd like to see you tonight,” he said to her when they rose at the seventh-inning stretch. “I'm hoping to launch an online travel guide. Written by real New Yorkers and aimed at kids. Books can't offer real-time videos of your destination.”

Diana grinned. “You could make a lot of money with that.”

“That's part of my plan,” Michael admitted. “So, tonight, OK? My place.”

“Won't Tina mind if I intrude?” Diana made herself ask.

Through Christmas and New Year and Valentine's Day—when three hundred red roses from Brad had been delivered to her desk, making the entire ninth floor smell like a florist's—Michael had still dated Tina. The great advantage to having a bigger office was that Diana hardly ever saw her now. On the rare occasions when she had to go to see Michael, she tried to time her visits so Tina would be having lunch.

Once or twice, though, she hadn't been able to miss her. And the signs were not reassuring. Tina had dropped the itsy-bitsy skirts and tight leather pants for almost demure dresses. Diana noticed she was adapting herself to Michael's taste. He was in favor of ladylike, funnily enough, for a guy who was dating a bimbette. And Tina, while not a smart girl, possessed a certain amount of low animal cunning. I bet she's out in the bookstore right now picking up Italian cookbooks and learning how to serve Sambuca with the espresso, with three coffee beans in the glass, she thought. But she pushed it down. She couldn't let dislike for Tina show. She was getting on so well with Michael.

“Not at all. Actually I told her we'd be spending the evening together. I have plans I want you to see. And the fewer people who know about it, the better.”

“But you can trust Tina, right?” Diana asked.

She didn't know why she asked this. It was like being a kid and having a loose tooth, and being unable to stop teasing it with her tongue.

Michael looked at her with his dark eyes. “Of course I can. But this is business, not personal. I don't mix the two. You know that.”

It felt like a slap. “Of course.” She nodded quickly. “I couldn't agree with you more. Mixing is always a mistake.”

They sat, and she switched her eyes to Tino Martinez, who promptly belted a double down the left-field line.

*   *   *

“Just keep your fucking trap shut, all right?”

Ernie turned on Felicity. Her inane questions about which wedding-cake design and which kind of fancy light-bulb to use in the strings of lights she planned on suspending over the ballroom ceiling were getting on his nerves. He was trying to find some way he could cut costs more, to improve the Blakely's bottom line just a little bit, and she was bugging him yet again. “I don't give a fuck, darlin'? Understand?”

His thick cockney accent had returned at full force under stress. “I just want you to fuck off and give me some peace. Just get out so I can do my business, which is what keeps
you
in jewels and fucking Maseratis.”

“I understand perfectly.” Felicity's brow did not crease; she had recently popped down to Dr. Wexler for an injection of Botox, the poison that paralyzed the muscles in the forehead, making you unable to frown and giving you a permanently surprised look. She had to fix Ernie with a gimlet stare instead. “You're trying to dig yourself out of the hole the company is in. And you intend on using foul language in my presence. So I am going to leave.”

“Oh fucking dear. Boo fucking hoo,” Ernie snarled.

“Just make sure you complete your task properly …
darling.
I wouldn't want you to have any difficulties paying for our summer place.”

Privately, Felicity thanked heaven that she had had the estate agent put the deed to that house in her name. Ernie was so busy these days with the wretched little men calling at the apartment, the endless faxes and the calls from Italy in the middle of the night … always fighting with somebody and screaming at somebody else … he hadn't even noticed the few alterations her private lawyer had put into the deal.