Man of the Hour. Diana Palmer

      She sighed. “Yes, she does. You look very much as your father used to,” she murmured.

      He shook his head. “He was shorter.”

      “But just as somber. You don’t smile, Steve,” she said quietly, and moved gracefully into the big front room with its modern black and white and chrome furniture and soft honey-colored carpet.

      “Smiling doesn’t fit my image,” he returned.

      “Some image,” she mused. “I saw one of your vice presidents hide in a hangar when he spotted you on the tarmac. That lazy walk of yours lets everyone know when you’re about to lose your temper. So slow and easy—so deadly.”

      “It gets results,” he replied, indicating that he was aware of the stance and probably used it to advantage with his people. “Have you seen a balance sheet lately? Aren’t you interested in what I’m doing with your stock?”

      “Finance doesn’t mean much to me,” she confessed. “I’m much more interested in the ballet company I’m working with. It really is in trouble.”

      “Join another company,” he said.

      “I’ve spent a year working my way up in this one,” she returned. “I can’t start all over again. Ballerinas don’t have that long, as a rule. I’m going on twenty-three.”

      “So old?” His eyes held hers. “You look very much as you did at eighteen. More sophisticated, of course. The girl I used to know would have died before she’d have insinuated to a perfect stranger that she was sharing my bed.”

      “I thought she was one of your women,” Meg muttered. “God knows, you’ve got enough of them. I’ll bet you have to keep a computer file so you won’t forget their names. No wonder Jane believed I was one of them without question!”

      “You could have been, once,” he reminded her bluntly. “But I got noble and pushed you away in the nick of time.” He laughed without humor. “I thought we’d have plenty of time for intimate discoveries after we were married. More fool me.” He lifted the cigarette to his mouth, and his eyes were ice-cold.

      “I was grass green back then,” she reminded him with what she hoped was a sophisticated smile. “You’d have been disappointed.”

      He blew out a soft cloud of smoke and his eyes searched hers. “No. But you probably would have been. I wanted you too badly that last night we were together. I’d have hurt you.”

      It was the night they’d argued. But before that, they’d lain on his black leather sofa and made love until she’d begged him to finish it. She hadn’t been afraid, then. But he hadn’t. Even now, the sensations he’d kindled in her body made her flush.

      “I don’t think you would have, really,” she said absently, her body tingling with forbidden memories as she looked at him. “Even so, I wanted you enough that I wouldn’t have cared if you hurt me. I was wild to have you. I forgot all my fears.”

      He didn’t notice the implication. He averted his eyes. “Not wild enough to marry me, of course.”

      “I was eighteen. You were thirty and you had a mistress.”

      His back stiffened. He turned, his eyes narrow, scowling. “What?”

      “You know all this,” she said uncomfortably. “My mother explained it to you the morning I left.”

      He moved closer, his lean face hard, unreadable. “Explain it to me yourself.”

      “Your father told me about Daphne,” she faltered. “The night we argued, she was the one you took out, the one you were photographed with. Your father told me that you were only marrying me for the stock. He and your mother cared about me—perhaps more than my own did. When he said that you always went back to Daphne, no matter what, I got cold feet.”

      His high cheekbones flushed. He looked…stunned. “He told you that?” he asked harshly.

      “Yes. Well, my mother knew about Daphne, too,” she said heavily.

      “Oh, God.” He turned away. He leaned over to crush out his cigarette, his eyes bleak, hopeless.

      “I knew you weren’t celibate, but finding that you had a mistress was something of a shock, especially when we’d been seeing each other for a month.”

      “Yes. I expect it was a shock.” He was staring down into the ashtray, unmoving. “I knew your mother was against the engagement. She had her heart set on helping you become a ballerina. She’d failed at it, but she was determined to see that you succeeded.”

      “She loved me…”

      He turned, his dark eyes riveting to hers. “You ran, damn you.”

      She took a steadying breath. “I was eighteen. I had reasons for running that you don’t know about.” She dropped her eyes to his broad chest. “But I think I understand the way you were with me. You had Daphne. No wonder it was so easy for you to draw back when we made love.”

      His eyes closed. He almost shuddered with reaction. He shook with the force of his rage at his father and Meg’s mother.

      “It’s all water under the bridge now, though,” she said then, studying his rigid posture with faint surprise. “Steve?”

      He took a long, deep breath and lit another cigarette. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you wait and talk to me?”

      “There was no point,” she said simply. “You’d already told me to get out of your life,” she added with painful satisfaction.

      “At the time, I probably meant it,” he replied heavily. “But that didn’t last long. Two days later, I was more than willing to start over, to try again. I came to tell you so. But you were gone.”

      “Yes.” She stared at her slender hands, ringless, while her mind fought down the flood of misery she’d felt when she left Wichita. The fear had finally defeated her. And he didn’t know…

      “If you’d waited, I could have explained,” he said tautly.

      She looked at him sadly. “Steve, what could you have said? It was perfectly obvious that you weren’t ready to make a real commitment to me, even if you were willing to marry me for your own reasons. And I had some terrors that I couldn’t face.”

      “Did you?” he asked dully. He lifted the cigarette to his chiseled mouth and stared into space. “Your father and mine were involved in a subtle proxy fight about that time, did anyone tell you?”

      “No. Why would they have needed to?”

      “No reason,” he said bitterly. “None at all.”

      She hated the way he looked. Surely what had happened in the past didn’t still bother him. His pride had suffered, though, that might explain it.

      She moved closer, smiling gently. “Steve, it was forever ago,” she said. “We’re different people now, and all I did really was to spare us both a little embarrassment when we broke up. If you’d wanted me that badly, you’d have come after me.”

      He winced. His dark silver eyes caught hers and searched them with anguish. “You’re sure of that.”

      “Of course. It was no big thing,” she said softly. “You’ve had dozens of women since, and your mother says you don’t take any of them any more seriously than you took me. You enjoy being a bachelor. If I wasn’t ready for marriage, neither were you.”

      His face tautened. He smiled, but it was no smile at all. “You’re right,” he said coldly, “it was no big thing. One or two nights together would have cured both of us. You were a novelty, you with your innocent body and big eyes. I wanted you, all right.”

      She searched his face, looking for any trace of softening. She didn’t find it. She hated seeing him that way, so