CHAPTER 9

It took a good two seconds for Melanie’s words to completely sink into Dianna’s consciousness and understanding. But when they did … “Oh, Melanie.”

The ramifications hit Dianna’s consciousness with the force of incoming meteorites. Still locked in Melanie’s embrace, she felt hot and weak all over. But then she remembered that this was Melanie. “Melanie, honey?” she choked out. “Okay, let go of me, all right?”

Melanie relaxed her grip and Dianna slipped back but remained squatted next to the woman’s chair. “Thank you. That’s good.” She rubbed her neck and smoothed her hair away from her too-hot face. “Now, I want you to look at me, and I want you to define ‘indiscretion.’ I know the dictionary meaning, but I mean as you’re using it.”

Before Melanie could explain, the front door opened and out trooped Mrs. Windhorst with a tiny cone-shaped paper cup of water. Right behind her came Paula with an industrial-sized wad of plucked-up tissues. Dianna forced herself to smile at Melanie. “Here we go. Have a sip of water and blow your nose, okay? You’ll feel better.”

“Thank you,” Melanie said in a very watery voice. She took the offered water and the wad of tissues. “You all are too kind.”

While she drank and then blew her nose, Paula and Mrs. Windhorst reseated themselves and turned questioning expressions Dianna’s way. She gave a tiny shake of her head, coupled with a vague gesture, to convey that she didn’t know yet what was up. The truth was Melanie’s notion of a sexual indiscretion could be her hand accidentally brushing against a client’s. Whereas Paula’s would be total nudity and raunchy sex in a men’s dressing room in Nordstrom’s out at Towson Town Center. At noon. On a Saturday. During Christmas shopping season.

But once Melanie seemed to have better control, though her face remained pale and her makeup was smeared, Dianna took the initiative. “Melanie, are you comfortable talking in front of us all? Or would you prefer to speak to me in private?”

The New Jersey–bred Southern belle and benignly crazy rich young woman shook her head. “No. I feel it best to bare my soul in front of everyone. That way my shame can be bandied about only the one time, and there’ll be no need later on for wondering or for gossip.”

Dianna frowned at Melanie. “Well, I don’t know about, uh, bandying or gossip, but go ahead whenever you’re ready.”

“All right.” Melanie twisted a tissue in her hands. “It was Dr. Yakahama.”

“What? That little Japanese man? The dentist?” This was the appalled Mrs. Windhorst. “What did he do, Melanie? Did he take a liberty with you? Now, do you all see? This is the very thing I worry about with you young women out alone with these men when you’re scouting locations. There’s a definite potential there for abuse—or worse.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Windhorst,” Dianna said evenly. “We’re very aware of your concerns. I had the same ones, and that’s why we have our clients fill out those forms that tell us all about them. It’s also why we carry cell phones and check in regularly and only go to the sites during business hours. But I don’t believe that’s what has happened here.”

“No?” Paula chimed in. “Then what did happen with the tooth-fairy guy?”

“We’re still trying to find that out,” Dianna said, smiling tightly. “So if we could let Melanie speak?” She watched as her employees sat back, apparently intending to keep their silence. Satisfied, Dianna settled her attention again on Melanie. “I think it’s safe to say, Mel, that we recall Dr. Yakahama. Go on.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She lowered her gaze to watch herself wadding up the tissues she held. “As you’ve guessed, we were scouting the location late yesterday afternoon, Dr. Yakahama and I. I had suggested the National Museum of Dentistry.”

“Hey, that’s a public building,” Paula cut in, her face lighting up with dawning respect. “You did it in public, didn’t you, with tourists walking around? You go, girl. Tell me you did it up against some giant toothbrush or tube of toothpaste. That is so phallic.”

Every bit as indignant as Mrs. Windhorst’s gasp of outrage, Melanie puffed up impressively. “We most certainly did not. Why, the very idea.”

“Paula,” Dianna warned, standing up and returning to her chair. She sat down, saying, “Let her talk, please.”

Grinning, Paula flopped back in her chair and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Yeah, go on, Melanie. I’d love to hear about a new use for dental floss or a Waterpik. Talk about getting drilled. This is so cool.”

Mrs. Windhorst threw in: “Well, I think it’s absolutely indecent, what you’re suggesting, Ms. Capland.”

“So do I,” Dianna agreed. “And I don’t think this is very easy for Melanie, so just chill, all right, both of you?” She glared; they quieted. “Go on, Mel.”

“Thank you, Di.” Melanie heaved a dramatic sigh. “Well, we’d already viewed the exhibit containing the thirty-two terrific teeth. And had an entertaining look at George Washington’s not-so-wooden teeth. Then we went to the popular tooth jukebox—”

“No, no, no.” Obviously Paula was in no mood for anything but the most salient of details. “You’re killing us here. Cut to the sex. We want to hear the part where you insert A into B and pump.”

Mrs. Windhorst jumped up. “We most certainly do not, Ms. Capland. I find your prurient interest to be—”

“I know: more interesting than you care to admit.” Paula’s grin changed to an expression of surprise as she stared past Dianna and Mrs. Windhorst. “Uh-oh. Trouble on the horizon.” Her pointing finger stabbed the air at a point approximately between Dianna and her secretary. “Ix-nay the ex-say talk, ladies and sister lunatics. Look who approacheth.”

Dianna froze, her eyes wide. With her back to the street, she stared at the front door of her business. No way did she want to turn around. From what Paula had said, it could only be the vice squad coming up the walk behind her. Or Dr. Yakahama’s girlfriend and her lawyer. Or maybe the legal people from the National Museum of Dentistry. A camera crew from 60 Minutes. Jerry Springer. Or, even better, all of the preceding.

The suspense became too much for her. Dianna jumped up from her chair and turned in the direction Paula had pointed.

Oh, no. Weakness washed over Dianna. Her heart skipped a beat and then thumped against her ribs like a car’s engine knocking badly. It was even worse than all those people she’d feared grouped into one lump. It was Chris Adams. He was the last thing—person—she needed to see right now. Or even ever, she suddenly decided. The man was a walking reminder to her of just how close she’d come to committing with him the same transgression that Melanie apparently had with Dr. Yakahama.

When her brain finally kicked in, Dianna quickly declared the staff meeting over, sent her employees inside—Paula and Mrs. Windhorst supporting Melanie—and then walked out in the sunshine to meet Chris. Heading him off, she signaled for him to step with her over to the small parking lot, where she and he now stood in the space between his parked car and hers. She leaned her hips against her car’s front door; he leaned his against his car’s front fender, a bit to her right. So they faced each other across a narrow, sun-warmed space. A gentle, playful breeze stirred Dianna’s hair. She tugged its heavy weight behind her shoulders. “So, what can I do for you, Chris?”

Behind his aviator sunglasses, Chris’s eyebrows shot up. “What can you do for me? Well, since you put it like that, I guess you can tell me why we’re standing out here in the parking lot, instead of inside. Either I’m not welcome, or I got here at the tag end of a fire drill.”

“I wish. Although it seems like one most days around here. But no, it was just an al fresco office meeting that went awry. And of course you’re welcome here. You’re a paying client.”

With his eyes lost to her scrutiny, Dianna watched Chris’s mouth. Not such an awful thing to have to do, not if one liked full sensual lips which had a tendency to curve up at the corners … like now, and somewhat ironically. “Oh, man. First, it’s what can you do for me. And now I’m a paying client. I must really be circling the drain here.”

“You’re not. And it’s not you, Chris. It’s me.”

Now his mouth became a firm, straight line. “When a woman says ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ it’s you. And don’t tell me it isn’t because I read that in one of my mother’s women’s magazines.”

He was so droll. Despite her funk, Dianna couldn’t resist teasing right back. She put a hand to her heart, feigning shock. “Your mother left one of our training manuals out for the enemy to find? The horror. Now I’ll have to report her to the committee.”

“Is that the same one that calls meetings in the women’s powder rooms in restaurants? I’m guessing that’s why you ladies go en masse.”

“Oh, no. You know more than I thought. I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you, then, that those meetings are where we train the young ones and where we compare notes on you guys and then change all the rules without telling you.”

He nodded soberly. “I always suspected as much.”

“And you were right. But it really is me this time, and I owe you an apology.”

Frowning, Chris cocked his head at a comically questioning angle. “How so?”

Laughter forced its way past Dianna’s present burden of worries. “You know what? You probably won’t appreciate this, but you look just like Joe Cocker with your head tilted that way. I don’t mean the singer. I mean my parents’ dog.”

Chris’s frown increased as he leaned in toward her. “Your parents named their dog Joe Cocker?”

“God, no. They’d never heard of Joe Cocker. That was my brother Edward’s doing.”

“Ah. Edward. Let’s see … that’s the accountant brother, right?”

“I’m impressed. And you’re right—Edward’s the accountant. Oh, and by the way, I don’t think you really look like the dog.”

“Imagine my relief. So carrying this forward, I’m guessing the dog is a cocker spaniel?”

“Hey, you’re good. Be glad he wasn’t a springer spaniel.”

“Ah. Edward would have named him Jerry?”

“Right. And who wants to live with that?”

“Not me. All that yelling and hitting.” Grinning, Chris pulled back to his original posture … butt against his car, arms crossed over his chest, ankles crossed. “I think I missed a lot not having brothers and sisters.”

“No, I don’t think you did.” So they’d slipped into the familiar and the chatty, Dianna realized. They always did somehow. The problem was she was very interested in Chris, very curious. She wanted to know what he thought, how he felt, what he was like. No way was this a healthy impulse. He wasn’t hers and wasn’t going to be, but, still, she did nothing to put them back on a business-only track. “You would have hated the sharing and the teasing and the tattling.”

“I don’t mind teasing and tattling. I can do that. But it’s the sharing that would get me. I’m more like ‘what’s mine is mine.’ So, anyway, tell me why you owe me an apology.”

“For Faidley’s. The way I left. I was bad, I yelled, got emotional. Any of this coming back to you?”

“Yeah, I remember all that. But I don’t think—”

“It was a business lunch, Chris. I shouldn’t have behaved that way. And why are you being so easy on me?”

“You want me to be hard?”

Chris? Hard? Instant and naughty images popped into Dianna’s lascivious mind, any number of which would get a Catholic schoolgirl’s hand smacked soundly by a ruler-wielding nun. Dianna blinked and scratched absently at her temple and tucked her hair behind her ears … and looked everywhere but at him as she spoke. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember my sarcasm and my telling you to fax me? Totally uncalled for in a professional setting.”

Dressed casually in black slacks and a gray oxford shirt open at the throat, he could have been a model in a new-car ad. So handsome and unconsciously sexy that he stunted Dianna’s breathing—and her thinking. “All right, if you say so,” he conceded. “So, go ahead, then. Apologize to me.”

Incongruously, that caught Dianna wrong. He didn’t have to look so smug about it. “I already did.”

“Did not.”

“Did.”

“And yet I never heard ‘I’m sorry’ from you.” He grinned, showing white and even teeth that Dianna would swear glinted when the sunlight hit them.

She crossed her arms under her breasts. “All right, Mr. Smarty Pants, I’m sorry. And you never did fax me.”

“My fax machine is broken.”

“Why don’t I believe you? You’re a computer whiz.”

“Which is not necessarily the same thing as a fax whiz.”

“Still, it’s not really broken, is it?”

“No. Well, it wasn’t until I hit it with a hammer.”

“You did not.”

“Did.”

“Why?”

“So I could get out of the house.”

“Are you going to tell me that your fax machine came to life, barred the front door threateningly, and you had to fight your way out?”

“Wow,” he said, looking totally impressed with her. “It’s like you were there.”

Laughing, Dianna shook her head. “Stop it. And explain yourself.”

He chuckled. “Yes, Miss Bossy, ma’am. Okay. It’s simple. I’m talking about the pitfalls of this age of technology, even if I did help create it. I’m saying that if you’re not careful, if you don’t break something occasionally that forces you to leave the house, you’ll never get to interact with real people.”

“Be serious.”

“I am. It’s now possible to work and live in one room, be totally productive, and never leave. Never go outside. Never seek people out.” Chris reached up to lower his sunglasses an inch or so down his nose. His dark brown eyes met her gaze and he said, pointedly, “Or never see anyone. Sometimes you just need to see someone, you know?”

He meant her. Thoroughly heated now, and in a way that had nothing to do with the spring day’s warmth, Dianna swallowed. “I do know.”

She also knew that they simply could not continue to stand this close and flirt like this. Very bad juju because, if they did, Dianna feared, she’d end up saying screw the consequences and set about checking out whose car, his or hers, had the most accommodating back seat. Hello, Melanie and Dr. Tooth Fairy. Splash-of-cold-water thought. Dianna exhaled and reverted to being businesslike. “So, Chris, since you’re here, I’m guessing you came out of your techno-cave because you needed to tend to something not, well, technical?”

“Precisely. I couldn’t fax you—”

“Or e-mail me or phone me, I take it?”

“Could, but didn’t want to. Wanted that face time. And that meant coming by in person and sans appointment to see you.” He grinned like a pirate, much as if he’d just said something very clever that had made him proud.

“And that’s another thing. Why do you keep coming back here?”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “I’m not feeling welcome again. Can’t it just be because I like the company?”

“Well, if that’s true”—she wanted terribly to believe that it was, but didn’t dare—“then you must be the most forgiving person in the world. All you’ve seen so far is me at my worst and most bumbling. I’d think you’d run far away and never look back.”

He shrugged those wonderfully broad shoulders of his that Dianna wanted to bite and kiss and knead under her hands. “Turns out I like bumbling.”

Swept away by the moment, Dianna heard her idiotic self blurting out: “Then you really ought to love me.”

Chris said nothing. He stuck his hands in his pants pockets and lowered his gaze to consider his shoes or the ground or whatever. This left Dianna hot with embarrassment from the forehead down and wanting to die right then and there. Maybe she could hurl herself into the path of oncoming traffic. Or throw herself off a cliff. Drown herself in a toilet. Eat too much cheesecake—

Chris raised his head, turning it in her direction. Though his eyes were still hidden behind his sunglasses, the set of his mouth and jaw adequately conveyed, I wish to hell you hadn’t said that.

Dianna took her cue to speak. “I was only teasing, Chris, about you ought to”—big breath here—“love me. There’s no reason why you should. You love Veronica.” He didn’t say anything. “You do, right? Love Veronica, I mean.” He still didn’t say anything. Damn man. She reached over and smacked his forearm, causing him to blink and jump. “Help me out here, okay? Say something.”

“All right.” And then he did. “Sometimes I think you’re right.”

Dianna blinked. Could he be more vague? Could he? She suffered this mental image of herself really lighting into him, boy, with wind-milling arms and fists and just beating the living hell out of him until he quit torturing her. Just kick the man when he was down. What am I right about? she wanted to shriek at him. Which freakin’ part? About you loving Veronica? Or about you loving me?

But of course she already knew the answer to that, didn’t she? Dianna felt her heart do a belly flop right into the pool of her watery emotions. “Well, then, Chris”—she grinned so brightly, falsely, broadly, that her facial muscles ached—“I guess you’re here today for purely professional reasons, right?”

He looked away from her for a seemingly interminable moment, and then swung his gaze back her way. “Right. I came to tell you in person that I’m ready for you to set up my romantic whatever-you-call-it with Veronica.”

“Oh, really? Well, good. In person. Wonderful.” Dianna nodded and smiled and somehow managed not to burst into tears. It just hurt like hell to realize he had been only flirting with her, and not even seriously, and she had no impact on him, not even now that he knew her. Story of my life. Still, what right did he have to look like he did, and smell so clean and citrusy like he did, and make her laugh like he did—and then go out and marry scary old Dr. Frankenlawyer?

Dianna rubbed at her forehead and directed her gaze to the general vicinity of Chris’s car’s hood. Okay, I can stand here and suck, or I can behave professionally and salvage my pride and admit that I have been, for whatever unknown reason, cut from the herd of desirables—

“Dianna?” Chris reached out and touched her arm.

Dianna wrenched away with a not-charming and spasmodic jerk. Embarrassed for herself, she used the motion to scratch at her head, which did not itch, and to talk really fast. “I’m fine. Just thinking about you and Veronica and what we might do. First, I need to know how soon you want to do it.” That didn’t sound right. “How soon you want to ask her to marry you, I mean. And where. Got any ideas? You said at Faidley’s that you had an idea.”

Okay, could I sound more Ally McBeal neurotic and annoying?

Chris was saying: “Yeah, I have an idea. But it’s only sketchy. More of a feel to the thing than actual places and details.”

“Of course. If you could visualize all that, you wouldn’t need me, would you?” Her attempt at a laugh was a sick little watery bleat that did nothing for her self-esteem. He doesn’t need me at all.

“No,” Chris said quietly. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

With her arms crossed over her cotton blouse and under her breasts, Dianna lowered her gaze to watch herself ruining her favorite bone-colored pumps by toeing a bit of gravel, pushing it into a pile, and then smoothing it out. She absolutely could not look at Chris Adams at this moment. It wasn’t fair. He excited her and made her hurt all in the same breath.

“Hey, are you all right, Dianna?”

She jerked her head up, wishing he’d take those damned shades off so she could see his eyes. “Yes. I’m fine. Never better.” I will fight this thing I feel for you, and I will beat it. She cleared her throat subtly. “Anyway, this is a good thing. It’s for the best. It’s exactly what we need to do, you and I. Get you engaged. Yes, I like it.”

“Well, I’m convinced.” With his arms crossed, he watched her, still from behind those light-reflecting shades of his.

“Good.” She was all business now—all cool, detached, professional business. “I’m sorry if I’m off kilter. It’s just that some”—she gestured vaguely back over her shoulder toward her place of business—“employee thing came up right before you got here.”

“Something serious?” At long last, Chris removed his sunglasses, folding them and sticking them in his shirt pocket.

Dianna watched all this before looking into his melting-chocolate brown eyes. “Very serious.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Thanks.” God, how the two of them had retreated. And how quickly. Dianna felt so defensive right now with him, like she physically had to hold him at arm’s length.

“Can I do anything to help, Dianna?”

Yes. You can make a permanent move to Antarctica so I don’t ever have to see you again. The man just did not know his boundaries. With that realization fueling her anger—something easier to feel than star-crossed yearning—Dianna inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Are you just out looking for more dragons to bitch-slap, or what?”

He grinned. Totally James Dean. “If need be.”

Denying she was affected, though her pulse throbbed hotly in a very private place not ever viewed in public, Dianna retorted, “Well, sorry, but you don’t need to be.”

“All right. Message received.”

“Good. Oh, and by the way, once we get you engaged, I do think I want to talk to you about the computer proposition you had for me.”

He perked up. “Hey, that’s great. Really?” But then he looked suspicious. “After I’m engaged? Not before?”

“No. Not before.”

“I see.” He looked directly into her eyes, holding her gaze, somehow showing her a Technicolor world of regret and desire and what might have been … in a different time and place. But not here, and not now. Or ever.

“I was hoping you would see,” she said quietly.

Chris exhaled and shook his head, no longer looking directly at her. “Sure you don’t want someone else to come in and set you up, Dianna?”

She chuckled … sadly and at her own expense. “No. You’ve already done a pretty good job of setting me up, Chris.”

He swung his gaze back to hers. “Now, what does that mean? Damn, Dianna, why is trying to communicate with you so hard? It’s like we’re trapped in some Japanese film and need subtitles at about knee-level to spell out what we mean but aren’t saying.”

Dianna pressed her fingertips to her temples. “God, do not say ‘Japan’ to me right now.”

“Now, see?” Chris’s broad gesture was one of agitation. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What’s wrong with Japan?”

“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand. And Japan has nothing to do with you. Could I be plainer? Here, let me say it again: It has nothing do with you.” She was lying, and she knew it. It had everything to do with him. How well she knew that if Chris only crooked his finger at her, if he just gave her one sign, she’d be Melanie and he’d be Dr. Yakahama.

“All right, look,” Chris was saying, “I’m not that vain guy who thinks everything is about him. I’m not. I just…” He looked away from her again, shook his head, exhaled, and then returned his attention to her. “Never mind. I should just walk away right now, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes.” Wasn’t she the brave and noble heroine of high ideals and few words? Ha. Dianna sniffed and blinked, trying not to see herself prostrated on the ground and screaming and clinging to his ankles, should he actually try to walk away from her.

“Well, I’m not going to do it.”

So he couldn’t walk away from her, either. Dianna had no idea what to make of that. Feeling fatalistic, she smiled grimly. “Wow. You must really want that computer contract.”

“Not me. I’m a man of infinite means, remember? I don’t need to work.”

“I do remember. Then … what? Some humanitarian impulse, maybe?”

“Now you’re being a smart-ass.”

“Sorry.”

“And surly.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t have to do your computers.”

“I know. But I want you to.” After you’re engaged. When you’re safely and finally claimed. When I have it through my big, fat head that you’re not ever going to want me, damn you. How was that for subtitles?

“All right. Just tell me what changed your mind about the computers.”

“The absurdity of not having them, actually.”

“And Mrs. Windhorst?”

“She’s why I want you to do it. She seems to have this thing with you—”

“Here we go. What do you mean, ‘this thing’?”

“She likes you, or something. Gives you walk-in appointments. Always argues your side.”

“She does? I have a side?”

“Yes, and yes. So I think she’ll take the computer news better if you’re to be the one to instruct her. Something tells me she’d like nothing better than to have you at her chairside for hours on end every day.” Subtitle: I know I would.

Chris eyed her suspiciously, which made Dianna wonder if he was searching for the subtitle. “So you’re just being a good boss, is that it?”

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Yes. I’m vying for Boss of the Year.”

“I hope you get it.” He stood there staring at her, while in the background cars passed by in the street; bees buzzed around the flowers in the landscaping; and birds sang from the trees’ branches. “I don’t understand the part about my having to be engaged first.”

“If not married.”

“Damn. I’ve never had to go to such lengths to do something free for someone.”

“I imagine you haven’t.” Dianna pushed away from her car. “Come on, let’s go inside and we’ll set up your dream scenario so you can ask the woman you love to marry you.”

Chris grimaced. “Thanks. You infused that with all the joy of experimental surgery.”

“Sorry. It’s that employee thing I was telling you about,” Dianna lied.

“Gotcha. So, you think it’s safe to go inside right now?”

“Yeah. I’m sure they’re okay. Well, relatively speaking.” Dianna smiled. “I mean, you’ve met them.” Dianna led off with Chris falling in at her side. As they walked, his hand periodically brushed against hers, sending her heart racing. Had anything ever been so bittersweet and so blasted hard before? “So, anyway,” she said, striving for more control—over herself—“I’ll see what I can set up for you. And how quickly we can get this thing going.”

“I’m not in all that big a hurry, Dianna.”

“I am.”

“You are?”

“Oh, yes. I really want those computers.”