For All the Wrong Reasons (33 page)

“Enjoy yourselves, you deserve it,” Michael told them. He looked around at his troops. “I'd tell you to give yourselves a week off, but we need the product.”

“Maybe we can have a week off when we die,” Mary Castellano, the new PR girl, suggested.

“Possible, but I doubt it.” Michael grinned. He picked up a glass of champagne somebody shoved at him and motioned to the DJ to start the music.

Michael moved through his staff, pressing hands, kissing cheeks and congratulating everybody. He had the whole office here, right down to the kid who re-stocked the water coolers and photocopier cartridges. It was important for people to feel that they shared in the stellar success of this thing. Next week he would ask more of them and more still the week after that. Everybody needed to be pumped to put in the same kind of hours he did himself. He'd suggested to Diana that she move some beds into the free rooms upstairs so people could shower and sleep there if they wanted to. But she'd vetoed it, firmly. She said people worked better when they had a life.

He wasn't so sure. Work was his life.

He noticed Diana wasn't dancing and looked around for her. There she was, leaning against the back wall in some kind of suit. It was hard to tell the color under the flashing strobes, but it was bound to be something subtle, something tasteful, well-cut and extremely expensive. The staff had all been given raises as soon as the cash started flowing in. Diana was his number two, and her raise had been the largest.

She had wasted no time, either, he thought, critically. She had found a new apartment, a beautiful twelfth-floor duplex in a building overlooking the river. She changed her shoes each day and floated into the office in a cloud of some vitally expensive scent. It was almost the same as when Michael first knew her. In fact, now she looked even better.

The excitement of the job gave a charge to her skin, put a glittering gleam in her eye. Her beauty was electric. Maybe he was jealous. The smartly cut suits that spanned her small waist and emphasized the flare of her breasts and her awesome butt, the colors that seemed so right, so elegant, the heels that gave a lift to the sexy curve of her calf … men noticed her. Even twenty-something puppies and teenagers. From the old weather-worn men on the construction sites outside to the harassed traffic cops, they stopped what they were doing to drool when Diana walked past. Even her soft make-up seemed unnecessary to him. She was so stunning. Her hourglass figure and supple, sexy sway would make a statue pant. And the way she dressed only made it worse. She was a torture to Michael. Even when she was going out with him, she seemed unattainable. To make love to her was barely to scratch the surface of his desire. She was like a lake which, every time you drank from it, made you thirstier.

Did she really need to put on such a softly brushed, melted-butter, just over the knee Prada suit for a night at the Tavern? Did she have to have her rich brown hair gleaming like that? She looked like a princess, not an executive. But there was nothing he could complain about. Each individual thing she wore was appropriate. It was the overall effect that took his breath away.

He walked up to her and watched as those cool English eyes fixed on him.

“Not dancing?” Michael asked. He breathed in her scent. It was light and fresh today. Sometimes she was rich and musky, or warm and woody. But today she smelled cleanly of meadow flowers and new-mown grass. It was good, but not as good as the woman smell of her, the personal scent of her soft clean skin. That was how he liked her best; naked, in the shower, with nothing to decorate, nothing to hide, the fantastic body. Her breasts sluicing with water, the tiny rivulets that hung on the peaks of her rose-pink nipples. Her flat belly with the small button he loved to trace with the tip of his tongue, teasing her, circling till she was hot and begging. And for an ass man like himself, the sensational flare of her hips, the rock-hard jutting curve of her butt, which walking all over Manhattan kept firmer than any personal trainer ever could. Desire rose in him. He wanted her more, he felt himself getting hard. Again. He'd thought this morning would have drained him for days, but the sight of her buttoned-up, three-quarter-length jacket was enough to wake him from the dead. She was so ladylike, so correct. But he knew how he could make her leap. He wanted to try again. Each day was a new challenge, to drive her to places she had never been.

Diana smiled slightly. “I don't like dancing in bars.” She nodded at the
Time
review. “Looks good, huh?”

“It does.” He agreed at once. It was her triumph. Mary Castellano had arranged the interview, but Diana had wowed the journalist, taking him out for a meal that had wiped out a week's petty cash, at Lutèce, and dazzling him with her elegance and poise. In a masterstroke of contrast, she'd brought Opie along, too. The gawky young programmer and the cold English director fascinated the writer. Diana talked about Imperial's educational philosophy, and Opie blithered on about tight code and graphics scroll and other things the journalist didn't understand. It was alchemy and exciting, and he'd actually sold his commissioning editor on running a tiny plug. As a result, their website was appearing in homes and stores right across the country. “You did good.”

Diana frowned slightly. She did good, huh? Michael was a sexist, patronizing pig. She had made his damn company with that article. He should be on his knees thanking her.

“Glad you think so.”

He noted the tone immediately. “Don't get snappy with me. I recognize your contribution.”

“Big of you,” Diana said.

They glared at each other, each thinking the other was impossible.

“I'm a little tired, to be honest.” Diana turned her head, and he caught a glimpse of the new diamond studs flashing in her creamy earlobes. “I think I might go home.”

“Fine,” Michael said coldly. “Whatever you like. Are we still on for dinner?”

“Why wouldn't we be?”

“I'll pick you up at eight,” he said.

*   *   *

She stared at herself in the mirror, undecided. What was she today? Was she strappy, sassy, pale-pink Miu Miu shot with lilac and silver, almost a hippyish, short little baby-doll thing? Or was she classic English rose, her rosy cheeks and nut-brown hair set off by a figure-hugging velvet sheath in dark green, with a rabbit-fur trim at the collar and cuffs? The sheath fell to the floor, but it was almost more revealing than the miniskirted dress. Michael had annoyed her today. Always the stern boss, always the workaholic. She had put in a long day with little sleep last night, and because she didn't feel like chugging down beer in some American pub he was going to give her grief? Michael expected her to be on twenty-four hours a day. She had to make it through a night of energetic lovemaking—well, nobody forced her, but his body gave her little choice—then get up at six, shower, dress like the businesswoman she was becoming, get into the office, put in a long day, take work home, go out on a date and do the whole thing again the next day. Michael was professional inside the office, but stern and forbidding. She always felt like she was doing something wrong. Despite her success, maybe he still held her background against her. He seemed so much friendlier around Mary Castellano and Opie and the other staff.

And the way she dressed. It was as though she could never please him. Diana was at her wits' end to discover the outfit that would get a compliment from Michael. Now that they were dating, she had thought he might unbend. Her suits got tighter and costlier, finding just the right blouse or pair of hose could take a whole Saturday, and yet he never said anything. It was annoying. Other guys seemed to like how she looked. But if Michael was not kissing her, she would never know he found her attractive.

Diana decided on the pink. Drastic measures were called for. She would shock him out of his goddamn complacency. She put the green sheath back in the walk-in closet and reached for the pink. Classic was failing with Michael, and anyway, the really stylish girl always mixed up her fashion. Guys needed to be challenged. They liked variety; Ernie had shown her that. So the trick was to be as many women as they could handle.

The silky, scrappy little dress slithered on over her strapless bra, an amazing feat of engineering considering the over-spilling, creamy flesh it had to contain. It hugged her waist and bottom like a second skin, a luminous fish-scale skin, sparkling in rainbow colors. A fluted hem followed the bias-cut of the skirt which stopped in a froth just above her slim knees and nicely turned calves. With a dress like this there were only Manolos, and she reached for her new yellow leather pair along with the gold Versace sequined clutch purse. A necklace of pink cut-glass looped around the freckled hollow of her throat and she shook her hair loose from its French braid, letting it hang shining and undressed over her shoulders. The effect was sensational. To prevent too many whistles, Diana reached for her latest toy, a three-quarter-length, sixties-style coat in white leather by Stella McCartney. It had big oversized buttons and looked like something Mary Quant might have made. The girl in the mirror was all curves and legs and flashes of pink and gold and white. Diana smiled, flashing her perfect pearly teeth. If this little number didn't knock Michael out, nothing was going to.

It really shouldn't have to be this much of an effort, but she was up to it, Diana thought. Day by day, she was falling more in love with him. He blazed through life like a stallion, thick-bodied, powerful, reckless and single-minded. She loved to see how the guys in the office leaped around him. The women pressed closer and closer each day. She thought they were only deterred from outright pursuit by the thought of being fired and banished from his presence. Everything female just loved to flirt with him. Fifty and matronly, thirteen and menarchal, it didn't matter. Married, single, anything short of an actual nun just loved to bat their eyelids at him. Even old ladies would stare in the street. Despite his roughness and his bluntness he was a natural leader. He was everything her ex-husband hadn't been. And he was a dream to touch. All the fighting stopped when she got him into bed and she could no longer be cool around him. It was hard trying to keep that up, to match his reserve, even when they were fully clothed. Diana thought she would expire of shame if he knew how obsessed with him she had become, while he was still parcelling out the compliments like rations on a battlefield.

The doorbell rang and she hurriedly spritzed herself with Hermes 24 Faubourg. It pitched itself as a sunny day in Paris, and for him, that was what Diana longed to be.

“Coming,” she said.

THIRTY-ONE

Michael just stared.

God, she was something else. Young, vibrant and all body. It didn't matter what your personal tastes were, Diana gave you something to drool over. Like breasts? He'd known guys obsessed with breasts who would have followed Diana around like parched dogs with their tongues on the floor. If only they could see what they looked like when you peeled off the shimmery dress and the lacy brassiere, they'd propose on the spot. Like a small waist? He could almost fit his hands around Diana's. And her butt was the stuff of poetry. In that dress, you just didn't know where to look first. Would his eye trail lovingly up the sexy curved calves and toned thighs that seemed to stretch up like a skyscraper? Or would it burrow into the small hint of warm, freckled cleavage, or try to fix on the smooth curves of her ass under the fluted flickering hem of her dress? She had no make-up on other than a hint of peach lip-gloss, and she looked like a sixties model—except that she didn't resemble a park railing but had curves like Raquel Welch. He wondered how those strappy bits of canary nothing that threw out her ass and aligned her whole body in that sensational way could bear the weight. It was a mystery a man would never understand.

She twirled for him, and the white leather coat and curly hem bobbed in the warm light of the candles. Her place was beautifully decorated in the kind of quiet way that society women were always over-paying their decorators in order to emulate. Usually fruitlessly. Diana had achieved it probably without effort. He was a man, and couldn't be bothered with decor, but the neatness and rightness of her color scheme took his eye. It was a soft scheme in understated tones of palest yellow and cream; a perfect antidote to the boring all-white or all-beige minimalism you saw everywhere in New York. Her paint job seemed to Michael to be sunny and relaxing. Though she couldn't stock it with the kind of pieces he'd seen at Ernie's joint, she still managed to make you feel like the place had been in her family for a hundred years, instead of being a luxury development put up in the nineties. And still, she'd decided to go out dressed like this.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He thought he'd need his karate tonight. Kicking the crap out of all the lowlifes who would approach her.

“Not bad,” Michael said.

Diana smiled to stop her face from falling. Damn the man. What was he, made of stone?

“I booked a spot at Balthazar,” he said, after a pause. “Let's go.” He offered her his arm and she took it. “Maybe we can avoid shop-talk tonight.”

*   *   *

“But I don't know what you mean by inadequate,” Diana said sharply. They were sitting at one of the nicer tables in the ultra-hip restaurant, eating French cuisine that really wasn't bad for New York, and fighting bitterly. Diana pushed her rocket and goat's cheese salad around on her plate and thought how aggravating Michael was. She'd just finished the office decor and now he was telling her it was inadequate?

“I mean in terms of size. We're going to need to expand.”

“Why don't we wait and see what our sell-through is like?” Diana said, spearing her salad like she had a personal grudge against it.

Michael regarded her. Great, now she was going to tell him his business. It wasn't enough that he had to deal with all the waiters staring at his date. He swore guys were getting up and going to the bathroom like women just so they could get a shot at trying to look down the front of her dress. Diana was eye candy, and they just couldn't get enough. She irritated him and fascinated him, and he wanted her badly. He wanted to punch out the lights of any man who even looked at her. And he wanted to finish up his meal so he could get her the hell home. Into bed.