For All the Wrong Reasons (40 page)

Michael shook his head. “Just to dance. If that's OK by you.”

Diana felt her breath coming a bit raggedly. She was burning up for him. Was there any chance, she wondered, that he still wanted her? That he could actually fall for her?

“Diana,” a voice said.

Michael pulled her upright and close to his chest, close enough to feel those full breasts press against his shirt, then let her go. He felt a wave of anger rock him, but held himself in check. Brad Bailey, in the flesh. He noted the diamond pinkie ring, the very expensive shoes. Bailey was tall, tanned and it looked like he actually bleached his teeth.

“Brad, this is Michael Cicero, my boss.” Diana looked flushed. Michael wondered why she would react to this vanilla pudding that way. “My escort tonight. I didn't know you were coming.”

“I wasn't, but you told me you'd be here, so I picked up a table at the last minute,” Brad said. He turned to Michael. “Cicero, wasn't it? Nice to meet you. I'll be taking Diana home now. Thanks for looking after her.”

“We were in the middle of a dance,” Michael said.

Brad shrugged and he caught a whiff of aftershave. “Diana doesn't really enjoy dancing. She prefers quiet dinners.”

Diana started to open her mouth and Michael snapped. He really wasn't interested in hearing her back up Mr. Moneybags.

“I know what you mean. I got to go myself,” he said. “My girl needs to get intimate a couple of times a night. Most of them do. I don't want to keep her waiting.”

“I … see,” Brad said, discomfited.

Diana flushed. “Could you take me home, please, Brad?”

She held out her hand and walked away from Michael without another word.

THIRTY-SEVEN

My girl needs to get intimate a couple of times a night.
Why not just say you're going home to fuck her? I hate him, I hate him, Diana thought, the way he tricks you into feeling something for him and then instantly hits you with that attitude to women.
I hate to keep her waiting.
Was that the way he'd talked to his buddies about
her
when they were dating? She prickled with embarrassment. She still wanted Michael a couple of times a night and a couple of times each day, too. All he'd had to do was to walk into her office and cup his hands over the globes of her ass, sometimes less than that, sometimes just shoot a look at her pussy, for Diana to feel primed for him, hot, almost panting.

He cheapens everything, she thought bitterly. I thought I was special. He acts just that way with Tina when nobody's looking, I bet.

“Where are we going?” Brad asked.

Diana looked up with a start. She had been thrusting through the crowd, smiling tightly at the movers and shakers, seething inside. She had forgotten Brad was with her.

He was looking down at her. A man that treats me with ultimate respect, Diana thought. Good-looking. Good family. Prestigious. And hugely rich.

“Let's go back to your place,” she suggested.

She swooped down on a waiter walking past with a fresh tray of champagne and grabbed a flute, tilting it back down her throat in a single gulp. Funny, she felt like Cinderella at the end of the ball, even though her finery had not turned to rags and she was leaving with the handsome prince.

But this needed doing. It was time. After all, she had been dating him for months.

“Really?” Brad asked, his blue eyes lighting up. “My driver is waiting outside.”

He looked like a kid who had been told Christmas was coming, as eager and enthusiastic as a puppy dog. Then he checked himself with a visible effort of will. “Of course, I mean … we'll have a nightcap.”

“That's right,” Diana said firmly. The champagne warmed her the way it always did. She felt courageous. “A nightcap and maybe something more.”

*   *   *

Brad's limo was not a hired ride like the one Michael would be taking back to that little tramp of his. It was a twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week convenience whose drivers worked in shifts.

“He'll be ready to take you home whenever you want,” Brad assured her, as the man bowed, holding open the door for Diana.

She smiled gently at him. “We'll see when that is.”

Brad's place was immensely luxurious. In a cramped city barely five miles long and three miles wide supporting millions of people, space was at a premium; yet Brad Bailey had a large garden, an entrance hall with an ornamental fountain playing over real Italian marble, and a servant's apartment in the basement. There were five bedrooms and three bathrooms, a library—how Diana had always longed for a house with a real, old-fashioned library—a beautiful roof terrace with a Japanese-inspired Zen-style garden, and modern reception rooms hung with Cubist paintings and a Picasso.

“This place is beautiful,” she told him, as a butler—wearing modern chinos and a Gandhi-style jacket—took her pale-gray wrap and hung it up.

“Thank you. I got it for peanuts from a Wall Street arbitrageur who got caught with his fist in the till.” Brad shrugged. “Benefits of being in real estate.”

Diana wondered what “peanuts” meant in this context. Probably about the entire worth of her ex-husband.

“Let's go upstairs to the bar. We'll fix our own drinks, Jenkins,” Brad said to the help.

“Very good, Mr. Bailey.”

Brad ushered Diana up the black stone staircase, laid with soft red carpet. “After you.”

The bar was, as Brad put it, his little indulgence. In a house that had been decorated at huge expense to be clean and Euro-modern—sofas from Cerruti, Danish chairs, nothing but dark polished floors and clean simple lines—Brad had kept one room away from the clutches of his exclusive design firm. The bar was an exercise in seventies retro-chic. Fully equipped, it featured huge furry rugs on the floor, fake bear skins, and large chrome bar stools with cherry-red leather. Diana wondered what she could do here if it was her house to go over. It was a stunning property. It definitely needed a woman's touch, though.

“What can I get you? Champagne? We have Cristal, Taittinger rosé, Krug, Veuve Grande Dame…”

“Jack Daniel's and Coke,” Diana said.

She felt the need to get bombed. Fucking Michael. This would show him, she thought. Let him go back downtown and bang the hell out of Tina Armis. She was up here, being courted, and she was going to have a good time.

Brad raised an eyebrow. “You're in a party mood.”

“Why shouldn't I be?” Diana demanded, a touch belligerently.

He held up his hands. “No reason. It's just funny. Before I met you, I used to take out girls, sometimes bring them back here. And they would pick at lettuce leaves all night and then order a Perrier. It drove me nuts.”

He handed her a glass full of golden liquor and poured a splash of black Coke into it. It was almost undrinkable, but she sipped at it anyway.

“Well, they were auditioning,” Diana told him. “It's a classic good-girl ploy. They were auditioning to be your wife. I bet you they ate before they went out to dinner. It's reverse competition. The girl that eats least at the table wins.”

Brad laughed aloud. God, she was so funny and enchanting. Having her here was like holding the winning ticket in the lottery and having the delicious anticipation of cashing it in.

“Can I be honest with you?”

Diana took a big slug of her JD. “Hell yes. All the boys are being honest this evening. Why not you?”

“When I first met you I knew who you were and I came after you.”

“Well, I knew that.”

“No, hear me out.” He looked a little shifty. “I had stayed single for about as long as I could. You know, one day a man wakes up and he knows it's time to get married, to settle down, to get himself an heir. And then, if you're a man like me, you want the best. Since I was small, I've been used to the best.”

“I'd never have guessed.” Diana beamed, pleased with her own wit.

“You were famous. You were English, you had a classy reputation. The way you handled the thing with your ex-husband was wonderful. No press interviews, no
National Enquirer
exposés.”

“As if I would.”

“Well, a man in my position needs to know that if the shit comes down, there won't be any scandal. I saw a woman who'd been through the worst that can happen to a society wife and who had kept her mouth shut. Even though you somehow lost out on his money.”

Diana straightened. “Quite a test,” she said evenly.

“But you passed. And then when I saw you, it turned from being … a … socially proper decision into being a personal one. You are just so breathtaking. And you kept me at arm's length. You know how long it's been since I had to chase a woman?”

“I don't think you've ever had to chase anything,” Diana said.

“That's pretty much true.” Brad was unapologetic. “I never have. But the result is I am head over heels, incredibly, amazingly, utterly in love with you, Diana.”

She tossed back the rest of her drink.

“Let's go to bed,” Diana said.

*   *   *

The master bedroom was a fantasy. The flooring was warm chocolate-brown marble, the rugs subtle shades of cream and ivory. The bed in the center of the room was suspended from a pole made of clear glass, so that it seemed to float above the floor. It was draped with rich satin and silk sheets, down pillows and soft comforters. Diana stared at it. It looked like the most comfortable thing she had ever seen. Sunk deep into a corner of the marble was a whirlpool bath the size of a small swimming pool, with discreet little bottles from Czech & Speake lined up alongside it.

Brad steered her gently toward the bed.

“You're the kind of woman who ought to have things like this,” he whispered. Diana felt his breath hot in her ear, playing against the nape of her neck. The buzz from the liquor was stealing over her, making her languid, making her bones feel like they could just pour flat onto the bed. “You work, but there's no need for it. You should throw nice dinners, tennis parties at my place in the Vineyard. Decorate. Have babies.”

He punctuated each phrase with a kiss, laid soft as down on her neck and the hollows of her throat.

“It can be like it was before for you,” he murmured. “Better. Because you'll have the kind of husband a woman like you deserves.”

“Husband?” Diana muttered dreamily.

Brad scooped her into his arms and laid her on the bed, reddening from her weight. Then his hands were on her back, seeking out her zipper, delicately peeling the clothes from her like a museum director unwrapping a priceless artifact.

“That's what I said,” he whispered, and moved to kiss the slopes of her warm, freckled breasts.

*   *   *

The scent of breakfast woke her. Diana propped herself up, her head throbbing, and tried to deal with the cold winter light streaming through Brad's vast French windows. He was already up and dressed, standing at the doorway taking a breakfast tray from a maid. She smelled fresh-roasted vanilla coffee, saw crisp bacon and a fluffy egg-white and fine-herb omelette. There was also a pitcher of squeezed blood oranges, ice-cold springwater and a warm, sun-ripened peach.

Brad walked across the floor and laid the tray across her knees.

“No need to get up,” he said.

“But there is. I'm late for work already,” Diana said, dismayed.

“Sure. Your office,” he said, a little patronizingly. “I know. I took the liberty of laying out some work things for you on that chair over there. I had one of my contacts at
Women's Wear Daily
guess your size for me, in the hope that one day you'd stay over here.”

“I'm impressed.”

“You should be. I plan ahead. I gotta go, honey.” Brad kissed her on the tip of her nose. “I have a closing on a luxury block in the Village. Twelve mil. Look, last night was just incredible. You think about what I said, OK? I want us to be married. It's the right thing for both of us.”

He smiled at her and walked out, giving her a little wave.

Diana poured a cup of the coffee, set the rest of the tray aside and staggered toward the bathroom set to the side. Brad's power shower had six jets and a range of shampoos hand-blended in Switzerland. It was inlaid with pale blue stone studded with small brass stars everywhere. Like showering in heaven, she thought. Anxiously she checked her face. No spots, despite sleeping in her make-up. Diana showered, then grabbed a towel and dried herself, slurping down a little more of the steaming brew and letting the fog in her brain clear.

Last night was … what? She had gotten drunk, and obviously had had sex with Brad. Except the problem was she didn't remember it. Diana pulled off the towel and glanced down at her body. There were none of the scratches and bruises she'd had after a night with Michael. If they had had sex, it must have been sweet, polite sex. She wondered if she'd actually passed out, from the booze, in the middle of it.

Possibly. Knowing men, though, he would only take that as a compliment.

She walked over to the chair and looked at the clothes he had left. A smart green Prada suit and a crisp white shirt; Woolford hose and sleek Chanel mules. Very nice. Hurriedly she tugged them on and regarded her reflection in the full-length Swedish mirror. A perfect fit, too.

Money buys everything, she thought.

Her life had come full circle. Marrying Ernie for … for money. And getting divorced for naivety, for pride. Now she actually had a job and because she hadn't chased money, money had come chasing her.

Elspeth would be thrilled. Claire would cheer from the rafters.

Natasha, Jodie and Felicity wouldn't know what had hit them.

Diana brushed out her hair with the Mason Pearson hairbrush laid out by the side of her clothes and rushed downstairs. The butler who had let her in was in the hall and bowed slightly when she appeared.