COLE KNEW THE INSTANT HE SAW DIANA'S PALE FACE THAT she'd heard something of what her "friends" were saying in the ladies' room, and because he couldn't offer any comfort, he offered his arm instead. When they reached the ballroom doors, they were closed and the opening speech was underway.

Frowning, she drew back, loath to draw more notice by entering the ballroom noticeably tardy and with Cole. "I suppose your table is in the front?"

As the donor of the most expensive item to be auctioned that night, Cole was to occupy the seat of honor at the head table, just below and in front of the auctioneer's podium. "Table one," he confirmed. "Front row center."

"Our table is in the third row." She sighed. "Why couldn't at least one of us have been seated at the back of the room? There's no way we can slip in there unnoticed." Anxious to get inside before they were any later, she reached for the big handles on the heavy doors, but he laid his hand on her arm to stop her from pulling them open.

"Why try to be invisible? Why not let them think what everyone who reads the Enquirer is going to think in a day or two—that you don't give a damn about Penworth and you're interested in me, not him."

"No one who knows me is going to believe that!" she cried, almost wringing her hands in despair. His whole face tightened. "You're right. How stupid of me. I forgot that this is a gathering of the rich and useless, who would never believe you'd switch from one of their own to an ordinary, common man—"

Diana glared at him, confused and frantic and dumbfounded. "What are you talking about! There's nothing ordinary or common about you."

She meant it, Cole realized with a surprise that was outweighed by self-disgust at his ridiculous outburst. "Thank you," he said with an assessing smile as he studied her flushed, upturned face. "At least anger put the sparkle back in your eyes. Too bad my kiss couldn't have accomplished that."

Diana made the mistake of looking at his mouth, then had to look away before she could concentrate on the issue. "I'm not accustomed to kissing men I hardly know, particularly when someone else is watching me."

"You've gotten awfully finicky," he joked. "You used to kiss stray kittens and mongrel pups all the time."

The analogy was so absurd that Diana laughed. "Yes, but only when I thought you weren't watching me."

In the ballroom, polite applause heralded the end of the opening speech. Cole pulled open the heavy doors, put his hand beneath her elbow, and escorted her forward. Murmurs erupted throughout the ballroom as one thousand startled people observed the unexpected arrival of their guest of honor—a notoriously illusive billionaire recently listed by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of the World's Fifty Most Eligible Bachelors—who strolled nonchalantly into their midst with his hand possessively cupping the elbow of Diana Foster—Daniel Penworth's recently discarded fiancée.

Cole escorted Diana to her table in the third row and seated her there in the vacant chair between Spence and Diana's grandfather. He nodded politely to everyone, but he winked at Corey, smiled warmly at Diana and briefly touched her shoulder, then strode off to his own table in the front row.

Diana watched him for a moment, impressed and amused by his supreme indifference to the excited curiosity his appearance was generating. Keeping her expression pleasant and neutral, she looked at Doug and his date, Amy Leeland, who were seated across from her to the left; then she glanced to the right at her mother and grandparents. Corey was one seat away, between Spence and Doug, and her eyes were filled with questions, but her expression was perfectly composed.

They were all dying of curiosity, Diana realized, but they all knew the first rule of social survival—always present a calm, united front. In keeping with that rule, Spence, Corey, and Doug smiled at her as if there were nothing in the least extraordinary about Diana arriving conspicuously late on the arm of a man whom they hadn't seen in over a decade and who treated her with possessive familiarity.

Diana's mother and grandfather had no idea at all who he was, but they followed suit.

Diana's grandmother, who had begun ignoring social rules at approximately the same time she attained the age of seventy, decided to ignore this one, too. She stared at Cole Harrison's back with a perplexed frown, then leaned forward in her chair and demanded of Diana in a loud stage whisper that got the attention of three people seated at the table behind her, "Who was that man, Diana?"

Anxious to avoid a discussion that would be heard by others, Diana said hastily, "That's Cole Harrison, Gram. You know—he's the man who donated the Klineman sculpture that you were admiring earlier."

Rose Britton was aghast at that notion, and in her advancing years, she'd also developed a disconcerting desire to state the entire truth, regardless of the consequences. "I did not admire it," she protested in an indignant whisper that was overheard by two more people at the table behind her. "I said," she clarified, "that it was hideous."

She glanced at the others in an innocent invitation to argue the merits or lack thereof of the sculpture, but everyone launched into diversionary small talk to avoid doing exactly that. "Well, it is," she told Diana as soon as she looked her way. "It looks like a huge pipecleaner doll!"

Diana was anxious to explain to her that Cole Harrison was the same Cole who'd worked at the Haywards' when Diana was a teenager, but she was afraid to do it now, for fear that the elderly lady might then begin reminiscing about the food they'd sent over to him and be overheard. Cole had gallantly come to her rescue tonight, and Diana was determined to protect his pride and his privacy in return.