COLE LOOKED UP WHEN SHE EMERGED FROM THE BEDROOM with her hair still wet from her shower and her slender body completely engulfed in one of the hotel's thick terry-cloth robes. Her bare toes peeped from beneath the hem of the robe, which should have stopped at mid-calf, and the shoulder seams fell to her elbows. Last night, Cole had thought she couldn't possibly look more desirable than she had in that provocative purple gown, but he'd been wrong. Wrapped in an oversize robe, with her face scrubbed free of makeup and her thick russet hair falling damply at her neck, Diana Foster had the dewy freshness of a rose at dawn.

He laid the Sunday Houston Chronicle on the coffee table and stood up. "You're looking better," he told her.

She gave him a weak smile. "I've decided to be very brave and try to go on living."

Chuckling at her quip, he gestured toward a linen-covered table laden with platters of food. "When I heard you turn on the shower, I phoned room service and had them send up some food."

She looked at the eggs and bacon and pancakes and shuddered. "I'm not that brave."

Ignoring her protest, Cole walked over to the table and pulled out a chair for her. "You have to eat."

She sighed, but she padded over to the table, slid into the chair, and unfolded her napkin.

"How do you feel?" Cole inquired, sitting down across from her.

"The same way I look." As she spoke, the oversize robe slipped off her left shoulder, leaving it bare, and she pulled it back in place.

"That good?" he said.

The warmth in his deep voice and the bold admiration in his eyes did astonishing things to Diana's heartbeat, a reaction that was so unexpected and so strong that her cheeks grew hot. With a faint smile, she quickly dropped her gaze from his and reminded herself that he was merely playing a part, living up to his promise to make her happy during the tenure of their bargain. A bargain—that was all it was to him, and to her. The problem was, she didn't know how she could possibly make her family understand that.

She reached for a slice of dry toast and lapsed into silence, trying to anticipate the scene with her family later. Cole had insisted on being with her when she told them they were married, and she appreciated his honorable desire to buffer, or share, the results of an action he had instigated. She didn't expect them to make any sort of angry scene, but Grandma in particular was likely to have some strong opinions and she wasn't likely to withhold them on Cole's account or Diana's.

Cole watched her expression grow increasingly somber as each minute passed. "Can I help?" he offered finally.

She glanced up with a guilty start. "I'm afraid not." When he continued to regard her in waiting silence, Diana conceded to his silent instruction and told him what was worrying her. "I just don't know how to explain to my family that I married a virtual stranger on an impulse and for purely practical reasons. I mean, once they calm down, they'll begin to understand. Not agree probably, but understand."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is that I'm dreading their reaction when they discover what we did. I'm going to give them the shock of a lifetime."

"Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?"

"You made some phone calls from my plane."

Diana gaped at him. "Who did I call?"

"Marge Crumbaker."

Relief restored a little color to her cheeks. "Marge is an old family friend." In case he'd forgotten, she added, "Marge used to be the society columnist for the Houston Post, but the Post went out of business. So in this instance, that's good."

"When you finished telling her the news, you called Maxine Messenger."

"That's bad." Diana's heart sank at the mention of the Houston Chronicle's society columnist; then she brightened. "Did I ask Maxine to keep it confidential?"

"I'm afraid not," Cole replied, intrigued by the play of emotions across her expressive face. "There wouldn't have been much point in asking her to keep it confidential, anyway."

"Please don't tell me I called anyone else."

"Okay."

She stared at him through suspicion-narrowed eyes "I did call someone else, didn't I?"

"Eat something. You'll feel better."

She picked up her spoon, nudged a red cherry off the top of a half grapefruit, and lifted a bite toward her lips.

"Who else did I call?"

"Larry King."

Denial and self-disgust reduced her voice to a choked whisper. "Are you telling me," she enunciated in dire tones, "that I actually called CNN in the middle of the night and asked to talk to Larry King?"

"I'm afraid so. He wasn't there, however."

"Thank God!"

"So you talked to some man in the newsroom instead."

She shook her head, groping desperately for a reason to be optimistic, and she hit on a lame one. "I have a common name, and besides, my grandfather is the one who's popular with men. I'm associated with the magazine and most of our readers are women. There's no way that newsman at CNN would have recognized little old me by name or reputation."

"Possibly not," Cole said. "But he recognized 'little old me' by name and reputation."

"You should have stopped me!" she moaned. "You should have taken the phone away. No, you should have pushed me out of the plane. At least if I were dead, my body wouldn't feel as bad as it does."

Unable to suppress a grin, he nodded at the plate of food in front of her and refused to say another word until she complied with his order. "Finish your grapefruit and have some more orange juice and a little of that egg."

She gazed at the three items and shuddered a little. "Everything looks so… so yellow. The grapefruit, the egg, the orange juice. The color is hurting my eyes."

"That's what happens when you drink too much."

"Thank you for that unnecessary lecture on a subject for which I can now qualify for a Ph.D."

"You're welcome," Cole said with unshakable good humor. "Eat some toast. It's brown, so it shouldn't hurt your eyes."

"It has butter on it, and that's yellow."

"Stop it, Diana," he said on a chuckle. "I don't feel so great either, but I refuse to get sick on my first morning as your husband."

"I'm sorry." She picked up a piece of toast and looked at him, her expression so troubled that Cole felt genuinely sorry for treating her concerns lightly and for trying to avoid more questions. "What's wrong?" he said gently.

"Tell me the truth—when I was calling those people, did I sound happy? Or intoxicated?"

"You sounded happy and like you'd possibly had a little to drink," Cole said diplomatically, "but I doubt they'd think much about that. Brides frequently have a little too much champagne on their wedding night."

"A little too much?" Diana repeated with shame. "I was disgustingly drunk—"

"You weren't disgusting," Cole argued with a tiny smile tugging at the left corner of his mouth.

Somewhat reassured, but undeterred, Diana added, "I was insensible—!"

"Not entirely," he gallantly contradicted.

"I drank so much I must have passed out in the plane." She nibbled tentatively at the toast, then took a full bite before putting the slice back down.

"No," he argued reassuringly, "you fell asleep after a long, stressful evening."

"Why, it's a miracle I didn't throw up—!" Unconsciously, Diana paused, expecting him to deny that as well.

Instead, he quirked a brow at her. Silence. Assent.

"Oh, I didn't!" she breathed, dropping her face into her hands.

"You felt better afterward," he pointed out kindly.

She let her hands fall away and drew in a deep breath. "Did I do anything else?"

"You told me a few very funny jokes." He helped himself to some eggs.

"I had strange dreams all night—they were so vivid they were more like hallucinations—but I can't remember all of them, and I'm not sure if what I do remember actually happened, or if it was part of those dreams. What I mean is, have I forgotten anything else that's important?" She picked up the slice of toast, but instead of taking a bite she looked directly at Cole.

Define 'important, ' Cole thought, remembering the way she had ensconced herself in his lap shortly after takeoff on the way back to Houston. While the jet hurtled skyward, she had laughingly told him nursery rhymes with silly, altered endings that made the rhymes seem hilarious.

He remembered the way she had pressed her lips to his for a small kiss, and later when he deepened the kiss, she had slid her hand beneath his tuxedo jacket and curved it around his neck, tentative at first, and then yielding, and then holding his mouth locked to hers. While the plane streaked through the predawn sky at cruising altitude, he had struggled to keep things from getting too far out of hand, while his delectable wife engaged in playful, inebriated, and astonishingly effective tactics aimed at seeing how far his control could be stretched before it broke.

He lost a little of it at thirty-two thousand feet, and stretched out on the sofa, bringing her down on top of him. This morning, he was having problems trying to forget things that she couldn't remember at all. On the other hand, her lack of recall was for the best, since there would never be a repetition of that. "Nothing worth remembering," Cole said.

"I know I did something else. I remember watching the casinos go by from the car and thinking how brilliant the lights were and how exciting it all seemed." She took another bite of the toast and realized she was feeling a little bit better.

She saw Cole's expression shift from gravity to poorly concealed amusement, and in her anxiety, she crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. "I did something while we were there, didn't I?" she demanded. Her fevered imagination conjured up an image of an inebriated woman in a purple gown trying to climb on stage and dance with the showgirls. Or, dear God, were they strippers? "Whatever I did, it was awful, wasn't it?" she said weakly.

"That depends. Are you morally or religiously opposed to gambling?"

"No."

"Then it wasn't awful."

Diana threw up her hands in joyous relief and cast her eyes heavenward. "I gambled!" she cried.

In the space of a few hours Cole had seen her switch from solemnity to panic to relief to humor, and it occurred to him that no matter her mood, he thoroughly enjoyed her company. He always had. With a sideways smile, she picked up her fork and took a bite of scrambled egg. "How did I do?"

"Not bad."

"I lost," she concluded with a muffled laugh, her happiness and her appetite remarkably unspoiled by that discovery. When Cole nodded, she reached for the orange juice and drank a little. "How much did I lose?"

"At the roulette table? Or at baccarat? Or at the slot machine?"

She put the glass down, nonplussed. "I lost at all three?"

"Yes, but I stopped you before you got into a high-stakes poker game," he added as he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.

"How long were we at the casino?"

"Not long—a half hour."

"Then I couldn't have lost very much," Diana said, but something in his carefully noncommittal expression made her pause. "How much did I lose?"

"About three thousand dollars."

She was appalled, but she nodded and said very formally, "I'll write you a check."

"That's not necessary."

"I insist. A lady must always pay her own gambling debts," she quoted with humorous finality, as if she'd learned it in finishing school.

She wasn't merely beautiful and intelligent and witty, she was obstinate as hell, Cole realized. But then, so was he. "And a gentleman always pays for the honeymoon," he countered firmly.

Unfortunately, by referring to a thirty-minute stop in a casino as a "honeymoon," he had inadvertently made a mockery of the word and a mockery of the abrupt, unromantic wedding that preceded it. He realized this as soon as he'd said it, and so did Diana. Her smile faded, but he noted that she didn't grow angry or hurt. She simply… readjusted to reality.

"I wish you hadn't let me make those phone calls from the plane," she said instead.

"I didn't stop you because it was to your benefit and to your company's benefit for the public to find out as soon as possible that you'd married me." He hadn't stopped her because of that and also because her phone calls to the media had eliminated any possibility that she could back out of their bargain this morning. On this point, however, he wisely kept his thoughts to himself, and she cooperated by changing the subject to something more neutral.

"At least I understand now why I kept dreaming of slot machines. Except that in my dream, the slot machine was gigantic—taller than you and at least five feet wide."

"That wasn't a dream."

"Really?" she said with well-bred interest, but it wasn't a question, it was a courteous statement. She had retreated behind a wall of pleasant reserve, which was her norm, and Cole switched his thoughts to business details, which was his.

"We have some practical details to discuss, but we can do it on the way to see your family."

She nodded, looked at her watch, and got up. "It will be five o'clock by the time we get there. Corey had to retake some shots for the magazine, so the crew should be wrapping up when we get there."

With her hand on the bedroom door she stopped and turned. "Last night I walked off with my grandmother's purse instead of my own. Since I didn't have any identification with me, how did we get married?"

Cole was pouring coffee into his cup and he glanced up, his expression wry. "Actually that caused a minor problem for a few minutes, but the wedding chapel belongs to a man and his wife. She recognized you, and with the help of an extra hundred dollars, her husband agreed that was proof enough of your true identity."

Diana accepted that with a nod, her thoughts turning to the problem of clothing. "It's a good thing I left my car with the valet last night, or I wouldn't be able to get into my apartment to change clothes."