ALL RIGHT," DIANA SAID WITH A NERVOUS SMILE AS SHE LED the small contingent into a formal living room with a grand piano at one end and a large fireplace with a raised marble hearth at the other. "Everyone get nice and comfortable."

In the middle of the room, separated by a carved mahogany coffee table, stood two long sofas upholstered in a rich burgundy and gold stripe, strewn with an assortment of plump pillows covered in jewel-toned plaids that made the sofas, and the room, seem more inviting and warm. With an expansive wave of her arm, Diana gestured toward the sofas and the pair of chairs beside them that faced the piano; then she walked over and stood near the keyboard.

Cole positioned himself at the opposite end of the piano, where he could participate in the proceedings if necessary without actually being in the middle of them; then he watched with amusement as Diana leaned against the piano for support, nervously rubbed her palms together, and generally behaved as if she genuinely dreaded the effect of her announcement on her family. From Cole's point of view, which was based on his own upbringing and adult experiences, Diana was a grown woman who had weighed the risks, made her decision, and shouldn't expect either support or even any real interest from her family.

Diana's mother and grandmother sat on one of the sofas, and Corey and Spencer Addison seated themselves on the opposite one. Diana's grandfather elected to remain standing, however, and rested his hands on the back of one of the chairs facing Diana. "No, no, Grandpa—please sit," she said.

"I'd rather stand."

"You'd better be sitting when you hear this," Diana mumbled.

"This must be one great big surprise you have in store for us," Henry teased her as he sat on the chair. Having followed her wishes, he beamed an expectant smile at her, clearly harboring the mistaken belief that Diana's visible nervousness came from excitement and that whatever she had to say couldn't possibly be anything but pleasing. "Okay, we're all here, and we're all sitting down," he pointed out. "Fire away."

Diana looked around at the attentive faces of her assembled family, rubbed her palms against her thighs, and admitted with a choked laugh, "I haven't felt this nervous since I was sixteen and had to stand here and tell everyone that I'd wrecked the new car Dad had just given me for my birthday."

Corey realized that Diana's normally unshakable composure was failing her badly, and she made a quick effort to give her more time to compose herself. "Actually, Diana didn't wreck the car," she confessed with an impenitent smile. "I wrecked it that time."

Diverted, the family turned and gaped at her in confused disbelief, but Diana's grandmother was more interested in the present. Trying to make a connection between wrecked cars and family meetings in the living room called by Diana, she furrowed her brow and said, "Is your car wrecked again, Diana? Is that why you've called us in here?"

"My car is fine," Diana said. My life is a wreck, she amended silently, then glanced sideways at Cole. He lifted his brows in a challenge to her to get down to business, and Diana automatically obeyed. "Okay, here goes," she said, directing her full attention to her mother and grandparents. "Last night, after the auction, I introduced Cole to you for the first time, remember?"

Her mother and grandparents nodded in unison.

"However, even though you hadn't met Cole before, the fact is that Corey and Spence and I have known him for a long time. A long, long time," Diana emphasized in a lame attempt to lessen the implausibility of her hasty marriage by emphasizing the length of time she'd actually known him. "To us—to Corey and me at least—Cole is actually an old family friend!"

"We know all about that, dear," Diana's mother said. Turning to Cole with a pleasant smile, she said, "Last night, on our way home, Corey told us all about who you are. Who you were, I mean. She told us you used to work for the Hayward family, and that she and Diana and Spence all used to see you there when they visited."

Cole noted that she discreetly avoided connecting him with the Haywards' stable, but Diana's grandmother evidently saw no reason for half-truths or evasions: "Diana used to talk about you when she was a teenager," she added enthusiastically. "She told us you lived in the Haywards' stable and took care of their horses, and that you didn't have enough food to eat and were always hungry. I used to help Diana pack up those bags of food she brought you whenever she went to the Haywards'."

To Cole's amusement, the other occupants of the room were so distressed by her tactlessness that they all leapt to his rescue in a rushed flurry of compliments and justifications that flew around the room like a volleyball during a tournament, with Corey making the opening serve: "Gram, the Haywards' stable is much grander than most people's homes!" She looked expectantly at her husband.

Spence fielded Corey's conversational ball: "When I was in college," Spence said, "I used to come over here and stuff myself on whatever they were having for dinner. I think an enormous appetite goes along with being male and under twenty, don't you, Henry?" Spencer asked, slapping the ball to his wife's grandfather.

Henry was older and a little clumsy, but he lunged manfully for the ball and managed to keep it in play: "No doubt about it. I've never been able to resist Rose's cooking myself. Not only that, but I've slept in our barn with a horse, too. When our old mare got sick and stopped eating, Corey and I slept out there together one night, because we didn't want Pearl to die alone. Rose brought our dinner down to us, and we shared some of our dessert with Pearl. The taste of that baked apple must have given her a reason to go on living, because after she ate it, she got to her feet and stayed there.

"After that, she was so partial to apples that she'd start nickering the moment she saw one, and she lived to be twenty-two!"

Greatly satisfied with his effort, he slapped his knee and beamed at his unsuspecting daughter, sending the conversational ball flying straight at her. "Well, Mary?" he prodded when she looked flustered. "Remember how partial Robert was to whatever Mother cooked or canned? He just couldn't eat enough of whatever it was."

"That's true!" Mrs. Foster said, belatedly rushing forward to assist the home team. "My husband gained twenty pounds after we came to live here with him. He used to have a big dinner and then sneak down for midnight snacks, even though he wasn't truly hungry. Diana knew that, and I'm sure that's why she wanted to bring you all that extra food, Cole."

Having made her successful play in the verbal volleyball game, she looked about for someone who hadn't participated yet, realized her mother was the only possibility, and quickly decided it was wiser to send the ball out of bounds instead. She aimed it straight at Cole on the sidelines. "You know how fanciful teenage girls can be," she told him with a smile. "You were probably stuffed to your ears and wishing Diana would stop bringing those bags of food, while Diana was convinced she was rescuing you from starvation. You were being polite and Diana was being… an overimaginative teenage girl."

Everyone looked expectantly at Cole, as if waiting for an official decision on the success of the game. When he realized it, he quickly declared an end to the match and issued his ruling: "Diana was very kind, and I appreciated her kindness."

Until then, Rose Britton had observed the entire scene with the innocent impartiality of an uninvolved spectator, but she shook her head in amused disagreement with Cole's verdict. "Diana has always been thoughtful and kind, but the truth is, she had a crush on you! That's why she lugged all those sacks of groceries and leftovers to you all the time. We all knew how she felt about you. Although," she confided with a reminiscent smile as she leaned a little forward, "Diana wasn't nearly as obvious as Corey was about Spencer. By the time Corey was sixteen, she'd wallpapered her bedroom with Spencer's pictures and turned the place into a shrine! Diana was much more secretive, but it was my opinion that she was probably as crazy about you as Corey was about Spencer. She had all the symptoms of a girl in love, and we thought—"

"Mother!" Mrs. Foster said in a low, imploring voice. "This isn't the time or place for that."

"The truth's the truth, right occasion or not," Rose Britton said; then she looked to Diana, of all unlikely people, for support. "Was I mistaken, dear?"

Diana's initial dismay over her grandmother's commentary had already given way to relief. She'd been trying for hours to think of something to say to make her abrupt marriage to Cole seem less unjustifiably impulsive, and she seized on the fragile excuse Gram had just inadvertently provided her. "No, you were absolutely right, Gram!" she exclaimed in a voice that sounded too eagerly enthusiastic for what was, after all, ancient history. "In fact, I had a tremendous crush on him!" she added, stealing a quick glance at Cole to see how he was reacting to that piece of news, but his expression hadn't altered by so much as a flicker. Completely impervious, he stood with his arms loosely folded over his chest, his feet planted slightly apart, watching her. A little startled by his lack of response, she returned to the main issue. "Now that you all remember how I felt about Cole when I was young, then what I have to tell you might not come as such a—a gigantic surprise…" The people she loved most in the world gazed at her in happy expectation of hearing something nice, and Diana faltered.

"Go ahead," Spence urged with an encouraging grin. "What's your surprise?"

Diana drew a steadying breath and plunged in. "Well, last night, after the auction, Cole and I danced for a little while. And then… and then…"

"And then?" Grandpa prodded when she seemed to choke on the end of the sentence.

"And then we went up to Cole's suite, and we had a drink, and… we talked… about things." Diana glanced at the coffee table between the sofas, wishing it would rise up on end on its legs and rush forward to shield her.

"And then what happened?" Gram prodded, looking expectantly from Diana to Cole.

Diana confessed the rest in a halting torrent of words: "And then… we… left the hotel… and we… flew to Las Vegas… and we… got married!"

The taut silence that followed her announcement tore through Diana's nervous system like nails scraping over a chalkboard. "I know you're all a little shocked right now," she told the five faces that were staring at her in incredulous horror.

Her grandfather was the first to recover and react. Aiming a look of pure, undiluted loathing at Cole, he said bitterly, "Mister, you must be some great talker. Especially when you get a lady alone in your hotel room. Especially if the lady's heart's just been broken and if she's had more to drink than she's used to having."

"No, now wait!" Diana interrupted, stunned by her mild grandfather's unprecedented anger and determined to take matters in hand. "It wasn't like that at all, Grandpa. Cole and I made a business arrangement that will benefit both of us personally as well as benefiting Foster Enterprises. By marrying Cole, I salvaged a little of my personal pride, but more important, I salvaged our magazine's public image. Cole has a problem, too, that being married to me will solve. He realized how beneficial a quick marriage would be for both of us, and then we discussed the terms and agreed on a temporary arrangement that would suit us both."

"What sort of 'temporary arrangement'?" Spence demanded of Cole in a hostile voice.

"Marriage for one year—in name only—for business purposes," Cole retorted, matching Spence's tone.

"That's it?" Spence said, sounding more confused now than angry.

"That's it," Cole said.

"Just exactly what is your problem that marriage to Diana is supposed to solve?" Spence asked.

"It's none of your damned business."

"Maybe not," Grandpa said tersely, "but it is my business, young man."

Diana had never imagined things would go this badly, and she opened her mouth to plead for calm, but to her surprise, Cole capitulated to her grandfather with glacial courtesy, but courtesy nonetheless. "To put it succinctly, I have an elderly uncle—a surrogate father, actually—who is seriously ill and desperately, obsessively, determined to see me become a husband and father before he dies."

"And just how do you intend to become a father in a name-only-for-business-purposes marriage?"

"I don't," Cole stated flatly. "But he doesn't need to know that, and unfortunately, he won't live long enough to discover it on his own."

"You've got everything all figured out, haven't you?" Grandpa said with biting disdain; then he looked at Diana. "What I can't understand is how you let this conniving schemer talk you into going along with all this."

"He didn't talk me into anything, Grandpa. I told you, I agreed to marry Cole because it will solve some very difficult problems—his problems, and mine, and ours," she emphasized, lifting her hand and gesturing toward all of them.

"Having you marry some conniving, smooth-talking cad you haven't seen in years isn't going to benefit your family one damn bit!" Grandpa fired back.

"Yes it will!" Diana insisted, so caught up in her explanation that she failed to notice she was inadvertently agreeing that Cole was a "conniving, smooth-talking cad."

"Anything that benefits Foster Enterprises benefits all of us, because we are Foster Enterprises. That's the way the public sees it, too. We've all had so much media exposure that the public feels like they know all of us. They watch you and Gram and Mom and Corey on cable television on The Foster Way, and they love not only what you do, but who you are. Their letters prove it. They write about how much they enjoy seeing you tease Gram and call her 'Rosie.' They love seeing Mom work with you and the affection you all have for each other. And their favorite program of all time was when Corey brought the twins on the show to demonstrate techniques for photographing babies. They enjoyed the demonstration and learned some tricks, but they loved it when Molly reached out her arms for Gram to be held, and when little Mary made a grab for one of Mom's cookies. However, if you suddenly gave Gram a black eye, or Corey got arrested for drunkenness, or Mom got busted for shoplifting—and the media found out and turned it into a circus—then your program's ratings would fall like a rock. For the same reason, when Dan jilted me and it hit the news media, it made me, and everything I represent, look pathetic and foolish. Do you understand now?"

"No, I don't!" Grandpa retorted impatiently.

"Then let me make it clearer: the public associates the four of you mostly with The Foster Way, but they associate me almost exclusively with the magazine, and no matter how you look at it, the theme behind every article in Foster's Beautiful Living magazine, and every one of Corey's wonderful photographs in it, is always the same: domestic beauty and harmony. And that's where the problem lies for me. As the magazine's publisher and spokesperson, I should believe in that theme and live up to it, but I don't have a husband or a baby and, as one reporter discovered somehow last year, I spend more time at our offices than at my apartment. If you'll remember, at the end of that newspaper piece, the reporter remarked that I'd make a better representative for Working Woman or Vogue or Bazaar than for Foster's Beautiful Living. And that's while I was still engaged to Dan. Once he jilted me—and for an eighteen-year-old—for an Italian heiress, my credibility and prestige with the public took an enormous blow, aided of course by a whole lot of humiliating media conjecture, and that would have directly affected the magazine. First we'd lose subscribers and, soon after, we'd lose advertisers." Finished, she looked at her grandfather, who didn't hesitate to voice his personal opinion about that possibility.

"If we've got subscribers and advertisers who are fickle enough to drop the magazine just because you picked the wrong man to trust and love, then the heck with them. There's plenty more out there where they came from. Just let the old ones go and get some new ones!"

"Let them go? Get some new ones?" Diana sputtered in disbelief as frustration and turmoil finally drove her to tell them things she'd hidden from them for nearly a decade: "None of you realize how hard it's been for me to keep Foster Enterprises thriving and growing, because I didn't want you to know. My God, I've invested my entire adult life in that company. I was only twenty-two and right out of college when Daddy died." She looked up at the ceiling for a long moment to keep herself from crying. "I didn't know anything about anything, except that, somehow, I had to find a way to maintain our standard of living and keep us all together. I know all of you thought I was brilliant and capable and confident when I convinced you that we could handle a catering business and then branch out into related businesses right away, but I wasn't. I was scared and I was desperate!"

Diana was so intent on making them understand what led up to her decision to marry Cole that she didn't notice the growing sorrow and regret in her family's expressions. Gentling her voice, she held out her hands as if asking for understanding. "I know you've always assumed that because Daddy and his friends were all wealthy and successful, and because I grew up among them, that I had inherited some sort of instinctive ability to start up a successful business, but I didn't."

When she paused for a moment, her grandmother reminded her in a quiet, gentle voice, "And yet, that's exactly what you did."

Diana's overwrought emotions veered from near-tears to near-laughter. "It was a fluke!" she said. "What I 'inherited' from my upbringing was a healthy fear of poverty. That, and a firsthand knowledge of how callous and cold wealthy people can become when one of their own goes broke. There's a stigma associated with it, and I didn't want Corey to discover it the hard way. I didn't want any of you to experience it. I wasn't some sort of daring entrepreneur, I was scared of the alternative, and so I took a risk, an enormous risk. All we had was this house, and I was so scared when I mortgaged it to start up the business that I threw up when I got home. I just couldn't think of any other way to keep us together and go on living as we had."

She paused and took a deep breath before she confessed the true extent of her youthful incompetence. "I made some costly mistakes, particularly in the beginning, that I will always regret. In order to raise money from private investors, I sold them stock in the company, stock that's now worth a fortune in comparison to the money I got for us. I've made other mistakes, too, like holding us back out of fear several times when I should have pushed forward."

Finished with the worst of her admissions, she said ruefully, "Everything I've achieved with Foster Enterprises hasn't been the result of genius; it's been the result of endless worry and work, combined with a whole lot of luck!"

The only person who didn't look completely taken aback by Diana's revelations was Cole, yet he was the most stunned of all. He'd assumed that Foster's Beautiful Living magazine had started out as a hobby, a whim when Robert Foster was still alive—a self-published vanity magazine that the Foster family had originally used to show off the family's unusual living style, showcase Corey's exceptional photographic ability, and give Diana a chance to dabble at being a publisher when she graduated from college. Never, ever, would he have imagined that the magazine had been created out of financial necessity and daring, not boredom and unlimited wealth. Until that moment, he'd also assumed that Diana was probably Foster Enterprises' figure head, not its founder.

What astonished him most of all was that she'd undertaken the enormous risk and responsibility when she was only twenty-two. Twenty-two. He'd been the same age when he struck out on his own, but he'd already led a hard life by then; he was used to scandal and hardship and opposition. Diana, on the other hand, had always struck him as being delicate and sheltered and endearingly prim.

In the uneasy silence that occurred while the family came to terms with the second major shock of a decade, they seemed to have forgotten that Cole was there, and normally he would have preferred not to be. He knew he could put an end to the discussion by either excusing himself or politely reminding them that such personal family matters were better discussed with family and not outsiders. He had, in fact, perfected that tactic and used it often, whenever a woman he was seeing attempted to draw him into a discussion about her children, her parents, or her ex-husband and his family. Discussions among family members or about family members invariably made him feel like an alien being who had sprung from a rock in a cave and had spent his first two decades on some uninhabited planet.

His own youth hadn't given him the slightest insight into normal family dynamics nor even a glimpse of how members of a loving family interacted.

Henry Britton finally spoke, his words springing from guilt and hurt. "Diana, you didn't need to put yourself through all that for our sakes. We weren't your dependents, after all. Your grandmother and mother and I could have gone back to Long Valley and lived as we used to live. Corey could have gone to college nights and worked for a photographer during the day."

Cole expected Diana to indulge in some sort of righteous outburst at having her efforts and sacrifices treated as unnecessary, but although her voice was teary, she smiled softly and shook her head. "You don't understand, Grandpa. I couldn't let that happen without at least putting up a fight. Corey has a rare gift, but she had to have a chance to show it off, and she might never have gotten that chance if she'd had to support herself by taking candid wedding shots for some local photographer who'd take all the credit and pay her peanuts in return."

Diana transferred her gaze to her mother and grandparents, and her voice grew heavy with emotion. "None of you realize how remarkably talented you are. You all have such amazing gifts that millions of people have fallen in love with you and everything you represent. The three of you still think of what you do as sort of a hobby, as 'puttering' in the gardens or in the workshop or in the kitchen, but it's much more than that. You see beauty in simple things and show other people how to see it, too. You prove to people that there's pleasure and harmony to be found in the creative act. You've reminded people that the job of a true hostess isn't to show off her home or her possessions, but rather to make each and every one of her guests feel special and important. People watch you on television, working together and laughing together, and they believe in you."

Diana's voice shook with feeling as she added, "The four of you have made a real difference in the attitudes and priorities of a huge number of people—men and women, young and old. The politicians all talk about a return to traditional values and getting back to basics, but you have shown people a lovely, simple route that will take them there."

Finished with every explanation and argument she could think of, she returned to the original reason for the meeting: "Whether or not you believe all that, you have to believe me when I tell you that Cole did not coerce me into marrying him. In my opinion, marrying him was the best of all possible alternatives, and I'm glad he trusted me enough to ask me. I know he'll live up to his part of the bargain, and I intend to live up to mine."

Diana sensed instinctively that the best thing to do for now was to let her family discuss the matter among themselves and come to terms with it. She looked at Cole and said, "We'd better go now."

Still grappling with his surprise over Diana's gentle but emphatic support of him in opposition to her family, Cole followed right behind her, but when they neared the doorway, Diana's grandmother issued an invitation in the form of a gruff challenge: "Do you intend to at least stay for Sunday dinner, young man?"

Diana refused in an attempt to spare Cole any more of an ordeal. "Not today," she said. "Another time, maybe," but to her surprise, Cole turned to Gram with an equally challenging smile and said, "I wasn't aware that I'd been invited."

"You are now," she announced.

Mary Foster seconded the invitation with quiet firmness. "Please have dinner with us."

Henry made it unanimous, though his voice was gruff. "You haven't had any of Rose's cooking in a long time."

"Thank you," Cole said to all of them. He glanced at Corey, and he thought he saw in her eyes a tentative offer of friendship. "In that case, I'll be happy to stay."

Diana decided it was still best to take Cole outside so that her family could talk freely among themselves and come to terms with her unorthodox marriage. They had already begun to change their attitude in the living room and the proof was their invitation to Cole to stay for dinner. She had every reason to think that the meal would be a pleasant one for Cole, but since he had had no way of knowing that, she'd been both surprised and pleased when he accepted their invitation.