HE TELEPHONE AT THE RECEPTIONIST'S DESK RANG, AND TINA Frederick picked it up. "Foster's Beautiful Living, "she said with a bright, energetic voice that reflected the general attitude of all Foster's employees.

"Tina, this is Cindy Bertrillo. Has Diana Foster come back from lunch?"

The magazine's publicist sounded so tense and desperate that Tina automatically looked over her shoulder to double-check that the lobby's revolving doors weren't moving. "No, not yet."

"As soon as you see her, tell her I have to talk to her. It's urgent."

"Okay, I will."

"You're the first person she'll pass when she enters the building. Don't leave your desk for any reason until you've given her my message."

"I won't." When she hung up the phone, Tina tried to imagine what sort of urgent matter might have come up, but she was positive that whatever it was, Diana would handle it with ease and not show any of the anxiety that had permeated Cindy's voice.

Diana Foster's tranquility and humor were admired by all 260 of the Foster Enterprises' employees who worked in the downtown Houston offices. From the mail room to the executive suite, Diana was famous among the staff for the courtesy and respect she showed to everyone who worked for her and with her. No matter how much stress she was under or how long the hours she worked, she rarely passed an employee without a smile or some gesture of acknowledgment.

Given all that, it was little wonder that Tina rose from her chair in shock when Diana blasted through the revolving doors several minutes later with a folded newspaper under her elbow and stalked right past Tina's desk. "Miss Foster—" she called, but her normally gracious employer didn't so much as glance her way.

Diana stalked down aisles lined with secretarial cubicles and executive offices without a word or glance in any direction, her face pale and rigid. She walked past the art department without saying a word about the next issue, pressed the button for the elevator, and, when the doors opened, disappeared into it.

Diana's secretary, Sally, saw her get off the elevator, and she automatically gathered up her phone messages because Diana always asked about messages the moment she came back to her office. Instead, Diana walked around Sally's cubicle as if it were invisible and vanished into her office. Sally stood up with the message slips in her hand and, as she moved around her desk, noticed several other secretaries peering curiously toward Diana's office.

Preoccupied with the desire to give Diana her messages so that she wouldn't have to ask for them, Sally doggedly followed Diana into her office. "Mrs. Paul Underwood called about the White Orchid Ball," Sally began, reading the first of the three slips of paper. "She said to tell you that the amethyst-and-diamond necklace you'll be modeling at the charity auction is spectacular and that if it weren't understood that Dan Penworth will buy the necklace for you, she'd insist her husband buy it for her." Sally paused and glanced up. "I think she was sort of, well, joking a little."

She waited, expecting some sort of humorous reaction to this, but Diana only nodded stiffly as she flung the newspaper on her desk and pulled off the jacket of her cherry wool-crepe suit, dropping it haphazardly on the back of the suede swivel chair behind her desk. "Any other calls?" she asked, her head down, her voice strained.

"Yes. The bridal salon called to say they have several new gowns in from Paris, which they think you'll love."

Diana seemed to freeze; then she turned away from her desk and walked over to the glass wall that looked out across a sunny Houston skyline. In silence, Sally watched Diana cross her arms over her chest, rubbing the sleeves of her white silk blouse as if her arms were cold. "Anything else?" she asked in a voice so low that Sally moved a little closer, trying to hear her.

"Bert Peters called. There was a problem with two of the photo layouts in the next issue, and his group is scrambling to get it fixed. Bert asked if you'd let him reschedule the production meeting you wanted from three o'clock today to four."

Diana's voice dropped lower, but it was filled with resolution. "Cancel it."

"Cancel it?" Sally repeated in disbelief.

Diana swallowed. "Reschedule it for eight A.M. tomorrow." After a moment, she added, "If my sister's in the building, ask her to come here."

Sally nodded and reached for the phone on Diana's desk, calling the extension where she knew Corey Foster could be reached. "Corey's downstairs with the production staff, helping with the layouts," she explained to Diana's back. "Bert said she had a solution that will work."

Sally repeated Diana's request to Corey on the telephone; then she hung up and stared worriedly at Diana's still form and stiff shoulders. People who didn't know Diana were normally so dazzled and disarmed by her classic features, vivid coloring, soft voice, and quiet elegance that they were misled into thinking of her as a languid young socialite who spent her days dabbling in charity work or dropping by her office for an occasional board meeting and spent her evenings being pampered in order to keep worry lines from marring her fragile beauty. However, those people who worked closely with her, as did Sally, knew that Diana was a tireless worker with seemingly endless supplies of energy and enthusiasm.

When the magazine's monthly deadlines drew near, it was not unusual for the staff to work each night until midnight. When everyone was too exhausted or too stressed out to do more than droop in their chairs, Diana—whose administrative duties often kept her working late in her office on the top floor—would frequently appear in the production department with an encouraging smile on her face and a tray of coffee and sandwiches in her arms.

The following morning, the production staff would stagger in a little late, their eyes bleary and their brains foggy, while Diana would look fresh and rested and be filled with sympathetic appreciation for the long hours they'd worked. The wide difference between the effect of stress and lack of sleep on Diana versus its effect on others almost always evoked some sort of good-natured grumbling comment from someone who'd worked late the night before. Diana would bear it with a smile or laugh it off with some remark about it all catching up with her someday, then turn the discussion to the next issue and the next set of problems they would invariably face.

Considering the fact that she never showed the slightest pessimism about even the largest problems, and considering her ability to juggle a dozen different projects and a hundred different details without ever seeming to be rattled, Sally had found it both amazing and endearing when she discovered that Diana actually had two weaknesses: she required a basic framework of routine within which to operate, and she required a state of absolute orderliness in her office. The lack of either of these could throw her into a state of confusion and dismay like nothing else could.

Diana could stand serenely in the chaos and disorder of the production department, the floors and drawing boards littered with proposed layouts and copy proofs, and make vital decisions with flawless judgment—but she could not sit at her own desk and concentrate on a problem or make a decision unless the top of her Louis XIV desk was perfectly neat, with each item in its proper place.

Last week, before leaving the building for a luncheon meeting with the corporation's attorneys, Diana had attended the regular Monday-morning budget meeting. While there, she ended up simultaneously arbitrating an argument between two extremely talented and temperamental artists, issuing instructions to the corporation's controller, and reviewing the contents of a contract Sally had brought her to sign. She managed all that without missing a written or spoken word, but when she was ready to sign the contract and reached into her briefcase for the gold pen she kept there and couldn't find it, she lost all concentration on everything.

She used the controller's pen to sign the document, but she continued to search through her briefcase and then her purse for her own pen, and when the two verbal combatants demanded to know if she had a compromise to suggest to settle the dispute, Diana glanced blankly at them and mumbled, "What dispute was that?"

As Sally had soon discovered, the "secret" Diana was a creature of habit with a need for orderliness in her personal surroundings. Each Friday morning at seven-thirty, come hell or hurricane, she had a massage at the Houstonian Hotel and Health Club, followed by a simultaneous manicure and pedicure at her favorite salon. She returned to the office at ten A.M., where a local car-care service picked up her car keys, washed her car, filled it up with gasoline, and returned it by noon, so that it would be available if she went out to lunch. She wrote checks for her personal bills on the first and fifteenth of the month, regardless of where she was or what day of the week the dates fell upon, and she went to church every Sunday morning at ten. And always, always, when Diana returned from lunch, she asked Sally to tell her, first, who had called while she was out and then what items were on her schedule for the afternoon.

Today, however, she'd done neither, and Sally's uneasiness grew as she looked at the newspaper Diana had tossed on her desk, on top of a treasured Steuben crystal frog, and at the red wool jacket that was hanging by only one shoulder over the back of her chair. "Diana?" Sally said hesitantly, "I don't mean to pry, but is something wrong?"

For a moment, Sally thought Diana either hadn't heard her or didn't want to answer; then Diana lifted her head and glanced over her shoulder, her green eyes bright with some emotion. "I think you could say that," she said in a shaky whisper. When Sally stared at her in helpless confusion, Diana tipped her head toward the newspaper. "I've just made the front page of the National Enquirer. "

Sally turned to the desk and reached for the newspaper, her apprehension already outweighed by outraged loyalty and indignation at whatever she was about to see that had so upset Diana. And even though she was braced for an affront, the headline and pictures that were sprawled across the front page had the effect of a punch in the stomach.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

DIANA FOSTER IS JILTED BY FIANCÉ

Below the headline was a huge picture of Diana's handsome fiancé, Dan Penworth, who was lying on a beach beside a curvaceous blond. The caption read, "Diana Foster's fiancé, Dan Penworth, honeymooning with his new bride, 18-year-old Italian model and heiress Christina Delmonte." Sally scanned the story, her stomach churning. "Yesterday, in Rome, Christina Delmonte got the 'scoop' on Foster's Beautiful Livingmagazine's publisher, Diana Foster… Lately, the Foster Empire has been under siege from rival magazines who've scoffed at Ms. Foster's steadfast avoidance of matrimony and motherhood while her magazine preaches the bliss and beauty to be found in both.

"That weasel!" Sally breathed. "That sneak, that—" She broke off as Corey walked into the office, looking rushed but blissfully unaware of any disaster.

"I think we've got the problem with the layout settled," Corey said, peering at Diana's averted face and then at Sally's stricken one. "What's wrong?"

In answer, Sally held out the newspaper, and Corey took it. A moment later, she hissed, "That bastard! That—"

"Coward!" Sally provided.

"He's a scumbag," Corey added.

"A jerk—"

"Thank you both," Diana said with a teary, forced laugh. "At a time like this, loyalty counts for a lot."

Corey and Sally exchanged sympathetic glances; then Sally turned and left, closing the office door behind her, and Corey headed for her sister. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, wrapping her in a fierce hug.

"Me, too," Diana said, sounding as meek and bewildered as a child who has been punished for something they didn't do.

"C'mon," Corey urged, turning Diana away from the window and toward her desk. "Get your jacket and purse and let's get out of here. We'll go home and break the news to Mom and Gram and Gramps together."

"I can't leave early." Diana managed to lift her chin a notch, but her eyes were still wounded and glazed with shock. "I can't run away. By tonight, everyone in the office will have seen or heard about that article. They'll remember that I left early, and they'll think it's because I couldn't face people."

"Diana," Corey said very firmly, "there cannot be any other president of a large company who is as thoroughly liked and as much admired by their employees as you are by yours. They'll feel terrible for you."

"I don't want pity," Diana said, getting her voice under control and her features into a semblance of their normal expression.

Corey knew it was useless to argue. Diana had a great deal of pride and courage, and both those things would force her to brave out the day no matter how shattered she was. "Okay, but don't work late. I'll phone Mom and tell her we'll both be home for dinner at six-thirty. With any luck we'll be able to break the news to the family before they've heard it elsewhere."

She half expected Diana to proudly decline that offer of support, but she didn't. "Thanks," she said.