Y THE TIME SHE LEFT THE OFFICE THAT NIGHT, WORD HAD already spread, making her the object of pitying glances from her employees, the security guards in the lobby, and even the parking lot attendant. While Corey waited outside in her car, Diana went into her apartment to change clothes. Her answering machine was full of messages from reporters, from friends, and from distant acquaintances who rarely called—all of them, Diana was certain, eager for more of the juicy details. She was furious with Dan and thoroughly humiliated.

As soon as Diana and Corey walked through the doorway of the River Oaks house, it was obvious from the indignant, dismayed expressions on the faces of their mother and grandparents that the rest of the family had also heard the news. "We heard it on the television, just before you got home. I can't believe Dan did this—not this way, not without a phone call or a telegram to let you know," Mrs. Foster said as they waited in the dining room for dinner to be served.

Diana stared bleakly at her hands, twisting the four-carat diamond engagement ring on her finger. "Dan called from Italy the day before yesterday, but we were on deadline and I couldn't take the call. Last night, we worked until midnight, and with the time difference, it would have been perfect for me to call him when I got home, but I fell asleep sitting up in bed, with my hand on the phone. This morning, I woke up late, and as soon as I got to work, I got involved with a half-dozen crises. He probably wanted to tell me about this, but I was too busy to call him back," she said bitterly. "It's my own fault for finding out about his marriage in the newspaper…"

"Don't you dare blame yourself for this, young lady," Diana's grandfather exclaimed loyally as he shifted in his chair, his left leg stiff from recent surgery. "He was engaged to you when he married someone else. He ought to be horsewhipped!"

"I never liked Dan Penworth!" Corey's grandmother announced.

Diana appreciated their steadfastness, but she was perilously close to tears. Oblivious to the fact that she was not easing Diana's burden, her grandmother continued bluntly, "Dan was too old for you, among other things. Why, what does a forty-two-year-old man want with a twenty-nine-year-old woman, anyway, I ask you?"

"Very little, obviously," Diana said bleakly, "and I'm thirty-one, not twenty-nine."

"You were twenty-nine when you got engaged," her grandmother argued.

"His new wife is eighteen. Maybe that will be his lucky number."

"Diana," Mrs. Foster interceded gently, "I don't know if this is the time to be philosophical or not, but I always wondered if the two of you were right for each other."

"Mom, please. You were very much in favor of Dan for a son-in-law when we got engaged."

"Yes, I was. But I began to have my doubts when you kept him dangling for two years."

"Dangling!" Diana's grandmother put in. "I'd like to see that young man dangling from the end of a rope for what he's done!"

"The point I was trying to make," Mrs. Foster said, "is that if two people truly love each other—if everything is really 'right' and there are no obstacles to getting married, it seems to me they should be in a little more of a hurry to be married than Diana was. I married your father within weeks of meeting him."

Diana managed a wan smile. "That's because he didn't give you a choice."

She sat at her place at the table, shaking her head as dinner courses were served. Her stomach was churning, and the others seemed to understand. "I wish I could just go away for a month until all this dies down," she said when dessert was over.

"Well, you can't," said Gram with unintentional ruthlessness. "That scoundrel pulled this trick only a few days from the Orchid Ball. It's a ritual that we all attend, and if you don't go, people will say you didn't show up because you were heartbroken!"

Diana felt physically ill at the thought of being subjected to public scrutiny at Houston's biggest, most lavish social event. "They'll think that no matter what I do!"

"A pity you couldn't arrive at the ball on the arm of a new fiancé!" said her grandfather with uncharacteristic impracticality. "That would stop the tongues from wagging!"

"Why don't I just show up with a new husband," Diana said, choking on an anguished laugh, "and make them all think I jilted Dan." Sliding her chair back, she said, "I'm going to change clothes and go for a swim. I think I'll spend the night here."

Corey's husband, Spence, was out of town, and Corey joined her in her after-dinner swim. Later, as they reclined in a pair of chaise longues beside the pool, Corey watched Diana's profile as her expression grew increasingly pensive. "I didn't expect you to get over today's news in a few hours, but you look as if Dan's defection is upsetting you more now than it did earlier."

"Actually," Diana admitted without shifting her gaze from the starry sky, "I was worrying about business, not my personal life. More correctly, I was worrying about the damaging effect of my personal life on ourbusiness."

Shifting onto her side, Corey propped her head on her hand. "What do you mean?"

"I haven't wanted to worry you with company economics when we agreed, at the outset, that you'd handle the artistic end and I'd handle the money side…"

"What's wrong—with the money side, I mean?" Corey prompted when Diana fell silent.

"As you know, we've come under fire several times this year because I don't personally live up to the 'Foster Ideal.' Each time it has happened, there's been a minor fall-off in advertisers and our new-subscription rate has flattened out or declined a little. We've rebounded every time, but thanks to Dan, there's going to be much more fallout this time."

"I think you're overestimating the influence and readership of the Enquirer, " Corey scoffed, but her voice lacked conviction. Diana was an astute businesswoman, perhaps even a gifted one, and although she was cautious, she never looked for trouble where none was to be found.

"There were several calls on my answering machine tonight. I listened to them while I was changing clothes after dinner. The story made CBS's and NBC's six o'clock news."

Corey's heart sank and she was filled with anger and regret for this assault on her sister's privacy and pride. Avoiding the personal implications for Diana, she tried to focus on the business ones that seemed to be concerning her sister far more at the moment. "And you think all this publicity about your fiancé breaking off your engagement will affect the magazine?"

"He didn't break off our engagement, Corey. He dumped me for someone else. Our readership is almost entirely female, and our entire success has been built on our readership's belief that the Foster way is the right way— that it brings beauty and harmony to the home and tremendous personal gratification to the women who try it."

"Well, it does do those things."

Diana rolled onto her side, finally facing Corey. "Tell me something, if you were a female who wanted to bring new spirit into her family life, would you be inclined to put your faith in the promises of a woman who just got jilted for an eighteen-year-old blond Italian model? Our competition is going to toss every sort of fuel onto the fire to keep this little scandal alive. I mean the fact that I am single, childless, and without a home of my own wasn't so inexcusable as long as I was engaged to Dan. The implication was that I intendedto practice what we preach in Foster's Beautiful Living. Now, because of what's happened, we're going to look as if we're trying to put some sort of money-making fantasy over on an unwitting segment of the population, namely women. Our profits are going to dive, you watch."

Corey couldn't begin to try to judge the effect of Diana's personal loss on the bottom line of the corporation's profit-and-loss statement; her brain rebelled at the effort, and her artistic nature cried out its artist's protest that beauty and emotion always took a backseat when accountants got involved. Moreover, she was starting to suspect that Diana was more deeply alarmed about the magazine than about the loss of the man she supposedly loved. "Tell me something," Corey said hesitantly. "What worries you more right now—your unfaithful fiancé or company finances?"

"Right now?"

"Right now."

"I—I'm worried about business," Diana admitted.

"In that case, maybe you were lucky you didn't marry Dan."

"Because he probably would have cheated on me after we were married?" Diana assumed bleakly.

"No, because I don't think you were really, deeply in love with him. I've been thinking about Spence and about how I'd feel if he did to me what Dan just did to you. I'd be demented with pain and rage, but it wouldn't have anything to do with the business."

She expected Diana to argue or protest, and she didn't feel reassured when Diana did neither. Instead her sister sat up, drew her knees against her chest, and wrapped her arms around them as if she were drawing into a tight, protective ball. "I don't think I'm capable of loving anyone the way you love Spence."

Corey stared at her with growing concern.

That very first afternoon they'd met—when Diana returned from Europe to find she'd acquired a stepmother, a stepsister, and a set of grandparents—she'd responded to Corey's cool greeting with quiet warmth, instead of the temper tantrum Corey had expected from what she'd been sure was a "spoiled, rich brat."

Now, as she looked at Diana's beautiful profile, she remembered the words Diana had said long ago on that very first day. "You come with a grandma, too?" Diana had asked, after complimenting the hand-painted sweatshirt that Corey had thought she'd deride. When Corey described her grandparents, Diana had raised her eyes and hands skyward and turned in a slow circle. "A sister, and a mom, and a grandma, and a grandpa! This could be very cool!" It had certainly been "cool" for Corey; Diana had seen to that. Diana, with her fragile beauty and dazzling smile and innate gentility, had paved the way for Corey, standing by her at every turn. Diana was and had always been the most loving, supportive person Corey had ever met.

The idea that Diana's self-confidence and self-esteem were somehow low enough to make her doubt her capacity for loving was more than Corey could stand. It bothered her far more than Dan Penworth's defection or the possible business consequences of it. "Diana," she said very clearly and very firmly, "what you just said is garbage!"

"Maybe not."

"There's no 'maybe' about it! Has it occurred to you that you've been too busy since Dad died to do anything but work? That you haven't actually dated all that many men? That maybe, just maybe, you settled for 'liking' Dan instead of 'loving' someone else?"

Diana lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug. "Whatever I did wrong, it's going to hurt us badly at the magazine now."

"You were going to marry the wrong man; that's what you did wrong."

"I wish I were married to the right one now."