HAT DO YOU MEAN HE WON’T SIGN THE RELEASES SO THAT we can use the pictures we took in Newport?” Corey exploded.

“I didn’t say he had flatly refused to sign them,” Diana said carefully. In the week since Corey had been back from Newport, she’d thrown herself into a dozen projects to keep from thinking about either her marriage or the annulment proccedings she’d started, and she looked exhausted. “He said he would sign them, but only if you brought them to him personally tomorrow tonight.”

“I am not going back to Newport,” she warned.

“You won’t have to. Spence will be in Houston taking care of some business.”

“I don’t want to see him in Houston or anywhere else.”

“I think he knows that,” Diana said wryly. “You not only started annulment proceedings, you asked for a legal injunction to prevent him from coming near you.”

“What do you think he’d do if we put the magazine out without the releases?”

“He said to tell you that if we do, his attorneys will dine on oour corporate carcass.”

“I hate that man,” she said wearily.

Diana wisely refrained from arguing that point and stuck to the matter at hand. “There’s a relatively painless way around this. He said he’s staying at the River Oaks house, so tomorrow night-“

Furious at the control he was exerting over the magazine and over her, Corey said, “Tomorrow night is the Orchid Ball. He’ll have to sign the releases during the day, instead.”

“I explained to Spence we’re one of the sponsors and have to be there. Spence said he would expect you at the house before the ball, at seven o’clock.”

“I am not going there alone.”

“Okay,” Diana said, sounding as relieved as she felt. “Mother and I will wait in the car for you while you’re with Spence, then we’ll leave from there.”