But how do you tell the man who happens to be your convenient husband that you want more than just convenience?

  "Yes, send her in," Tony replied to his secretary's question, feeling surprise. "Of course send her in. Always send her in."

  He rose from his desk as Diana entered his office. As he swept his hair to the side with his fingers, he realized the futility of attempting to refine his appearance when she was already looking at him and gestured to the chair across from him. "Diana! Can I get you anything? Something to drink, maybe?"

  "No." She waved off his offer and sank gracefully into the chair. "I don't want to impose on you for very long."

  "You're not an imposition," he replied. "Never."

  "Are you sure?" She tracked him with her eyes as he moved to pour himself a glass of water from the decanter. "With the way you've been avoiding me recently, I confess that I wasn't sure."

  " 'Avoiding you'? Really, Diana, I..." He found himself caught in the tractor beam of her don't-bullshit-me gaze and realized he had nothing to conclude with. "...I'm sorry.” He added lamely, “I've been so busy with work."

  "I know you have," she replied. "I've been putting in long hours, too. Trying to appease... trying to fit the mold, rather."

  "You don't fit any mold." Tony settled back against his desktop. "That's why I like you."

  "I like you, too." She blushed, although he got the feeling it seemed more out of frustration than bashfulness at her confession. Had she intended to say more? He certainly understood a thing or two about that... "And you're going to be the father of this child. Parenthood is coming, Tony. I was hoping that maybe we could find some time to ourselves before then."

  "What sort of time to ourselves...?" He set his drink aside and knelt beside her. Diana was playing with a loose string on the hem of her skirt, twisting it around and around; he pulled her fingers free and recaptured them with his own. "Diana...?"

  "I..." She trailed off, staring, as Tony allowed his free hand to slide slowly up her thigh. He couldn't resist the opportunity to touch her—to be close to her—to know her as he once had. She shifted, and as her thighs parted, she sucked in a shaking breath. Her eyes closed in surrender as Tony rose up to meet her, bracing himself on the arms of the chair, seeking that candy-sweet mouth he should have been running toward all this time—

  "Mr. Harrington?"

  Tony pushed himself upright at once, turning back to his desk as his secretary entered. "Yes? What is it, Melonie?" He was managing to disguise the most obvious physical signs of his arousal, but it was less easy to disguise his irritation at being interrupted. "Is the intercom down?"

  "No, I—"

  "Then why didn't you announce yourself before walking in?"

  "Tony." Diana's tone was hard. She was chastising him, he realized, for showing his annoyance with his secretary. He heard her chair scrape as she stood up behind him. "It's all right, I was just leaving. I'm sure you’re very busy."

  "I do have... meetings, er..." He knew his schedule was full today, though he couldn't remember who or what might be involved. All he could think about was this damn raging erection of his and putting it to use. If Melonie weren't standing there, he could have Diana bend before his desk... or astride him in his desk chair... surely her sense of adventure might extend to a high-stakes quickie in his office, right...?

  When he did finally compose himself enough to turn, Diana thrust a book into his hands. "What's this?" He blinked and glanced down.

  "What to Expect When You're Expecting. Read it," Diana advised. "If you can't find time away from the office to spend with your pregnant wife, then at least educate yourself on what she's going through."

  "Diana..."

  "I'll see myself out. Melonie, thank you." Diana smiled, the color of her coral lips clearly his mother’s selection, and assumed a powerful stride he didn't recognize as she walked out. She was becoming another person entirely before his eyes; worse, she was doing it for him. And how had he shown his thanks thus far? By avoiding her, simply because he couldn't keep a leash on his own feelings?

  "Oh, that's a good one," Max grunted later that evening when he saw the unopened tome on Tony's desk.

  "Hm?" Tony, having changed from water to brandy, now turned from pouring twin glasses at his office cabinet to consider Max's words. "Is it really?"

  "Taught me everything I needed to know. Which was everything." Max shrugged and kicked his feet up to rest on the desk. He was occupying the same seat that, only hours before, Tony had made a move on his wife in... not that Max needed to know that.

  "I don't have time to read it."

  "You’ll make time," Max informed him. "Or download the audiobook. I know, Tony, what you think this is, but with or without love, you owe it to the mother of your child to put in the effort. She mustn't go through this alone. And if you should make her go through it alone..." Max accepted his brandy without thanks, eyes cold. "...then you deserve winding up alone."

  "Our arrangement benefits us both staying together," Tony argued as he collapsed into his desk chair. "Diana knows that."

  "From what you’ve described, Diana is a strong-willed woman.” Max lifted the brandy almost to his lips, then paused and regarded the amber liquid in his glass with renewed thoughtfulness. “What's more, she's pregnant. That means she's a strong-willed, hormonally charged woman with two heartbeats where other women have one. You mess this thing up with her, and no amount of money will keep her from walking out on you."

  "You can detect the baby's heartbeat at this stage? Really?" Tony leaned forward, and Max indelicately shoved the book in his face.

  "Read, Tony. Prove Gavin wrong."

  Tony arched an eyebrow at the mention of their friend. "How would that be proving Gavin wrong?"

  "Because Gavin thinks you never properly learned to read." Max downed his brandy in a single swig and deposited his glass with conversational finality. "Your security program’s up to date, by the way. I already did it remotely."

  "Then why come all the way out here?" Tony demanded, annoyed. He knew he had a reputation for being a devil-may-care playboy, but he had hoped marrying Diana would put the worst of the rumors about him to bed.

  "To make sure you weren't fucking things up." Max snatched his jacket off the back of his chair and turned back to him. "Don't fuck this up," he advised.

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence, mate, really."

  Tony deflated as Max let himself out. He took another swig of brandy, then pulled Diana's book to him and flipped it open.

  6

  "...it is not an avocado,” Diana grumbled. “Quit calling it that!”

  “Hey, you’re the one who chose my reading material.” Tony’s hand on the small of her back, his voice pitched close to her ear, sent shivers racing down her spine. Too bad his conversation was completely inane.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” was her brilliant response as he steered her into the company party. She was feeling breathlessly nervous about their first outing together as a couple, and Tony’s proximity wasn’t making things any easier for her. She tried to concentrate again on their argument. “So maybe he or she is the size of an avocado...”

  “That’s what I’m saying!”

  “...but ‘avocado’ does not pass muster as a cute nickname for our child. In fact, you had better refrain from mentioning most foods around me. Did you get to the chapter that tells you that?”

  “I may have... skimmed it...?”

  Unbelievable. Then again, the fact that he had opened the book at all impressed Diana—even though she knew it shouldn’t. Brushing up on what she was going through, physically and emotionally, was the bare minimum Tony could do if he was too afraid to ask her outright.

  Was he afraid? Diana allowed him to remove her coat from around her shoulders, studying him all the while. Fleeting touches were about all she could hope for these days. She longed for the days—and nights—they had spent together in Fiji, wrapped in each other’s arms, without a care as to who might be watching, and certainly not tallying their public displays of affection. Now, it appeared that PDA provided the only excuse for intimate touch. They were performing for an unwitting audience, and Tony was either the best or worst actor in the world—she had no idea what he thought about the close contact their arrangement required.

  Except for the other day, in his office, when he’d seemed so close to—

  “There you are, Diana!” Constance Harrington swooped almost at once, cradling a glass of white wine as pristinely inoffensive as her own appearance. Well, not completely without offense; the sharp, bright smell of it alone was almost enough to make Diana gag. She was so sensitive to the smallest scent nowadays. She found herself longing, again, for the easy days of Kokoda and Mai Tais on the beach...

  “Here I am.” Diana grimaced a smile that she knew, from practicing in the mirror at home, would be convincing enough. “How are you this evening, Constance?”

  “Much improved now that you’re here,” her mother-in-law confided. Diana didn’t know whether to be mildly annoyed or flattered that she had been taken into the woman’s confidence. She knew Constance meant well—and according to Tony, his mother adored Diana—but the elder Mrs. Harrington was often aloof with people she deemed beneath her. Diana personally wanted nothing to do with any high society outlook, but she still had to play the part of at least seeming sympathetic to the attitudes of the “right” people. Walking the social tightrope was exhausting, but she reminded herself that she had come here this evening to be exhausted. No matter how much she might like to, she didn’t belong only to Tony.

  No matter how much she might like to.

  She allowed Constance to steer her through various conversations, wearing a smile of total petrification, as the thought played again and again in her mind. She couldn’t let anyone else perceive how she was really feeling, her husband least of all.

  That line of thinking had gotten her mother into trouble, once upon a time. Olivia Tinsley had given up on her dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot and traveling the world when she’d met and married Diana’s pilot father, Jack Tinsley, for love. Which had secured her an almost permanent position as Jack’s arm candy, until the fateful day she’d found out about Jack’s other arm candies spanning the globe. Diana’s mother had divorced without hesitation, but her dreams of becoming a pilot herself had never taken off again.

  Diana refused to let the same thing happen to her. True, she hadn’t expected her own feelings for Tony to become her biggest enemy in all this, but it wouldn’t be the first time she had come in conflict with herself. The last time had been in Fiji—only problem was, when you went to war with yourself, it was impossible to know whether you had won or lost until much, much later.

  “It’s going to be difficult to start thinking of myself as a ‘grandmother,’ but I think I can manage,” Constance was confiding to a board member. “Though of course I’ll put myself firmly in charge of whatever the little one calls me. I don’t care all that much for ‘Nana,’ so I was thinking...”

  With Constance’s attention focused elsewhere, Diana seized the opportunity to quietly slip away. God, how she wished she could have a drink...

  “Mrs. Harrington?”

  Diana didn’t respond at first. She didn’t even realize she was being addressed until she half-turned and saw one of Tony’s female employees frowning, holding a drink in each hand, and about to retreat.

  “Oh! Wait!” Diana put out a gentle hand to stop her—“gentle” because her first instinct was to seize the poor woman like the last lifeline thrown before Diana sank beneath the waves for good. “I’m sorry, I’m still not used to responding to that name! Please, call me Diana.”

  Knowing Tony preferred “Tony” to “Mr. Harrington,” she thought surely her request wasn’t out-of-bounds—even though, on second thought, she could anticipate Constance’s disapproval at the introduction...

  Maybe entertaining some disapproval from her mother-in-law would be healthy for the both of them.

  The young woman smiled in relief. “Diana. I’m Julie. It’s nice to meet you.” She offered one of the glasses she carried; Diana was about to decline, but Julie shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s non-alcoholic. I just figured... sometimes these functions are easier if you have a drink in hand. I don’t know why, precisely.”

  “You’re right, and I’m grateful,” Diana agreed. “Thank you.” She accepted the drink, and they raised their glasses to each other without any audible toast. Their immediate and apparently mutual understanding was enough. “Seems like a fun party, actually.”

  “You should join some of our crowd!” Julie suggested. “Come along! I’ll introduce you.”

  Diana allowed herself to be towed across the room, not bothering to disguise her relief. She let the muscles in her face relax for the first time that evening, and her genuine smile, imperfect and asymmetrical as it might be, shone through as Julie introduced her to some of the others who worked in the Scarborough office. She shook hands, traded jokes, and soon found her shoulders being clapped with affectionate ease.

  It didn’t hurt that the move had brought her closer to Tony.

  She watched her husband out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t strike her as glad-handing or, for that matter, deigning to come down from the castle to converse with the peasantry. Tony actually seemed to be enjoying himself; what was more, he seemed to be genuine friends with his employees. For every shoulder-clap she was getting, he gave two or three himself. The way people clustered around him and the compelling and natural way he smiled were enough to make her rethink all her grueling training at the hands of his mother. Maybe it was possible to exist in the high society Tony had been born into while being herself... then again, maybe it came naturally to him because he was used to it. Maybe there was no hope for someone like her to ever feel settled or fully at home.

  “Diana.”

  She nearly jumped out of her skintight dress. The subject of her musings had crept up on her without her noticing.

  Tony stood before her, or more accurately, his chest stood before her, powerfully shouldered and perfectly postured. No one else at this party could know what he hid beneath that suit, she thought—not the way she did.

  “Tony.” Whatever game he was orchestrating behind those blue eyes of his, she let him know with a single, mirrored word that she was ready.

  He smiled as he extended his hand to her. The wedding band that tied her to him seemed to wink at her entreatingly in the low, atmospheric light of the party.

  “Shall we dance?”

  It was the first time in months that Tony had really, truly, taken the woman he called his wife into his arms.

  He didn't think the revelation was his alone. As he led Diana out to the middle of the party and slipped a hand around her waist, he thought he felt her shiver. "Cold?" he queried as he raised their joined hands and began to sway. The partygoers around them, predominantly his employees, made room for them, but seeing the amused smiles and interested eyes of several other pairs, he knew they wouldn't be the only ones dancing for long.

  "Why?" Diana asked as he spun her in a careful turn. "Does this dress make it obvious?"

  Tony yanked her to him, perhaps more abruptly than the music required, but he suddenly wanted to feel her body against his. The full outlines of Diana's breasts were more than just a visual distraction now; they were pressed firmly to him, pushing against him, her nipples standing at pointed attention.

  "I don't think it's just the cold," he whispered wickedly in her ear.

  "How much have you had to drink?"

  He pulled back to take in that finely arched eyebrow of hers. Her eyebrows were sleek these days, like the rest of her. Never so much as a hair out of place. She was the high-society wife his mother had always wanted for him, the prize he had always coveted.

  Then why did he feel as if he wanted something else entirely?

  "A few," he admitted.

  Diana sighed as another couple joined them on the improvised dance floor. "Well, I'm glad you're finding the time to drink enough for both of us."

  "I'm glad you agreed to a dance."

  "Gotta keep up our image, right?" She pillowed her head against his chest as they swayed, but Tony would have given anything in that moment to see her expression. Why did she sound so reticent all of a sudden? So defeated? Was being married to him, and carrying their child, really the life sentence she was making it out to be?

  Or did the sadness he sensed in Diana's voice imply something else entirely? An opinion, a feeling, a desire, that he had no access to?

  "Diana." His voice thrummed low in his throat. The dance floor swarmed with other laughing couples now, and he didn't want to be overheard. "There's something, isn't there? Something you aren't telling me."

  "What do you mean?" Her own voice was breathy. Hesitant, he fancied.

  "You're stalling. You know what I mean." He paused their next revolution and awaited her answer, a tried-and-true business technique he’d perfected. He could out-stall any staller until they gave him what he wanted.

  Diana looked up at him, green eyes churning with something immediately below the surface. God, how he wanted to know what she was thinking. What she was feeling.

  "I just..." She trailed off helplessly, looking off to the side, but there was no escape from him now. Other bodies pressed in around them, and his mother's eyes were on them from across the room as well as the eyes of select board members. "I just miss Fiji, sometimes."

  "Fiji?" he repeated, bewildered.

  Diana shook her head. "I know it's stupid."

  "Diana, I miss Fiji every day."

  Her eyes snapped up to him again, but Tony’s heightened senses were alive to the risk of drawing unwelcome attention; they’d been still for too long already. He eased them back into the rhythm, and they danced together without further conversation. All the while, Tony's thoughts raced a mile a minute, trying to process the meaning behind their words to each other. Confession? Admission of a mutual attraction that neither knew how to act on these days? Or was Diana telling him that she felt stifled by their life here—that she wanted out?