"I'm going to go get a... water." Diana extracted herself from him. Tony let his arms drop as he watched her slip away. She made a beeline for the drinks table, her sensational body on display in her form-fitting dress; but suddenly, he found himself missing the breezy cotton shirts, the asymmetrical home-cut shorts. Flip-flops. No makeup. He could map every curve of her as she walked away, knowing he was allowed to explore none of it. They were both on display, as accessible as human exhibits in a museum: one could look and appreciate, but never touch.

  That was how his mother preferred things, of course. He was surprised that Constance Harrington had deigned to be seen at all tonight, but he was sure the presence of the more down-to-earth board members had something to do with it. No Harrington could ever turn down an opportunity to schmooze.

  Not even Diana. Not anymore.

  But as Tony maneuvered himself off the dance floor in her wake, he was surprised to see his wife smiling and laughing with Julie and a few of the other employees—and she wasn't wearing that stiff smile she habitually put on for his mother, either. He had seen her chatting with Julie earlier, but now he observed what he thought was an easy, budding friendship between the two women. His other employees were also clearly drawn to Diana—the real Diana.

  Absurdly, he was jealous. He plucked a glass of wine off a roving waiter's tray and downed it in a single swig, his mother's disapproving gaze be damned. That was his wife winning over hearts not his own, smiling her unfettered Fiji smile, granting access to a side of herself she kept carefully walled-off from him...

  He had almost penetrated, a moment ago. He was sure of it. But Diana might as well be back in Fiji, leaving him here alone, for the enormous distance that yawned between them.

  It was for the best. This was for the best. He mustn't risk stumbling head over heels into the same trap that had caught and ruined his father. If Diana stayed removed, so did the risk of loving her.

  It didn't occur to him that he might already be falling.

  7

  Only a few days later, she had traded party for ceremony.

  "You'll do fine," Julie encouraged as they walked together toward the new factory. "But why am I telling you this? Where's Mr. Harrington?"

  "Tony's preoccupied." Diana tucked a curl of auburn hair back behind her ear. It sprang free again almost instantly, insistent on framing her dolled-up face in a way she found completely distracting. Her mother-in-law had taken Diana's hair into the salon an hour earlier and had it tortured into perfect springs. She felt as much of an automaton as any one of the shiny new machines inside the plant that the Harrington family was unveiling today.

  She appreciated Julie making the walk with her. Her un-sensible heels raised her half a head taller than her friend, but at least she wasn't tipping around in them anymore as she had those first few grueling weeks as Tony's new bride. Doesn't Constance know these are a hazard to her grandchild? Heels should be illegal for pregnant women, Diana thought mutinously. All the more reason not to fall on her ass in them.

  "Well, you look beautiful," Julie said with a grin. "You're going to do great at cutting the ribbon."

  "What?" Diana froze, terrified, and darted a look ahead of them at the red ribbon stretched across the plant's doors. "I... me? I wasn't informed that—"

  "Relax, I'm joking!" Julie crowed. "Good Lord, woman, you should see the look on your face! Are you that afraid of making a mess of things? It's a ribbon-cutting ceremony, for goodness sake!"

  Diana breathed an audible sigh of relief. She was certain any other woman of "society" would be mortified by Julie's jest, but she had become fast friends with the brunette ever since the other girl had extended a much-needed hand of friendship to her at last week's party. "Yes, Julie. I'm that afraid of making a mess of things." Diana straightened her pencil skirt, just in case it might hold any wrinkles from the ride over.

  "Well, didn't Mr. Harrington talk you through what to expect?"

  "He did," Diana admitted. But a "talking-through" wasn't exactly what she had been looking for when she’d gone to him with her concerns. What she had been looking for was not only reassurance that she would survive this evening, but that she would do so with him by her side.

  That had turned out not to be the reality. They had arrived together in the limousine, sure enough. Tony held the door for her, stole a forehead kiss that made her unexpectedly hot beneath her dress collar—and desperate for more. Then a fast-talking man clenching a clipboard had pulled him away after only a few shutter snaps from the press pool, leaving Diana to fend for herself.

  She toured the crowd with Julie, meeting clients and catching up with employees she had met at the party. Actually, none of them would be working at the plant, but most if not all had come out on this Sunday to show their support and wish their boss success in his new venture. Their loyalty stunned Diana, though she couldn't imagine it as being misplaced... then again, maybe she was biased. But she had seen how her husband interacted with his employees, the respect and cordiality he showed them. The easy friendliness. Tony, apparently beholden to Constance’s whims, was still strikingly different from his mother.

  And speak of the devil.

  "Diana, there you are!" Constance fixed Diana in her crosshairs and began to wind her way through the crowd toward her.

  "Good luck." Julie squeezed her shoulder, then darted away before Diana could turn and beg her to stay.

  "Where is my son?" Constance demanded as they fell into heel-step together. "Why aren't you with him?"

  "I... we got separated," Diana admitted.

  "Don't be ridiculous. He's right over there!"

  I know he's right over there. She had been painfully aware for the last hour that Tony was never more than a few strides away, but her reluctance to appear in photos, coupled with her reluctance to move ambitious distances in her shoes, had held her back. The ground they trod was muddy; she was surprised Constance was able to navigate it at all in her fashionable footwear. Maybe the woman floated several inches above the ground that the rest of them were forced to walk on. She certainly acted like it much of the time.

  "You should be beside your husband," Constance informed her. She seemed annoyed that this particular lesson didn't seem to have taken yet.

  "I thought I'd let him do his own thing?" Diana suggested helplessly. She knew how ridiculous her excuse sounded; she didn't need Constance Harrington to tell her that, although the woman appeared as generous with her advice as ever.

  "Don't be silly," her mother-in-law repeated. "And don't be skittish. You often forget, Diana, that I used to be where you are.” Her lips stretched in a tight, humorless smile. “I used to wear those shoes."

  "You did?" Diana glanced down at her heels, horrified at the amount of black mud she had already managed to accumulate on them already.

  "Not your literal shoes, of course," Constance appeased. "But I was an accessory to Tony's father. When I needed to be. I know a young woman like you must find it old-fashioned, but such is our place at these events... and believe me when I say that women of every age have always found it stifling. But if you love and support your husband in public, he will surely do the same for you behind the scenes."

  "Yes, I... I get what you're saying." It was a tough pill to swallow, and a role that Diana had never expected to fulfill in any of her dreams for her own future, but this was an insight into Constance she hadn't expected. And her mother-in-law was right. The older woman wasn’t privy to the secret deal that Tony and Diana had struck—the details they had hashed out to make their marriage of convenience work—but she was more right than she could probably imagine. Diana's support was required in public, and Tony's in private. It was a fair trade.

  And she suddenly felt as if she was letting him down.

  "Excuse me." Diana smiled, and Constance nodded approvingly. The younger Mrs. Harrington kissed her mother-in-law on the cheek as they parted ways and made a beeline for her husband. He wasn't hard to miss: his tall, stately figure perfectly filled the slate-gray suit he wore. His blond hair was trimmed and styled back fashionably from his handsome face. He looked like a movie star rather than the public face of Harrington Enterprises. Certainly he looked like the money he came from.

  Diana hated herself for thinking this. She hated herself for pushing so hard to fit in and still feeling as if she was on the outside. She hated being married to a man who might as well be a stranger to her—

  As if sensing her approach, Tony turned suddenly. His gaze alighted on her in the crowd, and his broad smile took on a new quality, widening further as the years seemed to slide away from his chiseled features and the laugh lines fanning around his eyes softened and receded. Diana's heart lodged in her throat. She couldn't be the cause of such a change—could she? It almost looked as if Tony was in love with her—

  Her heart wasn't the only thing that became stuck in that moment. The three-inch heel on her left foot drove through the soft earth like a stake, and Diana stumbled. She flung out her arms in an uncoordinated effort to regain her balance, but gravity had other plans. The people nearest her gasped as she fell, but Diana couldn't spare a thought to them, nor to the flashes of photographs being taken. All she could think in that moment was—

  The baby. Oh God. The baby!

  Tony was already on his way to Diana before she began to fall; the unfolding scene simply expedited his progress. He bolted, shoving photographers out of the way, dropping some of them on their arses in his haste, but he didn't give one whit for them, standing idly by, shutters firing, while his wife and child were in danger.

  Diana! He meant to shout her name out loud, but he had no extra energy to expend. His every atom, every fiber of his being, was solely focused on his wife. She flailed as she collapsed, but he made sure his arms and shoulders were there to receive her.

  Tony fell to his knees in the muck as he caught her, scarcely noticing the cold, or the damp, or the fact that his and Diana's wardrobes for the event were ruined before the ribbon had even been cut. All he cared about in that moment was that his pregnant wife was cradled against him, safe. They breathed raggedly against one another, the terror of what had almost come to pass slower to catch up to the fact that Diana had been rescued from it.

  "Are you all right?" Tony murmured the question into her ear, conscious of the crowd around them, even as he willed them all to sink away forever into the mud and leave him alone with Diana. He pulled back slightly and brushed a strand of auburn hair from her pale forehead. She was completely drained of color, but he was glad to see some of the natural pink returning to her cheeks as he caressed her.

  "Yes!" she gasped. "Yes, I'm totally fine. Didn't even twist my ankle, or anything."

  “Are you sure?" he pressed.

  Diana's eyes narrowed incredulously at the question. "Before I was your wife full-time, was I or was I not a nurse?"

  Tony breathed a sigh of relief. "And a damn good one, if I recall."

  "Damn straight."

  He should relinquish her and help them both to their feet, but she felt too good in his arms to give her up now. It had been too long, and he would take what he could when he got it. He brushed his thumb along her cheek again, amazed at the blush that leapt into existence there. Diana's hands alighted tentatively on his shoulders.

  "Diana, your shoe?" Constance Harrington's voice shattered the tranquil moment like a stone tossed through the surface of a pond. Tony winced, then quickly mastered the expression in case a camera decided to click it into permanence.

  "Oh. Right." Diana gave an airy laugh that wasn't her own, and Tony knew they were back to performing. He supported her as she reached behind her to yank her lost heel free from the mud.

  "Steady?" He checked in with her as they rose together.

  "Steady." Diana smiled. She hopped on one foot, leaning her weight against him as she attempted to keep her stockings clean. Tony took a risk. He lifted her, bridal-style, into his arms; the shock at his maneuver was palpable as he carried Diana to safer (and drier) ground. He couldn't care less at the response. Diana was his, damn it, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world. So why not let prying eyes feast on what he mustn't allow himself to have?

  "I can't believe you did that," Diana muttered as he deposited her back on dry land. Her cheeks burned, and the airy laugh seemed to have departed for the moment. Good. Tony didn't want the facsimile of her that his mother had helped to create. Had never wanted it. What he wanted was Diana in all her stubborn, graceless glory.

  "Better late than never," he quietly teased her. They were married in name only, after all. He could see now, after finding every excuse to keep her in his arms these past five minutes, exactly how deprived they both had been.

  Diana turned to the nearest onlooker and grinned, showcasing her real smile this time. "Who do I send the check to?" she joked as she offered the man her broken-heeled shoe.

  "Oh, God." Constance was unable to hide the depths of her shock as the cameras fluttered ecstatically to preserve forever the moment when Diana insulted the CEO of the new plant.

  A day later, the tabloids had their salacious say:

  HARRINGTON'S BRIDE CAN'T WALK AND TALK. INSULTS CEO—DEAL IN JEOPARDY.

  "What a load of..." Tony angrily rattled the paper he held open above his desktop, then crumpled it to give his hands something productive to do. He would have cast it into his home office's fireplace, had it been lit. He settled for the waste bin instead.

  His cell vibrated, but he staunchly ignored the call. It would be his mother. She had called multiple times since before sunrise, even, but Tony had been firm in establishing early in the day that he was "too busy" to communicate with her outside of texting.

  He didn't think she'd go so far as to contact Diana directly about this... or would she?

  "Tony?"

  Tony jerked free of his private musings and looked toward the door. Diana had eased it open without his noticing and stood silhouetted in the afternoon light. "Diana." He rose, but he had been sitting behind his desk for so long that his legs immediately swarmed with pins and needles.

  "Your mother called me." Diana's face was pinched, vulnerable-looking without makeup. She looked as if she had been crying. She looked young, too young to have to be dealing with this, and Tony suddenly felt the same. What man or woman of any age should have to inhabit the spotlight like this, have their every faux pas immortalized and put on display? He wanted nothing more than to sweep her up and book them both a one-way flight to Fiji.

  But he could take that wild fantasy as a starting point and find a compromise. "Get dressed," he advised her. "We're getting out of the castle for the day. No family, no cameras, no CEOs who can't take a joke."

  "My joke wasn't very funny," Diana said despondently as he steered them together down the hallway toward their separate bedrooms. "Where are we going?"

  Tony smiled wanly. Then, before he could stop himself, he bent to press a swift kiss to her cheek. Seeing her so downcast was breaking his heart. At least when she glanced up at him, startled, she looked less defeated in the wake of her surprise.

  "You'll see," he promised. "Five minutes. I'll meet you downstairs."

  8

  “You really didn’t have to take me to lunch to make me feel better, Tony,” Diana protested for the umpteenth time. At this point, they were already at the restaurant, and her husband was behind her, pulling out her chair—making her repeated protest border on the ridiculous, but she thought she would lodge it one more time anyway.

  “You’re right. I don’t ‘have to’ anything,” Tony agreed as he sat down across from her. “And who said anything about making you feel better? Are you admitting something’s weighing on you?”

  Diana bit back a smile and made sure not to roll her eyes too obviously at this. “I was horrendous at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Everyone knows that.”

  “You weren’t ‘horrendous’ by any stretch.” Tony leveled a look that made her shift in her chair and cross her legs. Was she crazy, or did an inexplicable heat burn behind that steady gaze? Surely he hadn’t found her faux pas in front of all those press people a turn-on? Or was it the memory of her in his arms—the same memory that snuck up on her almost every hour when she didn’t guard against it—that made him smolder so?

  “Okay. I was merely awful, then,” she allowed.

  “Ignore what the tabloids say.” Tony waved down their waitress and put in an order for tea. A concoction of chamomile and ginger had become Diana’s go-to—normally she preferred coffee, same as Tony, but she was definitely embracing her English roots these days in an attempt to settle her stomach. The pregnancy nausea wasn’t hitting her as hard as some of the horror stories Constance and her friends had impressed on her, but she was determined to make as few trips to the washroom as possible during their date. Their date. There was no real harm in thinking of it that way, was there?

  “It was endearing.” Tony finally settled on a word for her epic stumble. “There are more social media posts to that effect than in agreement with the more unflattering headlines.”

  “Did your mother tell you that?” Diana guessed. Constance might make herself socially aloof, but she certainly hadn’t removed herself from social media.

  “Yes, my mother told me that. And I’ve also seen them for myself.” Tony grinned. “So relax, Diana. Please. Let me treat you. You’ve been going above and beyond for us; don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Diana had thought that, actually. She had assumed all her behind-the-scenes efforts to be the perfect ambassador for their marriage were taken for granted. Her eyes stung a little as she realized things were the opposite of what she’d thought, and she looked down.