“But you bought her anyway?”
“A gift for my parents. I’m leaving her here with Sky until she’s safely in foal. That’s why I want the photos, to send them in lieu of the real thing.”
“Easier to gift wrap.”
“Much,” he agreed, and a hint of the lopsided grin she loved lurked around the corners of his mouth.
Loved? Diana gave herself a quick mental shake. What they’d shared was not love, no matter what she’d thought during those blissful months. Mention of his parents whom she had never met acted as the perfect reminder.
“How is your family?” she asked out of politeness.
“They’re all well.”
“And you, Max?” Not out of politeness, but because she couldn’t help herself. She had to know. “How have you been?”
“Fine.”
On the surface it sounded liked a stock answer, the kind you pay no heed to. But all traces of that near-smile had vanished from his face and, as he pushed off the door and started toward the horse, Diana detected a stiffening in his posture.
Alarm fluttered in her chest. “Are you?” she asked, before she could think better of it.
“Why would you assume otherwise?”
“Because you seem so different, so—” she let her hands rise and fall as she struggled to describe the vibes he’d been giving off “—uptight.”
“You said you’re not the same person. Same goes.”
Okay, but now he sounded downright hostile and Diana couldn’t let it go. Not now that she’d started. “We’ve both changed, as people tend to do, but at Case’s party you were unfriendly to the point of rudeness. I thought you might have been too travel-lagged to recognize me, or that you simply may not have remembered. But that’s not the problem, is it?”
He clipped a lead rope onto the horse’s halter before he turned. The hat shaded his eyes but the line of his mouth definitely fit her description. Uptight and unfriendly. “You were introduced as Diana Young. Do I know you?”
“After my husband died it was easier to keep his name. Plus there are advantages to not carrying the Fielding name around…not that it matters. I’m still me.”
“Well, there’s the thing,” he said in his deep, down-under drawl. “I don’t know that I ever knew you.”
That shocked a short, astonished laugh from Diana. Never in her thirty-one years had she been as honest, as open, as herself, as in the time she’d spent as Max’s lover. “How can you say that? I shared everything with you!”
“Yeah, you shared. That’s what I don’t appreciate, Mrs. Young. That’s why I’m not feeling as friendly toward you as I used to.”
“What do you mean?” Diana shook her head slowly. “What on earth do you think I shared?”
“Your body, mostly. How did Mr. Young like that?”
“Are you implying that I was already married?” she asked with rising incredulity.
“Not married, but you must have been engaged.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You expect me to believe you met and married this Young character less than three weeks after leaving me? I guess it must have been love at first sight, then.”
Diana reared back, stung by the bitter irony of his accusation. Love at first sight had been Max. Her marriage to David Young, a big, inescapable, back-firing disaster. She’d always guarded the details closely because she knew what the gossip media would make of it. And because she didn’t enjoy admitting to the naivety and weakness that had opened her up to emotional blackmail, to the power she’d allowed her father and David Young to exert over her.
At one time she would have shared those details with Max—she’d called him, Lord knows, she’d tried. But not now. Not after those coldly delivered accusations.
Instead she fastened on the other untruth in his argument. “I didn’t leave you, Max. I went home because I had to…and only after we agreed that we saw our relationship somewhat differently. You wanted sex, I wanted more.”
He stared at her a moment, no sign of giving in the hard set of his face. It was the same uncompromising expression as the night they’d quarreled, when she’d realized how woefully she’d misconstrued their relationship. “You wanted to get married that bad?” he asked now. “That you said yes to the first batter up after I walked away from the plate?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she fired back. “David was my father’s business partner. I didn’t agree to marry him for the sake of a wedding band, okay?”
His lips compressed into a straight line of condemnation, and Diana realized that her angry outburst added weight to his belief she’d been involved with David all along. She thought about rephrasing but what did it matter? Driving here today she’d cautioned herself about getting involved again. She did not need this old heartache.
“My relationship with you was over when I returned to New York and you didn’t bother to acknowledge my calls,” she said, mustering some dignity and wrapping it around her like a protective cloak. “It’s been ten years. Why are we rehashing old quarrels?”
“You brought it up.”
“And, frankly, I’m sorry I did.”
“Seems we agree on one thing.”
For a long moment Diana couldn’t find any comeback, and to her horror she felt the ache of tears building at the back of her throat. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t pretend emotional detachment any more than she’d been able to ten years before.
“It seems that I’ve come to agree with you on another point.” She swallowed against the painful lump that was making it so dashed difficult to maintain her dignity. “I don’t believe I’m the right photographer for this job after all.”
“Suit yourself.” He gave a curt shrug. “You’re not indispensable, Diana. I can find a replacement.”
Glutton for punishment, she had to ask. “Is that what you did after I left Australia? Is that why you never returned my calls?”
He paused in opening the stable door, close enough now that she could see the wintry chill of his eyes and beneath the green patina a hint of some deeper emotion. Pain? Regret? Frustration? He shut the door behind him with a thud of finality and whatever she’d thought she’d seen was gone.
“Something like that,” he said in answer to her question. Then he touched his hat in a cowboy’s salute of farewell and walked away.
Two
“Is there something wrong with your lunch?”
Diana blinked until the chicken breast she’d been worrying around her plate came into focus. “No, it’s fine.”
“And you know this,” Eliza asked, “because…?”
Trust her friend to point out the obvious. Diana gave up on her untouched meal and put down her silverware. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this.”
This happened to be a late lunch in the atrium restaurant at the Fortune’s Seven Hotel. The hotel’s ballroom was the scene of next month’s Historical Society Auction to raise funds for reparations to the city’s Old West Museum. The fundraising committee, chaired by Eliza, had met earlier to discuss the function with hotel staff, and Eliza had used her gently persuasive charm to cajole Diana into lunch and a shopping expedition afterward.
“I’m not good company today,” Diana added.
“You don’t