Free Betina Krahn by The Soft Touch Page A

it—and with it, a lot of good men—to work.
    Whatever her irritating personal quirks, Diamond Wingate knew about railroads, believed in them, and under the right circumstances,
invested
in them.
    Vassar was right. She was his best hope. He had to find a way to deal with Diamond Wingate as if she were an investor, pure and simple. He had to take his proposal to her and make her a clean, aboveboard proposition. Strictly business. Because, after all, it
was
business. He would be offering her a profitable opportunity. And if all went as planned, she stood to gain handsomely from her investment in his rail line.
    There was the truth of it, he told himself, rolling his shoulders, and missing the widened eyes and fluttering fans that his casual movement caused in the matrons’ corner. By soliciting her participation in his venture, he was actually doing
her
a favor.
    Get in, sell your idea, and get the hell out.
    With his new outlook firmly in place, he took a deep breath while tugging his vest into place—sending an audible sigh through that same appreciative population—and began to stroll around the drawing room, working his way toward her.
    Diamond watched tall, broad-shouldered Barton McQuaid prowling around the drawing room and felt roundly irritated that she couldn’t take her eyes from him. Annoying man. It was little comfort that her difficulty seemed to be shared by virtually every other woman present, or that he was oblivious to the fact that they werestaring at him. He was preoccupied and appeared to be less than pleased to be here.
    That insight spawned another. His garments—no doubt the very ones she had been forced to pay for—were tailored to perfection. There wasn’t an erratic seam or an excess inch of goods anywhere on his striking frame, and yet he still seemed to be stuffed into his clothes. Or trapped in them. His visible discomfort and pensive manner presented a stark contrast to the ease and pleasure he had displayed at dinner when he spoke of Montana. It was suddenly as clear as if he had said it aloud: he would give anything to be there instead of—
    “Join me for a turn about the garden,” came a whisper at her ear. She looked up to find Morgan Kenwood leaning close with a wine-induced glow of warmth on his patrician face. “I’ll be waiting.”
    His hand slid deliberately up the inside of her bare upper arm. Her stomach contracted and didn’t relax, even after he released her and casually made his way toward the terrace doors. Passing a pair of admiring females on his way out, he gave them a regal nod, as if their admiration were his due. She knew if she joined him on the darkened terrace, he would alternately pressure and cajole her to announce their engagement and set a wedding date.
    She would rather have a tooth pulled.
    Several teeth.
    The next moment, however, dealing with Morgan-in-the-dark became the least of her worries. She spotted a slender male form, dressed in an oversized frock coat and white neck band that mimicked a cleric’s collar, standing in the drawing room doorway. The unrelenting black of his clothing posed a stark contrast to the pale hair that hung to his shoulders and had been caught back in an old-fashioned queue. She would know that dark clothing andpale hair anywhere. Her breath caught as his fair head turned this way and that, searching the guests.
    Her first impulse was to hide … to find a curtain, a planter, a sofa, anything. But, unaccustomed to such cowardly urges, she waffled and hesitated a moment too long to make a successful escape.
    “Diamond!” Louis Pierpont bore down on her with a look of such rapture on his delicate features that she groaned silently.
    “Louis!” She had to make the best of it. “What are you doing here?”
    He seized her gloved hands, held them up reverently before his gaze, and gave a dramatic sigh. “I could not bear to be away from you another day, my dearest jewel. I took the fleetest packet from Barbados and flew