His Love Match

by Shirley Hailstock

  “You stage weddings here?”

  Diana laughed. “I’m on the alumni board and usually park on a side street. Going in that way is more convenient.”

  Silence settled over them as they approached the spot in the walkway that Diana thought of as the kissing place. She didn’t stop there, but passed it.

  “Do you mind if I ask a question?” she asked.

  He turned and looked at her inquiringly.

  Teddy’s comment that he might have arranged the call to cut their time together short was on her mind. But if he had, it made no sense. Why would he stay the night with her if there was another woman he wanted to see?

  “Where did you go last night in such a hurry?” Diana asked.

  “I had an emergency flight to take.”

  “I thought you were a corporate pilot,” Diana said.

  “Even corporate pilots have emergencies. But I’m not strictly a corporate pilot.”

  Diana waited for further explanation.

  “I fly corporate executives from Centex Biologics. In addition, I sometimes deliver human organs for transplant.”

  “Transplants.” Diana was relieved. “This is what you did last night. You flew an organ to save someone’s life?”

  “I tried. I deliver the organ. I can’t tell if the operation is successful or even if the recipient is male or female.”

  Diana lifted herself up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “What was that for?”

  “For being one of the good guys.”

  She didn’t think anyone would make up that kind of explanation. Diana didn’t know what she would have thought if Scott had decided to leave her alone after he’d invited her to have dinner with him. Diana wanted to go, but she wouldn’t let Teddy or Scott know that was the case. She’d have refused Scott’s invitation if Teddy had not taken the phone.

  But all the tumblers had fallen in place and they were together. Dinner hadn’t been all she wanted it to be, but the walk on campus had begun well enough. Then Scott left her, but he was saving someone’s life. Of all the things she could fault him for, that wasn’t one of them.

  They resumed walking, this time Scott took her hand. Just as they were passing Nassau Hall, the main building seen from the front gates, a group of people exited the building. Most of them were students, but a few were faculty.

  “Hi, Diana,” Dr. Rhys-Weisz said.

  “Hello, Diana,” said her colleague, Dr. Lange. “There’s no committee meeting tonight, is there?”

  Diana shook her head. “I’m just showing a friend around.” She glanced between Scott and Dr. Lange. “This is Scott Thomas,” she said.

  They shook hands, and the two teachers excused themselves to hurry along to class. Dr. Lange and Dr. Rhys-Weisz were on a committee with Diana.

  “They didn’t recognize you,” Diana said, surprise evident in her voice.

  “Why should they?”

  “You don’t know who they are?”

  Scott watched the two people walking away from them. He cocked his head as if trying to pull a memory into focus.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “That was Professor Lange.”

  “He got his doctorate a few years ago,” Diana told him.

  “And Dr. Rhys?”

  “She got married,” Diana supplied. She’s Dr. Rhys-Weisz now.”

  “You know them?”

  She nodded.

  “How?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, Dr. Rhys-Weisz called her name. “You are coming next Saturday, right?”

  Diana nodded. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “I’m amazed she’s still here,” Scott said as the teacher left. “We used to walk all over her.”

  “She’s still here,” Diana said. “And I guess she learned from you, because she’s a force to be reckoned with now.”

  They continued to walk, and a few other people smiled and spoke to Diana by name as she and Scott approached the main gate.

  “You seem to have a presence here.”

  She nodded, not explaining.

  “Can I surmise that your memories of being here continue to form?”

  “You can,” she said with a bright smile.

  “What’s happening next week?” he asked. “If I’m not overstepping my bounds.”

  “A few people are coming in for dinner.”

  “You mean the alumni?”

  “Of course, they’re all alumni.” Diana made light of the situation as if the event was no big deal.

  “It’s the annual scholarship dinner,” Scott said. “I have an invitation at home.”

  “They were sent to all alumni,” Diana said. “Most people don’t appear in person. If they did we couldn’t accommodate them. Many send donations. About three or four hundred people attend the actual event.”

  Scott had never been there as far as Diana knew. He made regular donations. She got the list of attendees and patrons every year. Her first job on the dinner-dance committee was to send acknowledgments to the alumni who donated to the fund. She hadn’t looked for his name, but it had jumped out at her like an unexpected snake.

  “You’re going?” he asked.

  “I’m on the committee.”

  “How about we go together?” Scott asked. “You let me make up for running out on you yesterday, and I’ll make sure I’m not on call next Saturday. This is not a major reunion. It’s not likely they’ll be many people there either of us know.”

  “Then why do you want to go?” she asked. “Isn’t the point of a reunion to see people you haven’t seen in a long while?”

  “I’m sure there’ll be at least a few people I remember. And since we’re both right in Princeton, maybe we should go together.”

  “Scott, the BMOC and Diana 4.0. together.”

  Chapter 7

  Scott’s car blocked the driveway when the campus taxi dropped them off several minutes later. They had walked to the center of town to clear their heads. Traversing the distance back over small hills that looked like mountains was more exercise than she wanted.

  “I’m hungry,” Diana told him when they were inside. She headed for the kitchen. “Want some breakfast, or is it lunchtime?” She checked her wrist. It was bare. Her watch was upstairs on the bedside table. At least that was where she hoped it was. The events of last night were still a little fuzzy.

  “I’d love some. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Set the table and make coffee.” She indicated where the coffee was and pointed to the coffeemaker.

  Diana moved around the space with steps as precise as a dancer’s. In just a few minutes they were sitting down to a full breakfast of British bangers, scrambled eggs, Nutella crepes and buckets of coffee.

  They ate in companionable silence, enjoying the food, but when Diana finished and poured a second cup of coffee for herself, she leaned back in the chair and gazed at Scott. He was an enigma. She wondered how the two personalities could occupy the same gorgeous body. One of his personalities left her in the dark. The other spent the night making sure she was all right and then helping her through the worst day of her life.

  “What are you doing?” Scott asked. He had another cup of coffee and she hadn’t seen him get up to get it or even remove both their plates.

  “I was thinking of something.”

  “Was it about me?” he said with a smile.

  “As self-centered as ever, aren’t you?”

  He sipped the hot liquid and shook his head. “I just hoped I was the object of your thoughts.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Your expression said good, so I went with that.”

  Diana waited a long moment before she answered his question. “I don’t know i
f it was good or bad.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you kiss me that day?” Diana asked.

  Scott’s face didn’t change, but she knew he understood she was referring to the kiss he’d given her in front of Nassau Hall and not the one last night before he’d left her. Whatever his reason was, it had bothered her for years. She wanted to put it out of her mind. She’d tried, but suddenly without notice, she would remember it.

  Some days she would hear a voice that sounded like his, only to turn and find it belonged to a stranger. There were television actors who showed traits she remembered him having; the way they ran or drew a hand through their hair. When a movie got to a love scene, Diana would fantasize that the man was Scott and she was the leading lady. For a time she only watched plotless actions movies.

  “When we were students,” he stated, knowing exactly what day and what kiss she meant.

  She nodded. “It was one of the only times you talked to me without harsh words, without an audience. I thought you were changing. Then you kissed me. And you ran away.”

  “We had an audience.” He lowered his head and looked at his hands. “It was a joke, another prank against Diana 4.0.”

  She listened without a word.

  “They were in the window of the building behind us. We saw you coming across campus and someone said something about how you probably had never been kissed. Of course, the conversation quickly got out of control. And then they thought one of us should go out and kiss you.”

  “And you lost.”

  “That wasn’t how it was.”

  He was silence for a while. She was about to prompt him when he began speaking again. “I liked my friends back then. I still like them. They’re married now and settled, but at the time I was unsure what they might do if someone else tried to complete the bet.”

  “So your act was to save me?”

  “It doesn’t sound noble, and at the time I didn’t think of it that way. I was just unsure what would happen if one of them tried something and you didn’t like it.”

  “You thought I might hurt one of them?”

  “I doubt you could have. You were so much smaller than any of them. And they were either basketball or football players.”

  “You were on the diving team, but just as strong as any of them.”

  “But I wasn’t about to hurt you,” he said. “At least not physically.” The last he added in a lower voice.

  “I remember you started talking about a class. It had something to do with political science. You mentioned joining a campaign and wanted to know what I thought of the current presidential candidates.” Diana didn’t relay all he had said. She could repeat that conversation word for word if needed.

  “You were skeptical of my motives,” Scott reminded her. “I remember the expression on your face and you asking me why I wanted to know anything.”

  “You said you were interested in running for office, and you wanted to know how to change someone’s mind that you had offended. I was the perfect patsy for that.”

  Scott winced, remembering that long-ago conversation. He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry for that day.”

  “What do you think your kiss did?” Diana asked.

  “I’ve wondered about that for years. I thought you’d forgotten it. That it meant nothing.”

  “Is that’s why you ran away?”

  He shook his head. “I was surprised,” he admitted.

  “That the kiss was not my first time?”

  “That I liked it and every time I saw you I wanted to kiss you again. After that I never teased you again.”

  “I know,” she told him. “And you must have convinced your friends, because most of them stopped, too. I thought they’d found another target, but I knew it was you.”

  “We didn’t find another target. I think we grew up at that moment and realized what we were doing was something we wouldn’t want done to us. All except Linda.”

  “She thoroughly doesn’t like me. Her harsh criticism continued.” It had actually stepped up a few notches after the kiss.

  “I never understood that. What did you ever do to her?” Scott asked.

  “Nothing,” Diana said. “I existed, and she knew about the kiss and your abrupt exit.” It was a woman thing, and Diana wouldn’t reveal it to Scott. It would tell him too much about her. Linda instinctively knew that Diana was a threat to her—competition for Scott’s affections. Once she found out Scott had kissed her and no longer wanted to tease her, Linda would know that deep down Scott felt something for Brainiac.

  “Yeah,” Scott said, as if Diana had asked a question. “So?”

  “While your male friends didn’t get it, Linda did.”

  Scott frowned. He still didn’t know what she meant.

  “I was a threat to her. She wanted to make sure that she had your full attention, that she was the woman on your arm and no one else would replace her.”

  “She thought you would replace her?”

  Diana gave him a long look. “It wasn’t a peck on the cheek. When you kissed me, we were both surprised at the intensity that overtook us. Your friends were watching, and they embellished what they saw. So she continued her waspish comments and her belittling of anything I did.”

  “Good thing she married and left the area,” Scott said.

  That came as a surprise to Diana. The way Linda clung to him, she was sure they would have gone down the aisle together. She wanted to ask what had happened with the two of them, but didn’t.

  “She’s probably a lot different now,” Diana told him, and left the sentence obviously unfinished.

  “Yeah, we’re all different.”

  Scott got up and reached over to Diana. He pulled her to her feet and circled her waist. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “And this time I’m not running away.”

  * * *

  Teddy had come through for her. Diana knew she would. After Scott offered to take her to the dinner-dance, she wanted to look good, but after they made love, she wanted to outshine any woman he’d ever been with. She wanted to obliterate Diana 4.0 and Cousin Itt from his memory and let him see that she was a sexy, flesh-and-blood woman. And her blood ran hot for him.

  Diana needed a gown. “Not just any gown,” she told Teddy. “I need a gown that says WOW! Something that will knock Scott’s eyes out when he sees me.”

  “Gee, this sounds serious, and over someone you said you weren’t compatible with,” Teddy teased.

  Diana’s face crimsoned under her makeup, but she only smiled at Teddy. Diana knew the inner glow she felt was evident. Not compatible. All that had changed. It was never really true. Diana had given herself that excuse to keep from confronting the fact that she really liked Scott. She thought about him the moment she woke up and every minute throughout the day.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Teddy said.

  And now they were together. The BMOC and Diana 4.0. And they liked each other. She smiled to herself as she looked in the mirror. The dress was superb, a strapless royal-blue concoction that looked like blooming roses along the bustline. It pinched tightly in at the waist before flaring out as it fell to the floor. Teddy called in a favor and in a week got a dress fit for a queen. She knew exactly what Diana wanted, and the drawing Teddy sketched lived up to Diana’s expectations.

  She was rewarded when Scott arrived to pick her up. When she opened the door, he stared at her openmouthed and speechless.

  “Wow,” he finally said, and she smiled.

  Her hair was off her face, removing all traces of the Cousin Itt persona. This Diana bore no resemblance to the old Diana who moved about the Princeton campus. From looking at her, no one would know that Diana 4.0 resided under the ringlets of curls or inside a person who was dressed to kill.<
br />
  The dinner was going well when they arrived. Before people sat down, there was a reception for mingling and renewing friendships. Diana was apprehensive. She knew some time during the night, someone was going to comment on the BMOC being with the 4.0. Scott supported her, even understood her feelings. No one seemed to notice anything unusual. She got a few appraising glances. Finally she relaxed, sipping her drink and smiling at some of the people she had once known who hadn’t been at a dinner before. Many of them didn’t recognize her and looked at her admiringly.

  But her relaxation was short-lived. Her heart stopped when she saw the woman and realized the night was just beginning.

  Diana recognized her as soon as she walked through the door. She was as gorgeous as she’d been when they were students. Marriage and divorce hadn’t changed her God-given beauty. But the inner working that made a person beautiful from the inside was missing from Linda Engles, Scott’s old girlfriend.

  She stood in the doorway, searching for someone. Diana knew without asking who she was looking for. Gripping her drink tighter, she touched Scott’s back.

  “Scott,” Linda called the moment he turned. Her steps were determined as she rushed across the room, making a line for him as if she’d only been to the ladies’ room and was returning to their date.

  Scott turned as did everyone else in the room. This was the way Linda liked it. She loved being the center of attention and would do anything to make sure all eyes were on her.

  Linda went straight into Scott’s arms and kissed him on the mouth. “Scott, darling, it’s so good to see you again.”

  Scott pushed her back. “Linda,” he said, surprised. “It’s great to see you, too.” His voice seemed a little embarrassed to Diana. Taking his handkerchief from an outer pocket, he removed her lipstick.

  Scott put his arm around Diana’s waist and pulled her close.

  “This is Diana Greer,” he introduced. “You remember her?”

  “Oh...my...God,” Linda shouted loud enough for the entire room to hear. “I don’t believe it. What a transformation.” The tone she used said it was impossible. “What is she doing here?” Her question was directed at Scott.

  “Diana is on the committee for this dance.” Again his hand went to her back, settling just at the place where the zipper separated her bare skin from the fabric. “She runs a business now called Weddings by Diana.”