Rescuing Diana (3 page)

“You almost did with that look on your face,” he
said, chuckling. “Fortunately the thought of getting into trouble with higher-ups meant more to that guy than letting a couple go through the kitchen.”

“You know, this was exactly like the adventure games I do. You had to figure out logically how to get us past one blockade, and then the next. It even had a touch of a maze when we went down the corridor, made a turn, and ran up against another obstacle in the form of a waiter. And you got us past that one too.”

With a charming grin she added, “You’re going to make one heck of a Sir Morbid.”

Adam groaned to himself as her smile triggered very unknightly urgings inside him. Diana might think he’d make a great Sir Morbid, but he had the uneasy feeling that he was going to have one hell of a time with his sword.

“Lousy knights in shining armor,” Diana muttered, glaring at the offending article in her latest issue of
CompuWorld
. “The fairy tales never said those clowns probably charged the princesses for hazardous duty after rescuing them.”

She set her jaw as she read part of Jim Greigson’s “The Last Byte” column again. “One of the highlights of the Omega reception was our own Princess Di, Diana Windsor, seen in a cozy tête-à-tête with Starlight Software President Dan Roberts’s brother, Adam. Later Adam whisked her away for more ‘private discussions.’ Bet great things start happening to Starlight. But, folks, will they be in the boardroom or the bedroom?”

Darn that Jim Griegson, Diana thought as she slammed the magazine down on her desk. She folded her arms across her chest, leaned back in her swivel chair, and stared at the white ceiling of her workroom. She knew Jim had done this just to be nasty.

And darn that Adam Roberts, too, she thought furiously. She hadn’t recognized his name at the reception, but she had heard of Starlight Software. Starlight had made several offers to buy her and her programs during the past year. Angelica, her cousin, lawyer, intermediary, and agent, hadn’t liked Starlight’s high-powered tactics and had broken off negotiations with them. Brother Adam was obviously an attempt to circumvent Angelica and get directly to her, Diana decided.

Absently adjusting her glasses on her nose, she sighed almost regretfully. She’d liked Adam Roberts. Truly liked him. He’d been charming, yet commanding and quick-witted when the situation had needed it. She’d felt … warm and safe with him. And there had been something special about him that affected her senses as no other man had. All week his image had continually intruded on her thoughts, interfering with her concentration on her work, leaving her oddly restless at night and barely touching her meals. She’d actually been impatient to see the snake again!

“So much for an IQ of one hundred seventy,” she muttered in disgust. “You’ve got to be the dumbest bunny walking this earth!”

In her zeal to get him to pose for Sir Morbid, she’d never seen how she might have been playing into his hands. She admitted that in spite of just turning twenty-eight, she still needed street smarts in some areas. It was simply that she never thought about people having ulterior motives when they did things. She always did something because she wanted to. In Adam’s case, she’d never once considered she had put him in a position where he could ask a favor of her.

Well, he had a surprise coming when he did. Reporters had always intimidated her, because she’d never felt at ease around them. She wasn’t even at ease with regular industry reporters, whom she knew fairly well. She’d never had the knack, as some did, for saying a lot while not saying anything at all. But saying no to a software company’s management was easy. She’d been doing it for over five years, since she’d first struck out on her own. Now she had the freedom to create her games as
she
liked, then sell them on the open market to the highest bidder.

She and Adam had arranged, after escaping the hotel, for him to come to her house on Saturday. That was today, and Adam still had never asked exactly what she wanted him to do.

Of course he wouldn’t, she thought. She could ask him to high-jump to the moon, and he’d probably do it just to keep the lines of communication open. It was too late to cancel their work session. Besides, she still needed Sir Morbid’s face. Being forewarned, though, she could handle Adam. And his brother.

Frowning a little, Diana wondered why the brother hadn’t approached her at the reception in the first place. He was the logical one to do it. Why had it been Adam? He couldn’t have known she’d wanted his face for her Sir Morbid. Even she hadn’t known that until the moment she’d seen him. If she’d learned anything from the old BASIC language, it was that an
if
statement had to be followed by a logical
then
statement. It made no sense for Adam, who wasn’t even in the business, to approach her about Starlight Software, when his brother was the president of the
company. It made no sense for Adam to have approached her at all. Adam Roberts was definitely an
if
without a
then
.

She shrugged, dismissing her confusing thoughts. It really didn’t matter who did the approaching. What did matter was that Adam and his brother thought she was easy prey. Obviously her reputation as a hermit had them thinking that she was vulnerable to a sneak attack. Well, she could be just as sneaky.

Her Sir Morbid wasn’t turning out to be quite as she had envisioned, she thought, smiling crookedly. Still, it would be interesting to discover exactly how he intended to extract a victory.

Very interesting.

After parking the car in the gravel area in front of Diana’s garage, Adam climbed out of his Trans Am and slammed the door.

For a moment he stared at Diana’s modern red-wood-and-glass house nestled in the wooded hills above Berkeley, California. It was a stunningly beautiful piece of tri-level architecture, with deep, sloping roofs, picture windows, and a wraparound deck that blended with its natural setting. Smiling, he silently saluted the architect who had designed the house with such care and created such harmony.

His smile faded as he thought about the house’s owner. His brother had said Diana was successful, and as an architect Adam knew she had to be very successful to own a house like this. Diana had continually surprised him at their first meeting, and it looked as if their second would be no
different. Since Monday, images of her had been popping into his head at the oddest times. She’d been funny, offbeat, and intriguing.

He frowned, remembering how overly interested his brother had been in Diana. After Adam had told Dan he’d be seeing Diana on Saturday, Dan had called daily to check if the meeting was still on. Yesterday afternoon he had called four times. There had been a kind of worried excitement in his voice. He had even called that morning. “Just asking,” he’d said.

Adam wondered why his younger brother was so obsessed about the meeting with Diana. Dan acted as if Diana were the divine head of the church, and not a naïve, shrimp-sitting possible virgin.

But if Dan was so interested in Diana because of her games, Adam told himself, then he’d have to get them without his older brother’s help. Adam’s own business with Diana was personal, and he planned to keep it that way.

With that thought he crossed the drive and walked up the three deck steps to the front door. He had to ring twice before Diana opened it.

“Hi. Come on in, and we’ll get started,” she said before he could say hello. She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “My workroom’s in the back.”

As he followed her into the two-storied foyer, Adam grinned at her enthusiasm and at the glimpse he’d had of the front of her T-shirt. The University of California logo barely hid her unencumbered breasts, and her nipples were small pebbles against the thin knit. Her rich brown hair was in a loose ponytail that was rapidly becoming
looser as it drooped on the nape of her neck. He let his gaze drift farther down to the back of her tight jeans and her slender bare feet. She looked downright earthy, and far removed from the “behind the times” innocent of Monday.

He sobered when he realized he would be in close proximity to her for hours. Why did she have to be so damned shapely? The knights of the Round Table would have tossed chivalry out on its ear if all the ladies of the realm had been built like Diana. He sensed, though, that his first impression of her as a naïve virgin was a more accurate one. He only hoped his willpower held up.

Wanting to dampen his growing awareness of her, he said, “This is a beautiful house, Diana. Who …”

His voice trailed away when they reached the threshold of her workroom in the back lower level. Adam stopped dead. As he gazed in astonishment at the room’s contents, he wondered if he were about to enter the twilight zone. Frankenstein’s laboratory had never looked so wild. The workroom was enormous, running the width of the house, and contained the largest collection of computers he’d ever seen. There had to be at least twenty of the machines in all sizes sitting atop various desks and tables along two walls. Even a couple of commercial arcade games—big, boxlike things about six feet tall, with glowing screens to tempt players to part with their quarters—competed for space. The other two walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books. The electronic jungle was so overwhelming that the double sliding glass doors along the back actually looked squished.

As his first surprise wore off, Adam became aware that there was order amid the chaos. The books and magazines weren’t just shoved any which way into the bookcases, but were neatly shelved. The manuals on the tables and desks were primly stacked or standing between book-ends. Although wires seemed to snake everywhere, they were neatly bound together in an effort to keep them under control. In fact the room and its contents were scrupulously clean, and everything seemed to have a place.

“Don’t worry,” Diana said, chuckling. “Nothing bites.”

“I hope not,” Adam said, cautiously entering the room. “Do you actually use all of these?”

“I only use these for most of my preliminary work,” she said as she crossed the room to where three computers sat bunched together on an oversized table. A single swivel chair with rollers sat in front of it. “The others are different models currently on the market or outdated older ones that I don’t have the heart to get rid of.”

“My brother would think this was computer heaven,” Adam said, still trying to take it all in.

She turned around, her eyebrows raised above the top of her glasses. “Oh? Your brother likes computers?”

He laughed, remembering how Dan had always been hunched in front of a computer when he was a teenager. “He loves them. He has his own software company in Seattle. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called Starlight Software.”

She shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t get out as much as I used to. What kind of stuff is he doing?”

“Educational and game programs,” Adam replied,
forcing himself to keep his mind on the conversation. He didn’t remember Diana’s mouth looking so provocative on Monday … or the intriguingly stubborn tilt to her chin … or the mysterious depths of her violet eyes. He cleared his throat. “I was Dan’s guest at the reception.”

In the ensuing silence there was a funny look on her face. Adam frowned. It was almost as if she were expecting him to say something more, and he had no idea what he was supposed to say. He’d exhausted his knowledge of his younger brother’s business. Since both of them were busy building their respective companies, they didn’t get a chance to talk very often anymore. When they did, though, Dan usually talked about how business was, not what it was.

Unfortunately, too, Adam hadn’t been exaggerating very much on Monday when he’d said he barely knew where a computer’s “on” switch was. He did know that—but only on his firm’s two computers. His partner had had to teach him how they worked. If the smallest thing went wrong, though he was instantly yelling for help. Without fail, the damn machines always beeped like crazy and acted as if he’d just taken an ax to them. There were times when he wished he had.

When Diana continued to look expectantly at him, he asked, “What am I supposed to do as this Sir Morbid?”

“Not very much,” she said, giving him a wry smile. “I won’t have you jousting with windmills, I promise. The computer just needs your face.”

“The computer needs my face?” he repeated in confusion. It sounded as if he were about to be the computer’s next meal.

“Right.” She pulled a chair in front of the sliding doors. “I have a certain face in mind for each of the characters in my newest game, but I’m lousy at drawing faces freehand on the computer. They all wind up looking like Richard Nixon.”

Adam chuckled.

“So what I want to do is take some pictures that I can sort of enhance.” Straightening, she tapped her finger against her chin for a moment. “Now, where did I put that armor?”

“Armor!” he exclaimed, wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

“You’re a knight of the Oblong Table, so you’ve got to wear some armor, and I can’t draw that any better than I can draw faces. Aha!”