She waited until he had gotten in and put the car into gear before she spoke.
"I was thinking about turning the job down. That's why I hadn't responded to him. I knew you needed me more than I needed the job."
He pulled out of the driveway. "If you really believed that, you would have turned it down."
"It's more complicated than that, Coburn."
"It's not." He yanked the car over to the side of the road and put it in park. "Goddammit, Diana, I thought we were getting somewhere. That we were finally being honest with each other. That we had the partnership I had always dreamed of. When all along you were keeping this from me." His gaze pinned her to the seat. "When did he ask you?"
Heat singed her cheeks. "A few weeks ago. But it wasn't the right timing to bring it up."
He threw his head back against the seat. "So you said nothing. You allowed me to be blindsided tonight by Frank Moritz, who took great pleasure in putting me on the spot. Who made me look like a complete fool in front of a client by not knowing my wife had been offered a prestigious fellowship."
"It's your fault. If you weren't so crazed about my job, I would have told you and this never would have happened. As it was, I was doing everything not to set you off like a powder keg."
"So now it's my fault?" He turned and rested his gaze on her. "It doesn't excuse the lack of honesty."
She bit her lip, trying to be the reasonable one here. "I should have told you. But you can't unilaterally make decisions for me like that. I won't have it."
"And I won't have you taking that job. It will consume you, Diana. There won't be any room left for me or our baby."
It was the ultimatum that did it. "I guess that revelation in the Virgin Islands about the importance of my job was just talk. Do you have any idea how amazing this opportunity is? Frank Moritz was short-listed for a Nobel Prize. Working with him would put me on a world stage. Cement my career as a pediatric surgeon."
"I'm not saying it isn't a great opportunity. I'm insanely proud of you. I always have been. But this is not the right timing for us. It will kill what we've built."
"What will kill what we've built," she countered, "is if I continue this role I've been playing forever. I have spent the past three weeks attending every boring benefit you've asked me to, lunching with Jack Nieman's wife, who is a total piece of work just like him, by the way. I have played the perfect CEO's partner to the hilt. And I have done it willingly because I love you, Coburn. Because I know you need me right now. But I will not have you treat me like this, no matter how stressed you are."
His face tightened. "I'm sorry it's been such a chore supporting me."
"Take the ultimatum back," she said levelly, "and we can talk about this."
"No."
She tried to control the bitterness, the sadness that filled her at his total lack of give in this relationship. But she couldn't manage it. Not this time.
"You know what, Coburn? You don't want me. You want that mirage you were talking about. A wife intelligent enough to turn you on, but not so ambitious she might actually challenge your need for control. I hate to burst your bubble, but she doesn't actually exist."
She reached for the door handle and yanked it open. Coburn curled his fingers around her arm. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Putting a halt to this before we implode." She shook off his hand and slid out of the car. "This time I am saving us, Coburn. Let me know when you're ready to start acting like a reasonable human being."
He got out of the car. "Goddamn you, Diana, do not walk out on me again. You do it this time and we're done."
She was too busy crossing the street to flag down a cab coming the other way.
Damn him. Just when she'd let hope take over. When she'd allowed her heart to feel everything for him, he had to prove some things never changed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A SOBER GRAY suit will strike exactly the right note.
Coburn stood in front of the magnificent gold-accented steel structure that was the Grant Industries skyscraper, a tight feeling in his chest as he looked up at the building his father had built. He wasn't sure the custom-tailored, charcoal-gray suit he had worn this morning per his crisis communications expert's advice was going to be enough to convince the world that the iconic Grant brand was still to be trusted after producing the parts that had taken the lives of five people and injured countless more.
His father, who had made Grant into a symbol of the American dream, would roll over in his grave if he knew what he was about to do. His brother, one of the great business brains on the planet, would have chosen another path. The board had fought him tooth and nail to take a more conservative route. And yet through it all, his conviction about doing what was right had remained. He hoped that by acting with honor, transparency, his legacy would weather the storm he was about to unleash.
What the hell do you think you're doing?
He could almost feel the bite of his father's voice, picture the sting of his gray gaze as it lashed over him. Clifford Grant's blinding ambition had come before everything. Before his family, before his own mental well-being. And Coburn realized now he had been angry for a very long time-at his father for the way he'd treated him, for taking the coward's way out, at himself for letting it happen. But he was ready to let it go now. He was poised to forge his own path. He was not going to be the kind of man his father had been. He'd decided that a long time ago.
His steps as he pushed through the heavy glass doors and strode across the gleaming checkerboard marble floor toward the elevators were purposeful, his mind resolute. Which left his marriage as the outstanding crisis he needed to address. His asinine behavior Friday evening had done nothing but prove his wife right. She hadn't told him about the job because she'd known he'd react exactly as he had. Like the first-class jackass he was when it came to her. Because he loved her too much.
Waking up this morning without Diana for the third day in a row, faced with losing the woman who meant everything to him for the second time, he had been forced to take a good, hard look at himself. To question where his need to control her really came from. It hadn't taken him long to pinpoint the source. It stemmed from a childhood in which love had been given, then taken away. From the void inside him that needed to be the most important thing in Diana's life because he had never been prioritized in his closest relationships.
For him to commit to a woman had been the ultimate act of vulnerability. When Diana had walked out on him, she had confirmed everything he had ever believed about himself. That he wasn't good enough. That he wasn't deserving of love.
Her keeping that job from him had triggered all his old insecurities at the worst moment. He needed complete honesty in his marriage. But it didn't excuse his behavior. Nothing did.
He stepped onto the elevator and jabbed the button for the executive floor. He didn't want Diana to take that job. Knew what it would do to them. But he couldn't deny what an opportunity it was for her. It was a once-in-a-lifetime offer that would lie between him and his brilliant wife forever if she turned it down, eventually driving them apart.
A fist tightened around his heart. Losing Diana wasn't an option. He would make this right. Somehow.
If he hadn't lost her already.
Tracey, his director of PR, was waiting to do a final briefing with him before the press conference when he arrived.
"We have a problem. The victims' families just issued a statement to hijack our news."
She handed him her smartphone. He read the statement. Felt the color drain from his face at the astronomical settlement figure the group was putting forth. It would cripple Grant.
"It's a bargaining tactic," he told Tracey.
"So we treat it as one. We have thirty minutes to craft a response."
Harrison was campaigning in California. The future of Grant lay in what he did next. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled.
"All right, then. Let's go."
The scale of the press gathered in the briefing room when Coburn entered, flanked by his PR team, was breathtaking. Every major broadcast outlet in the country was there, each of them clamoring to turn a tragedy into prime-time news.
His rock-solid readiness of earlier that morning had been shattered by the preemptive tactics of the class action suit, leaving him raw and shaken. By attempting to do the right thing and win in the court of public opinion, he had exposed Grant to a well-orchestrated, perfectly timed opening salvo by the opposing counsel. One that could devastate it.
He scanned the room, his gaze moving over the far wall, where Jack Nieman and a couple of other board members stood. The sight of the stunning dark-haired woman standing to his right left his heart suspended in midbeat as his gaze locked with his wife's.