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  “That’s very colorful, Miss Quigley,” he replied with scathing mockery.

  “It’s fact,” she argued, smarting from his snide tone.

  “No,” he countered, “this is fact: Cushman Electronics was founded by a genius six decades ago, but his heirs grew more lazy and more stupid with each successive generation. Those heirs—who happen to make up the board of directors—were born to great wealth, educated in the best schools, and despite the fact that they were letting Cushman, and its shareholders’ investments, go down the toilet, they still remained so convinced of their own superiority that they couldn’t see what was coming. They couldn’t believe that some school chum from their ‘old-boy fraternity’ wasn’t going to step in and rescue them with an infusion of cash that they could squander either on themselves or on fighting off more takeover attempts.

  “Instead of that, they lost to me—to an upstart from the wrong side of the social tracks—and it’s humiliating to them; it offends all of their cultured sensibilities. That’s why they’re screaming ‘foul.’ We weren’t engaged in a tea party with polite rituals; we were engaged in a battle. In a battle, there are only winners, and losers, and bad losers.”

  Cole waited for her to admit defeat and retreat, but she sat there in stubborn silence, refusing to agree. “Well?” he demanded after a moment.

  “There are ways to fight the battle so that the winner doesn’t look like a barbarian, and public relations is the key to that.”

  She had a point and Cole knew it, but he didn’t particularly appreciate having to face it or admit it. Time and again, as Cole had built his company into a major conglomerate composed of profitable subsidiaries, he’d waged legal and economic battles with complacent aristocrats like the ones on Cushman’s board, and each time he’d emerged victorious, he had the feeling that they hated him as virulently for successfully invading their ranks as for taking whatever prize he had wrested from them. It was as if the damage Cole did to their sense of invulnerable superiority was as loathsome to them as the financial damage he did to their bank accounts and stock portfolios.

  Personally, Cole found their attitude funny rather than insulting, and he was amused that, when it came down to a corporate battle over the takeover of another company, he was always portrayed as a ruthless marauder swinging a mace, while his targets were innocent victims and his competitors were chivalrous white knights. The real truth was that those courteous knights hired mercenaries in the form of lawyers and accountants and stock analysts to do their “dirty” fighting and maneuvering behind the scenes; then when their opponent was too weak to put up more than token resistance, they strolled gracefully onto the corporate battlefield wielding a gentlemanly saber. After a brief, symbolic duel, they lifted the blade to their forehead for a courteous salute to their victim, plunged the blade into him, and then strolled off the field, leaving more hired mercenaries to clean up the legal mess and bury the victim.

  In contrast to these corporate duelists, Cole was a brawler, a street fighter who was interested only in victory, not in his reputation or in making friends or in showing off his grace and prowess on the battlefield. As a result, he’d acquired many enemies and few friends over the years, along with a reputation for ruthlessness that he partially deserved and one for unscrupulousness that he didn’t deserve at all.

  None of that bothered him. Lifelong enemies, unjust public accusations, and hard feelings were the dues that one paid for success. Cole paid his without complaint, as did those other determined visionaries who, like him, had managed in the last two decades to harvest vast personal fortunes from soil that was no longer fertile, in an economic climate that was considered unhealthy.

  “They said the same thing about Matt Farrell and Intercorp in the late eighties,” Cole reminded her pointedly. “Now he’s the Prince Charming of Wall Street.”

  “Yes, he is. And part of that is due to some very good publicity that resulted from his tumultuous marriage to a well-loved heiress and from a more open, public profile.”

  Cole glanced toward the doorway and nodded a greeting to the corporation’s head counsel, John Nederly, who was being ushered into the office by Cole’s secretary. Gloria assumed her time with Cole Harrison was at an end, and she stood up, defeated.

  “When do you want to have the press conference?”

  For a split second, Gloria couldn’t believe her ears. “I—As soon as possible. How about tomorrow? That’s enough time to set it up.”

  He was signing more papers handed to him by his secretary, but he glanced up at her and shook his head. “I’m leaving for Los Angeles tonight, and I’ll be there until Wednesday.”

  “What about Thursday?”

  He shook his head again. “I’ll be in Jeffersonville, Thursday and Friday, handling a family matter.”

  “Saturday then?” Gloria said hopefully.

  “That’s fine.”

  Gloria’s mental cheer was strangled by the secretary, who turned over the page in his desk calendar, pointed to something written on it, and said, “I’m afraid Saturday’s out of the question. You’re to be in Houston that night.”

  “Houston?” he demanded, sounding disgusted and irate at the prospect. “For what?”

  “For the White Orchid Ball. You donated a Klineman sculpture to the charity auction that precedes the ball, and you’re to be honored for your generosity.”

  “Send someone else.”

  They all looked up in surprise as Gloria negated that suggestion. “I put the Orchid thing together. The Klineman will be the most valuable item to be auctioned off—”

  “It will also be the ugliest,” Cole interjected in such a mild, factual tone that Gloria choked back an inappropriate giggle. “Why did you buy it?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “I was told it would be a good investment, and it’s gone up substantially in value over the last five years. Unfortunately, I don’t like it any better now than I did when I bought it. Let someone else go to Houston in the corporation’s name and take the bow.”

  “It has to be you,” Gloria stubbornly persisted. “When public relations suggested you make a donation, you made a very generous one. The proceeds go to the American Cancer Society, and the ball is a major national media event. The timing is perfect for a little publicity there, followed by a press conference here next week.”

  Cole stopped writing and stared hard at her, but he couldn’t find an argument to outweigh her logic, and in a small way, he approved of her resolute determination to do the job the company was paying her to do, despite his personal opposition and lack of cooperation. “Fine,” he said curtly.

  Dismissed, she got up and started to leave. A few steps away, she turned around and found the two men watching her. “The networks are going to play up the Cushman deal,” she said to Cole. “If you have a chance to catch any of that on the news, I’d like to go over it with you and make some plans for countermeasures at your press conference.”

  When he replied, he sounded as if she was in danger of exhausting his patience. “I’ll put the news on while I pack for Los Angeles.” Gloria began to retreat.

  As she left, Cole leaned back in his chair and looked at the corporation’s chief counsel, who, with an appreciative gleam in his eyes, was watching Gloria exit. “Tenacious, isn’t she,” John remarked when she was out of earshot.

  “Very.”

  “Great legs, too.” The door closed behind her, and John switched his attention to the matters at hand. “These are the proxies your uncle needs to sign for the board meeting,” he said, sliding some papers across the clear glass desktop which rested on a random pattern of free-form chrome tubes that always reminded John of twisted chrome Tinkertoys. “Cole, I hate to sound like a purveyor of gloom and doom, but your uncle really needs to sign over his shares in the corporation to you, instead of giving you his proxy each time. I know his will stipulates that you’re the sole heir to his shares, but I lie awake at night in a cold sweat, thinking of the dis