Strange Bedfellow Read Free Page A

Personally, I think it speaks well of your marriage to him.”  
    “You do?” Her voice was briskly cool; she did not care for discussions about her private life, although her curiosity was rising by degrees as she tried to follow his logic.  
    “Yes—I mean, obviously your marriage to Blake was very satisfactory or you wouldn't want to enter the wedded state again,” he reasoned.  
    “I see.” Her smile was tight, lacking warmth. “Blake and I did have a good marriage.” Whether they did, she couldn't say. It had been too brief. “And I know Chet and I will, too.”  
    “When is the wedding?”  
    “We haven't set the date yet.”  
    “Be sure to send me an invitation.”  
    “We will.” Dina's hopes for a quiet wedding and no reception were fast dissipating under the rush of requests to attend. An elopement was beginning to look inviting.  
    “At least you won't have to concern yourself with the company after you're married,” Harry Landers observed with a benign smile.  
    “I beg your pardon?” Dina was instantly alert and on the defensive, no longer mouthing the polite words she had repeated all morning.  
    “After you're married, you can go back to being a simple housewife. Chet will make a good president,” he replied.  
    Why the accent on “simple,” Dina wondered bitterly. “My marriage to Chet will have no effect on the company. It will continue to be run jointly by both of us with myself as president,” she stated, not wanting to remember that the work had been done by Blake alone. Rigid with anger, she turned to the papers on her desk. “I don't see the monthly report from the Florida hotel. Has it come in?”  
    “I don't believe so.” Her abrupt change of subject warned the man he was treading on forbidden ground. His previous open expression became closed and officious.  
    “Frank Miller is the manager there, isn't he?”  
    “Yes.”  
    “Call him and find out where the report is. I want it on my desk by four this afternoon even if he has to telex it,” she ordered.  
    “I'll see to it right away, Mrs. Chandler.”  
    When the door closed behind him, Dina rose from the overstuffed cushion on her swivel office chair and walked to the window. Afterquakes of resentment were still trembling through her. Almost since Blake's disappearance, she had run the company with Chet's help; but her competence to fill the position still wasn't recognized by some of the executive officers.  
    It hadn't been by design but through necessity that she had taken over. When Blake disappeared over South America, the company had been like a ship without a rudder, without guidance or direction. It had operated smoothly for a while, then it began to flounder helplessly.  
    The key members of the executive staff, those who might have been competent enough to take over, had resigned to take positions with more solid companies, like rats deserting a sinking ship. That was when Dina had been forced to step in, by virtue of the Chandler name.  
    It hadn't been easy. The odds were stacked against her became she was young and a woman and totally ignorant of the machinations of the company, not to say limited in experience. Exerting her authority had been the most difficult part. Most of the staff were old enough to be her parents; and some, like Harry Landers, were old enough to be her grandparents.  
    Dina had learned the hard way, by trial and many errors. The worries, the fears that she had about Blake, she had to keep to herself. Very early she discovered that the men who offered her a shoulder to cry on were also insistently offering their beds.  
    More and more in those early days, she began turning to Chet for his unselfish and undemanding support. Not once did he make a single overture toward her, not until several months after Blake's death had been confirmed. She trusted him implicitly and he had never given her a reason to doubt him.  
    But Harry Landers had just put a question