Chapter 1: Don't say goodbye ... just say good night...

On a Sunday night in April of 1954, John Wayne turned to his good friend Ward Bond. "Would you mind driving us in my car to take Diana home so I can spend a little more time just holding her?"

Ward answered quietly, "I'll be happy to do that, Duke." He carried Diana Maitland's things out to the car. Duke and Diana sat in the back seat while Ward drove them back to L.A. from his beach house in Malibu.

They didn't say a word to each other the whole drive. Ward glanced in the rearview mirror every once in a while and would see them kissing softly. But mostly she was just leaning on him with her head on his chest and his arms around her. They both looked sad, scared and lost. Ward felt a lump form in his throat. I can almost feel your pain just from the looks on your faces...

Diana lived less than a mile from the movie studio. She didn't own a car so she walked to work or took the bus if the weather was bad. She told The Duke, "You can walk me to the bottom of the stairs that lead up to my apartment. But you can't come inside—I couldn't handle having any memories of you in my apartment!"

Ward stayed in the car while they walked to the stairway and stopped at the bottom. The lump in his throat got bigger as he watched them.

Diana stepped up on the first step and turned to face the big man. She took the box with the black dress, undergarments and shoes he'd bought for her and set it down on the steps behind her. He grabbed her and pulled her against him tightly, hugging her. His left arm was at her waist and up her back and his right arm was around her shoulder with his hand on the back of her head. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck. They held each other as tightly as they could for a few moments.

He loosened his hold on her and put his mouth next to her ear and asked her quietly, "When will you know?"

"In about a week or so," she answered softly. Then she continued, "I'll get a message to you somehow, to let you know."

He looked at her and moved his hands to her waist. "No. I'll be at the studio again in a couple weeks and I'll come to you. This is something that I want to hear from you personally. Don't argue with me on this," he commanded when he saw her start to protest. She nodded. He brought his hands up to the sides of her face and neck and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. He stared into her eyes as he said huskily, "And don't you dare say goodbye ... just say good night." He leaned in to kiss her deeply and tenderly.

She had her hands on his shoulders and she moved them up to grasp his neck as they kissed for long moments. He ended it slowly when he heard her desperate whimper that sounded both passionate and sad. She was trembling slightly and there was a shimmer of tears in her eyes as she opened them slowly. She licked her lips and swallowed hard and then looked into his eyes. She whispered, "Good ... night." She turned to pick up the box and head upstairs.

He watched her go. She paused at the door to get her spare key from where she kept it hidden; her main keys were in her purse, which had been left in her office all weekend. She paused to look back at him before she went in and shut the door. He lit a cigarette as he walked back to his car and got in the front seat with Ward.

"Would it be OK with you, Ward, if I stay the night at your house? I need to get good and drunk in order to get any sleep tonight and I don't want to do it alone."

"That's no problem, Duke." They made the drive back in silence.

As soon as Diana shut the door to her apartment, she felt like she was dead. She had poured every ounce of her life force into loving John Wayne. After being with him for almost 58 hours straight, she was drained and her heart felt like it didn't want to beat any more. She felt empty. I already know I'm not pregnant —she didn't know how, she just knew if she was, she would feel it somehow and she wouldn't feel this empty. She would only have to wait a week or so to confirm it, but she already knew and she hadn't had the heart to tell him... he wouldn't have believed me anyway...

She collapsed into bed and slept fitfully between the haunting dreams that she was still with him. She made herself get up the next morning and go to work as usual. Hopefully, getting back to her normal routine would help keep her mind from being completely occupied by thoughts of him...

She was thrown slightly when her boss came in a little while later. He stopped at her desk and asked, "Was Mr. Wayne pleased with you this weekend?" She jerked her head up to look at him with wide eyes and murmured a quick, "What?" Her boss continued, "Was Mr. Wayne pleased with your work for him this weekend? I called his hotel concerned because you never returned after the tour with him. He left me a message saying that he had asked you to check on the availability of some of the production crew for the movie from his office. Were you able to get the information he needed?"

She stammered nervously, "Oh. Oh, yes, well ... some of it anyway. He ... just needed some ... information ... that his own staff wasn't able to provide. I ... guess he was pleased with me; he was ... very kind and generous to me." Her voice wavered as a lump started to form. She swallowed it and cleared her throat as her boss frowned at her slightly.

She sounded uncharacteristically nervous and when she sounded like this, it meant she was scared. Her boss had found that out when he'd asked her to do the studio-recorded singing for some movies. She had been flustered and stammered as she politely tried to tell him no. Her boss stared at her and asked, "Are you all right? You don't sound all right. Did something else happen this weekend?"

She shook her head. "Nothing happened! I'm just tired, that's all! I'll be fine!" Her boss still frowned slightly at her—like he wasn't buying her story, but he let it go.

At the end of the first day, a delivery person showed up in her office and informed her that he had several packages of frozen halibut fillets for her, and that she should get them home and into her freezer as soon as possible. She was surprised; she'd completely forgotten that they'd caught all those fish just the day before! She smiled to herself ... he was sharing them with her! She would have more fish to eat for a while than she'd had since she moved to L.A. from Virginia almost eight years ago. God, how she'd missed the taste of fish!

The rest of the week passed by in a blur. She just tried to get through each day without seeing his face every time she closed her eyes ... hearing his voice every time it was quiet ... recalling some vivid image from their weekend together when she didn't have anything else to occupy her thoughts.

The first weekend after their encounter was hard for her. She couldn't go out and drink with her girlfriends. If by chance she was wrong and she was pregnant, she didn't think it would be a good idea to drink heavily. She went out with them for a little while to a dance club and had one drink. Then she ended up going home early because a couple of men asked her to dance, and she knew she couldn't ... she'd feel like she was cheating on him!

Her girlfriends asked her what was wrong and where she'd disappeared to the previous weekend. "Nothing's wrong. I spent the weekend with some man because I felt lonely."

Her best friend, Lynda, frowned at her. She knew Diana was supposed to have met John Wayne that Friday and was going to attempt to seduce him. Evidently it hadn't worked out!

They all admonished her. "If you ever do that again without letting us know, we'll be very angry with you! We were worried about you!" Diana promised them it wouldn't happen again.

She got her confirmation of what she already knew that following Monday. She broke down and cried in the ladies room near her office at the studio. She tried to wash her face to hide the evidence before she went back to her desk, but if anyone looked closely, they would be able to tell she'd been crying. When she walked in the door to her office, she was taken aback to see Ward standing in front of her desk. As soon as he looked at her, she burst out crying again.

Ward came to her and put his arms around her. "What's wrong, Diana?"

She started to sob, "I'm not ... I'm not..." she stopped. She couldn't tell Ward that she was upset because she wasn't pregnant! She leaned against him for a couple more minutes as she stopped sobbing and calmed down. Ward handed her a tissue and led her to a chair. He sat next to her and held her hand while she composed herself. When she was calm, she looked at Ward and asked, "Why are you here?"

Ward explained, "I have a meeting with one of the casting people to see if there's going to be a part that's right for me. Duke knew I was going to be here and he asked me to check in on you if I had a chance."

"I've been doing fine, for the most part ... until today. I just ... got a little bad news. That's why I was upset. It has nothing to do with The Duke!" she added hastily when Ward frowned.

He didn't believe her ... He looked closely at her and asked quietly, "Are you upset because you are or aren't pregnant?"

Her eyes widened and she jerked her head slightly and started to say, "How did you know about... ?" She stared at him for a few seconds. The big man must've told him ... Tears came back into her eyes as she said softly, "I'm not pregnant ... I'm upset because I'm not pregnant ... even though it's for the best," she whispered as more tears gathered in her eyes.

Then she asked Ward, "Would you tell him for me? I don't know how I'm going to break this to him. I don't know if I'll be able to handle his reaction! I know it's going to hurt him and I can't stand the thought of causing him any more pain ... please?!!!" she begged. He was shaking his head no.

Ward patted her hand and said softly, "Diana ... this is something that he has to hear from you. I think he'd take it even worse coming from me. He might kill me, but I know he won't hurt you. And I don't think he'd appreciate my knowing about this before he does, so please ... don't tell him that I even asked you about it! OK?"

She smiled sadly and nodded that she understood. "Have you seen the big man much over the past week? How's he doing?"

Ward replied, "Oh, he's doing about the same as you it appears. He's walking around looking half-dead, like he's lost something of himself and doesn't know how to get it back. But that's only when he doesn't have something else to do or think about to keep his mind occupied. Is that about how it is for you?" She sighed and nodded with another sad smile.

Ward got up and went over behind her desk and picked up a bag and said, "By the way, he asked me to bring these to you. Your clothes and shoes from his hotel room. And he said for me to tell you that he still owes you a blouse?!!" He chuckled slightly as he wondered what happened to her blouse...