“You said we’d go at six-thirty. It’s almost six-thirty. The game’s gonna start.” He grabbed one of Daisy’s hands and began to tug her back toward the stairs.
“Coming,” Daisy said. But she straightened her desk, made a note to reorder the Cannavarro files, put her pencil in the drawer. All very methodical. Orderly. Step by step. Pay attention to detail. From the day that she’d learned she was pregnant, it was how she’d managed to cope.
Charlie bounced from one foot to the other until she finished and finally held out a hand to him again. “Okay. Let’s go.” She allowed herself to be towed down the stairs.
“We gotta hurry. We’re gonna be late. Come on. Dad’s pitching.”
Dad. One more reason she prayed that Alexandros Antonides didn’t darken her door again.
“Hey, Sport.” Cal dropped down beside Charlie on the other side of the blanket that Daisy had spread out to sit on while they watched the softball game.
They had been late, as Charlie feared, arriving between innings. But at least Cal, Daisy’s ex-husband, had already pitched in his half, so he could come sit with them until it was his turn to bat.
“We made a fire engine,” Charlie told him. “Me ‘n’ Jess. Outta big red cardboard blocks—this big!” He stretched his hands out a couple of feet at least.
Cal looked suitably impressed. “At preschool?”
Charlie bobbed his head. “You an’ me could make one.”
“Okay. On Saturday,” Cal agreed. “But we’ll have to use a cardboard box and paint it red. Grandpa will be in town. I’ll tell him to bring paint.”
Charlie’s eyes got big. “Super! Wait’ll I tell Jess ‘bout ours.”
“You don’t want to make him jealous,” Cal warned. He grinned at Charlie, then over the boy’s head at his mother.
Daisy smiled back and told herself that nothing had changed. Nothing. She and Charlie were doing what they often did—dropping by to watch Cal play ball in Central Park, which he and a few diehards continued to do well after the softball leagues ended in the summer. Now, in early October, there was a nip in the air, and the daylight was already going. But they continued to play.
And she and Charlie would continue to come and watch.
It was the joy of a civilized divorce, Daisy often reminded herself. She and Cal didn’t hate each other—and they both loved Charlie.
“—you?”
She realized suddenly that Cal was no longer talking to Charlie. He was talking to her. “Sorry,” she said, flustered. “I was just … thinking about something.”
“Apparently,” Cal said drily. Then he looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She looked around. “Where’s Charlie?”
Cal nodded in the direction of the trees where Charlie and the son of another one of the players were playing in the dirt. “He’s fine. You’re not. Something’s wrong.”
“No. Why should anything be wrong?” That was the trouble with Cal. He’d always been able to read her like a book.
“You’re edgy. Distracted. Late,” he said pointedly.
“I didn’t realize you were timing me. I’ve got things on my mind, Cal. Work—”
But he cut her off. “And you’re biting my head off, which isn’t like you, Daze. And you must’ve come on the bus.”
“The bus?” she said stupidly.
“You always walk, so Charlie can ride his bike.” Cal looked around pointedly. There was no bike because, he was right, they hadn’t had time to bring it. Charlie wanted to ride his bike everywhere. It was the smallest two-wheeler Daisy had ever seen, but Charlie loved it. Daisy was sure he would have slept with it every night if she hadn’t put her foot down. Cal had given it to Charlie for his fourth birthday.
Daisy had protested, had said he was too young, that no four-year-old needed a bike.
“Not every four-year-old,” Cal had agreed. “Just this one.” He’d met her skeptical gaze with confident brown eyes and quiet certainty. “Because he wants it more than anything on earth.”
Daisy couldn’t argue with that. If Charlie’s first word hadn’t been bike it had been in the first ten. He’d pointed and crowed, “Bike!” well before his first birthday. And he’d been desperate for a bicycle last winter. She hadn’t thought it would last. But Cal had insisted, and he’d been right.
Charlie’s eyes had shone when he’d spotted the bike that morning. And over the past six months, his love for it had only grown. Since Cal had helped him learn to balance and he could now ride it unaided, Charlie wanted to ride it everywhere.
Usually she let him ride to the park while she walked alongside him. But they had been late today because … because of her visitor.
She was suddenly aware that Cal was watching her, not the game. “He doesn’t have to ride his bike every time,” she said testily. “And it’s nearly dark.”
“True.” Cal stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back, resting his weight on his elbows and forearms as his gaze slowly moved away from her to focus on the game, yelling at the batter to focus. Then, still keeping his gaze on the batter, he persisted quietly, “So why don’t you just tell me.”
He wasn’t going to leave it alone. She’d never won an argument with Cal. She’d never been able to convince him of anything. If he was wrong, he couldn’t be told. He always had to figure it out himself—like his “I can love anyone I will myself to” edict. He’d been as wrong about that as she had been about her “love at first sight” belief.
Clearly, when it came to love, the two of them didn’t know what they were talking about.
Now he stared at her and she plucked at the grass beside the blanket, stared at it. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed. She tried to make it into a mantra so she could convince herself. But she was no better at lying to herself than she was at lying to her ex-husband. Finally she raised her gaze to meet his as he turned away from the game to look at her. “I saw Alex.”
There was the crack of bat hitting ball. Whoops and yells abounded.
Cal never turned his head to see what happened. His eyes never left Daisy’s. He blinked once. That was all. The rest of his body went still, though. And his words, when they came, were quiet. “Saw him where?”
Daisy ran her tongue over dry lips. “He came to my office.”
Cal waited, not pressing, allowing her to tell the story in her own way, in her own time.
And she couldn’t quite suppress the ghost of a smile that touched her lips. “Looking for a matchmaker.”
“What!” Cal’s jaw dropped.
Hysterical laughter bubbled up just as it had threatened to do when Alex told her. This time Daisy gave in to it. “He’s looking for a wife.”
“You?” Cal demanded.
“No. He was as surprised as I was when he knocked on my door. He didn’t know he was coming to see me.”
“Then how—?”
“Lukas sent him.”
Cal’s eyes widened. His teeth came together. “Lukas needs to mind his own business.”
“Of course. But Lukas never does. Besides, he didn’t have any idea what he was doing. He never knew about Alex and me. No one did.” No one ever had except Cal—and only because when she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d had to talk to someone. “Don’t blame Lukas. He thinks he’s doing me a favor sending clients my way. And he is, I suppose. Most of the time. Not this time,” she said quietly.
“No.” Cal stared down at his fingers plucking at the grass for a moment. Then his gaze lifted and went toward Charlie who was still playing with his friend in the dirt. The question was there, but unspoken.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“But he—”
Daisy shook her head. “No. That hasn’t changed. He wouldn’t want to know.”
“Still?” Cal persisted.
“No. He doesn’t want relationships any more than he ever did,” Daisy said firmly. “He doesn’t want a real wife—he wants a woman to take to
social events and go to bed with. It will save him the effort of having to go out and find one, charm one.”
“He charmed you,” Cal pointed out.
Cal, of course, knew that. He knew the whole sordid story.
She had met Cal Connolly when she’d taken the job with Finn after college. Cal had been the photographer she’d replaced, Finn’s assistant before her.
Even after Cal hung out his own shingle, he had regularly come by Finn’s to talk shop. Daisy had been included in the conversation. She learned a great deal from both of them.
Finn was brilliant, mercurial—and impatient. Cal was steadier, calmer, more methodical. He didn’t yell quite as much. Finn had a wife and growing family. Cal was single, on his own. So it was Cal she began to spend time with. And while Finn had always remained her mentor, Cal had quickly become her best pal.
When she wasn’t working for Finn, she had spent hours working with Cal, talking with him, arguing with him. They argued about everything from camera lenses to baseball teams to sushi rolls, from free will to evolution to love at first sight.
That had always been their biggest argument: did you love because—bang!—it hit you between the eyes? Or did you love because you decided who the right person was and made up your mind?
Because of her parents, Daisy had been a staunch believer in the “love at first sight” notion.
“I just haven’t met the right person,” she had maintained over and over. “When I do, I’ll know. In an instant. And it will be perfect.”
But Cal had scoffed at that. Ever the logical realist, he’d said, “Nonsense. I don’t believe it for a minute. That makes you nothing but a victim of your hormones.”
“It’s not hormones. It’s instinct.”
But Cal had disagreed. “You can will whom you love,” he’d told her firmly. “It’s a rational decision.”
So when he’d proposed to her, he’d been determined to demonstrate just that. “Obviously your way doesn’t work,” he’d pointed out. “So we’ll try it my way now.”
And Daisy, because she did love Cal—just not the way she thought she loved Alex—had faced the truth of her own folly. And she’d said yes.
It turned out they were both wrong. But they’d given it their best shot. And Daisy still did believe in love—now she had a codicil: it was apparently for other people.
Now Daisy let out a sigh and wrapped a blade of grass around her finger where Cal’s wedding ring once had been.
“So, are you going to do it? Matchmake for him?” Cal asked.
“Of course not.”
He grunted. “Good.” He stared out across the field. “Was it … the same? Did you feel … this time … what you felt before?”
It was all Daisy could do not to touch her tongue to her lips. Instead she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, in full cocoon mode. “He’s still charming,” she admitted.
Cal had been watching the next batter swing and miss. But at her words he turned his head and shot her a sharp glance.
Daisy gave him a quick humorless smile. “Speaking objectively. Don’t worry. I’m not a fool anymore.”
“So I should hope.”
The batter swung and missed. Cal hauled himself to his feet to go pitch another inning. “You all right? Anything I can do?”
“No. He won’t be back.”
Cal cocked his head. “No?” He didn’t sound so sure.
“Why would he? I didn’t invite him in. I didn’t encourage him at all.” I didn’t kiss him back! “And he doesn’t want me. He wants some woman who won’t care.”
“And Charlie?”
“He doesn’t know about Charlie. I’m doing him a favor, really,” she said firmly. “He doesn’t want kids. He never did.”
“Because he doesn’t think he has any,” Cal pointed out. “What if he finds out he does?”
“He won’t.”
“But if—” Cal persisted. It was what she hated about him.
“Charlie is mine! And yours.”
She had always told Charlie—not that he understood yet really—that he had two fathers—a birth father who had given him life, and Cal, the father he knew. Charlie didn’t question it. Someday he would, no doubt. But by then it would be ingrained in his mind. There would never be a time when she had to “tell him” his father was not Cal.
Because in every way that counted, his father was Cal. Cal was the one who had been there for her. He’d been her husband when Charlie was born. Charlie bore his surname. He was the only father Charlie knew.
If someday he wanted to know about Alex, she’d tell him. If someday in the distant future, Alex learned he had a child, perhaps they would meet. But not now. Now Charlie was a child. He was vulnerable. He didn’t need a father who didn’t want him.
“You don’t know what he’ll do, Daze,” Cal said heavily, “if he finds out.”
“He won’t find out.” She would make sure of that.
Cal’s smile was grim. “We hope.”
CHAPTER THREE
A DAY went by. Two.
Daisy still kept looking over her shoulder—well, out the window, actually—feeling skittish. Apprehensive.
She checked the caller ID every time the phone rang. Her breath caught whenever she saw a shadow on the front steps.
She actually dropped the kettle she was filling this morning, even though it was just the FedEx man bringing an order to Mrs. Kaminski upstairs.
Now she was filling it again for her friend Nell, who had just brought Charlie home from preschool and was staying for a cup of tea and regarding her curiously all the while.
“Something wrong?”
“No. I just … dropped the kettle this morning. I’m trying to be more careful now.” Daisy set it on the burner and turned the gas on.
“Cal giving you trouble?” It was always the first thing Nell thought of because her own ex-husband, Scott, was a continual source of irritation.
“Cal never gives me trouble,” Daisy said. She glanced out the sliding door to the garden where Charlie and Nell’s son Geoff were playing with trucks.
Nell grimaced. “Lucky you. Scott’s driving me crazy.”
Daisy wasn’t glad to hear that Scott was creating difficulties in her friend’s life, but talking about it did avert Nell’s further interest in Daisy’s edginess. She gave Daisy an earful about her ex while they drank their tea and ate biscotti. Daisy made soothing sounds, but Nell was still grumbling when she decided it was time to go. She called Geoff in and they headed out the front door.
Relieved that her life was nowhere near as complicated as her friend’s, Daisy was feeling much more sanguine when the phone rang as the door shut behind Nell and her son.
“Daisy Connolly,” she said brightly into the phone.
“Daisy.” The voice was warm, slightly gruff and instantly recognizable. The intimate tone of it made the hairs on the back of Daisy’s neck stand straight up. Why hadn’t she checked the ID this time?
“Yes. This is Daisy,” she said crisply. “Who is this?”
“You know who it is.” There was a smile in his voice as he called her bluff.
“Alex,” she said flatly because playing the fool any longer wasn’t going to help matters a bit.
“See. I knew you’d figure it out.” He was grinning now. She could hear that, too.
“What do you want?”
“Are you married?”
“What?”
“I remembered you weren’t Daisy Connolly back then. Wasn’t your last name Harris? Morris?”
“Harris.”
There was a brief silence. “So you did marry.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” she said firmly.
“And now?”
“What do you mean, and now?” Why did he have to ask? What business was it of his?
“Are you still … married?”
What kind of question was that? Damn it. She wanted to lie. But she’d never been a good liar, and though
her acquaintance with Alex hadn’t been long, it had been intense. She was sure he would be able to tell if she did.
“I’m divorced.” She bit the words out.
“Ah.”
Which meant what? Never mind. She didn’t want to know. “Alex,” she said with all the patience she could muster. “I’m working.”
“This is work.”
“No. I told you, I’m not matchmaking for you.”
“I got that. You don’t want what I want.” He parroted her sentiments back to her. “This is photography. Or are you going to turn me down for that, too?”
She opened her mouth, wanting desperately to do exactly that. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled her. “What sort of photography?” she said. “I do family stuff.”
“And weddings. And bar mitzvahs. And some professional head shots. Some editorial. Recreation. Ice skating,” he added. “Frisbee in the park. Baseball games.” He ticked off half a dozen scenarios that were all shoots she had actually done.
“How do you know that?”
“You have a website,” he reminded her. “The internet is a wonderful thing.”
Daisy, grinding her teeth, wasn’t so sure. Her fingers tapped an irritated staccato on the countertop. Outside Charlie was making vrooming noises as he pushed his cars around the patio. Any minute he’d slide open the door and want a snack. To prevent it, she latched the sliding door and got some crackers out of the cupboard and cheese from the refrigerator, preempting his demand. “What did you have in mind?” she asked.
“I need photos. An architectural journal is doing a piece on me and some of the work I’ve done. They’ve got photos of my projects from all over the world. Now they want some of me on one of the sites.” He paused. “They said they could send a photographer—”
“Then let them.”
“But I’d rather have you.”
She wanted to say, Why? But she didn’t want to hear his answer. Besides, asking would open a whole new can of worms.
“Not my line,” she said briskly as she slapped cheese between the crackers and made little sandwiches for Charlie.
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