He was stupid, not suicidal.
He should have known better than to think he could see her again and forget her. He’d never been able to forget her. And he wouldn’t be able to, damn it, until Amalie finally found him the right woman.
In the meantime he’d flung himself onto his bed, stared up at the skylight—and discovered the depth of his folly.
Daisy had been in his bedroom. He’d deliberately brought her in here—to show her the “best light”—wanting to get a rise out of her.
Well, she wasn’t the one who was rising. Pun intended, he thought savagely. The joke was on him.
***
The trouble with doing an hour-long shoot with Alex was that the hour was just the beginning.
Oh, it was over for him. But Daisy had to work with the images, study them, analyze them, choose the best ones, correct them. Spend hours and hours and hours contemplating them.
It drove her insane.
She didn’t want to see him in his element hour after hour. She didn’t want to feast her eyes on that handsome face. She didn’t want to focus on the lithe muscular body as he stretched across the drafting table to point something out to Steve. She didn’t want to study the strong profile, the sharp angles, the hard jaw, and hawklike nose as he stared out the window.
He was everything she’d thought he would become.
And she couldn’t bear to look at it.
She put the photos away and went to read books to Charlie. The next night she watched a movie instead. The following night she had a new shoot, some high school senior pictures to work on. She’d get to Alex’s when the memory of being in his office, in his apartment—in his bedroom—wasn’t quite so immediate.
She would do them.
Not now. Not yet.
She needed time. An eon or two.
She needed space. Would a galaxy be enough?
The trouble with the “options” Amalie was providing him with, Alex decided after his fifth disastrous date, was that not one of them—so far—had been worth the trouble.
He’d gone out with half a dozen since he’d contracted with her, and since the intense Gina whom he’d mentioned to Daisy and the airhead whose name he couldn’t recall, there had been phlegmatic Deirdre and twitchy Shannon and a politician called Chloe.
But if they’d been bad, tonight’s “flavor of the evening” was absolutely no improvement, though Amalie had sworn they would be perfect for each other.
“She’s an architecture student. You’ll have so much in common!” Amalie had vowed.
He met her at a restaurant near the Lincoln Center. She was at the bar when he got there, a red scarf looped around her neck. That’s how he would recognize her, she’d told him on the phone.
He did a double take when he saw her. She looked so much like Daisy. Maybe a little blonder than Daisy, maybe a little taller. And her eyes were a sort of faded gray-green. She beamed at him when he arrived.
“I knew it was you!” She was like bubbly champagne. “You’re even more handsome than your picture.”
She might have meant it. He didn’t know. Didn’t care. Her eyes didn’t sparkle like Daisy’s.
They took their drinks to a table and he said, “Amalie says you’re studying architecture.”
Not quite. What Tracie knew about architecture she appeared to have memorized from Wikipedia. She started talking about the Acropolis before they ordered and had barely reached the Colosseum by the time their entrees arrived.
It was always interesting to learn which buildings inspired another architect, but Tracie wasn’t an architect—or even a student of architecture, Alex was willing to bet. After two hours of her nonstop talking, he’d had enough. If she hadn’t looked so much like Daisy, he doubted he’d have lasted that long.
But the truth was, the longer he spent with her, the less like Daisy she seemed. Tracie was nervous, edgy. She had a shrill laugh. Her voice grated on him.
Daisy’s laugh made him feel like smiling. Her eyes always sparkled—either with joy or annoyance. It didn’t matter which. They drew his gaze. When she was with him, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her voice was always like warm honey.
Not, of course, that he’d heard it since she’d walked out of his place a week and a half ago. She’d taken his picture and said she’d be in touch and he’d never heard from her again.
He set down his fork sharply.
“You’re bored,” Tracie accused, staring hard at him over his empty plate. He hadn’t had to talk, so he’d eaten everything in front of him.
Now Alex shook his head. “No,” he lied. “I’m distracted. I just realized I have to be somewhere. I have an appointment.”
“Tonight?” Her eyes widened.
“I have to pick up some photos,” he said. “I need to get them to an editor in the morning.” It wasn’t entirely true. But the editor did need them. She’d called him yesterday inquiring about where they were. He’d thought Daisy had sent them in so she wouldn’t have to contact him again.
Tracie pursed her lips, then pouted. “But we’ve only reached the Duomo.” Which meant they had about six hundred more years of architecture to cover.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said firmly. “I really need to go.”
He did finish his coffee, but then called for the bill, saw her into a taxi and watched it drive off. Not until it disappeared around the corner did he breathe a sigh of relief. He was free.
For what?
It was just past nine. Not really late—unless you’d just spent the past two hours being systematically bored to death. Then you wanted some excitement, something to get the adrenaline going.
But the adrenaline was already going—and so were his feet.
They knew exactly where they were headed, and before Alex even realized it, he was on the corner of the street where Daisy’s office was.
Daisy—who was, let’s face it, the reason he’d been willing to go on five dates in the past ten days—so he would bloody well stop thinking about her.
But he hadn’t stopped.
Every night he lay in bed and stared at the damned skylight and remembered her sparkling eyes, her smooth golden skin, her warm smile. And because he was in bed, he remembered other things, too.
He remembered touching her skin—all over. He remembered kissing her smiling mouth. He remembered stripping off her clothes and running his hands over her body, teasing, tasting—
Hell! He couldn’t show up on her doorstep halfway to wanting to bed her. Not that she’d even be there. It was her office, for God’s sake. Why would she be burning the midnight oil editing photos? Presumably she had a life.
She probably even went out on dates now that she was divorced. Maybe she had a boyfriend. His jaw tightened and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he started walking down the street.
He didn’t expect she would be there. So he was taken aback to discover lights on in the bay window of the apartment that was her office.
She didn’t have a life, after all? He stopped across the street and stared.
Now what? Turn around and walk back to Columbus? Catch a cab home? And stare at the damn skylight again?
Abruptly Alex crossed the street, took the steps to the front door two at a time, opened the door to the vestibule and punched the doorbell.
He waited. And waited. He shifted from one foot to the other, and wondered if she left the lights on all the time. Maybe she wasn’t even there.
He was ready to turn around and leave when all at once he heard the sound of the lock twisting and the door handle rattling. The door opened.
Daisy stared out at him, nonplused. “Alex?”
“I came for the photos.”
“What?”
“The editor called me. She wants the photos. You said you’d have them ready.”
“I said I’d call you when they were ready.” She was gripping the door, glaring at him, and by God, yes, her eyes were sparking fire.
He almost smile
d as he snaked past her into her office before she could object, then turned and let his gaze run over her again.
She was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt—about as inelegant as imaginable—and she looked as sexy as hell. Her blonde hair was hanging loose around her face. It was disheveled, as if she—or someone else?—had been running fingers through it.
“Am I interrupting something?” he snapped.
“What?” She frowned. Then she shrugged. “My work. If you want the photos, let me get back to them. They’re not done yet. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. I’ll have them for you tomorrow. I—”
“Let me see them.”
“No. Not while I’m still working.”
“Why? Afraid of someone else’s opinion?”
“Do I offer you opinions about the buildings you design?” she countered with saccharine sweetness. “Of course not. So go away.”
But Alex didn’t want to go away. He wanted to drop down in the chair and watch her work. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair and pull her close. He wanted to slide his hands down the curve of her spine, cup her buttocks—
He groaned.
“What’s wrong?” She was looking at him intently, worriedly.
He ground his teeth, then turned away, knowing he should get the hell out of here, but somehow he couldn’t go. It was as if she’d bewitched him, cast some spell that wouldn’t let him find the woman he knew had to be out there, the woman who would actually be right for him.
“Alex?” she pressed in the face of his silence.
Finally he snapped. “I’ve had five dates, and they’ve all been disasters!”
Daisy’s eyes widened. She stared at him, then let out a sound that might have been a laugh. Or a snort.
“What a shame,” Daisy said in a tone that told him it had been both a laugh and a snort.
“It is, damn it! And it’s a waste of time.” Alex cracked his knuckles and spun away to pace irritably around her office. But every step brought him closer to her. And he wanted her. Badly.
She stepped past him and moved toward her desk, and he wheeled to follow her when he found himself face-to-face with the photos on her walls.
None of them, of course, was Daisy.
But they all spoke of Daisy. Of what she wanted and he didn’t.
Families. Children. Pets.
He looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed. She ran her tongue over her lips. She watched him warily, worriedly.
“Never mind,” he said abruptly. “I have to go.”
Ignoring his desire, forcing himself to turn away from the most beautiful woman he’d ever made love to, he stalked out the door. He was halfway down the steps when he turned his head, his heart still hammering. “Send me those photos, damn it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE next day Alex got an email with a link to a site where he could download the photos Daisy had taken.
Here you are, the email said. Sorry it took so long. Hope they meet with your editor’s satisfaction. Thank you for the opportunity to work with you.
Kind regards, Daisy Connolly.
Kind regards? Daisy Connolly?
As if he would need her last name to distinguish her from all the other Daisys in his life.
Blast her, anyway! Alex smacked a hand on the desk next to his computer screen. So all it had needed was for him to turn up on her doorstep and make an idiot of himself and Daisy was suddenly inspired to finish editing the photos, send them along and get him out of her life.
Swell.
He’d lain awake half the night—staring at the damned skylight and cursing his own misplaced desire—and wishing Amalie would come up with a viable “option.”
In the morning he called her and demanded a better selection. “The last one was a charlatan,” he said. “If she was an architecture student, I play center field for the New York Yankees.”
“I’m talking to another young woman today,” she promised. “You’re very discerning. It takes time.”
It didn’t take time, damn it. That was the trouble. If Daisy wanted what he wanted there wouldn’t be any problem at all.
But she didn’t. That was perfectly clear. She probably hadn’t been stalling. She’d probably actually been busy, too busy to get right to his photos. But once he’d turned up on her doorstep, making demands, she’d outdone herself getting the photos finished so she didn’t need to have anything more to do with him.
They were amazing photos, though.
He stood in his office, staring at them now. He’d spread them out on his drafting table, studying them, seeing himself through her eyes.
They were every bit as sharp and insightful as the ones he’d seen on her wall last night. She’d taken most of the shots in black and white which, on first glance, surprised him.
But the more he studied them, the more he saw what she was doing: she had used the monochrome scheme to pare him down to his essence, exactly the way an architectural drawing or a blueprint did.
She caught him clearly—a man who had little patience with subtlety, who knew what he wanted.
He wanted her.
She had to know that. Didn’t she know that?
He sighed and scraped the photos into a pile and put them back into the envelope. Of course she knew it.
She didn’t want him—not on his terms.
So he’d seen the last of her.
End of story.
Daisy was still taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly a week later. But it was her own fault. She knew she should have got the photos edited and sent off right away. She hadn’t.
And so Alex had turned up on her doorstep. An intense, edgy, irritated Alex. An Alex who had looked at her with fire in his normally cool green gaze. An Alex who had shot into her office so quickly, she hadn’t even thought about how to stop him. And once he was there, it had felt like being trapped in a cage with a full-grown, very hungry panther.
A panther who had complained about the meals he was being offered at the same time he was looking at her like he intended to make her the next one.
She’d skittered away, crossed the room, needing to put space between them, because the mere sight of him had set her heart to pounding. All her senses went on alert with Alex. Her body wanted him no matter what her brain—and her mother’s-heart—told her was wise.
She had been determined to resist—not just Alex, but her own desire.
Then abruptly he had turned and walked out!
And Daisy had been left staring after him as he strode off into the cold dark windy night. Then she’d shut the door and leaned against it, her heart still slamming against the wall of her chest, her pulse racing.
The adrenaline had kept her working half the night.
It took a week to wear off, more for her to be able to say with confidence to Cal that life was back to normal, and still more until she believed it herself.
So it was a blow on the first Saturday evening in November to hear a knock on the door, expect to get the Thai takeaway she’d ordered, and find Alex standing on her doorstep again.
She stared at him, dumbstruck.
“Good evening to you, too,” he said cheerfully. His tone was mild, friendly, completely at odds with the Alex who had shown up last time.
“Good evening,” she replied cautiously, trying not to look at his smooth-shaven face, his quirking smile, that groove in his cheek she always itched to touch. Deliberately she curled her fingers into the palm of her hand.
He hesitated a split second, then said, “I just wanted to say that I may have found the one.”
Daisy blinked. “The one? The one what?”
His smile widened. “Woman.” There was a pause. Then, “Wife,” he clarified.
Daisy’s stomach did an odd sort of somersault. She swallowed, then mustered her best polite smile. “Really. How nice.”
She shut her eyes for an instant, and opened them to discover that he’d done it again—slipped past her and was suddenly standin
g in her office. How did he do that?
“She’s a vice president in marketing for an international cosmetics firm,” he reported, his handsome face looking very pleased. “She runs campaigns in half a dozen places all over the world. Always on the move. She has two phones. A red one for emergencies.” He grinned, as if this were a good thing.
“Does she?” Daisy said drily. “Sounds perfect for you.”
“You think so, too?” He was still grinning, so she didn’t know if he heard her sarcasm as it had been intended or not. “That’s what I thought. I read Amalie the riot act after the first bunch, said if that was as good as she could do, I was finished. And then she came up with Caroline.”
Caroline. Even her name was right. Sophisticated, but approachable. She did sound perfect.
“And,” Alex went on with considerable enthusiasm, “there are other things, too—she’s beautiful, bright, funny, articulate, well-read.”
Daisy shut the door but stayed by it, keeping an eye out for the Thai deliveryman and thanking God that Charlie was at Cal’s this weekend. “So have you asked her to marry you yet?” she asked Alex flippantly.
“Considering it.”
Her jaw dropped. “On the basis of a couple of dates?”
“Three,” Alex corrected. He was moving around her office in panther mode, but looking better fed. He picked up an alabaster cat on the bookcase, and examined it while he talked. “Well, two and a half.” His mouth twisted wryly. “The red phone rang tonight. She had to leave in the middle of dinner. She’s on her way to San Francisco right now.”
“You’re joking.” He had to be joking. Didn’t he?
But when he didn’t immediately agree that he was, Daisy shook her head, torn between despair and the prickling of awareness and wholly useless desire she always felt faced with Alexandros Antonides. Still. Damn it. “You’re insane.”
He put the cat down again and looked at her quizzically. “Insane? Why?”
“You can’t make a decision like that in a few weeks’ time!”
“Why not? She’s what I want.”
“But are you what she wants?” Daisy didn’t know why she was asking that. Didn’t know why she was arguing with him.
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