Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 35

ALEXANDROS Antonides studied the crumpled receipt, the one with the hastily scrawled name, address and phone number on the back, and was tempted to stuff it right back in his pocket.

Or better yet, throw it out.

He didn’t need a matchmaker, for God’s sake!

His fingers crushed the already frequently crumpled piece of paper and he stared out the window of the taxi as it headed north on Eighth Avenue. They weren’t out of midtown Manhattan yet. It was nearly five-thirty. He should just tell the driver to forget it.

But he didn’t. Instead he made himself lean back against the seat and, just as he had done a dozen or more times before, he smoothed out the paper against his palm.

Daisy Connolly. His cousin Lukas had scribbled down her name and address a month ago when he and Lukas had met up at the family reunion out at Lukas’s parents’ place in the Hamptons. “She’ll find you the perfect wife.”

“How do you know?” he’d asked Lukas, letting his voice carry his obvious doubt. He’d looked around pointedly, noting Lukas’s complete lack of not only a wife, but even a date for their family reunion.

“Seen her do it,” Lukas said frankly. “I went to college with her. She did it then. She does it now. She has some uncanny sense of who belongs together.” He shrugged. “Who knows how she does it? Hocus-pocus? Tea leaves? Beats me. Give her a call or go see her.”

Alex had grunted, not a sound meant to convey agreement.

“Unless you really don’t want to get married.” Lukas had cocked his head, considering Alex. Then, “Maybe he’s chicken,” he had said to his brothers.

One of them had made a clucking sound.

Alex had masked his irritation and rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he’d said curtly. “If I get desperate enough, I’ll look her up.”

“I’d say you’re already desperate,” Lukas had said, grinning. “How many fiancées have you gone through?”

“Two,” Alex said through his teeth. “But Imogene doesn’t count.”

Imogene had been perfect. She hadn’t loved Alex any more than he’d loved her. When her long-time boyfriend had got cold feet faced with a lifetime commitment, Alex had grabbed her on the rebound. Unfortunately two days after she’d said yes to Alex, the love of her life had come to his senses and begged her to marry him.

“What can I do?” she’d wailed at Alex. “I still love him!”

The more fool she, Alex had thought. But he’d been polite and wished her good luck. He still did. If she was that besotted, she’d need it.

“I don’t know,” Lukas had said slowly, studying him. “Two fiancées in a little over a year …” He’d arched his brows in speculation, then looked over at his brothers. “Sounds pretty desperate to me.”

His brothers, Elias and PJ, had nodded sagely.

Alex had merely snorted. He didn’t want a perfect wife, anyway. He just wanted a suitable one. He was thirty-five years old. Time to get married.

Of course lots of men would disagree. But not Antonides men. Antonides men married. All of them.

Not young, as a rule. Most all of them sowed their wild oats before settling down. But in the end, every last one of them took the plunge.

As a young man Alex had turned his back on the notion. He’d figured to be the exception to the rule. Besides, then the thrill of the hunt and endless variety had enticed him.

Now it often seemed more trouble than it was worth.

Sex? Well, that wasn’t too much trouble. But picking up women who wanted a one-night stand seemed tawdry to him now. And while it was fine to play the field when they were young, Alex understood what every Antonides male understood—that there came a time to turn into a responsible, steady, dependable, mature man.

And that meant having a wife.

Elias might have been born responsible. But even PJ, who had been a beach bum for years, was respectably married now. In fact he had been secretly married for years. And Lukas, the youngest of them and definitely a free spirit, would get married, too.

Even Lukas knew it. It was just a matter of time.

Alex’s time was now.

He had made up his mind last year. The hunt had begun to bore him and he found he preferred spending his time designing buildings than enticing women into his bed. It wasn’t all that difficult, honestly. The difficult part was when he had to convince them he didn’t intend to fall in love with them.

It would be easier and more straightforward, he decided, to find a woman he liked, spell out the rules, marry her and get on with his life.

It wasn’t as if he had a lot of rules. Basically all he wanted was an easy-to-get-along-with, undemanding woman who wanted an easy-to-get-along-with, undemanding husband. He wasn’t looking for love and he wasn’t looking for kids. He wasn’t looking to complicate his life.

He and his wife would share bed and board when they were in the same country and would attend each other’s duty functions when possible. Presently he lived in an apartment he’d restored in Brooklyn above his offices, but it was a bachelor’s pad. He wouldn’t expect his wife to live there. They could get another place close to her work. She could choose it. He didn’t care. He was perfectly willing to be accommodating.

So, really, how difficult could it be to find a woman willing to agree to his terms?

Harder than he thought, Alex admitted now.

His last three dates had seemed promising—all of them were professional women in their thirties. He’d met them at business social functions. They all had high-powered careers, fast-track lives, and nearly as many demands on their time as he had on his.

They should have been perfect.

But the lawyer had treated their dinner date as a cross-examination about his determination not to have children. The dentist bored on about how much she hated her profession and could hardly wait to quit and start a family. And Melissa, the stock analyst with whom he’d had dinner with last night, told him point-blank that her biological clock was ticking and she wanted a baby within a year.

At least Alex had had the presence of mind to say just as firmly, “I don’t.”

But that date, like so many of the others he’d had since he’d decided that it was possible to marry without anything as messy as love complicating the relationship, had gone downhill from there.

Which brought him back to the receipt he held in his hand.

Daisy.

He stared at the name Lukas had scrawled on the crumpled paper. It brought with it flickers of memories, a frisson of awareness. Honey-blonde hair. Sparkling blue eyes. Laughter. Gentle, warm words. Soft sighs. Hot kisses. He shifted in the seat of the cab. Once upon a time, for one brief weekend, Alex had known a woman called Daisy.

So maybe this was fate.

The hot-kisses, soft-sighs Daisy had wanted to marry him. Maybe the matchmaking Daisy would find him a wife.

“Think of it as delegating,” Elias had urged him pragmatically when he’d balked at Lukas’s suggestion. “You do it all the time at work.”

That was true. Alex had a whole staff at his architectural firm who did the things he didn’t have time for. They did what he told them, checked availability, researched zoning and land use and materials, sorted and sifted through piles of information, then presented their findings and recommendations, and left him to make the final decision.

It was sensible. It was efficient. And Elias was right: a matchmaker could do the same thing. It would be smarter, in fact, than doing it himself.

He would be leaving less to chance if he deputized a disinterested employee to find appropriate candidates. And he’d be spared the awkwardness of future dinners like the one he’d shared with Melissa last night. With a matchmaker vetting the candidates, he would only have to meet the really suitable ones, then decide which one would make the best wife.

It suddenly sounded promising. He should have dropped in on Daisy Connolly before this. But Alex didn’t ordinarily get to the Upper West Side. Today, though, he’d been working on a building project in the West Village and, finishing early, he’d had a bit of time to spare before he headed back to Brooklyn. So he’d plucked the paper out of his wallet and hopped in a cab.

Twenty minutes later he consulted it as he got out again on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and the cross street on which Daisy Connolly had her office.

He hoped she hadn’t gone home already. He hadn’t made an appointment. It had seemed more sensible to leave himself the option of changing his mind if, when he saw the place, something about it made him want to walk straight on past.

But the street wore the New York City version of homey respectability. It was quiet, lined with four and five story brownstones, a few blocks north of the Museum of Natural History. The trees on either side of the street were all varying shades of gold and orange this early October afternoon, making it look like a photo op for an urban lifestyle magazine. Alex took his time walking up the block, the architect in him enjoying the view.

When he’d first bought a place to live in New York three years ago, changing his base of operations from Europe to this side of the Atlantic, he’d opted for an apartment in a high-rise about a mile south on Central Park West. Twenty-odd stories up, his aerie had given him a useful bird’s-eye perspective of the city, but it had literally kept him above it all. He hadn’t felt connected.

Two years ago, offered a chance to tear down a pre-war office building in Brooklyn not far from where his cousins Elias and PJ lived with their families, he’d found a purpose and a place where he was happy at the same time. He’d found another property on which to build what the owner wanted, and seeing a chance to make a useful contribution to the gentrification of a neighborhood in transition, he had snapped up the pre-war building for himself. Now he had his offices downstairs and his apartment on the fourth floor. He felt more like he belonged and less as if he were soaring above it.

He got the same feeling here on Daisy Connolly’s street. There was a laundry on one corner, a restaurant on the other. Between two of the brownstones he passed an empty lot which now held a small local playground with some climbing equipment, a swing and slide. One brownstone had a small discreet plaque by the door of the garden floor apartment offering herbs and organic seedlings. Another had a small sign for a chiropractor’s office.

Did matchmakers have signs? He felt an unwelcome flicker of awkwardness. When he found the address midblock, there was no sign. It looked like a version of all the rest—a tall, narrow, five story building with three stories of bay windows and another two stories above them of more modest windows—where once servants had dwelt no doubt. It was the color of warm honey, lighter than the traditional brownstone, and it sported lace curtains at the first floor bay windows making it look pleasant and professional at the same time.

Besides the lack of signs, there were no astrology signs or crystal balls in sight. No tiny fairy lights flickering in the windows, either. None of the “hocus-pocus” Lukas had mentioned. Alex breathed a sigh of relief.

He straightened his tie, took a deep breath, strode up the steps and opened the outside door. In the tiny foyer, on the mailbox for apartment 1, he saw her name: Daisy Connolly. Resolutely he pressed the buzzer.

For half a minute there was no response at all. Alex shifted from one foot to the other and ground his teeth at the thought of wasting the end of an afternoon coming all the way to the Upper West Side for nothing.

But just as he was about to turn away, he heard the sound of a lock being turned. The door opened into the shadow-filled front hall and he could see the silhouette of a slim woman coming to push open the door to admit him.

She was smiling—until their gazes met. Then the smile faded and the color drained from her face.

She stared at him, stricken. “Alex?”

Honey-blonde hair. Deep blue eyes. A memory of scorching hot kisses. “Daisy?”

Alex? Here? No!

No. No. No.

But all the time the word was banging around inside Daisy’s head, the truth—all six feet of his whipcord-lean, muscular, gorgeous male self—was staring at her in the face.

Why in heaven’s name couldn’t she have looked out the window before she’d answered the door?

The answer was simple: Alexandros Antonides was so far in her past she never ever considered that he might turn up on her doorstep.

She’d been expecting Philip Cannavarro.

She’d done a photo shoot with the Cannavarro family— Phil, Lottie and their three children—last month at the beach. A week and a half ago, they had chosen their photos, and Philip had called at lunch to ask if he could drop by after work and pick up their order.

So when the buzzer had sounded at twenty minutes to six, Daisy had opened the door with a smile on her face and an embossed portfolio of photos in her hand—a portfolio that the sight of Alexandros Antonides had let slip from her nerveless fingers.

“Oh, hell.”

Her heart hammering, Daisy stooped quickly and began gathering up the photos. Focusing on that gave her a few moments of time and a little bit of space to get her bearings. Ha. What was he doing here?

She hadn’t seen Alex in years and she had never expected to ever see him again. Only the fact that he seemed as surprised as she was allowed her to breathe at all.

She stopped doing that, though, when he crouched down beside her and began to help pick up the photos.

“Don’t do that. Leave them,” she said, trying to snatch them away from him. “I can do it!”

But Alex didn’t let go. He simply kept right on. He only said, “No.”

And there it was—the same single word, delivered in the same implacable tone that he’d said five years ago—that one that had pulled the rug right out from under her hopes and dreams.

Worse, though, was that his rough-edged, slightly accented, unconsciously sexy baritone still resonated all the way to the core of her exactly as it had from the moment she’d first heard him speak. It was as if he had been her very own personal pied piper of Hamelin. And foolishly, mindlessly, Daisy had fallen under his spell.

Then she’d called it “love at first sight.” Then she had believed in the foolishness of such fairy tales.

Now she knew better. Now she knew the danger of it, thank God. There would be no falling under his spell again. She gathered the last of the photos, no longer in any shape to be presented to Philip Cannavarro, and got to her feet.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, stepping away as he rose to his feet, too.

He shook his head, looking as dazed as she felt. “You’re Daisy?” He glanced at a piece of paper he held in his hand, then frowned. “Well, of course you are, but … Connolly?”

Daisy lifted her chin. “That’s right. Why?”

But before she got an answer, another man appeared outside on the stoop, just beyond the heavy front door and looked past Alex questioningly.

Daisy’s knees went weak with relief. “Phil! Come on in!” He might as well have been the cavalry come to her rescue. She beamed at him.

Alex turned and stared over his shoulder, his brows drawing down. “Who’s he?” he demanded as if he had more right there than her client.

Fortunately Phil was already pulling the door open, glancing in quick succession at Daisy’s relieved face and Alex’s scowl and finally at the photos in Daisy’s hands. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt—”

“You weren’t,” Daisy said quickly. “But I heard the bell. I thought it was you, not—” she gestured helplessly toward Alex who was standing so she could almost feel the heat of his body “—and I accidentally dropped your photos. I am so sorry.” She gave Phil a hopeful smile. “I need to have them redone.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’re probably just a little frayed at the edges,” Phil said cheerfully. “No problem.” He held out his hand and doubtless would have taken them from her, but Daisy shook her head and clutched them against her chest like a shield.

“No,” she said. “I guarantee my work. And I don’t give less than my best. You and Lottie deserve my best.” He and Lottie had been one of the first matches she’d made. Lottie had been a makeup artist she’d met when she first began working as a photographer after college. Phil used to do her taxes. She felt almost like their mother even though they were older than she was. And she wasn’t giving them less than her best.

“I’ll put a rush on it,” she promised. “You should have them in two days. I’ll have them couriered directly to your house.”

Phil looked doubtful. “We won’t mind,” he said. “Lottie will want …”

“Take these then.” Daisy thrust them at him. “But tell her they’re just until the new ones come in. Tell her I’m so sorry. Tell her—” She shut her mouth, the only way to stop babbling.

Phil fumbled with the photos, too, then stuffed them in his briefcase, shooting Daisy worried sidelong glances. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

But she knew why he was asking. Phil and Lottie were used to the unflappable Daisy, the one who rolled with the punches, adjusted on the fly, never worried if life threw pitchforks in her path.

“Daisy always copes,” Lottie said. It was like a mantra.

Daisy wasn’t exactly coping now. Alex’s mere presence created an electricity in the air, a force field of awareness she could never manage to be indifferent to. Damn it.

“She’ll be fine,” Alex said smoothly now. “She’s just had a bit of a shock.” He stepped even closer and looped an arm over her shoulders.

Daisy nearly jumped out of her skin. At the same time, though, her traitorous body clamored to sink into his embrace. Muscle memory was a dangerous thing. Daisy held herself rigid, resisting him, resisting her own inclination.

“She’ll be all right. I’ll take care of her.” Alex’s tone was all reassurance as he smiled and somehow put himself between her and Phil, edging the other man toward the door, making it clear that Phil didn’t need to hang around.

Phil didn’t hang around. He understood male territoriality as well as the next guy. “Right,” he said, all smiles and cheerful bravado. “I’ll tell Lottie.”

And he was out the door and down the steps without glancing back.

“Thank you very much,” Daisy said drily, slipping out from beneath his arm, which still managed to leave her with a sense that it was still there. She could feel the warm weight of it even though she’d stepped away. Instinctively she wrapped her own arms across her chest.

What was he doing here? The question pounded again in her brain.

“Daisy.” The way he said her name was somewhere between musing and caressing. It sent the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. “It is fate,” he murmured.

“What?” Daisy said sharply.

“I was just thinking about you.” His tone was warm. He acted as if they were old friends. Well, maybe to him that was all they were.

“I can’t imagine why,” Daisy said, which was the absolute truth.

“I’m looking for a wife.”

She stared at him, her jaw dropping.

He just smiled, expecting no doubt to hear her say, Oh, yes, please! Pick me.

Daisy hugged her arms more tightly across her chest. “Good luck with that.” She could have said, You don’t want a wife. You made a huge point of telling me you didn’t want a wife!

Now Alex raised his brows. The smile still lurking. “I wasn’t proposing,” he said mildly.

Mortified, Daisy said stiffly, “Of course you weren’t.”

She wasn’t going to bring up the past at all. It did her no credit. She’d been young and stupid and far too romantic for her own good when they’d met five years ago at a wedding reception.

Daisy had been one of her college roommate, Heather’s, bridesmaids, and Alex had been pressed into service as a last-minute substitute for a sick groomsman. Their eyes had met—something wild and hot and amazing had sparked between them—and to Daisy’s fevered romantic twenty-three-year-old brain, it had been one of those meant-to-be moments.

They had only had eyes for each other from the moment they’d met. They talked, they danced, they laughed, they touched. The electricity between them could have lit New York City day and night for a week.

So this was love at first sight. She remembered thinking that, stunned and delighted to finally experience it. She had, of course, always believed. Her parents had always told Daisy and her sister that they’d known from the moment they’d met that they were destined to be together.

Julie, Daisy’s sister, had felt that way about Brent, the moment she’d met him in eighth grade. They’d married right out of high school. Twelve years later, they were still deeply in love.

Daisy had never felt that way—wasn’t sure she believed it—until the day Alex had walked into her life.

That afternoon had been so extraordinary, so mind-numbingly, body-tinglingly perfect that she’d believed. It was just the way her parents had described it, the way Julie had described it—the sense of knowing, of a belief that all the planets were finally lined up, that the absolutely right man had come into her life.

Of course she hadn’t said so. Not then. She’d just met Alex. But she hadn’t wanted the day to end—and he hadn’t, either. She was the bridesmaid who had been deputized to take Heather’s car back to Manhattan after the reception.

“I’m coming, too,” Alex had said in that rough sexy baritone, and his eyes had met hers. “If that’s all right with you.”

Of course it had been all right with her. It was just one more reason to believe he was feeling the same thing, too. Together they had driven back to Manhattan. And all the way there, they had talked.

He was an architect working for a multinational firm, but eager to strike out on his own. He had his own ideas, a desire to blend old and new, to create both beauty and utility and to design buildings that made people more alive, that spoke to their hearts and souls. His eyes had lit up when he’d talked about his goals, and she had shared his enthusiasm.

He had shared hers about her own professional hopes and dreams. She was working for Finn MacCauley, one of the preeminent fashion and lifestyle photographers in the country. It was almost like an apprenticeship, she’d told him. She was learning so much from Finn, but was looking forward, like Alex was, to finding her own niche.

“People definitely,” she’d told him. “Families, kids, people at work and play. I’d like to shoot you,” she’d told him. She wanted to capture the moment, the man.

And Alex had simply said, “Whenever you want.”

When they got to the city, she had left the car in the parking garage by Heather’s Upper East Side apartment, then she’d taken Alex downtown on the subway to the Soho flat she was subleasing from a dental student on a semester’s internship abroad.

On the subway, Alex had caught her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her fingers, then dipping his head to touch his lips to hers. It was a light touch, the merest promise, but it set her blood on fire. And when he pulled back, she caught her breath because, looking into his eyes, she had seen a hunger there that was as deep and intense as her own.

It had never happened before. A desire so powerful, so intense just grabbed her—and it wouldn’t let go. Daisy wasn’t used to this sort of intensity. She didn’t fall into bed at the drop of a hat, had only once before fallen into bed with a man at all. It had been fevered groping on his part and discomfort on hers.

With Alex, she’d tried telling herself, it would be more of the same.

But it wasn’t.

His kisses were nothing like any she’d tasted before. They were heady, electric, bone-melting. They’d stood on the sidewalk nearly devouring each other. Not something Daisy had ever done!

She couldn’t get him back to her apartment fast enough.

Once there, though, she’d felt suddenly awkward, almost shy. “Let me take your picture,” she’d said.

And Alex had given her a lazy teasing smile and said, “If that’s what you want.”

Of course it wasn’t what she wanted—or not entirely what she wanted. And it wasn’t what he wanted, either. It was fore-play. Serious and smiling, goofing around, letting her direct him this way and that, all the way watching her—burning her up!—from beneath hooded lids.

He wanted her. He didn’t have to say it. They circled each other, moved in, moved away. The temperature in the room rose. The temperature in Daisy’s blood was close to boiling.

Then Alex had reached out and took the camera from her. He aimed, shot, posed her, caught the ferocity of her desire, as well. He stripped off his jacket, she unbuttoned his shirt. He skimmed down the zip of her dress. But before he could peel it off, she had taken the camera back, set the timer and wrapped her arms around him.

The photo of the two of them together, caught up in each other, had haunted her for years.

But at the time she hadn’t been thinking about anything but the moment—the man. Within moments the camera was forgotten and in seconds more the rest of their clothing was gone.

And then there was nothing between them at all.

Alex bore her back onto her bed, settled beside her and bent his dark head, nuzzling her breasts, tasting, teasing, suckling, making her gasp and squirm.

And Daisy, shyness long gone, had been desperate to learn every inch of him. She’d prowled and played, made him suck in his breath and say raggedly, “You’re killing me!”

But when she’d pulled back he’d drawn her close again. “Don’t stop,” he’d said.

They hadn’t stopped—neither one of them. They’d driven each other to the height of ecstasy. And it wasn’t at all like that other time.

With Alex there was no discomfort, there was no second-guessing, no wondering if she was doing the right thing. It had been lovemaking at its most pure and elemental, and so perfect she could have cried.

After, lying wrapped in his arms, knowing the rightness of it, she had believed completely in her mother’s assertion that there was a “right man”—and about knowing instinctively when you met him.

She’d met Alex and—just like her parents, just like her sister and Brent—she had fallen in love.

They’d talked into the wee hours of the morning, sharing stories of their childhood, of their memories, of the best and worst things that had ever happened to them.

She told him about the first camera she’d ever had—that her grandfather had given her when she was seven. He told her about the first time he’d climbed a mountain and thought he could do anything. She told him about her beloved father who had died earlier that winter and about the loss she felt. He understood. He told her about losing his only brother to leukemia when he was ten and his brother thirteen. They had talked and they had touched. They had stroked and smiled and kissed.

And they had made love again. And again.

It was always going to be like that, Daisy vowed. She had met the man of her dreams, the one who understood her down to the ground, the man she would love and marry and have children with and grow old with—

—until she’d said so.

She remembered that Sunday morning as if it had been yesterday.

They’d finally fallen asleep in each other’s arms at dawn. When Daisy had awakened again it was nearly ten. Alex was still asleep, sprawled on his back in her bed, bare-chested, the duvet covering him below the waist. He was so beautiful. She could have just sat there and stared at him forever, tracing the strong lines of his features, the hollows made by his collarbone, the curve of muscle in his arms, the long, tapered fingers that had made her quiver with their touch. She remembered how he’d looked, naked and primal, rising above her when they’d made love.

She would have liked to do it again. She had wanted to slide back beneath the duvet and snuggle up against him, to rub the sole of her foot up and down his calf, then let her fingers walk up and down his thigh, and press kisses to the line of dark hair that bisected his abdomen.

But as much as she wanted to do that, she also wanted to feed him before he had to catch his plane. She knew he had an early evening flight to Paris where he would be spending the next month at the main office of the firm he worked for. She’d hated the thought of him leaving, but she consoled herself by hoping that when he started his own company he would bring it stateside. Or maybe she would follow him to Paris.

Daisy had tried to imagine what living in Paris—living in Paris with Alex—would be like while she made them eggs and bacon and toast for breakfast. The thoughts made her smile. They made her toes curl.

She’d been standing at the stove, toes curling as she turned the bacon when hard muscled arms had come around her and warm breath had touched her ear.

“Morning,” Alex murmured, the burr of his voice sending a shiver of longing right through her.

“Morning yourself.” She’d smiled as he had kissed her ear, her nape, her jaw, then turned her in his arms and took her mouth with a hunger that said, The hell with breakfast. Let’s go back to bed.

But she’d fed him a piece of bacon, laughing as he’d nibbled her fingers. And she’d actually got him to eat eggs and toast as well before they’d rolled in the sheets once more.

Finally in the early afternoon he’d groaned as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed. “Got to grab a shower. Come with me?” He’d cocked his head, grinning an invitation that, despite feeling boneless already, Daisy hadn’t been able to refuse.

The next half hour had been the most erotic experience of her life. Both of them had been wrung out, beyond boneless—and squeaky clean—by the time the hot water heater had begun to run cold.

“I need to go,” he’d said, kissing her thoroughly once more as he pulled on a pair of cords and buttoned up his shirt.

“Yes,” she agreed, kissing him back, but then turning away long enough to stuff her legs into a pair of jeans and pluck a sweater from the drawer. “I’ll go out to the airport with you.”

Alex had protested that it wasn’t necessary, that he was perfectly capable of going off by himself, he did it all the time.

But Daisy was having none of it. She’d smiled saucily and said, “Yes, but now you have me.”

She’d gone with him to the airport, had sat next to him in the back of the hired car and had shared long drugging kisses that she expected to live off until he returned.

“I’ll miss you,” she’d told him, nibbling his jaw. “I can’t believe this has happened. That we found each other. I never really believed, but now I do.”

“Believed?” Alex lifted his head from where he’d been kissing her neck long enough to gaze into her eyes. “In what?”

“This.” She punctuated the word with a kiss, then looked deeply into his eyes. “You. Me. It’s just like my mother said. Love at first sight.” She smiled, then sighed. “I just hope we get more years than they did.”

There was a sudden stillness in him. And then a slight movement as he pulled back. A small line appeared between his brows. “Years? They?”

“My parents. They fell in love like this. Took one look at each other and fell like a ton of bricks. There was never anyone else for either of them. They were two halves of the same soul. They should have had fifty years. Seventy-five,” Daisy said recklessly. “Instead of twenty-six.”

Alex didn’t move. He barely seemed to breathe. The sparkle in his light green eyes seemed suddenly to fade.

Daisy looked at him, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

He’d swallowed. She could remember the way she’d watched his Adam’s apple move in his throat, then the way he’d shaken his head slowly and said, “You’re talking a lifetime, aren’t you?”

And ever honest, Daisy had nodded. “Yes.”

There had been a split second before the world tilted. Then Alex had sucked in a harsh breath. “No.” Just the one word. Hard, decisive, determined. Then, apparently seeing the look on her face, he’d been at pains to assure her. “Oh, not for you. I’m not saying you won’t have a lifetime … with someone. But … not me.”

She remembered staring at him, stunned at the change in him. He seemed to have pulled inside himself. Closed off. Turned into the Ice Man as she’d watched. “What?” Even to her own ears her voice had sounded faint, disbelieving.

Alex’s jaw set. “I’m not getting married,” he’d told her. “Ever.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to.”

“But—”

“No.” His tone was implacable. Yet despite the coldness of his tone, there was fire in his eyes. “No hostages to fortune,” he’d said. “No wife. No kids. No falling in love. Too much pain. Never again.”

“Because … because of your brother?” She had only barely understood that kind of pain. Her parents had been gloriously happily married until her father’s death a month before. And she had witnessed what her mother was going through after. There was no doubt it was hard. It was hard on her and on her sister, too. But her parents had had a beautiful marriage. It had been worth the cost.

She’d tried to explain that to Alex in the car. He hadn’t wanted to hear it.

“It’s fine for you if that’s what you want,” he’d said firmly. “I don’t.”

“But last night … this morning …?” Daisy had been grasping desperately at straws.

“You were great,” he’d said. Their gazes had met for a moment. Then deliberately Alex looked away.

By the time they’d arrived at the airport, there were no more kisses, only a silence as big and dark as the Atlantic that would soon stretch between them. Alex didn’t look at her again. His fingers were fisted against his thighs as he stared resolutely out the window.

Daisy had stared at him, willed him to reconsider, to believe—to give them a chance!

“Maybe I was asking for too much too soon,” she ventured at last as their hired car reached the airport departure lanes. “Maybe when you come back …”

Alex was shaking his head even as he turned and looked at her. “No,” he said, his voice rough but adamant.

She blinked quickly, hoping he didn’t notice the film of unshed tears in her eyes as she stared at him mutely.

“I won’t be back, Daisy. A lifetime is what you want,” he’d said. “I don’t.”

It was the last thing he’d said to her—the last time she’d seen him—until she’d opened the door a few minutes ago.

Now she dared to stare at him for just a moment as she tried to calm her galloping heart and mend her frayed nerves, tried to stuff Alexandros Antonides back into the box in the distant reaches of her mind where she’d done her best to keep him for the past five years.

It wasn’t any easier to feel indifferent now than it ever had been. He was certainly every bit as gorgeous as he had been then. A shade over six feet tall, broad-shouldered in a pale blue dress shirt and a gray herringbone wool sport coat, his tie loosened at his throat, Alex looked like the consummate successful professional. His dark hair was cut a little shorter now, but it was still capable of being wind-tossed. His eyes were still that clear, light gray-green, arresting in his tanned face with its sharply defined cheekbones and blade-straight nose. And his sensuous mouth was, heaven help her, more appealing than ever with its hint of a smile.

“Why are you here?” she demanded now.

“Lukas sent me,” he said.

“Lukas?”

Alex’s cousin Lukas had been her official “other half” at the wedding where she’d met Alex. He’d insisted she stay by his side at the reception long enough so that his mother and aunts wouldn’t fling hopeful Greek girls at his head. Once he’d established that he wasn’t available, he’d given her a conspiratorial wink, a peck on the cheek and had ambled off to drink beer with his brothers and cousins, leaving her to fend for herself.

That was when she’d met Alex.

Now Alex pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and poked it in front of her face. “He said I should talk to his friend Daisy the matchmaker.”

Yes, there it was—her name, address and phone number—in Lukas’s spiky handwriting. But she was more arrested by his words than what he was waving in front of her face. “You’re looking for a matchmaker? You?”

Alex shrugged. “No doubt you’re amazed,” he said easily. “Thinking I’ve changed my mind.”

She didn’t know what to think.

“I haven’t,” he said firmly. “I’m not looking for hearts and flowers, kindred spirits, the melding of two souls any more than I ever was.”

She wondered if he was being so adamant in case she decided to propose. No fear of that, she wanted to tell him. Instead she pressed her lips into a tight line.

“I want a marriage of convenience,” Alex went on. “A woman with her own life, doing her own thing. She’ll go her way, I’ll go mine. But someone who will turn up if a business engagement calls for it. And who’s there … at night.”

“A sex buddy?” Daisy said drily.

Was that a line of color creeping above his shirt collar? “Friends,” he said firmly. “We’ll be friends. It’s not just about sex.”

“Hire a mistress.”

“I don’t want a mistress. That is just about sex.”

“Whatever. I can’t help you,” she said flatly.

“Why not? You’re a matchmaker.”

“Yes, but I’m a matchmaker who does believe in hearts and flowers, kindred spirits, the melding of two souls.” She echoed his words with a saccharine smile. “I believe in real marriages. Love matches. Soul mates. The kind you don’t believe in.” She met his gaze steadily, refusing to look away from those beautiful pale green eyes that she’d once hoped to drown in forever.

Alex’s jaw tightened. “I believe in them,” he said harshly. “I just don’t want one.”

“Right. So I repeat, I can’t help you.” She said the words again, meant them unequivocally. But even as she spoke in a calm steady tone, her heart was hammering so hard she could hear it.

Their gazes met. Locked. And with everything in her, Daisy resisted the magnetic pull that was still there. But even as she fought it, she felt the rise of desire within her, knew the feelings once more that she’d turned her back on the day he’d walked out of her life. It wasn’t love, she told herself. It was something else—something as powerful and perverse and demanding as anything she’d ever felt.

But she was stronger now, and no longer an innocent. She had a life—and a love in it—that was worth resisting Alex Antonides.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said, holding his gaze. “It was nice to see you again.”

It was, she hoped, a clear dismissal. It was also a blatant lie. She could have gone the rest of her life without seeing Alex again and died a happy woman. She didn’t need a reminder of the stupidest thirty hours of her life. But in another way, she was aware of owing him her unending gratitude.

That single day had forever changed her life.

“Was it?” he asked. His words were as speculative as his gaze. He smiled. And resist as she would, she saw in that smile the man who once upon a time had melted her bones, her resolve, every shred of her common sense, then broken her heart.

She turned away. “Goodbye, Alex.”

“Daisy.” His voice stopped her.

She glanced back. “What?”

The smile grew rueful, crooked, far too appealing. “Have dinner with me.”