Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 38

“I SAW you wandering back and forth across the street. I thought you might be lost.” Alex had caught hold of her when she’d turned and crashed into him. He was still holding on now. Their bodies were touching.

Daisy’s heart was going a mile a minute. Hastily she pulled away from his hard chest. “I wasn’t lost,” she said, hating her sudden breathlessness. “I was studying the building. Looking at all the angles.”

She squinted up at him, trying not to be bowled over by the casual magnetism of the man. What was it about Alexandros Antonides that drew her like a moth to a flame?

Well, he was still gorgeous, there was that. Tall, whip-cord lean, broad-shouldered. Masculinity defined. Alex didn’t have to flaunt the testosterone. It wasn’t a veneer he put on. It was clearly bedrock in him.

“Well, if you’re done assessing all the angles, let me show you around.” He gave her one of those smiles, too, the one that had, from the beginning, undermined her common sense.

But she was older now, Daisy reminded herself. Made of sterner stuff. And she knew what he was made of, too.

“Fine,” she said briskly. “Lead on.”

He did just that, but not before he plucked her camera bag and one of the tripods out of her hands, leaving her with only her purse and the smaller tripod. “You could have left that in the building while you were looking around,” he said over his shoulder as he crossed the street.

“I suppose.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Subway.”

He turned as he stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of his building. “With all this stuff? For God’s sake, Daisy! They have cabs in Manhattan!”

“It’s more efficient to take the subway.”

“I’d have paid the cab fare.”

“I don’t need your cab fare. It’s a business expense. When I want to take a taxi, I take one. I prefer the subway when I’m coming to Brooklyn. No bridge tie-ups. Now can we get going?”

She didn’t want him fussing over her. He had no right. She didn’t need him—of all people—thinking he knew best what was good for her.

Alex grunted, but still he shook his head as if despairing of her as he pushed open the door to the building. The electronics store she’d already spotted had its entrance off this interior vestibule on one side of the building. On the other was a stationer’s shop—all fine paper and cards and pens.

“The old and the new,” Daisy remarked, looking from the stationer’s to the electronics store, nodding. She’d work that in, too.

Meanwhile he was leading her into the electronics store, pointing out the new windows and the old oak paneling, the new built-in oak cabinets and the old tin ceilings now restored. It was an artful blend of the best of both, and it showed off the latest electronic devices spectacularly well. After a quick tour there, he took her into the stationer’s shop, and the same was true there, as well.

The exquisite paper products looked appealing against the same oak cabinetry. The displays of calligraphic pens and multicolored inks and artists’ tools were equally appealing.

Against the tall narrow windows Alex had created window seats which the proprietor had set up as inviting nooks for one or two people to sit and try out the various products. They were all full—and many of the customers were as young and hip as those in the electronics store across the vestibule.

“I’ll show you photos of how it was before when we go upstairs,” he said. “In the meantime, shoot whatever you want. Den and Caroline—the owners of the stores—have given their permission.”

“Great. Thanks. You don’t have to hang around,” she said when he made no move to go. “I’ll shoot down here. Then I can come to your office.”

“I’ve cleared my calendar.” He set her bag down, then propped his shoulders against the wall and watched every move she made.

Daisy was used to going about her work single-mindedly forgetting everything and everyone else but the focus of her shots. She was, this time, aware every second of Alex’s eyes on her. She tried to tell herself he was just being polite. But he didn’t simply watch while she took photos in the stationer’s shop and in the electronics store. He followed her outside so she could shoot a couple from down the block.

Daisy shot him a hard look. He smiled back blandly.

“Fine,” she muttered, “if you’re going to tag along …” Then she raised her voice loud enough for him to hear and motioned him to stand in front of one of the heavy oak and etched glass doors. “Stand there and look ‘lord of the manor-ish.’”

He was Greek. What did he know about lords of the manor?

But apparently some things were universal, and he understood perfectly, leaning casually against one of the walls by the front door, a proprietorial air about him that said exactly what she wanted it to—that this was his domain. He owned the place.

“Got it,” she said, clicking off half a dozen so she could have her pick.

“Come on upstairs, then.” He led the way back inside.

The elevator was utilitarian, so she wasn’t sure what to expect when the doors opened—a hallway and doors to offices, she would have guessed. But that wasn’t what she got.

The elevator opened into one big room facing north. There were expanses of gleaming oak flooring broken up by areas covered with dove-gray carpet. In one of the carpeted areas, a woman sat at a desk making some notes while she talked on the phone. Not far away, on another carpet there was soft furniture—sofas and armchairs that invited you to sit and peruse books from floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

Where the floor was wood, she saw several large tables with projects on display, detailed architectural models in place. Around the sides of the room, in their own spaces but accessible to everyone, there were drafting tables, a couple of which had people working at them. They had glanced up when the elevator doors opened, but seeing Alex, they’d nodded and gone back to work.

Daisy’s gaze swiveled to take in the whole room. “Wow,” she said, impressed. “Very nice.”

“I like it. Let me show you around.” He introduced her to Alison, his middle-aged office manager. Then he took her to meet the two at the drafting tables. A young dark-haired woman, Naomi, was deeply involved in whatever she’d been assigned and barely glanced up to smile. But the other, an intern named Steve, had some questions about his project, so Daisy was able to take some shots of Alex and Steve, leaning over one of the drafting tables, studying blue prints.

Then, while Alex answered Steve’s questions, she wandered around, taking other shots of the room, of Alex on the job.

It was just the way she’d imagined him—in his element, his easy competence apparent. He drew her gaze as he bent over the table, his dark hair falling across his forehead as he pointed out something to Steve. She snapped off a couple of shots. But even when she lowered the camera, she couldn’t seem to look away.

“Sorry,” he said, coming back to her. “I didn’t mean to spend so long with him.”

“No problem. I got some good shots. Which is your table?” She nodded toward the vacant drafting tables.

“Upstairs. I’ll show you.”

He led her to a spiral staircase that ascended in one corner of the room. “We could use the elevator, but this is faster.”

It was also a treat. It had caught her eye earlier, a bit of wrought-iron frivolity in stark utilitarian surroundings. And yet it belonged.

“Was it original to the building?” It was a little added lagniappe, and she had already taken a number of shots of it.

“No. But I wanted something to catch the eye,” Alex said. “Something that was from the original period. I went to every salvage place in the boroughs, looking. I knew it when I saw it.”

“It’s perfect.” She motioned him to precede her up the steps. “Turn around,” she said when he was halfway up. She took several shots of him on the steps, and was seriously tempted to take one of his backside when, afterward, she followed him up. But she didn’t need any more reminders of how tempting Alex Antonides was.

His office was out of the mainstream, but connected to it. “I don’t let them up here,” he said frankly. “I need my space.”

“A perk of being the boss,” Daisy acknowledged. But she had to admit she liked his private aerie, too. The room in which he had created his office wasn’t large. Like the bigger room downstairs, it had tall, narrow, gothic arched windows and polished oak flooring. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves held vast arrays of architectural titles, books about design, and a lot of history, art and photography books. Daisy studied the titles.

It was disconcerting to find many of the same titles she had on her own shelves. So, whatever it was, it wasn’t just physical.

She wished it were. He would be so much easier to resist. Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, she gave a little wave of her camera, asking permission to take photos. “May I?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“I’ve heard that there’s a movement to minimize windows for energy conservation,” she said as she pointed the camera in his direction. “You obviously don’t believe that.”

“There’s a place for that. But light is good, too. And while you can conserve energy by building dark, I like light. So I try to make sure the windows are doing their job, too.” He stopped. “Sorry. Boring.”

Daisy lowered the camera. “It’s not, actually. And I’m a photographer. I like light, too.”

“Come on,” he said suddenly. “I’ll show you the best light of all.”

Without looking to see if she followed, he started up to the next level on the same spiral staircase. Daisy followed, expecting more office space. But when he reached the landing and unlocked the door, she knew better.

This was where Alex lived.

If he hadn’t said, “Welcome to my place,” she would have known it anyway. The light walls, the earth tones, the casual modern but not stark furniture, the plush dark rust and blue and gold oriental rug centered on the polished oak floor created a visual backdrop for the man she had known. Even if he weren’t standing there watching her take it all in, she would have known this was where he belonged.

There were, in the furnishings, in the books and papers on the coffee table, in the framed architectural drawings on the walls, signs of Alex everywhere. She was shaken by how instantly she felt at home, as if she, too, belonged here.

No. No, she didn’t.

She took a breath, steeled herself and tossed his words back at him, “So show me the best light of all.”

He smiled. “Right this way.”

Wouldn’t you just bloody know that it would be the skylight in his bedroom!

Daisy stopped dead at the door, realizing a split second before she crossed the threshold exactly where they were going. “I didn’t mean—”

Alex turned, flashing her a grin. “You asked for it.”

Daisy read the challenge in it—the very challenge she’d told Cal she could handle. And she could, damn it. So, deliberately, she stepped in and looked around. The skylight was above the bed. The bed looked to be the size of, perhaps, the Sahara Desert—but vastly more comfortable with its buff-colored duvet and a quartet of dark brown pillows.

“Very nice,” she said, doing her best to keep her gaze fixed on the skylight until she turned back to the living room again. “Let me shoot some photos out here.”

He smiled, but didn’t challenge her further, just let her wander around and look her fill.

Daisy resisted looking her fill. She’d have been here for hours, curious about the man, wanting to know him better, at the same time she knew she shouldn’t want to know him at all.

Alex’s apartment was not some sterile showplace. There were dishes in the sink, a newspaper on the counter. Two pairs of athletic shoes, a gym bag and a racing bike sat by what she supposed was the main front door—the one that didn’t lead down to his office. And one wall of the kitchen was painted as a mural of something that looked like the Greek islands—lots of blue sea and sky, white-washed buildings and blue domed churches. It drew her attention.

“Did Martha paint that?”

Martha was Lukas’s twin sister. Daisy had met her several times over the years. She knew Martha now lived part of the year in Montana—of all places—and part of the year on Long Island and wherever her husband, Theo Savas, was sailing boats.

It seemed an amazing exotic existence to Daisy who had been born in Colorado, came to the big city for university, and never left—except to go back home occasionally.

“She did,” Alex agreed. “Kind of bowls you over, doesn’t it?”

“I like it,” Daisy said.

“I didn’t,” Alex said, surprising her.

“What? Why not?”

He shook his head. “Memories.”

That startled her until she remembered him telling her about his childhood, about his brother who had died young.

“You could paint over it,” she suggested.

He shrugged. “I got used to it. I just wasn’t expecting it. I was heading out of town and I told her to paint whatever she wanted. She thought it would make me happy. Can we get on with this?” he said abruptly, gesturing to her camera.

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Daisy grimaced, feeling a flush of confusion engulf her. That would teach her.

She pointed to the armchair near the window. “Go sit there and look at one of your books.”

Alex picked up a book and sat down with it, opened it at random, studied it as if he cared what was in it while Daisy moved and shot, moved and shot.

He turned a page. “I hired a matchmaker.”

Daisy’s finger slipped on the shutter release. Then, taking a slow careful breath so as not to jar the camera, she clicked off several more shots and lowered it again.

“Did you?” she said, heart pounding. “Good for you. I’m sure you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for. Turn a little more this way.”

He turned. “I found her on the internet.”

A breath hissed through Daisy’s teeth. “The internet? For heaven’s sake, Alex! How do you know she’s legitimate? She might be a charlatan—someone hanging out her shingle, looking to make money off poor unsuspecting fools.”

He looked up from the book and raised a brow. “Poor unsuspecting fools … like me?”

Daisy’s cheeks burned. “I didn’t mean that! I never said—” She retreated behind her camera again. “I just meant that not everyone is reliable, honest. Did you get letters of recommendation? What do you know about her background?”

“She has a degree in human relations. She was born and raised in Virginia. She came to the ‘big city’ when she was just out of college. Reminded me a little of you.”

“I’m not from Virginia,” Daisy bit out. “And I don’t have a degree in human relations.”

“So maybe she’s more qualified than you are,” Alex mused, giving her a sly smile.

“Maybe she is. I’ve got enough here. Let’s go back down to your office.” Someplace less intimate. Someplace where she could focus on her work. She didn’t want to hear anything more about his matchmaker.

Alex picked up her camera bag, then started down the stairs again. He glanced back. “I went out with one of her suggestions last night.”

Daisy pasted on a bright smile. “How nice. Maybe you’ll have a wife by Christmas.”

He nodded. “Maybe I will. She’s a stockbroker. Nice enough. Intense, though,” he mused.

Daisy pointed him toward his drafting table. “Put out a drawing and focus,” she directed. She did not intend to get sucked into analyzing his date.

“Too intense for me,” he went on, even as he obediently pulled out a drawing, spread it on the table and stared down at it. “She’d talked nonstop about everything from chandeliers to parakeets to stock options to astronomy.”

“Well, it’s early days yet,” Daisy said briskly. “Maybe the next one will be better.”

If he’d been her client she’d have talked to him about that, tried to learn what he hadn’t liked, what was “too intense.” But she wasn’t finding a wife for Alex Antonides. He was someone else’s problem.

He kept his gaze on the drawing. “Maybe. I’m going out with another one tonight.”

“Another one?” That fast? Where was the “matchmaking” in that? It sounded more like trial and error.

He glanced around. “Amalie—that’s the matchmaker—has got a whole list.”

A list. Daisy wasn’t impressed. “Is she French? Or fake?” she added before she could help herself.

Alex raised a brow. “Her mother’s French. Is that a problem?”

Daisy raised her camera again, refusing to admit she was taking refuge behind it. “Of course not. I just wondered. I suppose she’s introducing you to French women then.” It made sense. He spent a good part of every year in Paris.

“Career women,” Alex corrected. “And I’m not looking for a French one. I live here now.”

That was news. Daisy stayed behind the camera. She kept moving.

Alex picked up the drawing and rolled it up. Whether she was finished or not, it was clear that he was. “She has a list as long as my arm,” he reported. “She said I need options.”

Daisy grunted noncommittedly. She didn’t think much of “options.” But then, when she helped people find the right mate, she was trying to find their soul mate, not a sex partner who was willing to share a mortgage.

“So,” Alex said, “I just have to find the right one.”

Good luck with that, Daisy thought. But she kept her skepticism to herself. If she expressed it, he’d tell her she should do it herself.

“All done,” she said, and began disassembling her camera and stowing it in her bag. “I’ll get to work editing these early next week. I’m going to be out all day tomorrow, and I’m not working this weekend. If you’ll give me your business card, I’ll email you when I’ve finished. Then you can let me know whether to send you a disk or email you files or send them directly to the magazine.”

Alex fished a card out of his wallet, started to hand it to her, then took it back and scribbled something on the back before pressing it into her palm again. “You can reach me at this number anytime.”

Not likely. But Daisy just pocketed it and smiled as she zipped her bag shut, stood up and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Then, deliberately, she stuck out her hand to Alex for a businesslike shake. “Thank you.”

He blinked, then stared—at her, at her hand. Something unreadable flickered across his face. Then in slow motion, he reached out and took her fingers in his. Flesh on flesh.

Daisy tried not to think about it. But his palm was warm and firm and there were light calluses on it, as if he didn’t only sit in his office and draw. She remembered those calluses, those fingers—the way they had grazed her skin, had traced the line of her jaw, the curve of her hip, the hollow of her collarbone. Other lines. Other hollows.

She swallowed hard.

Still he held her hand. Then abruptly he dropped it. “Thank you, too,” he said, his voice crisp. As businesslike as she hoped hers was.

“Goodbye.” One more polite smile and she’d be gone.

Alex nodded, his gaze fixed on hers. The phone on his desk rang. He grimaced, then picked it up. “What is it, Alison?” There was barely concealed impatience in his tone. Then he grimaced again. “Right. Okay. Give me a sec.” He turned back to Daisy. “I have to take this.”

“Of course. I was just on my way.”

She was down the steps and out the door without looking back. There. She’d done it—beard the lion in his den.

And survived.

Just like she’d told Cal she would.

Staring at the skylight in his ceiling in the dark didn’t have much to recommend it. There were stars. There were a few small clouds scudding along, silvery in the moonlight.

There was Daisy.

Alex flipped over and dragged the pillow over his head. It didn’t help. She was on the insides of his eyelids, it seemed.

The whole day had been a bloody disaster. Well, no, that wasn’t true. Before 3:00 p.m., things had been pretty normal. He’d been a little distracted, there had been a lot to do, but he’d got some work done.

And then Daisy had shown up. Exactly as he’d planned.

She was supposed to come, take her photos, and leave again. He was supposed to smile and look professional and competent and disinterested, and see her on her way. Asking her to take the photos was supposed to settle things between them, put them on a business footing.

It was supposed to pigeonhole her—and convince Alex that he wasn’t really attracted, that he hadn’t been thinking about her fifty times a day since he’d seen her again, that she didn’t draw his gaze more than any other woman, that he was perfectly happy to watch her walk out of his office and out of his life.

The operative word was supposed. The truth was, well, something else altogether.

And the day hadn’t been all that normal before three o’clock, either. He might have got some work done earlier in the day, but shortly before Daisy was due to arrive, he’d found himself walking over to look out the window every few minutes. It was a nice day, sunny, brisk. He was enjoying perfect fall weather. No more, no less.

So why had his heart kicked over at the sight of her down there on the sidewalk, pointing her camera up at his building? Why had he stopped Steve abruptly halfway through a question to go down and intercept her before she came in? Why had his fingers itched to reach out and touch her? And why had he had to fight to suppress the urge to kiss her when she’d turned and bumped straight into his chest?

She drove him crazy. She got under his skin. The minute he saw her, he couldn’t seem to focus on anything or anyone else.

The feeling persisted the whole time she was there—this desire to touch her, to smooth a hand over her hair, to pull her against him, to touch his lips to hers. His heart had begun hammering the moment he’d seen her, and it was still banging away when he’d had to take that phone call and she’d left.

He’d wanted to stop her, to say, “Hang on. Wait,” because it was too soon, there had been so little time, he had not had enough of her yet.

But at the same time, he knew it was stupid—he was stupid.

Daisy Harris—Connolly!—was not what he wanted—or needed—in his life.

And it didn’t matter that she was divorced now. She still apparently wanted things he didn’t want. Wanted things he wasn’t prepared to give. So the one bit of common sense he had, had kept his mouth shut.

He hadn’t said, “Wait.” Hadn’t stopped her or called her to come back.

It was better she had left. And better still that he had had a date that night with one of Amalie’s “options.”

Whoever she was, she would erase Daisy from his mind.

Except she hadn’t.

Her name was Laura or Maura or Dora. Hell, he couldn’t remember. She had been pleasant enough in an airheaded sort of way. But he’d spent the evening making mental comparisons between her and Daisy.

Suffice to say, Dora/Maura/Laura had come up short on all counts.

She didn’t have Daisy’s charm. She didn’t have Daisy’s ability to listen. She didn’t have Daisy’s smile or Daisy’s sparkling eyes or Daisy’s eager enthusiasm.

She wasn’t Daisy. He was bored.

He’d been polite enough. He’d listened and nodded and smiled until his jaw ached. He’d dutifully told her a bit about himself, but his comments were flat and uninteresting even to his own ears. It wasn’t hard to tell she was bored, too.

“You win a few, you lose a few,” she’d said, smiling and shaking his hand when they’d left the restaurant to go their separate ways.

It was nine-thirty. Shortly after ten he was home.

And that was when he began to realize his mistake. He’d not only lost, he’d lost big-time.

He hadn’t vanquished Daisy from his mind by having her come take photos this afternoon. On the contrary he now had a whole host of new images of Daisy—on his turf.

Now when he stood at the window, he could look down at where he’d first spotted her, camera to her eye, taking pictures of his building, her hair loose in the wind. And when he grew tired of pacing his apartment and went back down to his office to do some work, the minute he sat down at his drafting table, he could almost feel her presence just over his right shoulder where she had been that afternoon.

He crumpled up half a dozen attempted drawings before he gave up, stomped back upstairs, stripped off his clothes and took a shower.

She hadn’t been in his shower, at least.

Not this one, anyway. But he’d shared a shower with her five years ago, and the memories flashed across his mind with such insistence that he’d cranked the hot water down till only the cold beat down on his body. But his arousal persisted.

He wanted to go for a bike ride, burn off the energy, the edge. But not in Brooklyn. Not at midnight. There was stupid—and then there was stupid.

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 smiled 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.”