Breaking the Greek's Rules (6 page)

“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.