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“Why matchmaking?” he asked her suddenly.
She shrugged. “Long story.” And no invitation to ask her to tell it.
He lifted a corner of his mouth. “I’ve got time.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re scared.”
The color in her cheeks bloomed again. “I am not scared! What’s there to be scared of?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” He cocked his head. “Temptation maybe?”
She shook her head adamantly. “I’m not tempted. I’m busy. I have things to do. I haven’t seen you in five years, Alex. I barely knew you then. We don’t have a past to catch up on.”
“We had a hell of a lot.” He didn’t know why he was persisting, but he couldn’t seem to leave it alone.
“And we wanted to do different things with it. Goodbye, Alex.” She turned away and started to go back inside.
But before she could, Alex caught her arm, and spun her slowly back, then did what he’d been wanting to do ever since he’d realized who she was.
He dipped his head and kissed her.
It was instinct, desire, a mad impetuous hunger that he couldn’t seem to control. It was a roaring in his ears and a fire in his veins. It was the taste of Daisy—a taste he’d never forgotten. Never. And as soon as he tasted her, he wanted more.
And more.
For a second, maybe two, Daisy seemed to melt under the touch of his lips. She went soft and pliable, shaping her mouth to his. And then, in another instant, it was over.
She jerked away from him, stared at him for one horrified moment, cheeks scarlet, mouth still forming an astonished O. Then she pulled out of his grasp and bolted back inside the foyer.
“Daisy!”
The door slammed in his face.
Alex stared after her, still tasting her. Jolted, intrigued, stunned. Aroused.
Five years ago Daisy had been like a siren he’d followed eagerly, mindlessly, hungrily. He’d wanted her on every level imaginable. And having her that weekend over and over hadn’t assuaged his hunger. He’d only wanted more.
Leaving, thank God, had removed the temptation.
And now—within minutes of having seen her again—it was back. In spades.
It was the last thing he wanted. The last thing he needed.
Alex turned and walked down the steps, pausing only to drop the paper with her name and address in the trash.
She had been right to say no. He would be smart and walk away.
Ten minutes later Daisy was still shaking.
She sat at her desk, staring at the photo she was editing, and didn’t see it at all. Eyes closed or open, she only saw Alex—older, harder, stronger, handsomer—in every way more, even more compelling than the younger Alex had been.
She shuddered and scrubbed at her mouth with her fingers, trying to wipe away the taste of his kiss.
But all the scrubbing in the world wouldn’t do that, and she knew it. She’d tried to forget it for years. It hadn’t done a whit of good.
She hadn’t even tried to forget him. That would have been impossible. But as time passed, at least she’d managed to put him on a shelf in the back of her memory’s closet. He was still there, but he couldn’t hurt her.
But now Alex was here.
She’d just seen him, talked to him. Been kissed by him. Had almost, heaven help her, kissed him back. It had felt so right, so perfect, so exactly the way it had felt the first time.
But she knew better now.
He had come. He had gone. The other shoe had finally dropped. He wouldn’t come back.
“And it wouldn’t matter if he did,” Daisy said aloud.
Because if one thing was completely obvious, it was that however much more he had become, in fundamentals, Alex hadn’t changed a bit.
He might want to get married now, but he obviously didn’t want anything more than “friends—with benefits.” He didn’t want love. He didn’t want a real marriage. He didn’t want a family.
He didn’t want her.
For a nanosecond her traitorous heart had dared to believe he’d finally come to his senses, had learned the value of love, of relationships, of lifetime commitment.
Thank goodness, a nanosecond was all the time it had taken her to realize that there was no point in getting her hopes up.
Of course he had proved he still wanted her on one level—the one he had always wanted her on. She wasn’t such an innocent that she didn’t know desire when she felt it. And she had felt it hard and firm against her when Alex had kissed her and pressed his body against hers.
But physical desire was just that—a basic instinctive response. It had nothing to do with things that really mattered—love, commitment, responsibility, sharing of hearts and souls, dreams and desires.
It was nothing more than an itch to be scratched.
And she wasn’t about to be a matchmaker for a pairing like that. If he was interested in nothing more than a woman to share his bed—but not his heart—he wouldn’t be interested in the sort of marriages she believed in. So he wouldn’t be back.
And thank God for that—because if her heart still beat faster at the very sight of him and her body melted under his touch, at least her mind knew he was the last person she needed in her life.
Not just in her life, but in the life of the person she loved most in all the world—the one who, at this very moment, she could hear pounding his way up the stairs from the kitchen.
“Mom!” His voice was distant at first, then louder. “Mom!” And louder still as the door banged open. “Mom! Aren’tcha finished working yet? It’s time to go.”
Charlie.
Four and three-quarter years of sunshine and skinned knees and wet kisses and impatience all rolled up in the most wonderful person she knew.
He skidded to a stop in front of her and looked up at her, importuning. “Mom!”
“Charlie!” She smiled at him, echoing his tone, loving him with all her heart.
“Are you ready?” he demanded.
“Almost.” She turned back to close the file she hadn’t done a thing to since Alex had shown up on the doorstep. “Almost,” she repeated, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, then shutting the file.
She wished she could shut her memories of Alex down as easily. She couldn’t. Particularly she couldn’t right now—faced with the small boy staring up at her, all quivering impatience.
Impatience wasn’t Charlie’s middle name, but maybe it should have been. He’d been eager and energetic since the moment of his birth. Before his birth, in fact. He’d come almost two weeks early, right before Christmas. And he’d been taking the world by storm ever since.
He had a chipped tooth from a fall out of a tree back in May. He had a scab on his knee beneath his jeans even now. Daisy had told him last week she was going to buy stock in the Band-Aid company, and after he’d wrinkled his nose and said, “What’s stock?” he’d listened to her brief explanation and said, “Good idea.”
His stick-straight hair, the color of honey shot through with gold, was very close to the same shade as her own. But his light eyes were nothing like her stormy dark blue.
He didn’t look like Alex—except for the shape of his eyes.
And after nearly five years, she was inured to it. She didn’t see Alex in him every time she looked at him. She saw Charlie himself—not Alex’s son.
Except today. Today the eyes were Alex’s. The impatience was Alex’s. The “let’s get moving” was Alex down to the ground.
“In good time,” she said now, determined to slow Charlie down—a little, at least. But she managed a smile as she shut the computer down. And she was sure she was the only one who noticed her hands were shaking.
“You said we’d go at six-thirty. It’s almost six-thirty. The game’s gonna start.” He grabbed one of Daisy’s hands and began to tug her back toward the stairs.
“Coming,” Daisy said. But she straightened her desk, made a note to reorder the Cannavarro files, put her pencil in the drawer. All very methodical. Orderly. Step by step. Pay attention to detail. From the day that she’d learned she was pregnant, it was how she’d managed to cope.
Charlie bounced from one foot to the other until she finished and finally held out a hand to him again. “Okay. Let’s go.” She allowed herself to be towed down the stairs.
“We gotta hurry. We’re gonna be late. Come on. Dad’s pitching.”
Dad. One more reason she prayed that Alexandros Antonides didn’t darken her door again.
“Hey, Sport.” Cal dropped down beside Charlie on the other side of the blanket that Daisy had spread out to sit on while they watched the softball game.
They had been late, as Charlie feared, arriving between innings. But at least Cal, Daisy’s ex-husband, had already pitched in his half, so he could come sit with them until it was his turn to bat.
“We made a fire engine,” Charlie told him. “Me ‘n’ Jess. Outta big red cardboard blocks—this big!” He stretched his hands out a couple of feet at least.
Cal looked suitably impressed. “At preschool?”
Charlie bobbed his head. “You an’ me could make one.”
“Okay. On Saturday,” Cal agreed. “But we’ll have to use a cardboard box and paint it red. Grandpa will be in town. I’ll tell him to bring paint.”
Charlie’s eyes got big. “Super! Wait’ll I tell Jess ‘bout ours.”
“You don’t want to make him jealous,” Cal warned. He grinned at Charlie, then over the boy’s head at his mother.
Daisy smiled back and told herself that nothing had changed. Nothing. She and Charlie were doing what they often did—dropping by to watch Cal play ball in Central Park, which he and a few diehards continued to do well after the softball leagues ended in the summer. Now, in early October, there was a nip in the air, and the daylight was already going. But they continued to play.
And she and Charlie would continue to come and watch.
It was the joy of a civilized divorce, Daisy often reminded herself. She and Cal didn’t hate each other—and they both loved Charlie.
“—you?”
She realized suddenly that Cal was no longer talking to Charlie. He was talking to her. “Sorry,” she said, flustered. “I was just … thinking about something.”
“Apparently,” Cal said drily. Then he looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She looked around. “Where’s Charlie?”
Cal nodded in the direction of the trees where Charlie and the son of another one of the players were playing in the dirt. “He’s fine. You’re not. Something’s wrong.”
“No. Why should anything be wrong?” That was the trouble with Cal. He’d always been able to read her like a book.
“You’re edgy. Distracted. Late,” he said pointedly.
“I didn’t realize you were timing me. I’ve got things on my mind, Cal. Work—”
But he cut her off. “And you’re biting my head off, which isn’t like you, Daze. And you must’ve come on the bus.”
“The bus?” she said stupidly.
“You always walk, so Charlie can ride his bike.” Cal looked around pointedly. There was no bike because, he was right, they hadn’t had time to bring it. Charlie wanted to ride his bike everywhere. It was the smallest two-wheeler Daisy had ever seen, but Charlie loved it. Daisy was sure he would have slept with it every night if she hadn’t put her foot down. Cal had given it to Charlie for his fourth birthday.
Daisy had protested, had said he was too young, that no four-year-old needed a bike.
“Not every four-year-old,” Cal had agreed. “Just this one.” He’d met her skeptical gaze with confident brown eyes and quiet certainty. “Because he wants it more than anything on earth.”
Daisy couldn’t argue with that. If Charlie’s first word hadn’t been bike it had been in the first ten. He’d pointed and crowed, “Bike!” well before his first birthday. And he’d been desperate for a bicycle last winter. She hadn’t thought it would last. But Cal had insisted, and he’d been right.
Charlie’s eyes had shone when he’d spotted the bike that morning. And over the past six months, his love for it had only grown. Since Cal had helped him learn to balance and he could now ride it unaided, Charlie wanted to ride it everywhere.
Usually she let him ride to the park while she walked alongside him. But they had been late today because … because of her visitor.
She was suddenly aware that Cal was watching her, not the game. “He doesn’t have to ride his bike every time,” she said testily. “And it’s nearly dark.”
“True.” Cal stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back, resting his weight on his elbows and forearms as his gaze slowly moved away from her to focus on the game, yelling at the batter to focus. Then, still keeping his gaze on the batter, he persisted quietly, “So why don’t you just tell me.”
He wasn’t going to leave it alone. She’d never won an argument with Cal. She’d never been able to convince him of anything. If he was wrong, he couldn’t be told. He always had to figure it out himself—like his “I can love anyone I will myself to” edict. He’d been as wrong about that as she had been about her “love at first sight” belief.
Clearly, when it came to love, the two of them didn’t know what they were talking about.
Now he stared at her and she plucked at the grass beside the blanket, stared at it. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed. She tried to make it into a mantra so she could convince herself. But she was no better at lying to herself than she was at lying to her ex-husband. Finally she raised her gaze to meet his as he turned away from the game to look at her. “I saw Alex.”
There was the crack of bat hitting ball. Whoops and yells abounded.
Cal never turned his head to see what happened. His eyes never left Daisy’s. He blinked once. That was all. The rest of his body went still, though. And his words, when they came, were quiet. “Saw him where?”
