LITMIR.BIZ

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so at her own risk.

      Some unfathomable force drove her to stand. Saying nothing to her friends, she sidestepped the table and walked toward the doorway, as if an invisible thread were drawing her to him.

      Even if she was having second thoughts, he didn’t give her the chance to reconsider. Without a word, he took her by the hand and headed for the elevators, forcing her to keep up with his long, purposeful strides. He led her straight into an open elevator, and as the doors closed, the tension between them reached a crescendo. He backed her against the wall and kissed her, bringing those fantasies to life in ways she never could have imagined. And by the time they reached his room—

      “Hey, lady! Watch where you’re going!”

      A hand clamped down on Alyssa’s arm and pulled her backward at the same time a car horn blared. She whipped around to find that the hand on her arm belonged to an older man who had just pulled her out of the path of an oncoming car.

      She stared at him dumbly, then glanced at the traffic whizzing by. Good Lord. What was the matter with her?

      She blinked, bringing herself back to reality. “Thank you,” she told the man. “I—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

      He gave her a smile. “You must have been daydreaming.”

      “Yes,” she said. “I guess I was.”

      “Better be more careful next time,” he said as he continued down the street.

      Alyssa stood there for a moment, collecting her wits and chastising herself for walking around in traffic like some kind of loony romantic with her head in the clouds. She’d spent a lot of time in the past six months thinking about what had happened in Seattle, but this was the first time that preoccupation had nearly gotten her killed. In every other aspect of her life, she had her head on straight. So why was it that the memory of that man could still make her behave like an idiot?

      Oh, hell. She knew why. Because the week she’d spent with him had been the most incredible experience of her life and no man since had measured up. Not one of them had even come close.

      Particularly the man she’d met today.

      She’d left the restaurant a few minutes ago, thankful she’d agreed to meet him for an early lunch and not dinner. Of course, for the right man, she could have stretched her hour-long lunch into two, but this guy hadn’t even been worth a coffee break.

      Not that he was unattractive. He was tall and blond with surfer-boy good looks—every woman in the place had noticed him. Unfortunately he’d turned out to be the most smug, self-centered, self-important man she’d ever met.

      The light turned red and the Walk sign came on. Alyssa had just stepped off the curb when she heard a voice behind her.

      “Alyssa! Wait!”

      She turned to see her sister, Kim, hurrying down the sidewalk toward her, moving clumsily in her too-tall heels, the breeze swirling her hair into a copper cloud around her head. She stopped in front of Alyssa, breathing hard.

      Alyssa looked at her incredulously. “Kim? What are you doing here?”

      “I was sitting in the coffeehouse across the street from the restaurant, waiting for you to come out. But you left so quickly I had a hard time catching up.” She wiped a strand of windblown hair from her face and flashed Alyssa a big grin. “So? How was your date with Tom?”

      Oh, Lord. That goofy smile again. Ever since Kim had gotten engaged, she’d become The Stepford Sister, with a mission to make Alyssa as ecstatically happy as she was. Unfortunately that meant setting her up with anyone she could find who was male and had a pulse. Since Alyssa had been transferred from Seattle several months ago, Kim had talked her into four blind dates, and every one of them had been a disaster. And this guy—a neighbor of Kim’s fiancé—had been the worst one yet.

      “How was it?” Alyssa said. “Well, let’s see…have you ever listened to somebody talk about himself?”

      “Sure.”

      “For an entire hour?”

      Kim’s buoyant smile sank into a frown. “Oh, come on. He couldn’t have been that bad.”

      “Do you know what he does for a living?”

      “Yeah. He sells luxury cars. Jeff says he makes a lot of money.”

      “Oh, yeah. He told me he made big bucks last year, but—hush, hush—what the IRS doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

      Kim winced. “Well, if he sells cars, he probably drives a nice one, right?”

      “Sure he does. It’s very expensive and classy and prestigious, you know, and he told me if I’m very, very lucky, he might take me for a ride in it someday. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

      Kim’s expression grew progressively more pained. She shrugged weakly. “Okay. But at least it sounds as if he likes to talk. Beats the silent type.”

      “Only if we’d had an actual conversation. It was more like pontification. I got to hear about The World According to Tom. Religion, politics, sex, the stock market—I heard it all. I’d be willing to bet he couldn’t even tell you my name.”

      “Come on, Alyssa. There must have been something good about him.”

      “Kim,” she said sharply, “the man could barely eat because he was so busy patting himself on the back!”

      Kim held up her palm. “Okay. I get the picture. I just thought you two might get along, you know? After all, you went to the same university.”

      “So did ten thousand other people.”

      “So you have nothing in common?”

      “Yes. We do. We both have opposable thumbs and walk upright. But I’m looking for a little more compatibility than being part of the same species.”

      “But opposites attract. Everyone knows that.”

      “No, they don’t. That’s a myth perpetuated by people who screwed up and married somebody totally wrong for them and now they’re looking for a way to explain the dumb choice they made.”

      “Okay, so this one didn’t work out. But there’s still that other guy Jeff works with. The one who—”

      Alyssa held up her hand. “No. No more blind dates. Just let me make my own choices from now on, okay?”

      “So the men you pick will be better?”

      “Yes!”

      “Like Mr. Wonderful in Seattle? The man who had an affair with you for a week, lied to you about who he was, then disappeared without a trace?”

      Alyssa cringed. Whenever she thought about that time in Seattle, she tried very hard to edit out the way it had ended. The week they’d spent together had been incredible, and not just because of the sex. He said he’d never been to Seattle before, so she’d shown him the sights, taking him to museums and parks and restaurants and enjoying his company more with every moment that had passed. She’d shared more intimate details about her life with him than with any man she’d ever known. She’d told him about her family, her job, her volunteer work, and he’d listened with rapt attention, as if she were the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. She knew she couldn’t have been. Not even close. She didn’t consider herself to be an unattractive woman, but fascinating she wasn’t.

      Still, in spite of her rational, reasonable nature that told her how crazy it was, she’d begun to imagine what forever with him might be like. Then she’d awoken one morning to find him gone, with only a cursory note left behind. It’s been fun, but I have to go. Derek.

      She’d told herself to let it drop, to forget him, to pretend the week had never happened, because it clearly hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to her. But she couldn’t stop herself from trying to find him. And that was when she’d made the most painful

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