LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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