was a damn fool idea. When Caroline had said she couldn’t make it, but suggested he invite his friend Daisy, he’d been surprised.
“My friend Daisy?” he’d echoed, puzzled.
Caroline had shrugged. “I assume she’s your friend. You talk about her all the time.”
Did he? Surely not. But he could hardly deny their friendship if it came across that way to Caroline because how could he justify talking about her if she wasn’t a friend? What would Caroline think if he said she wasn’t a friend at all, she was … a thorn in his side, an itch he never quite managed to get rid of. Like poison ivy, perhaps.
So he’d shrugged and told Caroline he’d ask. And, hell, why not? He could prove to Daisy that he’d listened, that he hadn’t gone straight home and asked Caroline to marry him. He’d done what Daisy suggested and got to know her.
He hadn’t fallen in love with her. That wasn’t going to happen. He knew it. Caroline knew it.
They had seen each other as often as their schedules allowed. They always had a good time. Relationship-wise they were on the same page—and perfectly happy to be there. And if they still hadn’t managed to make it to bed together, well, the time had never been right.
She’d had an early meeting or he was flying off to Paris. She was in Rio or he was in Vancouver. It had nothing to do with memories of Daisy in his bed. She hadn’t been in this bed.
Only in his bedroom. And the fact that he couldn’t forget that was still driving him nuts.
“Alex!” A hearty booming voice from the doorway startled him back to the present—back to the lack of Daisy anywhere in sight. He turned to see Tom Holcomb, the hospital’s vice president in charge of building development.
Tom was grinning broadly, holding out a hand to shake. “Good to see you. Big night for you.” He pumped Alex’s hand, then looked around. “Where’s your date?”
Alex opened his mouth, hoping that a suitable polite reply would come out when, all of a sudden, from behind a hand caught his.
“Sorry,” Daisy said, catching her breath.
Alex turned his head, saw her smiling up at him, and felt his heart do some sort of triple axel in his chest. There was a glow to her cheeks, as if she’d been running, but she was smiling.
And so was he. His heart which, after the triple axel, had seemed to stop all together as he looked at her, began beating again. “About time,” he said gruffly, swallowing his relief. She was gorgeous. She wore a long black wool dress coat and he could barely get a glimpse of the dress beneath it, but what he could see seemed to sparkle—just as Daisy did. Her eyes were alight, electric almost, taking in everything. She’d pinned her hair up in some sort of intricate knot which reminded him of the way she’d worn it at the wedding when he’d met her. He remembered taking it down, running his fingers through it. Felt a quickening in his body at the temptation to do it again now. It was, after all, already slightly askew, as if she had been running.
“My cab got stuck in traffic. Think I stood you up?” She laughed.
“No.” He wiped damp palms down the sides of his trousers. He wasn’t admitting anything.
“Your date, I presume?”
Alex was suddenly conscious of Tom Holcomb still standing beside him, looking with interest at Daisy.
Alex nodded and drew her forward. “This is Daisy Connolly. Daisy, Tom Holcomb. He is the VP in charge of building development, the man I worked with on the hospital design.”
“The man who rubber-stamped his terrific ideas,” Tom corrected, shaking the hand Daisy offered. “I’m delighted to meet you. Are you an architect, too?”
“No. A photographer,” Daisy said, shaking the hand he held out. “I recently did a photo shoot of Alex at a building he restored in Brooklyn.”
“A man of many talents,” Tom agreed. He drew Daisy with him into the hotel, asking questions about her own work which she answered, still smiling. And Daisy, with a glance back at Alex, went with him.
Alex stood watching, bemused, and somehow a little dazed.
Dazed by Daisy. Dazzling Daisy, he thought, smiling wryly at his own foolishness. But it was true. And he didn’t mind following, it gave him a chance to admire her from another angle.
From any angle tonight she was elegant, sophisticated, tailored, stylish. She would never be the stunning classical beauty that Caroline was. Daisy’s nose still had a spattering of freckles, her cheekbones were not quite as sharply pronounced. Her mouth was less sculpted than impish. And you could never say that Daisy had every hair in place.
But everything about her was alive—from her unruly hair to her lively sparkling eyes to her kissable lips.
Alex tried not to think about her kissable lips. It wasn’t as if he was going to be tasting them again this evening. Furthermore, he reminded himself, he shouldn’t even want to. He was this close to buying Caroline an engagement ring.
But Caroline’s kisses had never intoxicated him. They’d never made him hot and hard and hungry in a matter of an instant. He’d lost every bit of his common sense that weekend with Daisy—and she hadn’t had any at all.
There had never been anything cool, calm and collected about her. She was a lead-with-her-heart, damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead sort of woman.
Basically the anti-Caroline. And Caroline was what he wanted.
Wasn’t she?
“Are you coming?”
Alex jerked his brain back into gear to see that Tom had disappeared into the hotel, but that Daisy was still standing at the top of the stairs by the revolving door, waiting.
“Got distracted. Sorry.” He bounded up the steps, feeling awkward, caught out. And feeling that way, he challenged her. “Been running?” he asked her gruffly.
“I told you,” she said with some asperity. “The cab was caught in traffic. I left it in the middle of Columbus Circle.”
“You walked from Columbus Circle?” Wide-eyed he stared at her high pointy-toed heels.
“No,” she said flatly. “I ran.”
Definitely the anti-Caroline. Alex shook his head, dazed and amazed, and unable to keep from grinning. “Of course you did.”
Daisy glared, her eyes flashing. “You said not to be late!”
“So I did.” His grin widened briefly, then he met her gaze. “Thank you.”
Their eyes locked. And Alex felt the electricity arc between them exactly the way it always did. It didn’t seem to matter that she was all wrong for him. He jerked his gaze away from hers, but it only went as far as her lips. Nervously she licked them.
Alex’s body went on full alert.
Daisy tore her gaze away. “It sounded like the sort of occasion where it wouldn’t do to waltz in late,” she said, a little ragged
