concerned. “What’s wrong?”
He’d swallowed. She could remember the way she’d watched his Adam’s apple move in his throat, then the way he’d shaken his head slowly and said, “You’re talking a lifetime, aren’t you?”
And ever honest, Daisy had nodded. “Yes.”
There had been a split second before the world tilted. Then Alex had sucked in a harsh breath. “No.” Just the one word. Hard, decisive, determined. Then, apparently seeing the look on her face, he’d been at pains to assure her. “Oh, not for you. I’m not saying you won’t have a lifetime … with someone. But … not me.”
She remembered staring at him, stunned at the change in him. He seemed to have pulled inside himself. Closed off. Turned into the Ice Man as she’d watched. “What?” Even to her own ears her voice had sounded faint, disbelieving.
Alex’s jaw set. “I’m not getting married,” he’d told her. “Ever.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to.”
“But—”
“No.” His tone was implacable. Yet despite the coldness of his tone, there was fire in his eyes. “No hostages to fortune,” he’d said. “No wife. No kids. No falling in love. Too much pain. Never again.”
“Because … because of your brother?” She had only barely understood that kind of pain. Her parents had been gloriously happily married until her father’s death a month before. And she had witnessed what her mother was going through after. There was no doubt it was hard. It was hard on her and on her sister, too. But her parents had had a beautiful marriage. It had been worth the cost.
She’d tried to explain that to Alex in the car. He hadn’t wanted to hear it.
“It’s fine for you if that’s what you want,” he’d said firmly. “I don’t.”
“But last night … this morning …?” Daisy had been grasping desperately at straws.
“You were great,” he’d said. Their gazes had met for a moment. Then deliberately Alex looked away.
By the time they’d arrived at the airport, there were no more kisses, only a silence as big and dark as the Atlantic that would soon stretch between them. Alex didn’t look at her again. His fingers were fisted against his thighs as he stared resolutely out the window.
Daisy had stared at him, willed him to reconsider, to believe—to give them a chance!
“Maybe I was asking for too much too soon,” she ventured at last as their hired car reached the airport departure lanes. “Maybe when you come back …”
Alex was shaking his head even as he turned and looked at her. “No,” he said, his voice rough but adamant.
She blinked quickly, hoping he didn’t notice the film of unshed tears in her eyes as she stared at him mutely.
“I won’t be back, Daisy. A lifetime is what you want,” he’d said. “I don’t.”
It was the last thing he’d said to her—the last time she’d seen him—until she’d opened the door a few minutes ago.
Now she dared to stare at him for just a moment as she tried to calm her galloping heart and mend her frayed nerves, tried to stuff Alexandros Antonides back into the box in the distant reaches of her mind where she’d done her best to keep him for the past five years.
It wasn’t any easier to feel indifferent now than it ever had been. He was certainly every bit as gorgeous as he had been then. A shade over six feet tall, broad-shouldered in a pale blue dress shirt and a gray herringbone wool sport coat, his tie loosened at his throat, Alex looked like the consummate successful professional. His dark hair was cut a little shorter now, but it was still capable of being wind-tossed. His eyes were still that clear, light gray-green, arresting in his tanned face with its sharply defined cheekbones and blade-straight nose. And his sensuous mouth was, heaven help her, more appealing than ever with its hint of a smile.
“Why are you here?” she demanded now.
“Lukas sent me,” he said.
“Lukas?”
Alex’s cousin Lukas had been her official “other half” at the wedding where she’d met Alex. He’d insisted she stay by his side at the reception long enough so that his mother and aunts wouldn’t fling hopeful Greek girls at his head. Once he’d established that he wasn’t available, he’d given her a conspiratorial wink, a peck on the cheek and had ambled off to drink beer with his brothers and cousins, leaving her to fend for herself.
That was when she’d met Alex.
Now Alex pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and poked it in front of her face. “He said I should talk to his friend Daisy the matchmaker.”
Yes, there it was—her name, address and phone number—in Lukas’s spiky handwriting. But she was more arrested by his words than what he was waving in front of her face. “You’re looking for a matchmaker? You?”
Alex shrugged. “No doubt you’re amazed,” he said easily. “Thinking I’ve changed my mind.”
She didn’t know what to think.
“I haven’t,” he said firmly. “I’m not looking for hearts and flowers, kindred spirits, the melding of two souls any more than I ever was.”
She wondered if he was being so adamant in case she decided to propose. No fear of that, she wanted to tell him. Instead she pressed her lips into a tight line.
“I want a marriage of convenience,” Alex went on. “A woman with her own life, doing her own thing. She’ll go her way, I’ll go mine. But someone who will turn up if a business engagement calls for it. And who’s there … at night.”
“A sex buddy?” Daisy said drily.
Was that a line of color creeping above his shirt collar? “Friends,” he said firmly. “We’ll be friends. It’s not just about sex.”
“Hire a mistress.”
“I don’t want a mistress. That is just about sex.”
“Whatever. I can’t help you,” she said flatly.
“Why not? You’re a matchmaker.”
“Yes, but I’m a matchmaker who does believe in hearts and flowers, kindred spirits, the melding of two souls.” She echoed his words with a saccharine smile. “I believe in real marriages. Love matches. Soul mates. The kind you don’t believe in.” She met his gaze steadily, refusing to look away from those beautiful pale green eyes that she’d once hoped to drown in forever.
Alex’s jaw tightened. “I believe in them,” he said harshly. “I just don’t want one.”
“Right. So I repeat, I can’t help you.” She said the words again, meant them unequivocally. But even as she spoke in a calm steady tone, her heart was hammering so
