her in his arms and took her mouth with a hunger that said, The hell with breakfast. Let’s go back to bed.
But she’d fed him a piece of bacon, laughing as he’d nibbled her fingers. And she’d actually got him to eat eggs and toast as well before they’d rolled in the sheets once more.
Finally in the early afternoon he’d groaned as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed. “Got to grab a shower. Come with me?” He’d cocked his head, grinning an invitation that, despite feeling boneless already, Daisy hadn’t been able to refuse.
The next half hour had been the most erotic experience of her life. Both of them had been wrung out, beyond boneless—and squeaky clean—by the time the hot water heater had begun to run cold.
“I need to go,” he’d said, kissing her thoroughly once more as he pulled on a pair of cords and buttoned up his shirt.
“Yes,” she agreed, kissing him back, but then turning away long enough to stuff her legs into a pair of jeans and pluck a sweater from the drawer. “I’ll go out to the airport with you.”
Alex had protested that it wasn’t necessary, that he was perfectly capable of going off by himself, he did it all the time.
But Daisy was having none of it. She’d smiled saucily and said, “Yes, but now you have me.”
She’d gone with him to the airport, had sat next to him in the back of the hired car and had shared long drugging kisses that she expected to live off until he returned.
“I’ll miss you,” she’d told him, nibbling his jaw. “I can’t believe this has happened. That we found each other. I never really believed, but now I do.”
“Believed?” Alex lifted his head from where he’d been kissing her neck long enough to gaze into her eyes. “In what?”
“This.” She punctuated the word with a kiss, then looked deeply into his eyes. “You. Me. It’s just like my mother said. Love at first sight.” She smiled, then sighed. “I just hope we get more years than they did.”
There was a sudden stillness in him. And then a slight movement as he pulled back. A small line appeared between his brows. “Years? They?”
“My parents. They fell in love like this. Took one look at each other and fell like a ton of bricks. There was never anyone else for either of them. They were two halves of the same soul. They should have had fifty years. Seventy-five,” Daisy said recklessly. “Instead of twenty-six.”
Alex didn’t move. He barely seemed to breathe. The sparkle in his light green eyes seemed suddenly to fade.
Daisy looked at him, 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
