like a mantra.
Daisy wasn’t exactly coping now. Alex’s mere presence created an electricity in the air, a force field of awareness she could never manage to be indifferent to. Damn it.
“She’ll be fine,” Alex said smoothly now. “She’s just had a bit of a shock.” He stepped even closer and looped an arm over her shoulders.
Daisy nearly jumped out of her skin. At the same time, though, her traitorous body clamored to sink into his embrace. Muscle memory was a dangerous thing. Daisy held herself rigid, resisting him, resisting her own inclination.
“She’ll be all right. I’ll take care of her.” Alex’s tone was all reassurance as he smiled and somehow put himself between her and Phil, edging the other man toward the door, making it clear that Phil didn’t need to hang around.
Phil didn’t hang around. He understood male territoriality as well as the next guy. “Right,” he said, all smiles and cheerful bravado. “I’ll tell Lottie.”
And he was out the door and down the steps without glancing back.
“Thank you very much,” Daisy said drily, slipping out from beneath his arm, which still managed to leave her with a sense that it was still there. She could feel the warm weight of it even though she’d stepped away. Instinctively she wrapped her own arms across her chest.
What was he doing here? The question pounded again in her brain.
“Daisy.” The way he said her name was somewhere between musing and caressing. It sent the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. “It is fate,” he murmured.
“What?” Daisy said sharply.
“I was just thinking about you.” His tone was warm. He acted as if they were old friends. Well, maybe to him that was all they were.
“I can’t imagine why,” Daisy said, which was the absolute truth.
“I’m looking for a wife.”
She stared at him, her jaw dropping.
He just smiled, expecting no doubt to hear her say, Oh, yes, please! Pick me.
Daisy hugged her arms more tightly across her chest. “Good luck with that.” She could have said, You don’t want a wife. You made a huge point of telling me you didn’t want a wife!
Now Alex raised his brows. The smile still lurking. “I wasn’t proposing,” he said mildly.
Mortified, Daisy said stiffly, “Of course you weren’t.”
She wasn’t going to bring up the past at all. It did her no credit. She’d been young and stupid and far too romantic for her own good when they’d met five years ago at a wedding reception.
Daisy had been one of her college roommate, Heather’s, bridesmaids, and Alex had been pressed into service as a last-minute substitute for a sick groomsman. Their eyes had met—something wild and hot and amazing had sparked between them—and to Daisy’s fevered romantic twenty-three-year-old brain, it had been one of those meant-to-be moments.
They had only had eyes for each other from the moment they’d met. They talked, they danced, they laughed, they touched. The electricity between them could have lit New York City day and night for a week.
So this was love at first sight. She remembered thinking that, stunned and delighted to finally experience it. She had, of course, always believed. Her parents had always told Daisy and her sister that they’d known from the moment they’d met that they were destined to be together.
Julie, Daisy’s sister, had felt that way about Brent, the moment she’d met him in eighth grade. They’d married right out of high school. Twelve years later, they were still deeply in love.
Daisy had never felt that way—wasn’t sure she believed it—until the day Alex had walked into her life.
That afternoon had been so extraordinary, so mind-numbingly, body-tinglingly perfect that she’d believed. It was just the way her parents had described it, the way Julie had described it—the sense of knowing, of a belief that all the planets were finally lined up, that the absolutely right man had come into her life.
Of course she hadn’t said so. Not then. She’d just met Alex. But she hadn’t wanted the day to end—and he hadn’t, either. She was the bridesmaid who had been deputized to take Heather’s car back to Manhattan after the reception.
“I’m coming, too,” Alex had said in that rough sexy baritone, and his eyes had met hers. “If that’s all right with you.”
Of course it had been all right with her. It was just one more reason to believe he was feeling the same thing, too. Together they had driven back to Manhattan. And all the way there, they had talked.
He was an architect working for a multinational firm, but eager to strike out on his own. He had his own ideas, a desire to blend old and new, to create both beauty and utility and to design buildings that made people more alive, that spoke to their hearts and souls. His eyes had lit up when he’d talked about his goals, and she had shared his enthusiasm.
He had shared hers about her own professional hopes and dreams. She was working for Finn MacCauley, one of the preeminent fashion and lifestyle photographers in the country. It was almost like an apprenticeship, she’d told him. She was learning so much from Finn, but was looking forward, like Alex was, to finding her own niche.
“People definitely,” she’d told him. “Families, kids, people at work and play. I’d like to shoot you,” she’d told him. She wanted to capture the moment, the man.
And Alex had simply said, “Whenever you want.”
When they got to the city, she had left the car in the parking garage by Heather’s Upper East Side apartment, then she’d taken Alex downtown on the subway to the Soho flat she was subleasing from a dental student on a semester’s internship abroad.
On the subway, Alex had caught her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her fingers, then dipping his head to touch his lips to hers. It was a light touch, the merest promise, but it set her blood on fire. And when he pulled back, she caught her breath because, looking into his eyes, she had seen a hunger there that was as deep and intense as her own.
It had never happened before. A desire so powerful, so intense just grabbed her—and it wouldn’t let go. Daisy wasn’t used to this sort of intensity. She didn’t fall into bed at the drop of a hat, had only once before fallen into bed with a man at all. It had been fevered groping on his part and discomfort on hers.
With Alex, she’d tried telling herself, it would be more of the same.
But it wasn’t.
His kisses were nothing like any she’d tasted before. They were heady, electric, bone-melting. They’d stood on the sidewalk nearly devouring each other. Not something Daisy had ever done!
She couldn’t get him back to her apartment fast enough.
Once there, though, she’d felt suddenly awkward, almost shy. “Let me take your picture,” she’d said.
And Alex had given her a lazy teasing smile and said, “If that’s what you want.”
Of course it wasn’t what she wanted—or not entirely what she wanted. And it wasn’t what he wanted, either. It was fore-play. Serious and smiling, goofing around, letting her direct him this way and that, all the way watching her—burning her up!—from beneath hooded lids.
He wanted her. He didn’t have to say it. They circled each other, moved in, moved away. The temperature in the room rose. The temperature in Daisy’s blood was close to boiling.
Then Alex had reached out and took the camera from her. He aimed, shot, posed her, caught the ferocity of her desire, as well. He stripped off his jacket, she unbuttoned his shirt. He skimmed down the zip of her dress. But before he could peel it off, she had