“Well, it’s late. I’d better go.”

“Yes, I suppose….” Sarah answered.

Desire stretched between them like a taut, heavy rope. If either tugged, the other would topple and this farce, this forced politeness, would be over. All she had to do was smile, open the door, let him leave, take two aspirin and retreat to her bed, alone, for twelve more years.

But she couldn’t leave it like this.

“Alex, aren’t you going to kiss me good-night?”

He took one step toward her. “I wouldn’t dare kiss you, Sarah.” He hesitated for an instant. “First date, you know.”

“But, Alex…”

His honest admission made the ache in her body more immediate, more demanding than the ache in her heart. She wanted him so desperately, she could barely remember the hurt, the anger, the vows of revenge.

She held out her hand to pull him back into the room. “It’s not our first date now, is it?”

Dear Reader,

Remember that special high school boyfriend? Some of you lucky ladies married him and are still living happily ever after. Some of us lost him to a prettier girl, or said a bittersweet goodbye as we went off in different directions, vowing to be true but quickly finding other boys—men now—and feeling that old flame die.

Then there’s Sarah Nevins, beautiful and feisty, whose memories are still feeding the blaze of that first love many years later. He was the one who ended their youthful romantic idyll, and now, out of the blue, he’s back, wanting a second chance.

What’s a girl to do? Especially when he plies her with flowers and…air conditioners. It’s a sizzling summer in New York, and when Sarah and Alex are together, the temperature only rises. The old passion is still there, unabated. All Sarah has to do is forgive him for the past, but can she let go of her need for revenge?

I recommend that you find a cool spot and pour yourself a glass of iced tea before you turn another page of this book. Otherwise, you might find it…Too Hot To Handle. Here’s wishing you a great summer with lots of time for reading!

Barbara Daly

Books by Barbara Daly

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

859—A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS

HARLEQUIN DUETS

13—GREAT GENES!

34—NEVER SAY NEVER!

69—YOU CALL THIS ROMANCE!?

ARE YOU FOR REAL?

Too Hot to Handle

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is for my park friends, those intrepid New Yorkers who walk their dogs in Washington Square at seven in the morning, no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world or falling out of the clouds above them: Wanda, Gideon and Crissy; Natt and Nickie; Mary Lou and Emily; Mary, Teddy and Jordan; Lynn, Boris and Jenny; Marvin, Ziggy and Miss Daphne; Ann, Pat, Phoebe and Siren; David, Russ and Sally; Marsha and her Emily; Rozanna and the memory of Tara; Susan, first with Jazz and now with Ralph; Holden, Calpurnia, Nina, Lucy, Tiger, the sweet Sheltie, and all their moms and dads; Sandra and Lou, who are actually walking; and Cecily, my excuse for being there; and New York itself, whose special qualities make friendships like ours possible. Bless you, and stay strong.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

1

“YOU NEED TO GET LAID.”

Dumbfounded, Sarah Nevins stared across her desk at Macon Trent, congenital nerd and, as the guy who kept the computers up and running at Great Graphics! her most essential employee. Otherwise, she’d fire him on the spot.

“Don’t hold back, Macon,” she said, forcing her lips into a tight little smile. “Just be blunt.”

“As blunt as you were with Ray just now?”

Sarah’s steady gaze wavered. “What exactly did I say to Ray?”

“You told him his copy for the RemCom brochure sucked blood from chickens. It was not your usual management style.”

Sarah sank her face into her hands. “Where is he? I have to apologize.”

“He’s in the rest room crying.”

“Okay, as soon as he comes out.” She rocked her head from side to side. “I don’t know what made me do it.”

“You aren’t like the Sarah we keep working for in spite of our miserable paychecks. How long has it been since you went out with a man?”

Sarah raised her head to glare at him. “Macon, that’s even worse than asking a woman how much she weighs.” He needed contact lenses, a personal shopper and a lengthy session with Miss Manners.

“Oh. Thanks for the tip.” His reflective pause was brief. “I think your last date was about a year and a half ago. With our cardstock salesman.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Our former cardstock salesman.”

She gritted her teeth. Even Miss Manners would find Macon a challenge. “I didn’t like his yellows. He took it personally.”

His other eyebrow winged upward. She gave up the fight. After a deep, mood-changing sigh, she said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should start looking around for a new relationship.” She, at least, had some manners, some delicacy of expression. But she wouldn’t be looking for a relationship, she’d be looking for a man, somebody to satisfy the needs only a man could satisfy.

“Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Do I ever?”

“Not at the office.”

“Not anywhere. I’ll meet a man through friends, or find a bonded carpenter or plumber. A union man with credentials.”

The search and capture wouldn’t be too difficult. Her standards were reasonable and easily met. He should be clean—drug-free, disease-free and addicted to daily showers, deodorants and promising toothpastes—and lacking a record of abusive behavior. Other than that, almost anyone would do. She wasn’t looking for a man to share her dreams, make her rich, raise her consciousness, enhance her knowledge or give her a home and children. Many years ago when she was young and hopeful, she’d wanted those things with Alex—Alexander Asquith-Emerson—and she still felt that if she couldn’t have them with him, she didn’t want them.

“Sarah…” Macon seemed to gather up something within himself as he leaned forward. “These days the world is a dangerous place for women. Maybe I could fill the current void. You and I know and understand each other, and all I feel for you is the deepest respect. No strings. No promises except my promise of total discretion. I could get you over your rough spot.”

Today was apparently going to be studded with shocks, so she might as well get used to them. Sarah gazed into his eyes, seeing nothing there but an earnest need to help her out, and as magnified as Macon’s eyes were behind the Coke-bottle lenses of his glasses, you could pretty much see whatever was there. But he’d given her an opening to say something to him she’d been wanting to say for a long time, if she could get her mind off her own problems long enough to grasp the opportunity.

“Macon,” she said with great solemnity, “I am deeply flattered by your offer, and I’m tempted to accept it. You have no idea how attractive a man you are.”

He actually could be, if it weren’t for those glasses, his depressing sartorial choices and a haircut that looked as if he’d done it himself. She rarely noticed Macon’s looks. She was too dependent on his genius.

“That’s what my landlady tells me,” Macon admitted. “She’s always after me to buy clothes, get a better barber.”

Any barber. “Listen to her,” Sarah said. “A few outside changes would give you self-confidence. Personally, I’m extremely fond of you just as you are. But I have made a vow not to have sex with my professional colleagues. You saw what happened with the cardstock salesman. When I rejected his yellows, I lost his reds, the best reds on the market.” She sighed, still stung by the loss. “Most people have a religion to guide them,” she added for good measure. “That’s mine.”

Macon nodded, apparently not at all hurt by her refusal. “It’s one of the things I respect you for. Just thought I’d make the offer. Save you time and hassle.”

“I really appreciate it, but you deserve something more.”

“Oh, come on, Sarah.”

“I’m serious about this. And what I want you to do—” She got up, came around the desk and sat on the arm of his chair. “What I want you to do,” she repeated softly, “is go out and find someone who will love you romantically as much as I love you as a friend and colleague. Somebody who will appreciate all those qualities that make me love you. Maybe even—” she put her hand under his chin and tilted his head up until his eyes goggled directly into hers “—maybe even somebody who wants strings, something permanent.”

She had him mesmerized. His lips parted. “Why are you so sure you don’t want something permanent yourself?”

She let go of his chin and stood up. He’d surprised her again. She felt uneasy, fidgety. “Maybe I just can’t see past you,” she said in a sexy growl he couldn’t possibly take seriously.

In fact, he laughed. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Just…” He was grave again. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Absolutely.” But not in the way he imagined. She had no fear for her physical safety. All she had to protect was her heart.

THE NEXT MORNING was no different from the last month of mornings. Sarah woke up hot and restless, exhausted from fighting her way through dreams that swirled her into a spiral of desire, then left her floating in limbo, just short of reaching the pinnacle of release. The sheets were damp and tangled. Her nightgown, nothing more than a cream silk slip, felt clammy as she shrugged the slender straps off her shoulders and let it fall to the bathroom floor.

In the shower, she moved the faucet from hot to warm to cool. As she ran nervous fingers through her damp hair, feeling the curls spring up with a life of their own, she felt fresher, but not better. The heavy, swollen sensation persisted, making her feel dull and lethargic.

Coffee should help.

It didn’t.

Clothes. Sarah reached into the sea of black that filled most of her closet and drew out a pair of slim capri pants, a tiny, tight tank top and a jacket that looked as though someone had shrunk it, as it was short in the sleeves and short in length.

She frowned at her reflection in the mirror, her mood darkening. What she needed was a splash of bright color. She exchanged the black pants for an identical pair of khaki-colored capris and took a second look at herself. Yes. Very jolly. Practically festive for downtown Manhattan.

She put large gold hoops in her ears and her entire collection of gold bangles on her right arm. They clanked dully in rhythm with her black mules as she traveled the crumbling, tip-tilted New York sidewalks—half of the long crosstown block to Sixth Avenue, then a dozen short blocks uptown—to her office in Chelsea. While she walked, she faced up to her problem.

Those bothersome dreams hadn’t been wild and crazy fantasies. They’d been wild and crazy memories, memories of Alex.

Macon was all too right. It was once again time to find a man to dull those memories.

Just a man, that was all she needed. She’d start looking for prospects this very weekend. She only hoped her staff wouldn’t move on to greener salaries before she found one.

ALEX EMERSON STROLLED aimlessly north through Soho after lunch in Tribeca, crossed Houston and made his way up to Washington Square. Encouraged by the warmth of mid-May, joggers trotted around the perimeter of the park and dog owners ignored the No Dogs Allowed signs to toss Frisbees to ecstatic black Labs and golden retrievers. In the center of the park near the fountain, hot-dog vendors were doing a land-office business.

The hot dogs smelled great, but he’d already eaten a couple of times today and would have to eat a couple of times more. He had several hours between the long but productive business lunch at Arqua, which he’d just left, and drinks at the Plaza’s Oak Bar with yet another set of potential investors in the venture capital company he ran out of San Francisco. Drinks would be followed by a long, expensive and, he hoped, even more productive business dinner in a quiet corner of the elegant restaurant Jean-Georges near Lincoln Center.

Doing business was a fine way to spend a spring Saturday as far as Alex was concerned. Work was the only arena in which he felt comfortable. When he was at home in San Francisco he worked. When he traveled to New York or London or Taipei, he also worked. It was only during the little breaks between work that he felt on edge, jittery, bothered, too aware of the needs of his body and the permanent sense of loss in his heart.

Walking helped a little. Running would have helped more, but it would have meant two additional clothes changes and a shower before his five o’clock appointment. Too much time wasted. Suddenly bored with greenery, he headed west on Waverly Place toward the untidy bustle of Sixth Avenue. A couple of blocks north he crossed the street to get a closer look at the library, then went to the corner to wait for the walk light.

From that vantage point he watched shoppers cram their way into Balducci’s, a specialty grocer, while others emerged, burdened and visibly harassed, from the exits.

His New York business acquaintances occasionally sent him gift baskets from the place. They sold several things Alex was crazy about—the most thinly cut smoked salmon in town, fresh cream cheese, a lemon tart that had had a walk-on role in one of his dreams and boxes of chocolate-chip cookies that were close enough to homemade to fool somebody like him, whose mother wasn’t into cookies. He should go in, buy them out of those cookies and surprise his staff with them on Monday morning.

It really would be a surprise. He wasn’t what you’d call a chocolate-chip-cookie kind of boss.

As this thought went through his mind, a woman came out of the shop carrying two of the distinctive green-and-white shopping bags. She set them down for a moment to set a brown leather handbag more firmly over her shoulder. She was reed-slim in narrow jeans, the dark-blue ones Alex had decided must be the fashion this spring. A loose white shirt floated over her arms, barely touching her body down to her waist where she’d tucked it in. High-heeled sandals added four inches to her already considerable height.

She was an extraordinarily striking woman. He felt drawn to her, a stranger, as he rarely felt drawn to the women who decorated his life as fleetingly as the bouquets of fresh flowers Burleigh routinely ordered for the round foyer table in Alex’s Pacific Heights home. Just seeing her there gave him an oddly familiar surge of desire to penetrate a softness and warmth that felt too real to be a figment of his heated imagination.

She turned directly toward him for an instant, and he saw with the crystal clarity of cherished memories the fine skin, the blond hair that floated in the same ethereal fashion as her shirt, the generous mouth. His eyes opened wide. His lips parted. He breathed a single word.

“Sarah.”

And then, as she took off like the Concorde, as comfortable on those high heels as if they’d been sneakers, he came to life. He couldn’t shout her name. Men like him didn’t shout women’s names in public places. They didn’t follow women up the street, either, but this was Sarah he was following, and he could not, would not, let her get away.

HURRYING NORTH, Sarah congratulated herself on how well the weekend was going. The evening before, she’d had drinks at the latest trendy bar—those ratings could change overnight—in Chelsea with Rachel and Annie, two friends from work. She’d chatted with an appealing man, an actor with a charming smile and high hopes, who’d auditioned the day before and had just gotten a callback.

A man for whom she had high hopes.

They’d agreed to meet for breakfast at a coffee shop in the West Village. He’d arrived with his lover, an equally appealing—but jealous—man.

However, while she waited for him, she’d shared the sports section of the Times with a better prospect, a lawyer with one of the city’s large firms. They’d exchanged cards, and she fully expected to find a message from him on her answering machine when she got home. In the meantime, she’d prepared herself for whatever the evening—and the next morning—might bring.

Balducci’s stocked a plentiful array of hors d’oeuvres and prepared foods, and she’d bought enough to manage dinner in case going out suddenly lost its charm. This afternoon she would make a dessert—a hazelnut torte, perhaps, or a flourless chocolate cake, or both.

She swung right onto Twelfth Street. Her bags also held bagels, smoked salmon, cream cheese and juice from apparently rare and valuable grapefruit, judging from the price. She would check the answering machine, then put her purchases away. Then, with everything in a state of readiness, she’d slip out onto the fire escape to let the sunshine and cool breeze arouse her to fever pitch. Her sixth sense told her the lawyer would be up to whatever level of passion she chose to demand of him.

She’d reached her building and started up the walk when she heard, “Sarah!” She froze, unable to move, unwilling to turn around. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, ugly, painful tricks. She heard footsteps behind her, and filled with dread, she slowly spun to face Alexander Asquith-Emerson, all grown-up.

“Sarah.” He sounded out of breath. “It’s Alex. Saw you coming out of Balducci’s. It was just too amazing a coincidence.” The rush of words coming from his mouth, a mouth that quirked up at one corner in an all-too-familiar way, suddenly halted.

Inside she was quaking so violently she was sure it showed on the outside. His hair was as thick and dark as ever, and his shoulders were broader in his well-tailored navy blazer than they’d been when he was eighteen. His eyes flashed dark, mysterious messages as they always had. An ache rose through her body that recalled the past even as it demanded recognition of the present.

“Fuhgeddaboudit,” they said in Brooklyn. And, of course, she already had forgotten about it. A long time ago.

“Well. My goodness. After all these years. Alex Asquith-Emerson.” Her spine felt like cold steel. She was proud of it for holding her up so firmly.

“Just Emerson.” His full lower lip curved in a smile. “I dropped the Asquith. Too pretentious for the States.”

His face held an expectant expression that frightened her. “Well,” she said again, wishing she could bring her deceased vocabulary skills back to life. “It was good of you to go to all this trouble just to say hello.”

“I didn’t. Go to all this trouble just to say hello.”

She waited, unable to move toward him or away from him. The ache had traveled up to her throat, making it impossible for her to answer.

“I’ve been trying to find you for years, Sarah. And suddenly, there you were.”

He still had a faint trace of an upper-class English accent, and the rich quality of his voice had intensified with time. He had always been able to dissolve her with a word, merely her name spoken as only Alex could say it, but she was an adult now, immune to his manipulation.

“I’ve been here for the last five years,” she said. “I own my own company. A graphics design firm.” She wanted him to know she was in control of her own life and getting along just fine.

“I’m in and out of New York a lot. Wish I’d known you were here.” He went on rapidly. “Well, now that I’ve found you we must get together sometime. I’ve filled up this weekend with business, I’m afraid, and have to head back home after lunch tomorrow…”

Sure, Alex, business.

“…but I’m coming back next weekend. Have dinner with me Friday night?”

I’d like to have you for dinner Friday night, you bastard. She forced breath into her lungs, forced her lips to move. “Sorry, I’m busy Friday.”

“Saturday?”

“Busy Saturday, too. And I never go out on Sundays.” She hoped he’d felt the point of the knife she’d just jabbed into him. “But it was great to see you.” She turned away, longing for the safety and comfort of her own space, any space that didn’t have Alex in it.

“Sarah.”

The old deep, slow rhythm slowed her steps. She couldn’t help herself.

“Here’s my card. Call me if your plans change.”

She took the card, tried to focus on it. She saw a San Francisco address. “You went back to California.”

“Yes.”

“Your mother?” She let her gaze rest on his face.

His wry smile added a touch of reality to the painful dream Sarah floated in. “In England. In excellent health, as impossible as ever and slowly killing husband number five. And your aunt Becki?”

The flood of sorrow rose inside her, as it always did. “She died. Eight years ago, while I was still in school.”

“Oh, Sarah, I am sorry.”

“Well.” She gave him a bright, social smile as she gathered up her bags and started toward her doorway. She didn’t know what she’d do if he followed her, offered to help with the bags, asked to come in. He didn’t do any of those things. He just stood quietly, watching her.

“Enjoy your stay in New York,” she said over her shoulder.

She got up the steps and through the doorway, fumbling with her keys. She made it to the tiny elevator at the end of the hall, to her apartment on the fifth floor and at last, to solitude.

Then she cried.

ROOTED TO THE SIDEWALK, Alex found it difficult to bend his knees.

As he watched Sarah vanish into the town house, he felt as if his memories were burning him alive. Memories of the warm, silken feel of her stretched out over the full length of his body, or straddling him, clinging to his hair with her fingertips, or writhing beneath him, and finally lying quietly beside him, sated.

Suddenly edgy and needing to move around, he started slowly back toward Sixth Avenue. As soon as he’d officially reached adulthood and financial independence he’d begun searching for her, futilely trying to track her down through their mutual high-school friends, eventually surfing Internet telephone directories, state by state. She’d cut herself off, it seemed, vanished. He hadn’t expected her to do that. He’d imagined she’d be there when the time was right. And today, at last, she’d appeared as if by magic.

It hadn’t seemed possible. It still didn’t seem possible.

He reached Sixth, stepped out onto the street and held up his hand. A taxi swerved, crossed two lanes and pulled up in front of him.

He wished the meeting had gone better, been easier, more comfortable, had given him some hope of forgiveness, yet he felt almost relieved by her hostility.

It meant she still cared.

“Hey, buddy, you want a cab or not?”

Alex gazed blankly through the window at the man, then climbed into the cab and tried desperately to restore his interest in the business deal that had seemed so important an hour ago.

2

“I WILL NOT BE spoken to in that tone,” Jeremy said. His voice shook. “I know you’re the boss, but it doesn’t give you the right to be abusive. I have other options, Sarah. I turn down job offers right and left, higher pay, bigger assignments, because in the past—” he emphasized the words “—I have enjoyed working here.” His chin quivered. “But I cannot work for a person who tells me my artwork has to be cremated before burial.”

“Oh, Jeremy,” Sarah said, genuinely remorseful. “I am so sorry.” First Ray, now Jeremy. Jeremy was her ace computer-art person; she couldn’t get along without him. She couldn’t get along without any member of her small staff. Business was picking up as advertising agencies, in-house publicity departments and independent print salespeople grew familiar with her name and her product, but it was still a struggle to meet the overhead and pay salaries that were well below market. One glitch, one late delivery on a contract, one angry client taking his work elsewhere and she’d be bankrupt. Friendship and loyalty were all that kept these people with her, and she was alienating them one by one.

She slid her fingers through the silky waves of her hair, realizing that even her scalp itched. She felt feverish. She ached all over. But aspirin wasn’t going to help. “I am not myself today.”

“Or yesterday,” Jeremy said. “Or three weeks ago Monday.”

Sarah straightened up and spoke briskly. “I’m having a few personal problems,” she said, “but it was both unkind and unprofessional of me to take it out on you. Please accept my apology.”

“What about the artwork for the Designer Discounts mailer?” He eyed her suspiciously.

She cleared her throat. “I would appreciate it if you’d make one more stab at capturing the magic of a new shipment of Italian designer clothing.”

“You mean the artwork stinks.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

He gave her a flashing smile. “Then why didn’t you just say so?” He picked up the artwork and turned to leave Sarah’s office. “Hey, Macon,” he said as the two of them met in her doorway.

Sarah saw the significant glance that passed between them as Jeremy exited.

Macon came in, shut the door and sat down. “Well, you sure haven’t gotten…”

“Don’t say it!”

“Okay,” Macon said, ever agreeable. “I’ll put it another way. Your date Saturday night wasn’t all you hoped and dreamed it would be.”

“To say the least.” Its hopes, disappointments and unexpected turns had left her hotter and more restless than ever.

“What happened?”

She fidgeted for a moment. “I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what? I mean, if I were talking to a guy I’d know what he meant, but…”

Irritation increased the prickly sensations in her skin. “Macon,” Sarah said. “When did you become my counselor? Who hired you? Who’s paying you?”

“It’s pro bono work,” Macon said. “I’m not charging you a dime.”

“Exactly what you’re worth.”

“Sarah, what happened?”

She couldn’t sit still another minute. She swirled up and went to the windows of her office. They were filthy. Nothing unusual about that. The building management company wouldn’t have them washed until a tenant threatened to write to the Housing Commission. From her eleventh-floor perch she could see through the grime a characteristically odd assortment of Chelsea rooftops. She saw water tanks and ventilation equipment surrounded by tarred surfaces already beginning to steam in the mild heat of spring. She saw elegant roof gardens, where trees and potted houseplants either flourished on their steady diet of toxic New York air or died, to be replaced at once by professional plant-maintenance crews. Nothing personal.

A Himalayan cat prowled among the expensive terracotta planters on one of the roofs, its long, pale hair fluffing up in the soft breeze. Maybe that was what she needed, a cat.

“What I need is a window-washer,” she murmured.

“What?”

Her self-appointed counselor waited. In the middle of a fleeting daydream—the window-washer blowing kisses at her as he worked, her teasingly opening the window and watching as he came into her office, leaving no doubt in her mind that he was already aroused and ready for her—Sarah suddenly realized there could be no better repository for her anguished thoughts than the compact mass of pure objective intelligence who was so generously offering her his ear.

“I met a really promising prospect,” she told him, “but when the moment of reckoning arrived, I couldn’t go through with it.”

“Tough scene to get through,” Macon said, shaking his head. “Frustrating for both of you.”

“Unfair,” she muttered, sinking back into her chair. “And the worst part was that he was so nice about it.” He’d said he understood. He’d handed her his card with an invitation to call anytime. Her life was filling up with business cards. They made damned poor lovers.

She could tell from his expression that Macon couldn’t see why that had been the worst part. “I felt so guilty,” she explained. “I really had led him on, with the worst of intentions, of course.”

“The question is why couldn’t you go through with it?”

A deep sigh rose all the way up from her tortured center. “Because earlier in the day I ran into the only man I ever actually fell in love with.”

“Wow,” Macon said. “And he’s married, right? Or an ex-con. Or…Mafia!” His eyes lit up with interest, turning his thick glasses into twin flashlight beams.

She gritted her teeth. “No, he’s as perfect as ever.” Even more perfect, if that were possible. What a grim thought.

“So you chased him down and he snubbed you.” Macon looked properly outraged.

Sarah leapt up again and began to pace the confines of the small, rose-walled office. The tension had built up so high inside her she felt as if she were about to come out of her skin. She could have asked Alex to come in. He would have come. One touch and she’d have led him to her bed. “He saw me, actually, and followed me home.”

“Ha!” Macon said. “He’s a—”

She spun. “No, he’s not a stalker. He’s…”

She had to gather up her courage to go on. “We were teenagers. He was my first lover. It was an experience so exquisite—” she halted, frightened by the threat of tears, by the impact of the memories that controlled her life even now “—I knew I wanted only that, with that person, for the rest of my life.”

“And he didn’t?”

Dear Macon. He couldn’t believe a man she wanted would not want her. “I guess I wasn’t good enough for him. At least, I wasn’t good enough for his mother, the ever-so-famous movie star, and he didn’t have the courage to defy her.”

“You weren’t good enough? Or your Aunt Becki wasn’t the kind of…”

“Whatever,” Sarah snapped. Of course she’d told Macon about Aunt Becki. She told everyone about Aunt Becki. Tall and blond like Sarah, but more beautiful than Sarah could ever dream of being, she’d been the mistress of a film producer, Todd Haynes. Although he had loved her deeply, he couldn’t take the publicity of a divorce from his wife or the potential pain it would have caused his children.

Aunt Becki had loved him, too, so much that she’d been willing to accept what she could have of him. He’d provided her with a lovely little house in Beverly Hills, where he spent as much time as he could. And then, when Sarah’s parents died, this cutthroat industry type had welcomed Sarah into that house as generously as Aunt Becki had, accepting without protest his mistress’s need to shelter and comfort her sister’s child.

Becki’s and Todd’s was a beautiful love story. Why anyone couldn’t see how innately good Aunt Becki had been remained a mystery to Sarah, who’d been cared for with a kind of love Eleanor Asquith couldn’t begin to understand.

“Hello in there,” Macon said. “Where’d you go, Sarah?”

Sarah snapped to the present. “Alex and I were an item at Hollywood High. We made our plans. Pretty sensible plans, come to think of it, for a pair of kids drunk on love. He had to go to Cambridge—the Emerson men had been going to King’s College for generations. I had a scholarship to Stanford. But we’d stay together, even if we were apart.”

“This is so romantic it’s making my scalp prickle.”

“My scalp prickles, too, just thinking about it.” The hollow sound of her voice came straight from the hollow feeling in her heart. “One night he just didn’t show up, and I didn’t see him again until last Saturday.” She whirled on Macon again. “If you say, ‘And how did that make you feel?’ I’m going to shove you out the window.”

Macon arranged his arms in a diving position. “See Macon,” he said, “preparing to go gracefully.”

ALEX SAT in glum silence in his stately suite of offices. Located in a historic old building in downtown San Francisco, Emerson Associates was the venture capital firm he owned and had naively assumed he totally controlled. Apparently that assumption was incorrect. As far as he could tell, the offices were empty, which was odd, since it was Thursday. With a staff of five he managed hundreds of millions of dollars, which he then channeled into businesses that made the dollars thrive and multiply. He made sure those five people shared the success in salary increases, bonuses and stock shares. But in order for everyone to grow richer, those five people needed to show up at the office on a regular basis. Until today, they always had.

There was a fine, warm team spirit in the office. Especially when the team was in the damned office.

“Carol,” he yelled.

Silence, followed by footsteps whose slow pace reeked of reluctance. A moment later a middle-aged, red-haired woman in a navy suit became visible by increments—the tip of her nose followed by the rest of her head, then a substantial bosom and, at last, a pair of surprisingly elegant legs. The whole package came to a halt just inside the doorway to his enormous office. He could barely see her at this distance.

“You called?”

Or hear her. “Of course I called. Where is everybody? Where’s Mike with the Harbisher analysis? Where’s…”

“Hiding,” said Carol.

“What do you mean, hiding? Do we have a maniac loose in the office?”

“Yes.”

“Carol,” Alex said, forcing a tight smile, “come closer.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked you! Nicely!”

She grabbed the door and closed it silently, his shout echoing against it.

“So much for nicely,” he muttered. His single objection to his staff was that they didn’t always treat him with the respect he, as owner of the firm, properly deserved. They treated him more like family. A younger member of the family, to add to the insult. So what if he was thirty years old, younger than anybody, except the office manager? Didn’t matter. This was his castle and he should be king.

Of course, they were Americans. They took a dim view of kings. That might explain it.

For a few minutes he remained at his desk, fuming. Then, being a man of action, he got up and went in search of his people.

He found them huddled together in Mike’s office. Mike Semple was his financial analyst. Carol, his executive assistant, was just sitting down at Mike’s conference table with Suzi, the office manager, Les, his management analyst and Tricia, negotiator and director of communications.

“Good of you to join us, Alex,” Mike said. “We were just starting a staff meeting.”

“Without me?” Alex felt startled and oddly unbalanced.

“About you.”

“Oh.” Alex nudged Suzi to the left and Les to the right in order to plunk himself down in a side chair, avoiding his usual spot at the head of the table. “Good thing I showed up. What is it about me we’re discussing?”

“We’re wondering what’s up,” Les said. “Are we going broke?”

“No.”

“Did we underbid for Palmer Pipe Company?”

“No. Look, I know I haven’t been in the best mood the last couple of days.” To his annoyance, his team answered him not with reassurance, but with, to be precise, two nervous giggles and three derisive snorts. “It’s a personal matter,” he said, hoping that those sacred words would end this ridiculous cross-examination as it would in any civilized sort of setting. Americans, however, were not yet completely civilized, as he had learned from numerous painful experiences. They talked too openly about matters they should keep to themselves, and in return, wanted the most outrageously intimate details from others. You’d think, with more than two hundred years of practice, they’d learn to stop asking how much you made in a year. And whom you were sleeping with. At least one of the two.

“I didn’t know you had any personal matters,” Suzi said.

Of course, Suzi was still very young.

“I didn’t know you had any personal anything,” Les seconded her. “Except your toothbrush.”

Now Les should have known better than to mention something as personal as a toothbrush.

“Put the problem on the table,” Mike suggested. “We’ll discuss it just like we discuss business problems.”

As his senior person, Mike should be hanged for what he’d just said. This was not fine, warm team spirit. This was insubordination of the most outrageous, most insupportable nature. He wouldn’t put up with it. He’d fire the lot of them. Let them find somebody else to work for, somebody who could increase their net worths by eighty percent annually instead of a mere seventy.

He suddenly heard himself, his irritability, his childishness. He had plenty of faults, but childishness wasn’t one of them. He hadn’t been childish even when he was a child. His mother hadn’t allowed it. So why was it suddenly showing up now?

It must have been the distraction of his own thoughts that made him blurt out the one thing he most wanted to keep to himself. Either that, or he’d lived in the United States too long. “I ran into an old girlfriend in New York last weekend.”

That was as far as he got before a collective sigh drowned him out, followed by, “No kidding?” and “Great!” and “Uh-oh, it’s a woman problem.”

“I told you it had to be something important,” Suzi said. “Tell us all about her.”

Cornered by his own stupidity, Alex said, “No, no, it’s not like that. She’s just a girl I dated in high school. Hollywood High. When my mother did those three movies—” He made a gesture with his hand. He didn’t need to embellish. Eleanor Asquith was a household name, in cultured households, at least. “She pulled me out of boarding school and brought me with her. She wanted me to see what real Americans were like.”

“Real Americans at Hollywood High? I don’t think so,” Les said.

“Sarah was there.”

The silence told him he’d shocked them. It was a frightening thought, that he might have said more than one of them would have in the same circumstances. What was it that made him babble on? “We fell for each other, but this and that happened, you know how it is with kids, and we broke up. I lost track of her. Last Saturday I found her again.”

“Something about this reunion did not make you happy.” Mike folded his hands over an incipient paunch and waited.

Alex had opened the doors himself. There was no going back. “I thought it would be the polite thing to ask her out this weekend. She turned me down flat. I gave her my card and asked her to call if her plans changed.”

“I didn’t know you were going to New York this weekend,” Carol said, looking worried. “You loaned the plane to Tucker Associates, remember? You don’t have transportation or a hotel suite, and you don’t have any appointments.”

“Well, obviously,” Alex began, then, realizing he sounded sarcastic, backed up and started over. “I wasn’t going to New York unless she called.”

“But she didn’t call,” Suzi said.

“Not yet.”

“It’s only…well, I guess it is Thursday,” Mike said. “Looks like maybe she’s not going to call.” He winced under the glare Alex sent in his direction.

“She calls or she doesn’t,” Alex said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m annoyed by her bad manners, that’s all.”

“If you did something to make her so mad that she’s still mad after all these years,” Suzi said, “it may take her more than five days to get over it.”

“Or maybe you need to push her a little bit,” Carol suggested. “If this was a business deal you wouldn’t let it go with a single, ‘Let’s take a meeting,’ and then just sit around on your tush waiting for the other guy to call.”

“If this was a business deal,” Suzi said, echoing Carol, “you’d put together a package for the guy, an annual report, a prospectus, your card, maybe an Emerson Associates paperweight.”

A lightbulb went off in Alex’s head. A business deal. Of course. It was a road toward Sarah, and it was a way out of the untenable social predicament he’d gotten himself into with his staff. “In fact, it was a business deal I had in mind,” he said smoothly. He let his fingers stray casually toward the most recent prospectus he’d sent to a group of potential investors. It was shiny, glossy, colorful, printed on heavy, expensive paper, filled with photographs, the essential charts and graphs cleverly disguised by their Disneylike style. “This—” he brandished it at them “—didn’t really send the message, did it?”

He looked up when silence seemed to be the only response he was going to get.

“I was thinking we should tell the ad agency to look for a new graphics design firm. Somebody with a fresh, quirky approach might make the difference, tip the scale.”

Meaningful glances sizzled around the table. “Can we infer,” Mike said in his most pompous tone, “that the lady works for a graphics design firm?”

“Owns it,” Alex informed them, and couldn’t keep the tinge of pride out of his voice.

With nothing more than graphics design and New York to go on, he’d found her on the Internet earlier in the week. At least he’d found the person who had to be Sarah. She’d been Sarah Langley way back then; when her aunt adopted her after her parents’ death, she’d taken Aunt Becki’s last name. Now she was Sarah Nevins, her father’s name, and the sole owner of Great Graphics! in Chelsea. Five employees. Undercapitalized, barely making it, but getting good feedback on their work.

The search had made him feel like a cyberstalker, and he didn’t intend to share anything but the firm’s name, even with these people.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Suzi said, interrupting his thoughts. “I meant send flowers.”

She so obviously wanted to add “You turkey,” that in spite of his annoyance that she still wasn’t listening, Alex couldn’t help but admire her restraint. “Flowers wouldn’t be appropriate,” he argued. “A contract to do our brochures and stuff, now that’s an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

Thinking of Sarah not refusing him was enough to make him shift discreetly in his chair. He could hardly say her name without getting hard, and picturing her lying soft, sweet and naked in his bed, saying, “Yes, oh, yes…”

“Oh, yes,” he said firmly, “a big contract will make an impression on her.”

More silence. “Could we try it my way first?” Suzi pleaded with him.

“I’d vote for that,” Mike said. “Or candy.”

“How many times do I have to tell you. This is a business…” Alex said.

“Candy’s risky,” Les said. “Give my wife candy, she says, ‘You want me fat so you can run off with some skinny bimbo?”’

“What would she say to a fat contract?” Alex inquired.

Their sympathetic, patronizing expressions spoke volumes. “Who’s our florist of choice these days, Suzi?” Carol said succinctly.

“THIS ISN’T COMPANY BUSINESS,” Sarah snapped. “You don’t get to address my personal life in a staff meeting.”

Each of her loyal colleagues handed her a sheet of paper. She glanced down at the first, which was from Ray. A letter of resignation. Her hands began to tremble as she leafed through one sheet after the other.

“You’re all resigning?”

“Or,” Macon said, “we’re going to discuss your personal life in this staff meeting.”

“Blackmail.”

“Right.”

“What precipitated this…mutiny?”

They all spoke at once.

“The last grain of sand…” Macon began.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back…” Rachel said.

“The lowest blow…” Ray said.

“The final blow…” Annie said, sounding teary, “was when you told me my Citibank brochure would make great confetti for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

“It was…vivid,” Sarah said. “It was hard to imagine bank customers relating Mardi Gras to estate planning.” She had to establish control over this situation. “But I apologize for my choice of words.”

“Your vocabulary has blossomed over the last few days,” Jeremy said. “We think it’s time to deadhead it.”

“That was very good, Jeremy,” Sarah said, “that connection between blossoming and deadheading.”

“What’s deadheading?” said Rachel, whose idea of country life was to visit the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. “It sounds more sadistic than I, personally, feel at the moment.”

“It was a metaphor,” Macon said impatiently. “Jeremy was drawing a nice little metaphor, which surprised Sarah because he’s the artist and Ray’s the writer and…”

“You’re killing it with analysis,” Annie interrupted him.

“Thank you, Annie,” Macon said. “The point, Sarah,” he went on, “is that you’re obviously unhappy, and if you won’t do something about it, we’re moving on.”

“Like wagons at dawn,” Sarah said, gazing at them sorrowfully, “leaving the sick and wounded behind.”

“You got it,” Ray said. “Now on the other hand, if you would lend a receptive ear, we might suggest a cure.”

If Ray offered to solve her problem as Macon had, she’d scream. It was unlikely, given that Ray and Jeremy were a couple. “My, my, the rhetoric is just flowing this afternoon,” Sarah said. “If only we could put this same creative effort into our copywriting, Ray, we might…”

“You’re doing it again,” Jeremy warned her.

Sarah waved both hands in the air, noticing sadly that they flinched. “I’m turning down your resignations. Okay, what do you think I should do?”

“Call him,” Annie said.

They didn’t understand. “I can’t, Annie, I just can’t. What he did to me…”

“About a million years ago,” Jeremy interjected.

“I take it Macon has given you the gist of the story.”

“It was the only way he could talk us out of e-mailing our resignations and sneaking back in the dark of night to clear out our desks,” Rachel said.

“Oh. Then I suppose I should say thank you,” Sarah said, turning to Macon.

“It would be a change.”

Her grudging smile segued at once into a glower. “Okay, okay, it was twelve years ago, I admit, and I was dealing with it just fine until I saw him again. Well, I was,” she retorted, reacting to the expressions on their faces.

“But now that you have seen him again,” Rachel argued, “you’re going to have to resolve your feelings about him.”

“Or you’ll resign,” Sarah said, feeling sulky.

“Or you’ll explode,” Jeremy said.

“Or implode,” Ray said.

“I wouldn’t mind if she’d implode,” Jeremy said. “It’s the exploding that’s making me think that job with Hall & Lindstrom wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

“Jeremy, you wouldn’t!”

“Sarah,” he mimicked her, “I would and will if you don’t…”

“…call him,” her five devoted employees chorused while Sarah glared at them.

SHE WOULDN’T. She couldn’t. They didn’t understand.

That summer, the summer after she and Alex graduated, they were more desperate for each other than ever, knowing that soon they’d be going away to college. They would be apart in body, but not in spirit. They would work it out. What they had was too perfect to let go.

No one could imagine how she felt the night she waited for him, hot and tremulous, already wet and ready for him just knowing she would see him in a few minutes. It was agony to act normal in front of Aunt Becki. But this time Alex simply didn’t arrive. No letter, no phone call, no Alex. Not ever again.

Her knees buckled as she went up the steps to her building. Gritting her teeth against the pain she’d managed to keep in a separate compartment of her soul for so many years, Sarah turned the key in the lock, heard the reassuring click and pushed at the main door, surprised when very little happened. She shoved a little harder.

“Don’t knock over the flowers!” It was her first-floor neighbor Maude who shouted at her from her apartment window. While Sarah hesitated, a door slammed, indicating that Maude had come out into the narrow entrance hall. A series of mutters followed, alternating with oofs and grunts. “You think I have nothing better to do than sign for your deliveries, collect your menus from Chinese restaurants? Where’s my big Christmas tip, that’s what I’d like to know.”

Maude, being a writer and a famous one at that, worked at home, and so, by default, was the building’s doorperson. Her diatribes on this subject were long, loud and venomous.

“Sorry, Maude. What flowers?”

“Your flowers,” Maude said. “So stop trying to break down the door until I get them shoved out of the way.”

The staff had sent flowers to cheer her up, let her know they didn’t really hate her. How sweet of them. They shouldn’t be spending their money, what little they had of it, this way. The door suddenly burst open and Sarah fell into a virtual conservatory.

If not quite a conservatory, it was certainly an enormous bouquet, largely composed of white orchids whose long streamers of blossoms waved toward the high ceiling of the entry. The vase wasn’t a standard florist’s container, but a frosty-looking piece of handblown glass in a pale, smoky hue. Sarah gazed at it, feeling stunned.

“How’re you going to get it into the elevator?” Maude said. Her expression was sour. Beside her, a doleful basset hound uttered a soft moan.

Sarah’s ears buzzed and her voice seemed to come from a distance. “I can’t imagine. Call the Longshoreman’s Union and see if somebody wants a job on the side?”

“I’ve got a dolly.” The words dripped out as slowly as liquid through an intravenous tube.

“Why, thank you, Maude. Just give me a sec to read the card.”

If she wasn’t mistaken, the cardholder that feathered up through the orchids was crafted in sterling silver. Her entire staff put together didn’t have that much money to spare. She knew what the card would say even before she opened the tiny envelope:

Dear Sarah:

Sorry this weekend didn’t work out for you. How about next weekend? You can reach me at any of these numbers….

Her eyes blurred on the string of numbers, written in the neat hand of someone at the florist’s shop, not in a large, rounded scrawl. If the card had actually been in the handwriting she remembered so well as being distinctively Alex’s, she might have fainted.

3

DEAR ALEX:

What a gorgeous bouquet! Thanks so much. It was far too large for my apartment, so I put it on the table in the front hall where all the tenants in my building could enjoy it.

It was very nice to see you again. Unfortunately, I won’t be in town next weekend. I have a new client in…

Sarah halted, her pen poised, thinking of unlikely, out-of-the-way places Alex wouldn’t dream of suggesting he join her. It wasn’t easy. In spite of his wealth and sophistication, Alex had his own interesting way of fitting in everywhere, seemingly as relaxed at the small round table in Aunt Becki’s cottage or eating hamburgers in a greasy spoon as he was in the massive dining room of Eleanor Asquith’s Bel Air mansion.

It was called noblesse oblige, or you could call it plain good manners.

Extensive travel with his mother and her entourage had made him flexible. He could handle cold weather, hot weather and rainy season in the tropics, mountains, deserts and forests.

One thing he hated was inconvenience. Waiting. He liked his trains to run on time, so to speak. So…where could you almost not get to from San Francisco? Someplace you might not choose to go in the first place.

It struck her that Dubuque, Iowa, might be the perfect solution. A quick Internet check showed her that although Dubuque wasn’t impossible to reach from San Francisco, it could not be reached very directly.

…in Dubuque, Iowa, and must make a trip there on Friday. Perhaps another time.

Again, thank you for the magnificent bouquet.

Most sincerely,

Sarah

She paused again, then added “Nevins.” Alex would read her message—“shove off” —loud and clear in her formal language and the use of her last name. He liked getting his own way, yes, but he also had an inner dignity that would keep him from pushing.

Not daring to give herself time to think it over, she licked the envelope flap, pounded it down with her fist, slapped on a stamp and raced for the corner mailbox.

She’d waited until morning to decide how to react to Alex’s floral offering, and felt she’d handled it well. As she sauntered back to her building, she saw that a crew had arrived to do their annual maintenance to the carefully preserved slate roof of the nineteenth-century town house.

At least her apartment house was managed by a responsible, sensitive building management firm, quite unlike the skinflints who managed her office building. She paused for a moment to admire the broad, muscled back and spectacular buns of the man who was directing his workers to the back of the building where a scaffolding was already in place. Wouldn’t it be great if she could lure him into her home for a brief interlude before her own workday started?

It was one thing to entertain such a delightful thought, and quite another to emerge from the shower a short time later and see a man’s face looking through her bathroom window.

Sarah opened her mouth to scream. The neighborhood had been plagued by a Peeping Tom in the last few years. Maude, who claimed to have sighted him twice, had warned her to keep her windows closed and locked and her shades down as the scaffolding provided such easy access to all floors of the building, but had Sarah listened? No, and here she was, facing the Village Voyeur himself!

“Whoa!” the man said through the open window, just before her scream emerged.

She clutched her bath sheet tighter and glared at him. “What do you think you’re doing, looking in my…”

All of a sudden she realized she was seeing the front of the very man whose back she’d been admiring earlier. He gave her a broad, brilliant smile and tipped the bill of his cap. “I’m the roofing contractor, ma’am. Don’t mind me. I’m just on my way up.”

His words trailed off as his gaze focused directly on her. The scene took on the misty quality of a romantic movie as she gazed back. Tall, dark, handsome, deeply tanned—and he was a roofing contractor. Perfect, simply perfect.

Before the fantasy ended, they’d made a date to go out for Thai food that very night. By nine o’clock that evening she wished she had remembered to pull the shades down. The roofing contractor might be breathtakingly handsome, but he was not going to become her man-for-the-moment. Not even for a split second. He told terrible jokes terribly, quizzed the waiter relentlessly until he was sure he hadn’t ordered any Thai food that had any Thai seasonings in it, and she had a deep-seated suspicion he’d neglected to mention he was married. His line, delivered in a low, sexy voice while his eyelids drooped in a manner he must have thought was suggestive, was: “How about we head up to your apartment for a quick one before I hit the road to Brooklyn.”

As the word Brooklyn came across the table, Sarah conceded that the misty quality of their accidental morning meeting was entirely due to steam from the shower. “I don’t drink after dinner,” she said, then added, “Tonight’s my treat.” She whipped out her billfold.

“I wasn’t talking drinks, foxy lady, I was talking…”

Foxy lady? Bleah-h-h-h. She knew perfectly well a drink was not the “quick one” he had in mind. She handled the transaction so swiftly, estimating the tip, rounding it off on the high side and paying in cash, that she was off in one direction and he in another before he had time to absorb the situation.

Not that she was giving up on the idea of finding a man. She would demand to have her office windows washed at once or the management company could look for a new tenant.

She said as much to Annie on Monday morning after a frustrating, unproductive weekend. A worried look came over Annie’s face.

“Uh, I’ll tell them that, but it’ll be an empty threat.”

“How so?” She strongly felt the management company owed her a crew of muscled hunks, just for letting the windows go for such a long time.

“You can’t afford to move.”

She knew it, of course, but Annie’s expression told her there were other things she needed to know. In addition to supplementing Jeremy’s design work, Annie kept the Great Graphics! books.

“What’s our financial situation?”

“I don’t know how you’re going to meet the payroll next month.”

“That bad?” Sarah’s other frustrations fled as a sick feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “Well, for starters, I won’t pay myself. I can manage for a while.”

Macon stuck his head through the doorway. “I can manage for…well, forever, I guess.”

“Oh, Macon,” Sarah said, “I pay you little enough as it is.”

“But you let me keep my consulting business. I’ve been making money working with computers since I was thirteen,” he told her, “and apparently not spending it.” He frowned, as if he were wondering what on earth other people did with their money. “Except on more computer equipment.”

“We can take it a month at a time,” Annie said, giving the printout of her spreadsheet a steel-eyed gaze. “If you two can forgo salaries next month, I’ll lean on the Zweig Company for the money they still owe us, and if that doesn’t do it, we can hit Ray and Jeremy up for the next month.” She gave Sarah an apologetic look. “Rachel and I are both living right on the edge as it is.”

“We will not ‘hit up’ anybody else,” Sarah said. “I’ve got to get out there and drum up more business.” She didn’t miss the sidelong glance that passed between Macon and Annie. They already had all the work they could do, but the jobs were small ones with a low-profit margin. She was in deep trouble, and at the moment, lacked the necessary backbone to get herself out of it.

IT SEEMED NOTHING SHORT of a miracle to learn that the window-washers had arrived at the office building. Sarah found it particularly annoying to pick up the telephone just as she was looking over the crew and find Alex on the other end of the line.

Rachel was a wonderful office manager and general factotum, but the announcement, “Guy on the phone wants to talk to you about some work,” was not the sort of briefing one needed before speaking with the enemy.

“Sarah. Hello.”

Sarah took a deep breath. He must have lied to Rachel, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“Alex.” Well done. She was as cool as a mint Lifesaver. “Did I pick up on the wrong line? Rachel said a potential client was calling.”

“That’s me. Alex Emerson, potential client.”

She blinked. “Oh. Well. What can I do for you?” Or to you, you scum on a picture postcard English pond.

“Actually, the reason I’ve been so persistent about dinner,” Alex said, “is that I have a project I want to talk to you about.”

He’d said the magic word. “A project?”

“Yes. My promotional materials. I don’t like the product I’m getting now. I’ve told the ad agency to contract the work to somebody different, but I’ve been asking around myself, too, and somebody mentioned your name. Said he’d been happy with your work.”

“Who?”

“Si Harper. The guy at Super Shuttle. That’s the new airline that runs shuttles from New York to…”

“I know Si. I know what Super Shuttle does.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her gasp. How had he found out she did Super Shuttle’s work?

“Carol, my person here, tells me I can take the company jet as far as the Midway Airport…”

She hadn’t been thinking. Of course he would have his own plane. No place on earth was too inconvenient for Alex to reach.

“…but I can’t land it in Cedar Rapids. The private strip is closed for construction. So I’ll take a taxi to O’Hare, get on a United shuttle to Cedar Rapids, then rent a car and drive up to Dubuque.”

When he mentioned O’Hare, Sarah felt tempted. As a hub of air travel for the continental United States, Chicago’s O’Hare was a wonderfully chancy airport. An electrical storm on either coast and O’Hare came to a standstill. If she had a thousand dollars for each person she knew personally who’d had to spend a night in that airport, she’d have the down payment for a two-bedroom apartment. She relished the image of Alex stretched out on waiting-room seats, only half-covered by a scratchy gray airline blanket, a thread of mozzarella from his dinner—a slice of cold pizza—hanging from the corner of his mouth.

That was the other thing Alex hated—the loss of his dignity.

But Alex would consume a slice of cold pizza in the same graceful way he did everything else, without drooling, and if he absolutely had to sleep, he’d do it sitting up. Without snoring. Besides, with her luck, he’d probably arrive in Dubuque without incident, only to find out she was a liar.

“I’ve cancelled the trip to Dubuque,” she admitted. A brainstorm struck. “I convinced the customer there was really no need for a face-to-face meeting. We can handle everything fine by phone and e-mail.” She warmed to her theme. “Just as I can handle your account, if you’re serious about needing to have some work done.”

In the brief silence that ensued she imagined she could hear Alex thinking. Instead, she heard, “Forget Dubuque, Carol,” and then, “Oh, I’m very serious. But the design firm our ad agency has been using has the same attitude you just described, and I’m more of a hands-on person.”

How well she knew that. His hands-on policy had awakened her to sensations she could never have dreamed of, to pure, hot, insistent…

“I was hoping your firm might take a more personal approach to your clients.”

“We do, of course,” Sarah said. “We want to be sensitive to our clients’ perceived needs and self-images.” She trailed off, distracted by an odd echo on the line.

“I have very strong feelings about my investors, the companies I invest in and everything that goes out under my name. I require periodic face-to-face discussions, whether I’m buying or selling. It means a lot of travel, but it’s worth it,” he said.

“I see.”

“I’d insist on an initial meeting at the very least.”

“What’s your print budget?” It was a rude question, but he was gaming her, dangling a carrot in front of her nose, and she needed to know how sweet that carrot was before she bit into it.

“A million and a quarter, give or take.”

With great difficulty Sarah kept herself from saying, “Dollars?”

Now she faced a new distraction. Jeremy crept into her doorway and mouthed, “Take it!” Ray moved up behind Jeremy, nodding vigorously. Annie thrust herself between them, giving Sarah a pleading expression complete with a Virgin-Mary-clasped-hands pose. There wasn’t room in the doorway for anyone else. Rachel had clearly left the line open and the speakerphone on, and the whole staff was begging her not to turn down a plum contract simply because she was too chicken to see Alex Emerson again.

They did work for peanuts. Their deal with her contained no definition of overtime and therefore no compensation for it. And still, cutting every corner, the firm was barely keeping its head out of the minestrone.

She owed them this contract. And to get it, she’d have to get it on Alex’s terms. The customer, damn him, was always right.

“I suppose one meeting would…”

Victory signals came at her from the doorway. She frowned.

“…get the basics worked out.”

A hand, either Macon’s or Rachel’s, shot through the doorway to wave a small American flag with a white hanky of peace tied to it.

“Saturday, then. At seven.”

She hung up slowly. The breeze from the collective sigh of relief that emerged from the doorway lifted the tendrils of hair off her suddenly hot forehead.

SARAH EYED HERSELF in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, turned to the left, then to the right. After, she picked up a hand mirror to get a rear view.

This wasn’t the right dress, either. It would be the fourth dress she’d brought home and taken back.

She knew she wasn’t behaving rationally, but self-awareness was a long way off from behavior modification and she didn’t have time to travel that road.

Curse Alex and his British correctness. Of course, he would insist on picking her up and bringing her home. She could protest until she turned blue that the modern woman was perfectly capable of getting herself to and from a restaurant, but her reasoning wouldn’t work on Alex.

So she’d volunteered to make dessert.

Now why the hell had she done that?

Because Alex would insist on paying for dinner, and the only way she could strike back was to offer dessert, coffee and brandy.

Because Alex had a legendary sweet tooth.

Because by the sheerest coincidence, desserts were the only cooking she did, and she’d gotten pretty good at doing them.

Sarah buried her face in her hands. Dusk was falling on this Thursday night in early June. The wedge of sky she could glimpse through her bedroom window was such a thrilling mix of terracotta pink and orange, it seemed irreverent to think of it as merely pollution from a million cars crossing bridges, threading through tunnels on their way to the New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs.

That’s what she’d like to do—leave town. Instead, she had to get back to Loehmann’s before it closed, return the dress, then scour the grocery and specialty stores for dessert ingredients.

The cold lump in her stomach grew larger. Which dessert? Crème brûlée for sure.

A memory drifted through her mind, sharp, clear and bittersweet—Aunt Becki making crème brûlée for her lover, just in case he might be able to come to dinner that night.

“What do you think, sweetheart?” she could hear Aunt Becki saying in her sweet, laughing voice. “Have I got it? A little browner, do you think, or is it just right?”

Todd had not been able to break free from his family and come to dinner that night. “It was good practice,” Aunt Becki declared, as cheerful as ever, although her glow had dimmed a little. “Let’s try it out on Alex when he picks you up tonight. See what he thinks. He probably knows exactly what a crème brûlée should be.”

Alex had licked his lips over the crunchy broiled brown-sugar top and the creamy interior of the dessert and pronounced it to be the model against which all other crème brûlée should be measured. At Aunt Becki’s insistence, he’d taken one home to Burleigh, the butler who’d been like a father to fatherless Alex, a man who’d seen, heard, experienced and eaten everything in his position with the formidable Eleanor Asquith, Lady Forsythe at the time Sarah met her.

She wished she’d asked Alex how Burleigh was.

Slowly her attention returned to the immediate problem. Maybe she didn’t want to remind Alex of the past. Personally, she was hungry for an almond zuger kirsch-torte, layers of fluffy white cake baked with meringue on top and put together with tons of buttercream frosting.

Some people didn’t like cake.

Or a clafoutis. Alex could watch her stir up the batter and pour it over the fruit, and while it baked they could…

Scratch the clafoutis.

Some people didn’t think it was dessert unless it was chocolate. The warm chocolate cake would present the same timing problem as the clafoutis, the timing problem being time alone with Alex. Her fudge pecan pie would cover the chocolate front.

On the other hand, Alex might have developed an allergy to chocolate.

She groaned. First, Loehmann’s.

THE SOUND OF THE BUZZER set Sarah’s heart to pounding painfully. Her hand shook as she picked up the house phone. “It’s Alex,” he said, as if she might not recognize his voice.

What she could do was simply not push the button that unlocked the front door. Then she could go out the back window and down the fire escape, grab a taxi on Sixth Avenue, go to a car rental agency and leave for someplace cool, quiet and Alex-free. Like the Yukon.

“Come on up. Fifth floor,” she heard herself say, then watched herself push the button.

After hanging up, she stared at the phone. Then she heard a knock at the door.

“Sarah.” He was there too soon, filling her living room with his size and strength, with the power he still held over her. “For you.” He handed her an armful of apricot-colored roses with lush, heavy heads still tightly closed.

Sarah cast a nervous glance around the room, noting all its peachy-apricot accents, wondering if he’d known, how he’d known. “Thank you,” she murmured. “They’re beautiful. Just let me…”

She was grateful to have an excuse to flee to the kitchen. She stuck the roses into the biggest container she could find—a crystal ice bucket she’d inherited from Aunt Becki that was large enough to chill champagne for a small party. Taking a deep breath, she went back to Alex.

She found him gazing slowly around her living room with its cream walls, the pale-blue ceiling she’d painted herself. “So this is where you live,” he said. “It looks so much like—”

“Aunt Becki’s cottage,” she interrupted him.

“Yes. I always felt good there.”

The unexpected words stopped her in her nervous, darting tracks, the vase filled with roses still clutched in her hands. “You did?”

“More comfortable than I felt anywhere else.” He reached out a hand and touched the lace that bordered one of the many pillows on the sofa, which was slipcovered in a fabric Aunt Becki herself might have chosen, a faded floral pattern of blues, greens, and apricot colors, similar to those of the roses Alex had given her, against a cream background. Had he remembered? Had he chosen the roses because they reminded him of the past?

She put the roses on a small antique table, forcing herself to speak naturally. “I felt good there, too. When she died, Todd—” She broke off. “Did you ever meet Todd Haynes? Aunt Becki’s—”

“Friend,” Alex said. He hesitated. “Yes. Once. He came to our house for dinner.”

Alex had never told her this. “But not with Aunt Becki, I imagine.” She managed a smile.

Again, he spoke reluctantly, but seemed determined to be honest. “No. With his wife. Haynes produced one of Mother’s movies. Mother and his wife saw each other at industry parties and had become friends.”

Eleanor Asquith must have known about Todd’s long-standing relationship with Becki Langley. Aunt Becki had not merely been a kept woman, but “the other woman” in Eleanor’s eyes. But hadn’t Eleanor Asquith been “the other woman” often enough herself?

This was a business dinner she was having with Alex. It wasn’t in her best interests to start off angry. “I see,” she said. “Well, anyway, Todd insisted on giving me everything that had been hers. I put it in storage, and when I was settled here, I sent for it.”

“It suits the room.”

The rooms of her apartment were tiny but high-ceilinged. This one was a twelve by twelve by twelve-foot box. Aunt Becki’s pretty, feminine things did suit the room, and had made Sarah feel instantly at home, as well.

“It suits you, too.”

For a minute she thought he was about to move toward her. Instead, he glanced out one window at the fire escape, where an exuberance of purple and white petunias bloomed beside pots of geraniums with salmon-colored blossoms. He smiled, and went to the tall, narrow front windows. “The street’s so quiet you’d never know you were in Manhattan,” he said.

“The burglar bars on the house across the street might give you a clue.”

He flashed a different kind of smile at her, and she felt that he was pulling himself back from memories of the past, just as she was. “Who’s the gorgon you’ve got guarding the door down there?”

Gorgon? “Oh, you must have met Maude. Maude Coates.”

“The Maude Coates? Who writes the thrillers?”

“The very same.”

“Damn. I’m reading her latest book. I could’ve gotten her autograph. She scared the hell out of me. Thought I was going to get bitten. I gave her half the roses I was bringing to you as a peace offering.”

“Was Broderick with her?”

“The depressed-looking basset hound?”

“That’s Broderick. Named for Broderick Crawford, not Matthew Broderick. Broderick wouldn’t dream of biting anybody.”

“Wasn’t Broderick I was afraid of.”

Wasn’t Broderick she was afraid of, either. Alex was too handsome in his dark suit, too charming. She had to keep her guard up, have nothing on her mind except getting this contract into her life and Alex out of it.

STAY CALM. DON’T SCARE HER. She was like a bowstring drawn back so tightly that one jostle and the arrow would fly—straight for his chest.

She wore a short black dress with a small white jacket. On her feet, sandals, nothing more than shiny little black straps on skyscraper heels. Her toenails were pink. No stockings. The heat that consumed him just by imagining the small pair of panties she’d be wearing under the silky dress was almost more than he could handle. He wondered if, under that jacket, the dress looked like a slip. Was there anything between it and the small, perfectly shaped breasts he remembered so well?

Get a grip. Don’t obsess.

He frowned at his watch. “Ready to go? We’ll have a drink and then go on to dinner.”

“Would you rather have a drink here?”

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