Free Breaking the Greek's Rules by Anne McAllister Page A

still banging away when he’d had to take that phone call and she’d left.
    He’d wanted to stop her, to say, “Hang on. Wait,” because it was too soon, there had been so little time, he had not had enough of her yet.
    But at the same time, he knew it was stupid—
he
was stupid.
    Daisy Harris—Connolly!—was
not
what he wanted—or needed—in his life.
    And it didn’t matter that she was divorced now. She still apparently wanted things he didn’t want. Wanted things he wasn’t prepared to give. So the one bit of common sense he had, had kept his mouth shut.
    He hadn’t said, “Wait.” Hadn’t stopped her or called her to come back.
    It was better she had left. And better still that he had had a date that night with one of Amalie’s “options.”
    Whoever she was, she would erase Daisy from his mind.
    Except she hadn’t.
    Her name was Laura or Maura or Dora. Hell, he couldn’t remember. She had been pleasant enough in an airheaded sort of way. But he’d spent the evening making mental comparisons between her and Daisy.
    Suffice to say, Dora/Maura/Laura had come up short on all counts.
    She didn’t have Daisy’s charm. She didn’t have Daisy’s ability to listen. She didn’t have Daisy’s smile or Daisy’s sparkling eyes or Daisy’s eager enthusiasm.
    She wasn’t Daisy. He was bored.
    He’d been polite enough. He’d listened and nodded and smiled until his jaw ached. He’d dutifully told her a bit about himself, but his comments were flat and uninteresting even to his own ears. It wasn’t hard to tell she was bored, too.
    “You win a few, you lose a few,” she’d said, smiling and shaking his hand when they’d left the restaurant to go their separate ways.
    It was nine-thirty. Shortly after ten he was home.
    And that was when he began to realize his mistake. He’d not only lost, he’d lost big-time.
    He hadn’t vanquished Daisy from his mind by having her come take photos this afternoon. On the contrary he now had a whole host of new images of Daisy—on his turf.
    Now when he stood at the window, he could look down at where he’d first spotted her, camera to her eye, taking pictures of his building, her hair loose in the wind. And when he grew tired of pacing his apartment and went back down to his office to do some work, the minute he sat down at his drafting table, he could almost feel her presence just over his right shoulder where she had been that afternoon.
    He crumpled up half a dozen attempted drawings before he gave up, stomped back upstairs, stripped off his clothes and took a shower.
    She hadn’t been in his shower, at least.
    Not this one, anyway. But he’d shared a shower with her five years ago, and the memories flashed across his mind with such insistence that he’d cranked the hot water down till only the cold beat down on his body. But his arousal persisted.
    He wanted to go for a bike ride, burn off the energy, the edge. But not in Brooklyn. Not at midnight. There was stupid—and then there was stupid.
    He was stupid, not suicidal.
    He should have known better than to think he could see her again and forget her. He’d never been able to forget her. And he wouldn’t be able to, damn it, until Amalie finally found him the right woman.
    In the meantime he’d flung himself onto his bed, stared up at the skylight—and discovered the depth of his folly.
    Daisy had been in his bedroom. He’d deliberately brought her in here—to show her the “best light”—wanting to get a rise out of her.
    Well, she wasn’t the one who was rising. Pun intended, he thought savagely. The joke was on him.
    ***
    The trouble with doing an hour-long shoot with Alex was that the hour was just the beginning.
    Oh, it was over for him. But Daisy had to work with the images, study them, analyze them, choose the best ones, correct them. Spend hours and hours and hours contemplating them.
    It drove her insane.
    She didn’t want to see him in his element hour after hour. She didn’t want