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  Alec’s marvelous, unfamiliar weight touching her everywhere; his heartbeat, loud and quick beneath her sweat-slicked cheek; the tension that continued to trickle, little by little, out of her body with each breath; her bendy, pliable limbs that seemed incapable of serious movement; the sharp, heady scent of their entwined bodies.

  Each sensation, sweet and new and treasured, lingered, imprinted itself on her very soul.

  She’d wanted this for so long she almost couldn’t believe it had happened. But with Alec’s arms encircling her, his spicy scent surrounding her and his still-labored breath playing in her hair, it was impossible to deny it. She turned her head and pressed her lips against his shoulder and felt his arms tighten around her. Then he dropped a kiss onto her unkempt curls and the gesture was so tender she had to squeeze her eyes shut to fend off the emotions that threatened to overpower her.

  Her heart was still hammering like crazy when Alec rolled just far enough away to prop himself up on one elbow and demolish her with those devastating blue eyes. “Hey, you,” he said.

  She put on a wobbly smile and gently swept the back of her hand over his raspy cheek. “Hey, yourself,” she whispered, her voice sounding oddly seductive to her own ears.

  “You know, you could have told me that you…” His voice trailed off before he finished the thought, but it would’ve been hard to misunderstand him.

  “If it’d ever come up in conversation, I’m sure I would have.”

  “Hmm,” he said as he looked up at her. Then, with a sinful smile that might have made her fall for him if it wasn’t already a done deal, he said, “We need to rethink the kinds of conversations we have, don’t you agree?” as he began to draw slow, sensuous circles on her bare stomach with his fingertips.

  Her heart lodged firmly in her throat. Why him? she thought as she looked over at his handsome, achingly familiar face. Why did she have to fall in love with this unavailable, unattainable, impossible man?

  Lord, she thought as she bathed in his smile, if only she knew something, anything, about how to make a man fall in love with her.

  “You’re not mad,” she said, and while she’d meant to make it a question, the laughter in his eyes had already told her what she wanted to know.

  He shook his head once, then his brows drew together over eyes suddenly filled with concern. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “God, no,” she said on a soul deep sigh. “It was everything I imagined.” And then some.

  “You imagined this?” he asked, repeating her earlier question with a sly smile.

  “Actually, wise guy,” she said as she pushed him onto his back and rolled on top of him, “it was more like this.” She sat up, pushed her unruly hair back from her face and struck a pose that should have made her blush but instead made her feel like the wickedest woman in the world. His intense, approving gaze swept down to her breasts, and she reveled in the passion in his eyes when he reached for her, enveloped her with his searing touch.

  “What happens next?” he asked, shifting beneath her to show her the evidence of his rekindled desire.

  Renewed excitement flooded every fiber of her being, along with a surge of power and confidence she’d never dreamed she’d experience. She lifted herself off him, just high enough to take the tip of his erection inside her. “This happens next,” she said softly, and his expression went from lazy to intense in an instant as she slowly, slowly took him all in.

  He grasped her hips and his fingers were strong and sure as he helped guide her down over every splendid inch of him. “I love the way your mind works,” he said on a groan torn from deep inside.

  And I love you, she thought, biting her lip to keep from saying it out loud. I love you enough to take whatever piece of you that you’ll share with me.

  Then they began to move, body to body, soul to soul, in an ancient rhythm that bound them, made them one. Together, with frantic hands and inquisitive lips and tender words, they climbed higher, impossibly higher, to a place so exquisite, she shivered at the sweet miracle of it.

  And then, as they found their release in an explosive melding of minds and bodies and souls, Daisy Kincaid’s reality finally, blissfully, eclipsed her fantasies.

  Alec had been pretty busy the last few months and hadn’t quite gotten in all the workouts he should have and right about now—boy, oh, boy—could he feel it.

  His shoulders ached, he had a tic in his neck, and his back was pinging somewhere in the middle of his shoulder blades—probably from that acrobatic thing he and Daisy had done around three in the morning when she’d woken him up with a single, seductive touch of her hand to a place on his body that just couldn’t say no.

  But his twinges and pains weren’t really important. All that really mattered was that they’d had one hell of a night.

  He smiled as he tightened his arm around Daisy’s slim waist and tugged her closer. It was nice the way her back pressed up to the front of his body, her contours molding to his hardened planes with ease. She was warm and soft and smelled, as always, like fresh-baked cookies. He sucked in a deep breath and thought, “I could really get used to this,” and then he snapped his eyes open in surprise.

  Blinding sunlight filled the room, birds sang outside on the patio, the clock ticked loudly on the nightstand—and Alec Mackenzie had just woken up with a woman in his arms for the first time in his life.

  Oh, he’d gone to bed with women, lots of them. But waking up with them? That was much too intimate. Alec had always been careful not to form any close bonds with the women he dated. And yet here he was, spooning with Daisy as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Spooning. He’d never even said that word before, not even to himself.

  This was not good, he thought, forcing himself not to jump away from her. Next thing he knew, he’d be telling her all about his pitiful, lonely childhood and crying in her arms like men did in those silly romantic chick flicks.

  Daisy was dangerous. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she’s was definitely messing with his mind. Never before had a woman occupied his thoughts this way, never had a woman made his body react just from thinking about her, never had a woman captivated him so completely that he loathed every minute he couldn’t be with her.

  Yes, she was dangerous. Dangerous to his peace of mind, dangerous to his freedom and dangerous to the carefully constructed rules of the game by which he played. Because she was the kind of woman who dreamed of—and, apparently, could even make someone like him think of—the dreaded triad of love and marriage and children.

  And that made him want to jump in a helicopter, go home and plunge himself back into his familiar life, because one thing he was sure of was that he was never going to get married. The disastrous sham of a union that his parents had dragged him through was enough for him to swear it off, but he also had some pretty impressive national statistics on his side. The failure of one in two marriages spelled don’t bother to Alec.

  But he and Daisy were never going to get that far. She would realize that he was a terminal bachelor and that he was never going to change and she’d leave him. He knew she was capable of it—hell, she’d bailed on him once already when she’d quit without warning. And while the short-lived nature of his relationships didn’t normally bother him, something told him that this time he wouldn’t be taking it in stride.

  Warm and silky, Daisy murmured something and laughed softly in her sleep, then wiggled her butt up against the danger zone and his temperature spiked to critical levels. What he wanted to do was wake her and continue what they’d started last night. She was sweet and lush and just so damned tempting, but he resisted, dropped a kiss onto her velvety shoulder and eased away from her.

  As he pulled on a pair of jeans, he noticed a beam of sunlight streaking across the floor from window to bed, reminding him that last night’s storm was over. Now all he had to do, he thought as he crept out of the room, was deal with the storm that raged inside him.

  Daisy’s cat join
ed him in the hallway and raced him to the kitchenette, then meowed insistently as it wound its furry body around Alec’s ankles.

  “What?” he asked the cat in a voice that clearly said, “Get the hell away from me, furball.”

  But the cat merely looked up at him with its big, round, sincere cat eyes and blinked.

  Sighing, Alec opened a can of food for the little pest and the cat thanked him by turning its back on him and attacking its breakfast with gusto. Alec snorted in disgust. Why did women love their cats so much? he wondered. Now, dogs on the other hand…dogs were more like people. Cats were always acting like they knew a secret or something. It was annoying.

  Alec opened the cabinets and stared blindly at the contents, lost in thoughts of Daisy. He thought about how their bodies fit together perfectly, how she sounded when she came apart in his hands, how she’d wanted him to be the first one for her. And then he thought about how knowing all that was going to make it so much harder to end this thing.

  Because no matter how tempting, sexy, smart, sweet, fun…anyway, it didn’t matter. This would end. It always did. Alec didn’t do forever and it was better to lay his cards on the table right now. Because this time he had a horrible feeling that he had something to lose.

  He sighed and leaned on the cabinet door while the cat licked its paws rapturously. At least he could make Daisy breakfast. And maybe, just maybe, if he didn’t char the toast to a cinder and made her a decent cup of joe, she might not kill him for what he was about to tell her.

  Something was burning.

  Daisy sat up in bed—not her own bed, she remembered as she saw Alec’s clothes hanging in the closet—and was just about to throw her legs over the side to go investigate when she heard him coming down the hallway.

  She clutched the sheet to her naked body. Damn. She’d never done a morning after. Did he regret what they’d done? And speaking of that, did she? She checked in with herself quickly and realized that no, she absolutely didn’t. So, acting on instinct, she fell back against the pillows and buried herself in the covers and willed her heart to slow down so she could feign sleep.

  Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, she thought as she heard him come into the room and bang into the dresser.

  “Damn,” he whispered fiercely, and she popped one eye open to see him with a tray in one hand, the toe he’d just mangled in the other. Naked from the waist up, he looked like a hunky slice of heaven. Yummy, she thought, and then the whole night flooded back, from the first kiss to the hot, spiraling climax she’d had in the wee hours as the moonlight had sifted through the shutters.

  As if he could hear her thoughts, Alec looked over at her and she slammed her eye shut and resumed playing possum.

  “Daze,” he called quietly, and the mattress tipped to one side under his weight when he sat down. “Daisy, wake up.”

  Her heart flip-flopped hard in her chest. She cracked her eye open again and saw him sitting there, carrying the tray that held two coffee cups and a plate with some blackened toast.

  “Morning,” he said, smiling.

  She faked a stretch and smiled back. “Morning.” He looked so good it almost hurt.

  He held the tray aloft. “Here it is. Everything I know how to cook.”

  She sat up, carefully tucking the sheet under her arms to cover herself. “Looks—” she eyeballed the black toast “—interesting.”

  He set the tray down on the comforter and with a brief, appreciative glance at her sheet-clad breasts, he handed her a cup of coffee. “I think I did the coffee right.”

  She sipped…and by sheer will alone managed not to choke. And not just because it was the worst coffee she’d ever tasted—although it was—but because somehow the man who was so clueless he didn’t even know she’d been in love with him for the past year knew that she took her coffee black with two sugars.

  In that moment, her crush-turned-love deepened impossibly further. She wanted to cry.

  “Delicious,” she said with a watery smile.

  He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, took a drink from his own cup and grimaced. “Liar.”

  And just like that, the spell was broken. She laughed. “It was the thought,” she said.

  He smiled as he took the cup from her and set the tray and its contents aside. But then his demeanor grew more serious.

  “What?” she asked after a long moment had passed.

  He looked deeply into her eyes, as if he was memorizing her for a test. “I have a question for you,” he said.

  Her imagination kick-started and took off at a hundred miles an hour. Last night was a mistake. Not disclosing her virgin status had been a bad idea. She was fired. Worse, he still wanted her to stay after this job was done. “Uh, okay,” she said, twisting her hands in her lap.

  “What happened to your glasses?”

  “What?” she asked, incredulous. “Why?”

  “You used to wear them all the time.”

  “We-ell,” she stalled. “I really only need them for reading.”

  He reached out and dragged a thumb across her cheek. “I like you better without them.”

  “Thank you,” she said, suddenly shy. Then she laughed out loud.

  He raised an eyebrow in question. “What?”

  “I thought you were going to tell me that last night was a mistake.”

  The serious look on his face grew more serious.

  “Oh,” she said and her smile died. “I guess you were getting around to that.”

  He shook his head but she knew he was lying. “It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. An inscrutable smile lit his features for a moment before he went on. “It was amazing. Wheels-off, howl-at-the-moon, amazing.” Then he shook his head again. “But you know me, the kind of guy I am. That’s not going to change, Daisy.”

  She couldn’t be absolutely sure because this was all pretty new to her, but this sounded very much like he was trying to let her down easy. Dread filled all the places inside her that had been filled with happiness a few minutes earlier. “I don’t remember asking you to change.”

  “No, you didn’t but—”

  “I’m a big girl, remember? I make my own choices.” She’d waited too long for this to happen. She wasn’t going down without a fight, dammit. “Besides, I know exactly who you are.”

  His hand moved reflexively and she thought he might reach out to touch her again but then he let his arm drop to his side. “You think you do but you—”

  “Alec, wake up.” She leaned forward and covered his hand with hers. “Who knows you better than I do?”

  He sucked in a big breath, let it out. She bit her lip, waited for him to deliver the whopper he’d just tried to swallow. “Daze, you want…hell, you deserve more than I have to give.”

  She did. She wanted everything. The whole matrimonial enchilada. But last night—sometime between act of passion number one and act of passion number nine—she’d decided that she could live with the fact that she wasn’t going to get that from him. She could and she would.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that he would fall in love with her…

  Ah, there it was, she thought as she grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to her. Her optimism, right back where it belonged. She slipped her arms around his neck and tipped her head to whisper in his ear, “I know what I want.” She nipped at his earlobe and he sucked in a breath and then she said, very softly, “Thank you for hiring me back, Alec.” Nibble. “For wanting me here with you.” Nibble. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

  He stiffened in her arms for a beat, so she nibbled on his ear some more and let her lips play around a sensitive spot on his neck she’d found last night. C’mon, give it up, Mackenzie.

  Alec groaned and said, “Ah, hell,” and after that it only took a second for him to roll her beneath him and a second more for him to find her lips and urge their kiss to an immoral, feverish place that had him crushing his mouth against hers, bruising her lips in a way that sent her mind spi
nning and her heart soaring. He tossed away the sheet that separated them, and the absolute perfection of his skin against hers made her sigh into his mouth, made her rejoice all over again that fate had seen fit to make this magnificent man her first.

  His strong, callused hand slipped down over her breast and cupped it gently while he used his thumb to tease her nipple into a hard, aching peak. Then he took her into his mouth and pulled gently, again and again, and she moaned as a thick, warm flush of pleasure slipped down her body and pooled between her trembling legs.

  Her skin burned beneath his hand as he moved down her body, caressing and stroking across her stomach, then lower until he found her, wet and ready. and slid his fingers inside her. She clutched the sheets in her fists and arched up to meet him, then she bit down hard on her lower lip when she felt his breath, hot and fluid, on her skin as he used his lips to follow the same path his hand had just taken.

  Oh, yes, she thought as he lifted her to him with clever, urgent hands and used his tongue and mouth to take her, thrashing and moaning and begging, to the very boundary of her being. She buried her hands in his dark hair and let the waves of sheer pleasure take her, pulling her down, deeper and deeper, until finally a wondrous, delicious release seized her and swept her away in one fast, furious, unstoppable surge.

  He smiled down at her as he stripped off his jeans and then, with his breathing ragged and reckless in her ear, he entered her while her body still vibrated with sweet aftershocks. She took him, all of him, took him gratefully, and loved that he filled her so completely.

  And then she forgot to think at all as they began to move as one, and her body and her heart opened impossibly further to him. Their pleasure deepened and swirled and intensified and then finally he, too, surrendered, crying out her name with one last thrust, taking her with him to a place she knew in her heart she’d only ever be able to find again in his arms.

  Daisy tore the concrete contractor’s bid out of the fax machine, read through it quickly, initialed her approval and fed it right back into the machine. While the pages zoomed through the ether, she updated her costs spreadsheet, printed a copy and laid it on Alec’s desk.