His Chosen Wife. Anne McAllister

to you tomorrow. I’ll tell your dad you’ve got everything under control.”

      Ally hoped it was true. She punched the connect button on her phone. “This is Alice Maruyama.”

      “Have dinner with me.” The voice was gruff and male and needed no identification.

      She’d heard it only an hour before, but if she hadn’t heard PJ Antonides’s voice for ten years, she would have recognized it. There was a sort of soft, lazy, sexy edge to it that made her toes curl.

      “Who is this?” she said with all the starch she could muster.

      He laughed. “Check your caller ID. Come on, Al. Don’t be a bad sport. You never used to be a bad sport.”

      “This has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with you signing the divorce papers.”

      “So convince me over dinner.”

      “PJ …”

      “Are you chicken, Al? Afraid?” It was the same old taunt he’d used years ago. In the same teasing tone.

      When she had met him she’d never surfed in her life, and he’d been appalled.

      “Never surfed? And you live where?” He’d stared at her, stunned. She’d just handed him his order from the lunch counter and expected him to move along, but he stayed right where he was, ignoring the line behind him.

      “Not everyone who lives in Hawaii surfs,” she’d said haughtily.

      He’d shrugged. “Guess not,” he’d agreed. Then he’d slanted her a grin. “And why should you if you’re chicken?”

      “I’m not chicken!”

      “Then come out with me,” he’d suggested. “I’ll teach you.”

      “I have work to do.” She’d waved her arm around, pointing out the fact that she had responsibilities, even if he didn’t. “I can’t just walk out and go play with you.”

      “So come tomorrow morning. Better surf then anyway. I’ll meet you here at seven.” He’d tipped his head, the slow grin still lingering, green eyes dancing. “Unless you’re—”

      “I am not chicken!” Ally said it then. She said it again now. “Fine. I’ll have dinner with you. We can catch up on ‘old times.’ And you can sign the papers. Where shall I meet you?”

      “I’ll pick you up.”

      “I’d rather meet you there.”

      He paused, then said, “Fine. Suit yourself.” He gave her a street corner in Brooklyn. “You can take a cab or the subway. Either way, I’ll meet you at the Seventh Avenue subway stop.”

      “I’ll go to the restaurant.”

      “I’ll be at the subway stop. We can walk from there. Seven o’clock. It’s a date.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      IT WAS not a date.

      Ally had never been on a date with PJ Antonides in her life—unless you counted their date to meet at the courthouse where they got married, which she wasn’t, she thought irritably, jerking clothes out of her suitcase, trying to find something suitable to wear.

      Not that it mattered. It wasn’t a date, despite what he had said. And they weren’t a couple!

      She was annoyed. With PJ. But even more with herself. And even more that she was annoyed and had let him get to her.

      She was kicking herself now for having done the polite thing and come to give him the papers in person. Jon was right. She hadn’t needed to. She could have sent them through the mail. And if he hadn’t signed them, oh, well. She’d have proceeded with the divorce anyway.

      Of course, she still could. But it was worse now, having stirred the pot, so to speak. And she couldn’t understand why he was being obstinate. She’d thought her task would be simple.

      She’d expected that PJ would be delighted to see her, that he would tease her a bit—as he always had done—then, still joking with her, he’d sign the papers, maybe buy her a cup of coffee, then give her a wink and a wave as she walked out the door.

      Her only qualm about seeing him again had been wondering what her own reaction would be.

      PJ had turned her world upside down the night he’d made love to her. He had made her want things she hadn’t suspected existed—things that she’d tried to put out of her mind ever since.

      Worse, he had made her want him.

      And, on a physical level, her body still did.

      Which was why she was putting on a tailored black pantsuit and knotting her hair up on top of her head—tamping down and buttoning up—to remind herself that this was not about physical desire.

      It was about commitment and family and eternity.

      It was about ending their sham of a marriage so that she could move on and make a real one with Jon.

      “Just remember that,” she told her reflection, staring intently into her dark eyes and willing herself to be strong. “PJ doesn’t love you. He’s just getting his own back.”

      She was fairly sure that was what this reluctance was all about. He was making her pay, no doubt, for having been rude and distant the night he’d come to her opening.

      “He doesn’t love you,” she repeated once more for good measure, then added severely, “and you don’t love him, either.”

      The subway ride from her midtown Manhattan hotel to the Seventh Avenue stop in Brooklyn wilted her pantsuit. A straphanger’s charm bracelet snagged her hair. She was disheveled, unkempt and perspiring by the time she emerged onto the street. She wished he’d told her what restaurant they were going to so she could have gone there and repaired the damage before she met him again.

      But he was already there waiting when she appeared. He was still wearing the trousers and shirt he’d worn at work. His jacket was slung over his shoulder. His tie was gone. The power was still there. It was like seeing the wild animal let out of his cage.

      Ally caught her breath.

      “Right on time,” he said approvingly. “No trouble getting here? You look great.”

      That was so patently a lie that Ally laughed.

      He grinned. “Ah, a real smile at last.”

      “It’s just that I’m so delighted to be here,” she said sarcastically.

      He laughed. And before she realized—or prepared, or dodged—he swooped around, ducked his head down and kissed her.

      It was a quick kiss—a street-corner kiss. A smack of lips, an instant’s worth of the taste of enticing sexy male and nothing more. It was the sort of kiss that happened every day on thousands of street corners around the world. Nothing earth-shattering about it.

      At least, no one else’s world shattered.

      Only hers.

      Because that one brief touch of PJ’s lips brought everything back. The memories she’d wallowed in at first, then spent years sublimating or suppressing, crashed back in on her as if the years of constructing defenses had never even happened.

      That one instant, that one taste—his lips on hers, his scent filling her nostrils—and for a split second she was back in Hawaii, back in PJ’s apartment, back in his arms.

      She swayed, stumbled.

      He caught her before she could fall on her face. “Are you okay?”

      Of course she was, but he kept his arm around her as she wobbled on knees of jelly. And she gripped his shirtfront as she righted herself, then let go as she straightened and pulled away. “I’m fine.