Too Hot To Handle. Barbara Daly

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?”