Breaking the Greek's Rules

“You’re scared.”

“I am not scared! What’s there to be scared of?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.” He cocked his head.

“Temptation, maybe?”

She shook her head adamantly. “I’m not tempted. I’m busy. I haven’t seen you in five years, Alex. I barely knew you. We don’t have a past to catch up on. Goodbye, Alex.” She turned away and started to go back inside.

But before she could Alex caught her arm and spun her slowly back—then did what he’d been wanting to do ever since he’d realized who she was.

He dipped his head and kissed her.

It was instinct, desire, a mad impetuous hunger that he couldn’t seem to control. It was a roaring in his ears and a fire in his veins. It was the taste of Daisy—a taste he’d never forgotten. Never. And as soon as he tasted her he wanted more.

And more.

For a second, maybe two, Daisy seemed to melt under the touch of his lips. She went soft and pliable, shaping her mouth to his. And then, in another instant, it was over.

She jerked away from him, stared at him for one horrified moment. Then she pulled out of his grasp and bolted back inside the foyer.

“Daisy!”

The door slammed in his face.

About the Author

Award-winning author ANNE MCALLISTER was once given a blueprint for happiness that included a nice, literate husband, a ramshackle Victorian house, a horde of mischievous children, a bunch of big, friendly dogs, and a life spent writing stories about tall, dark and handsome heroes. ‘Where do I sign up?’ she asked, and promptly did. Lots of years later, she’s happy to report the blueprint was a success. She’s always happy to share the latest news with readers at her website, www.annemcallister.com, and welcomes their letters there, or at PO Box 3904, Bozeman, Montana 59772, USA (SASE appreciated).

Recent titles by the same author:

 SAVAS’S WILDCAT

 THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

 HIRED BY HER HUSBAND

 THE VIRGIN’S PROPOSITION

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Breaking the Greek’s Rules

Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Nancy

CHAPTER ONE

ALEXANDROS Antonides studied the crumpled receipt, the one with the hastily scrawled name, address and phone number on the back, and was tempted to stuff it right back in his pocket.

Or better yet, throw it out.

He didn’t need a matchmaker, for God’s sake!

His fingers crushed the already frequently crumpled piece of paper and he stared out the window of the taxi as it headed north on Eighth Avenue. They weren’t out of midtown Manhattan yet. It was nearly five-thirty. He should just tell the driver to forget it.

But he didn’t. Instead he made himself lean back against the seat and, just as he had done a dozen or more times before, he smoothed out the paper against his palm.

Daisy Connolly. His cousin Lukas had scribbled down her name and address a month ago when he and Lukas had met up at the family reunion out at Lukas’s parents’ place in the Hamptons. “She’ll find you the perfect wife.”

“How do you know?” he’d asked Lukas, letting his voice carry his obvious doubt. He’d looked around pointedly, noting Lukas’s complete lack of not only a wife, but even a date for their family reunion.

“Seen her do it,” Lukas said frankly. “I went to college with her. She did it then. She does it now. She has some uncanny sense of who belongs together.” He shrugged. “Who knows how she does it? Hocus-pocus? Tea leaves? Beats me. Give her a call or go see her.”

Alex had grunted, not a sound meant to convey agreement.

“Unless you really don’t want to get married.” Lukas had cocked his head, considering Alex. Then, “Maybe he’s chicken,” he had said to his brothers.

One of them had made a clucking sound.

Alex had masked his irritation and rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he’d said curtly. “If I get desperate enough, I’ll look her up.”

“I’d say you’re already desperate,” Lukas had said, grinning. “How many fiancées have you gone through?”

“Two,” Alex said through his teeth. “But Imogene doesn’t count.”

Imogene had been perfect. She hadn’t loved Alex any more than he’d loved her. When her long-time boyfriend had got cold feet faced with a lifetime commitment, Alex had grabbed her on the rebound. Unfortunately two days after she’d said yes to Alex, the love of her life had come to his senses and begged her to marry him.

“What can I do?” she’d wailed at Alex. “I still love him!”

The more fool she, Alex had thought. But he’d been polite and wished her good luck. He still did. If she was that besotted, she’d need it.

“I don’t know,” Lukas had said slowly, studying him. “Two fiancées in a little over a year …” He’d arched his brows in speculation, then looked over at his brothers. “Sounds pretty desperate to me.”

His brothers, Elias and PJ, had nodded sagely.

Alex had merely snorted. He didn’t want a perfect wife, anyway. He just wanted a suitable one. He was thirty-five years old. Time to get married.

Of course lots of men would disagree. But not Antonides men. Antonides men married. All of them.

Not young, as a rule. Most all of them sowed their wild oats before settling down. But in the end, every last one of them took the plunge.

As a young man Alex had turned his back on the notion. He’d figured to be the exception to the rule. Besides, then the thrill of the hunt and endless variety had enticed him.

Now it often seemed more trouble than it was worth.

Sex? Well, that wasn’t too much trouble. But picking up women who wanted a one-night stand seemed tawdry to him now. And while it was fine to play the field when they were young, Alex understood what every Antonides male understood—that there came a time to turn into a responsible, steady, dependable, mature man.

And that meant having a wife.

Elias might have been born responsible. But even PJ, who had been a beach bum for years, was respectably married now. In fact he had been secretly married for years. And Lukas, the youngest of them and definitely a free spirit, would get married, too.

Even Lukas knew it. It was just a matter of time.

Alex’s time was now.

He had made up his mind last year. The hunt had begun to bore him and he found he preferred spending his time designing buildings than enticing women into his bed. It wasn’t all that difficult, honestly. The difficult part was when he had to convince them he didn’t intend to fall in love with them.

It would be easier and more straightforward, he decided, to find a woman he liked, spell out the rules, marry her and get on with his life.

It wasn’t as if he had a lot of rules. Basically all he wanted was an easy-to-get-along-with, undemanding woman who wanted an easy-to-get-along-with, undemanding husband. He wasn’t looking for love and he wasn’t looking for kids. He wasn’t looking to complicate his life.

He and his wife would share bed and board when they were in the same country and would attend each other’s duty functions when possible. Presently he lived in an apartment he’d restored in Brooklyn above his offices, but it was a bachelor’s pad. He wouldn’t expect his wife to live there. They could get another place close to her work. She could choose it. He didn’t care. He was perfectly willing to be accommodating.

So, really, how difficult could it be to find a woman willing to agree to his terms?

Harder than he thought, Alex admitted now.

His last three dates had seemed promising—all of them were professional women in their thirties. He’d met them at business social functions. They all had high-powered careers, fast-track lives, and nearly as many demands on their time as he had on his.

They should have been perfect.

But the lawyer had treated their dinner date as a cross-examination about his determination not to have children. The dentist bored on about how much she hated her profession and could hardly wait to quit and start a family. And Melissa, the stock analyst with whom he’d had dinner with last night, told him point-blank that her biological clock was ticking and she wanted a baby within a year.

At least Alex had had the presence of mind to say just as firmly, “I don’t.”

But that date, like so many of the others he’d had since he’d decided that it was possible to marry without anything as messy as love complicating the relationship, had gone downhill from there.

Which brought him back to the receipt he held in his hand.

Daisy.

He stared at the name Lukas had scrawled on the crumpled paper. It brought with it flickers of memories, a frisson of awareness. Honey-blonde hair. Sparkling blue eyes. Laughter. Gentle, warm words. Soft sighs. Hot kisses. He shifted in the seat of the cab. Once upon a time, for one brief weekend, Alex had known a woman called Daisy.

So maybe this was fate.

The hot-kisses, soft-sighs Daisy had wanted to marry him. Maybe the matchmaking Daisy would find him a wife.

“Think of it as delegating,” Elias had urged him pragmatically when he’d balked at Lukas’s suggestion. “You do it all the time at work.”

That was true. Alex had a whole staff at his architectural firm who did the things he didn’t have time for. They did what he told them, checked availability, researched zoning and land use and materials, sorted and sifted through piles of information, then presented their findings and recommendations, and left him to make the final decision.

It was sensible. It was efficient. And Elias was right: a matchmaker could do the same thing. It would be smarter, in fact, than doing it himself.

He would be leaving less to chance if he deputized a disinterested employee to find appropriate candidates. And he’d be spared the awkwardness of future dinners like the one he’d shared with Melissa last night. With a matchmaker vetting the candidates, he would only have to meet the really suitable ones, then decide which one would make the best wife.

It suddenly sounded promising. He should have dropped in on Daisy Connolly before this. But Alex didn’t ordinarily get to the Upper West Side. Today, though, he’d been working on a building project in the West Village and, finishing early, he’d had a bit of time to spare before he headed back to Brooklyn. So he’d plucked the paper out of his wallet and hopped in a cab.

Twenty minutes later he consulted it as he got out again on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and the cross street on which Daisy Connolly had her office.

He hoped she hadn’t gone home already. He hadn’t made an appointment. It had seemed more sensible to leave himself the option of changing his mind if, when he saw the place, something about it made him want to walk straight on past.

But the street wore the New York City version of homey respectability. It was quiet, lined with four and five story brownstones, a few blocks north of the Museum of Natural History. The trees on either side of the street were all varying shades of gold and orange this early October afternoon, making it look like a photo op for an urban lifestyle magazine. Alex took his time walking up the block, the architect in him enjoying the view.

When he’d first bought a place to live in New York three years ago, changing his base of operations from Europe to this side of the Atlantic, he’d opted for an apartment in a high-rise about a mile south on Central Park West. Twenty-odd stories up, his aerie had given him a useful bird’s-eye perspective of the city, but it had literally kept him above it all. He hadn’t felt connected.

Two years ago, offered a chance to tear down a pre-war office building in Brooklyn not far from where his cousins Elias and PJ lived with their families, he’d found a purpose and a place where he was happy at the same time. He’d found another property on which to build what the owner wanted, and seeing a chance to make a useful contribution to the gentrification of a neighborhood in transition, he had snapped up the pre-war building for himself. Now he had his offices downstairs and his apartment on the fourth floor. He felt more like he belonged and less as if he were soaring above it.

He got the same feeling here on Daisy Connolly’s street. There was a laundry on one corner, a restaurant on the other. Between two of the brownstones he passed an empty lot which now held a small local playground with some climbing equipment, a swing and slide. One brownstone had a small discreet plaque by the door of the garden floor apartment offering herbs and organic seedlings. Another had a small sign for a chiropractor’s office.

Did matchmakers have signs? He felt an unwelcome flicker of awkwardness. When he found the address midblock, there was no sign. It looked like a version of all the rest—a tall, narrow, five story building with three stories of bay windows and another two stories above them of more modest windows—where once servants had dwelt no doubt. It was the color of warm honey, lighter than the traditional brownstone, and it sported lace curtains at the first floor bay windows making it look pleasant and professional at the same time.

Besides the lack of signs, there were no astrology signs or crystal balls in sight. No tiny fairy lights flickering in the windows, either. None of the “hocus-pocus” Lukas had mentioned. Alex breathed a sigh of relief.

He straightened his tie, took a deep breath, strode up the steps and opened the outside door. In the tiny foyer, on the mailbox for apartment 1, he saw her name: Daisy Connolly. Resolutely he pressed the buzzer.

For half a minute there was no response at all. Alex shifted from one foot to the other and ground his teeth at the thought of wasting the end of an afternoon coming all the way to the Upper West Side for nothing.

But just as he was about to turn away, he heard the sound of a lock being turned. The door opened into the shadow-filled front hall and he could see the silhouette of a slim woman coming to push open the door to admit him.

She was smiling—until their gazes met. Then the smile faded and the color drained from her face.

She stared at him, stricken. “Alex?”

Honey-blonde hair. Deep blue eyes. A memory of scorching hot kisses. “Daisy?”

Alex? Here? No!

No. No. No.

But all the time the word was banging around inside Daisy’s head, the truth—all six feet of his whipcord-lean, muscular, gorgeous male self—was staring at her in the face.

Why in heaven’s name couldn’t she have looked out the window before she’d answered the door?

The answer was simple: Alexandros Antonides was so far in her past she never ever considered that he might turn up on her doorstep.

She’d been expecting Philip Cannavarro.

She’d done a photo shoot with the Cannavarro family— Phil, Lottie and their three children—last month at the beach. A week and a half ago, they had chosen their photos, and Philip had called at lunch to ask if he could drop by after work and pick up their order.

So when the buzzer had sounded at twenty minutes to six, Daisy had opened the door with a smile on her face and an embossed portfolio of photos in her hand—a portfolio that the sight of Alexandros Antonides had let slip from her nerveless fingers.

“Oh, hell.”

Her heart hammering, Daisy stooped quickly and began gathering up the photos. Focusing on that gave her a few moments of time and a little bit of space to get her bearings. Ha. What was he doing here?

She hadn’t seen Alex in years and she had never expected to ever see him again. Only the fact that he seemed as surprised as she was allowed her to breathe at all.

She stopped doing that, though, when he crouched down beside her and began to help pick up the photos.

“Don’t do that. Leave them,” she said, trying to snatch them away from him. “I can do it!”

But Alex didn’t let go. He simply kept right on. He only said, “No.”

And there it was—the same single word, delivered in the same implacable tone that he’d said five years ago—that one that had pulled the rug right out from under her hopes and dreams.

Worse, though, was that his rough-edged, slightly accented, unconsciously sexy baritone still resonated all the way to the core of her exactly as it had from the moment she’d first heard him speak. It was as if he had been her very own personal pied piper of Hamelin. And foolishly, mindlessly, Daisy had fallen under his spell.

Then she’d called it “love at first sight.” Then she had believed in the foolishness of such fairy tales.

Now she knew better. Now she knew the danger of it, thank God. There would be no falling under his spell again. She gathered the last of the photos, no longer in any shape to be presented to Philip Cannavarro, and got to her feet.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, stepping away as he rose to his feet, too.

He shook his head, looking as dazed as she felt. “You’re Daisy?” He glanced at a piece of paper he held in his hand, then frowned. “Well, of course you are, but … Connolly?”

Daisy lifted her chin. “That’s right. Why?”

But before she got an answer, another man appeared outside on the stoop, just beyond the heavy front door and looked past Alex questioningly.

Daisy’s knees went weak with relief. “Phil! Come on in!” He might as well have been the cavalry come to her rescue. She beamed at him.

Alex turned and stared over his shoulder, his brows drawing down. “Who’s he?” he demanded as if he had more right there than her client.

Fortunately Phil was already pulling the door open, glancing in quick succession at Daisy’s relieved face and Alex’s scowl and finally at the photos in Daisy’s hands. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt—”

“You weren’t,” Daisy said quickly. “But I heard the bell. I thought it was you, not—” she gestured helplessly toward Alex who was standing so she could almost feel the heat of his body “—and I accidentally dropped your photos. I am so sorry.” She gave Phil a hopeful smile. “I need to have them redone.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’re probably just a little frayed at the edges,” Phil said cheerfully. “No problem.” He held out his hand and doubtless would have taken them from her, but Daisy shook her head and clutched them against her chest like a shield.

“No,” she said. “I guarantee my work. And I don’t give less than my best. You and Lottie deserve my best.” He and Lottie had been one of the first matches she’d made. Lottie had been a makeup artist she’d met when she first began working as a photographer after college. Phil used to do her taxes. She felt almost like their mother even though they were older than she was. And she wasn’t giving them less than her best.

“I’ll put a rush on it,” she promised. “You should have them in two days. I’ll have them couriered directly to your house.”

Phil looked doubtful. “We won’t mind,” he said. “Lottie will want …”

“Take these then.” Daisy thrust them at him. “But tell her they’re just until the new ones come in. Tell her I’m so sorry. Tell her—” She shut her mouth, the only way to stop babbling.

Phil fumbled with the photos, too, then stuffed them in his briefcase, shooting Daisy worried sidelong glances. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

But she knew why he was asking. Phil and Lottie were used to the unflappable Daisy, the one who rolled with the punches, adjusted on the fly, never worried if life threw pitchforks in her path.

“Daisy always copes,” Lottie said. It was like a mantra.

Daisy wasn’t exactly coping now. Alex’s mere presence created an electricity in the air, a force field of awareness she could never manage to be indifferent to. Damn it.

“She’ll be fine,” Alex said smoothly now. “She’s just had a bit of a shock.” He stepped even closer and looped an arm over her shoulders.

Daisy nearly jumped out of her skin. At the same time, though, her traitorous body clamored to sink into his embrace. Muscle memory was a dangerous thing. Daisy held herself rigid, resisting him, resisting her own inclination.

“She’ll be all right. I’ll take care of her.” Alex’s tone was all reassurance as he smiled and somehow put himself between her and Phil, edging the other man toward the door, making it clear that Phil didn’t need to hang around.

Phil didn’t hang around. He understood male territoriality as well as the next guy. “Right,” he said, all smiles and cheerful bravado. “I’ll tell Lottie.”

And he was out the door and down the steps without glancing back.

“Thank you very much,” Daisy said drily, slipping out from beneath his arm, which still managed to leave her with a sense that it was still there. She could feel the warm weight of it even though she’d stepped away. Instinctively she wrapped her own arms across her chest.

What was he doing here? The question pounded again in her brain.

“Daisy.” The way he said her name was somewhere between musing and caressing. It sent the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. “It is fate,” he murmured.

“What?” Daisy said sharply.

“I was just thinking about you.” His tone was warm. He acted as if they were old friends. Well, maybe to him that was all they were.

“I can’t imagine why,” Daisy said, which was the absolute truth.

“I’m looking for a wife.”

She stared at him, her jaw dropping.

He just smiled, expecting no doubt to hear her say, Oh, yes, please! Pick me.

Daisy hugged her arms more tightly across her chest. “Good luck with that.” She could have said, You don’t want a wife. You made a huge point of telling me you didn’t want a wife!

Now Alex raised his brows. The smile still lurking. “I wasn’t proposing,” he said mildly.

Mortified, Daisy said stiffly, “Of course you weren’t.”

She wasn’t going to bring up the past at all. It did her no credit. She’d been young and stupid and far too romantic for her own good when they’d met five years ago at a wedding reception.

Daisy had been one of her college roommate, Heather’s, bridesmaids, and Alex had been pressed into service as a last-minute substitute for a sick groomsman. Their eyes had met—something wild and hot and amazing had sparked between them—and to Daisy’s fevered romantic twenty-three-year-old brain, it had been one of those meant-to-be moments.

They had only had eyes for each other from the moment they’d met. They talked, they danced, they laughed, they touched. The electricity between them could have lit New York City day and night for a week.

So this was love at first sight. She remembered thinking that, stunned and delighted to finally experience it. She had, of course, always believed. Her parents had always told Daisy and her sister that they’d known from the moment they’d met that they were destined to be together.

Julie, Daisy’s sister, had felt that way about Brent, the moment she’d met him in eighth grade. They’d married right out of high school. Twelve years later, they were still deeply in love.

Daisy had never felt that way—wasn’t sure she believed it—until the day Alex had walked into her life.

That afternoon had been so extraordinary, so mind-numbingly, body-tinglingly perfect that she’d believed. It was just the way her parents had described it, the way Julie had described it—the sense of knowing, of a belief that all the planets were finally lined up, that the absolutely right man had come into her life.