Kitabı oku: «Kiss A Handsome Stranger»

Chapter One

Daisy Redford smacked Chance Foster a couple of times. Then she pushed him so hard he compressed into a lump of submissive clay.

“Take that!” she told the clay as it spun around on the potter’s wheel, perfectly centered.

Some internal demon had goaded her earlier into making a little bust of the man. She couldn’t capture the teasing light in his eyes, but, for a quarter-hour’s effort, it had been a creditable likeness of his strong face, full mouth and straight nose.

She’d felt a flash of satisfaction when she pounded him into oblivion. Now, though, the only evidence of her triumph was the neatly spinning lump, ready to be made into a pot, and spatters of wet clay that she could feel drying across her cheeks.

Another woman might have washed a man out of her hair. Daisy Redford had smashed him onto the potter’s wheel. If her actions stopped the images of their stolen night together from tormenting her dreams, she would be happy. More than happy. Ecstatic.

“Now all I have to do is find Mr. Right before my girlfriends match me up with yet another loser,” she announced to her empty studio. “Or before I find another loser on my own.”

It was ironic. Her two best friends, Phoebe and Elise, had set out months ago to find Daisy a mate so she could have a child before endometriosis made her infertile. Both had sworn they weren’t interested in men for themselves, yet along the way they’d fallen in love and gotten engaged.

Not Daisy. She’d met a guy she thought was terrific, only to learn that he was bad news personified. “And then some,” she muttered.

Uh-oh, she was talking to herself. Thank goodness her assistant, Sean, was off on Mondays, when Daisy closed her downtown Phoenix gallery, so there was no one around to hear.

Today no one wandered through the three exhibition rooms or the sales gallery, or examined the photo portfolio of other available works. Today the only activity was confined to one of the two storage rooms, which she had converted to a studio.

Mondays belonged to the artist side of Daisy. She never sold or displayed her own pottery, because she didn’t consider it good enough. But she loved making it, and often gave her creations to her friends and her mother.

Now, carefully applying pressure, Daisy drew up a vase from the wet clay on the wheel. Between her steady hands, the material assumed a high-shouldered shape. It was similar to several previously made pots, each about fifteen inches tall, that stood drying on a canvas-covered table.

The small room was crowded with the potter’s wheel, a shelf of glazes, several drying tables and an electric kiln. It was, however, well ventilated and well lit.

A faint pounding echoed through the room. It sounded like distant hammering, perhaps repair work at the Civic Center a few blocks away. Not until she stopped the wheel to remove the pot did Daisy realize someone was knocking on the gallery’s locked front door.

“Oh, great.” She hurried to scrape and scrub clay off her hands, then wiped them on a towel.

There was no time to change her stained canvas shoes or disreputable jeans. Normally, she might have ignored a visitor to the closed gallery, but she was expecting a shipment from one of her artists, and perhaps the driver didn’t realize he was supposed to use the alley entrance.

After wiping her feet on a mat, she hurried through the gallery, called Native Art because it represented local artists. Although some of the pottery and weavings did indeed show a Native American influence, the painting and sculpture were contemporary.

Sure enough, through the front window she could see a delivery van double-parked on the street. The man outside wore the uniform of a local trucking company.

Daisy pushed a hank of hair off her forehead and unbolted the door. “You have to deliver through the back.”

“Checked your alley recently?” the man demanded. “They’re working on the waterline at the end, and there’s a van blocking the other. The driver’s nowhere around.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back any minute.” She glanced anxiously along the busy street, which was lined with trendy shops and restaurants. At this noon hour, cars and pedestrians bustled by like hungry ants. Double-parking was likely to bring a ticket, and she could just guess who would get stuck paying for it.

“I can’t wait, lady,” the man said. “Sorry, but I’ve got another order to pick up this afternoon.”

Daisy made a snap decision. Better to unload everything right now than to risk having him depart with an exhibit scheduled to open this Saturday.

“Okay, but you’ll have to hurry,” she said, and opened the facing door to create a double aperture.

Daisy didn’t like going outside in such a messy state. Chance Foster’s law office was a block away, and she’d barely avoided running into him several times in the past two months. On the other hand, he didn’t know her real identity and, beneath these clay daubs, he wasn’t likely to recognize her even if he saw her.

“Be careful!” she told the delivery man, who, with his assistant, was carting a painting-shaped package down a ramp. “Go right through here, all the way to the back.”

The dozen acrylic works were heavy, and several had odd-shaped frames. The workmen were none too careful, either, and twice Daisy barely saved potted plants from being knocked over as they trudged through the gallery.

At last, with relief, she made a final check of the truck’s interior and found it empty. “Thanks,” she said.

The men waved and climbed into the cab. Daisy was almost at the gallery entrance when, half a dozen doors down, a woman emerged from Le Bistro Français.

Honey-blond hair swirled around her pouty face. The bee-stung lips quivered and her wide eyes glistened.

A man stepped out right behind her. Daisy’s fists clenched.

Chance Foster radiated good taste, from the elegant cut of his light-brown hair to his expensive business suit. Yet no amount of subdued overlay could disguise the tantalizing leanness of his hips or the masculine way he carried himself.

She knew every inch of him, from those watchful gray eyes and broad shoulders down to the muscular thighs. In spite of her resolve never to have anything to do with Chance again, Daisy wanted him.

She ached not so much for the physical pleasures they’d shared—although those had been amazing—as for the gentle way he’d talked and listened and eased inside her closely guarded heart. Or pretended to, anyway.

A pang shot through her when Chance put his arms around the woman. They stood next to a sleek car, and he held her for several minutes before going to open the driver’s door for her.

He stood in traffic, making sure the blonde got inside safely. Daisy hoped the woman wasn’t naive enough to think that meant he cared about her. Chance was suave, all right, a perfect gentleman and a charmer. He was also the most notorious playboy in Arizona.

Two long strides carried him to the sidewalk, where he waited until the car pulled away. On the point of turning toward his office, he halted and stared straight at Daisy.

Please don’t let him recognize me. She didn’t see how he could, with clay hardening across her nose and cheeks. Yet he remained planted there, indifferent to the people flowing around him. Maybe he’d noticed her distinctive, chin-length auburn hair, she realized.

“Oops.” Daisy hurried inside and locked the door. She straightened the Closed sign before fleeing to the back room.

Long minutes ticked past. When no one rapped on the glass, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

She should never have gone to bed with a man she had just met. It wasn’t like Daisy. Being an illegitimate child, the daughter of a man who promised the moon and delivered nothing but empty sky, she’d been careful to avoid casual involvements.

But that night at Elise’s engagement party, the handsome newcomer had brought to life all her fantasies. He’d put her at ease when they talked, and electrified her when they danced together.

When he invited her to his house for a drink, she’d welcomed the chance to continue their talk. Besides, she hadn’t wanted either Elise or Phoebe, the party’s hostess, to spoil this magical mood by fussing over them. Her friends sometimes went a bit overboard in their attempts to pair Daisy off.

She could see, in retrospect, how foolish she’d been to abandon her usual caution. Most of the time, when she met a man, the first thing she assessed was what kind of father he would make. Especially since she’d reached the age of thirty and, due to the severity of her condition, had to marry soon or possibly lose her opportunity for motherhood.

With Chance, though, Daisy hadn’t worried about such things. She’d simply enjoyed being with him. In his house, in his arms, in his bed.

That evening she’d given him her real name, Deirdre, because it made her feel more sophisticated. When he’d said his name was Charles, she hadn’t realized that he, too, was better known by a nickname.

It was after they made love and were talking quietly that she asked how he knew Elise. She’d nearly stopped breathing when he said, “I’m her brother.”

Chance Foster was famous. Or, rather, infamous. According to Elise, his conquests included the most attractive women in Phoenix. A different woman for every occasion, that was his reputation.

When she realized who she’d slept with, Daisy could have smacked herself for being such an idiot. Until that moment she’d believed they were special to each other, that their instant rapport had been as exciting to Chance as to her. Now she knew it was a trick he used to wrap a woman around his finger.

She’d waited until he fell asleep, then called a taxi and fled. Now she was cowering in her studio to avoid him, when the man probably hadn’t given her a moment’s thought in the past two months.

Annoyed at herself, Daisy used a wire to cut the vase’s bottom from the mound of clay remaining on the wheel. Carefully she set it on the table to dry.

Who was that woman at the restaurant? she wondered. The make of car, the clothes and the grooming all shouted, Rich! Or, possibly, In debt and loving it!

Without giving much thought to what she was doing, Daisy seized a few pieces of clay, created a woman’s features and attached them to the side of a partially dried pot. The resulting face, a caricature of the blond woman, had a hungry, predatory look.

On the vase next to it, she devised Chance’s visage with a sly smile and leering eyes. Studying it, she realized she might finally have hit on an individual twist for her work.

“I could make a whole line of Character Crockery,” she mused. “Or maybe I should call them Personality Pots.”

The prospect appealed to her. Daisy enjoyed fooling around with caricatures in clay, but had never shown them to anyone, let alone considered selling them. People weren’t likely to buy little heads with no practical use.

These pots, on the other hand, could hold plants. She smiled. Poison ivy, maybe.

A flame of excitement sprang up. Daisy’s ceramic work, although technically accomplished, had until now lacked uniqueness, but this idea was promising. Although other artists had made pots with faces, she knew she could take her idea in new directions.

How ironic that this development had been inspired by Chance Foster!

She spent the rest of the afternoon experimenting with ways to create character faces on her pots. By making slight depressions, she created eye sockets and other contours that gave her work an even more distinctive look.

By late afternoon Daisy’s arms ached pleasantly and her agitation over the near encounter with Chance had dissipated. She was cleaning the studio when the phone rang.

“Native Art,” she responded.

“Hi, Native, this is Elise!” joked her friend.

How could such a delightful woman have such a heartless brother? Daisy wondered, not for the first time. “What’s up?”

“I picked my colors! Deep-rose and pale-yellow!”

Daisy didn’t immediately grasp her friend’s meaning. Then it hit. “Oh, for the wedding.” Elise and her fiancé, James, would be walking down the aisle in September, three months from now. “That sounds lovely.”

“You know what this means,” Elise said. “We can start looking at bridesmaids’ dresses for you and Phoebe.”

“Great.” Since Elise hadn’t wanted to favor one of them as the maid of honor, they were both going to walk down the aisle together. It would be kind of funky, Daisy thought, but fun.

“How about if we meet for a swim right after work? Say, five-thirty?” Elise went on. “We can talk strategy and cool off at the same time.”

Although it was only June, temperatures hovered in the high eighties. “Sounds great.”

“See you there.”

“There” meant the Mesa Blue condominium complex, where the three women lived. The blue-tiled pool, nestled among ferns and a few squatty palms, provided a refreshing meeting place in summer months.

Daisy couldn’t wait to take a dip and see her friends. After draping loose plastic covers over the pots to prevent cracking, she hurried home.

CHANCE FOSTER COULD HAVE sworn he recognized the smudged redhead outside the art gallery. By the time he strolled by, though, she’d disappeared and the place was closed.

He stood on the sidewalk like a smitten teenager, debating whether he dared knock. But what would he say? That two months ago he’d spent a wonderful evening with a mysterious woman and now he was trying to find her?

He couldn’t understand how such an intriguing woman could get invited to his sister’s engagement party without either Elise or Phoebe knowing her. Afterward, both had roundly denied knowing anyone named Deirdre.

Deciding not to waste any more time on a wild-goose chase, he walked back to his office. Still, Chance’s mind wouldn’t leave the subject.

He told himself for the umpteenth time that he must have been mistaken in his impression of Deirdre. The honest, direct, sunny lady who’d knocked him off balance wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. There must be a darker side to her personality. Or maybe she’d fooled him from the beginning.

Perhaps she was married and cheating on her husband. Or so afraid of commitment that she panicked when she met a guy she might care about.

As a family law attorney, Chance had seen how many things could go wrong in a relationship. A lot of times the problems sprang from a partner who lacked the character to stick around and stay faithful when the going got tough.

He would like to see Deirdre again, though, at least to learn why she’d bailed out on him. And so he could stop imagining he saw her on the street, the way he’d done today and several times previously.

As he reached the professional building, Chance wondered if his sister and her fiancé had followed his advice to get premarital counseling. People as successful as those two—Elise was a French professor, James a wealthy businessman—didn’t think they needed any preparation for marriage. But to Chance, that was like someone saying he didn’t need medical insurance because he was healthy.

He decided to drop by her condo after work and, as her big brother, take the liberty of nagging a bit.

“I AM NOT GOING TO WEAR a yellow dress!” declared Phoebe. Sitting on the edge of the pool, she swished her feet in the water. “Yellow looks awful on blondes. And rose will do terrible things to Daisy’s complexion! I mean, she’s a redhead, for heaven’s sake.”

“I was thinking of the flowers,” Elise admitted. “Yellow and red roses would look so pretty in a bouquet.”

Daisy tilted her face to soak up the lingering rays of sunshine. With her tendency to freckle, she couldn’t enjoy midday sunbathing, so this was a treat.

“Come on, Daisy!” Phoebe prodded her with an elbow. “Back me up, here. Yellow wouldn’t look so great on you, either.”

Daisy stretched and smothered a yawn. Not that she wasn’t vitally interested in her friends’ arrangements, but after all, Phoebe was the beauty consultant. She was also studying biochemistry with the goal of establishing her own cosmetics company, and she had a good sense of what colors looked right on people.

Daisy’s own taste ran to the offbeat. Her swimsuit, for example, had been created by her mother, Jeanine Redford, a seamstress and costume designer in Tempe.

A single, angled black strap continued as a diagonal black slash across the emerald green stretch fabric of the swimsuit. A geometric cutout at the waist furthered the impact. It wasn’t so much a bathing suit as a dramatic statement.

“We could ask my mom,” she said. “She’d come up with a memorable design.”

Elise grinned. “I love your mother’s costumes, but not for my wedding, thank you.” To Phoebe she said, “The yellow can go, but I like deep-rose.”

Phoebe stood up, a move that displayed her impressive figure to advantage. In fact, the former actress was impressive to look at from any angle.

“I came here to swim, not argue,” she said. “First one to reach the far end gets to pick the colors, okay?”

She dived in, water closing over her head with scarcely a ripple. The pool looked so inviting that Daisy jumped in and swam after her friend.

“It’s my wedding so I get to choose!” shouted Elise, and made a long arcing dive past Daisy. A few furious kicks carried her past Phoebe, as well, and she arrived at the far end first. “Deep-rose,” she reaffirmed when she could speak. “Deep rose and…something.”

Phoebe emerged and caught her breath. “Forget rose. How about green?” she said. “Green and gold.”

Elise grimaced. “That sounds like pom-poms at a high school football game.”

“Purple and white?” Daisy suggested as she paddled alongside.

“That’s for a royal coronation,” said Elise. “I don’t care how rich James is, I don’t want anyone thinking I’m turning into a princess.”

A burst of meowing drew their attention toward apartment 1B. On the patio, a bevy of cats gathered as a fiftyish woman with unnaturally red hair filled their feeding dishes.

“I wonder how Frannie and Bill are getting along?” Phoebe mused.

Red-haired Frannie, with her brightly colored clothes and beehive hairdo, made an odd contrast to the soft-spoken building superintendent who lived in a nearby unit. The two had been edging toward each other for months and finally seemed to be hitting it off, but had parted after a jealous quarrel.

Apparently Bill had also noticed the cat noises. The large, usually jovial man, returning from one of his periodic inspections of the premises, stopped near the pool and gazed wistfully toward Frannie.

She ignored him, and after a moment Jeff Hawkin, the handyman, stuck his head out of the laundry room and requested Bill’s attention. Daisy hoped they were fixing the number three dryer, which ate quarters.

“Pale-pink might work,” Phoebe suggested, returning to their previous conversation.

“Pale pink with what?” Elise asked.

“White?” said Daisy. “No, too boring. How about three colors? Pale pink with black and white?”

“Black? At a wedding?” Elise groaned.

“Let’s go try on dresses and figure out what colors look good on us,” Phoebe said. “That way Daisy and I can buy something we might actually wear again.”

“What if chartreuse looks good on you?” grumped their friend. “Oh, good, here comes big brother. Let’s see what he thinks.”

To her horror Daisy spotted an all-too-familiar figure strolling from the lobby into the courtyard. It had been sheer coincidence that had kept her from meeting Chance before that ill-fated night of the engagement party. Why couldn’t she have the same luck now?

Frantically she gazed around for somewhere to hide. Giving up, she sucked in her breath and sank under the water.