Too Hot To Handle. Barbara Daly

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СКАЧАТЬ she needed. She’d start looking for prospects this very weekend. She only hoped her staff wouldn’t move on to greener salaries before she found one.

      ALEX EMERSON STROLLED aimlessly north through Soho after lunch in Tribeca, crossed Houston and made his way up to Washington Square. Encouraged by the warmth of mid-May, joggers trotted around the perimeter of the park and dog owners ignored the No Dogs Allowed signs to toss Frisbees to ecstatic black Labs and golden retrievers. In the center of the park near the fountain, hot-dog vendors were doing a land-office business.

      The hot dogs smelled great, but he’d already eaten a couple of times today and would have to eat a couple of times more. He had several hours between the long but productive business lunch at Arqua, which he’d just left, and drinks at the Plaza’s Oak Bar with yet another set of potential investors in the venture capital company he ran out of San Francisco. Drinks would be followed by a long, expensive and, he hoped, even more productive business dinner in a quiet corner of the elegant restaurant Jean-Georges near Lincoln Center.

      Doing business was a fine way to spend a spring Saturday as far as Alex was concerned. Work was the only arena in which he felt comfortable. When he was at home in San Francisco he worked. When he traveled to New York or London or Taipei, he also worked. It was only during the little breaks between work that he felt on edge, jittery, bothered, too aware of the needs of his body and the permanent sense of loss in his heart.

      Walking helped a little. Running would have helped more, but it would have meant two additional clothes changes and a shower before his five o’clock appointment. Too much time wasted. Suddenly bored with greenery, he headed west on Waverly Place toward the untidy bustle of Sixth Avenue. A couple of blocks north he crossed the street to get a closer look at the library, then went to the corner to wait for the walk light.

      From that vantage point he watched shoppers cram their way into Balducci’s, a specialty grocer, while others emerged, burdened and visibly harassed, from the exits.

      His New York business acquaintances occasionally sent him gift baskets from the place. They sold several things Alex was crazy about—the most thinly cut smoked salmon in town, fresh cream cheese, a lemon tart that had had a walk-on role in one of his dreams and boxes of chocolate-chip cookies that were close enough to homemade to fool somebody like him, whose mother wasn’t into cookies. He should go in, buy them out of those cookies and surprise his staff with them on Monday morning.

      It really would be a surprise. He wasn’t what you’d call a chocolate-chip-cookie kind of boss.

      As this thought went through his mind, a woman came out of the shop carrying two of the distinctive green-and-white shopping bags. She set them down for a moment to set a brown leather handbag more firmly over her shoulder. She was reed-slim in narrow jeans, the dark-blue ones Alex had decided must be the fashion this spring. A loose white shirt floated over her arms, barely touching her body down to her waist where she’d tucked it in. High-heeled sandals added four inches to her already considerable height.

      She was an extraordinarily striking woman. He felt drawn to her, a stranger, as he rarely felt drawn to the women who decorated his life as fleetingly as the bouquets of fresh flowers Burleigh routinely ordered for the round foyer table in Alex’s Pacific Heights home. Just seeing her there gave him an oddly familiar surge of desire to penetrate a softness and warmth that felt too real to be a figment of his heated imagination.

      She turned directly toward him for an instant, and he saw with the crystal clarity of cherished memories the fine skin, the blond hair that floated in the same ethereal fashion as her shirt, the generous mouth. His eyes opened wide. His lips parted. He breathed a single word.

      “Sarah.”

      And then, as she took off like the Concorde, as comfortable on those high heels as if they’d been sneakers, he came to life. He couldn’t shout her name. Men like him didn’t shout women’s names in public places. They didn’t follow women up the street, either, but this was Sarah he was following, and he could not, would not, let her get away.

      HURRYING NORTH, Sarah congratulated herself on how well the weekend was going. The evening before, she’d had drinks at the latest trendy bar—those ratings could change overnight—in Chelsea with Rachel and Annie, two friends from work. She’d chatted with an appealing man, an actor with a charming smile and high hopes, who’d auditioned the day before and had just gotten a callback.

      A man for whom she had high hopes.

      They’d agreed to meet for breakfast at a coffee shop in the West Village. He’d arrived with his lover, an equally appealing—but jealous—man.

      However, while she waited for him, she’d shared the sports section of the Times with a better prospect, a lawyer with one of the city’s large firms. They’d exchanged cards, and she fully expected to find a message from him on her answering machine when she got home. In the meantime, she’d prepared herself for whatever the evening—and the next morning—might bring.

      Balducci’s stocked a plentiful array of hors d’oeuvres and prepared foods, and she’d bought enough to manage dinner in case going out suddenly lost its charm. This afternoon she would make a dessert—a hazelnut torte, perhaps, or a flourless chocolate cake, or both.

      She swung right onto Twelfth Street. Her bags also held bagels, smoked salmon, cream cheese and juice from apparently rare and valuable grapefruit, judging from the price. She would check the answering machine, then put her purchases away. Then, with everything in a state of readiness, she’d slip out onto the fire escape to let the sunshine and cool breeze arouse her to fever pitch. Her sixth sense told her the lawyer would be up to whatever level of passion she chose to demand of him.

      She’d reached her building and started up the walk when she heard, “Sarah!” She froze, unable to move, unwilling to turn around. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, ugly, painful tricks. She heard footsteps behind her, and filled with dread, she slowly spun to face Alexander Asquith-Emerson, all grown-up.

      “Sarah.” He sounded out of breath. “It’s Alex. Saw you coming out of Balducci’s. It was just too amazing a coincidence.” The rush of words coming from his mouth, a mouth that quirked up at one corner in an all-too-familiar way, suddenly halted.

      Inside she was quaking so violently she was sure it showed on the outside. His hair was as thick and dark as ever, and his shoulders were broader in his well-tailored navy blazer than they’d been when he was eighteen. His eyes flashed dark, mysterious messages as they always had. An ache rose through her body that recalled the past even as it demanded recognition of the present.

      “Fuhgeddaboudit,” they said in Brooklyn. And, of course, she already had forgotten about it. A long time ago.

      “Well. My goodness. After all these years. Alex Asquith-Emerson.” Her spine felt like cold steel. She was proud of it for holding her up so firmly.

      “Just Emerson.” His full lower lip curved in a smile. “I dropped the Asquith. Too pretentious for the States.”

      His face held an expectant expression that frightened her. “Well,” she said again, wishing she could bring her deceased vocabulary skills back to life. “It was good of you to go to all this trouble just to say hello.”

      “I didn’t. Go to all this trouble just to say hello.”

      She waited, unable to move toward him or away from him. The ache had traveled up to her throat, making it impossible for her to answer.

      “I’ve been trying to find you for years, Sarah. And suddenly, СКАЧАТЬ