Kiss A Handsome Stranger

Elise’s mouth twitched. She was only slightly mollified, he could tell. “Then what did you want to say?”

“That I hope you’ve taken my advice about getting premarital counseling.” Opening the cupboard, he stared at the rows of cans before selecting artichoke hearts and pinto beans. Chopped mild chili peppers. Sliced black olives. And a bag of sunflower seeds.

“We don’t need it.” His sister splashed olive oil into her omelette pan. “We love each other and we’re already on the same wave length.”

“How do you plan to handle finances?” Chance challenged. “Which relatives will you spend Christmas with? How many children do you want? What if you get a once-in-a-lifetime offer to teach at a foreign university?”

“We’ll deal with those issues as they come up.” Elise’s thoughtful expression indicated he’d hit home, however.

“It’s better if you discuss potential areas of conflict before there’s an urgent need,” Chance informed her.

His sister released an exasperated breath. “Don’t you ever stop being bossy?”

“Will I ever stop caring about you? No.” He drained the salad ingredients and tossed them together.

Elise didn’t say any more as she concentrated on pouring the mixture into the pan, letting it cook and deftly folding it. A few minutes later the two of them sat at the table, sharing their creations.

“Tell me about you and Daisy,” she said.

There was no point in playing coy. “I met her at your engagement party.”

She stopped, a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth. “Daisy is Deirdre? I don’t believe it!”

He thanked his innate reserve for the fact that he hadn’t told about taking Deirdre home with him. He’d said only that he’d met a charming woman and wondered if anyone knew her phone number. “To make matters worse, I told her my name was Charles. So she didn’t know who I was, either.”

“And you like each other? How perfect!” Elise crowed. “Phoebe and I have been trying to find a guy for Daisy for months!”

“So you’ve told me,” Chance said. “I don’t understand why. An attractive woman like her should have men swarming around.”

“She’s picky,” his sister said. “We’ve been trying to find the right man.”

“So she’s hard to please.” He poured a little more vinegar and oil on his salad. “Does that mean she’s unreliable? Does she change her mind often?”

“There’s a difference between being discerning and being capricious.” Now Elise sounded like the professor she was instead of like his kid sister. “There’s nothing flighty about Daisy.”

Chance hesitated. There was another thing he wanted to know that might shed light on Daisy’s behavior. It was highly personal, though. “Phoebe mentioned a female condition. I don’t know much about these things.”

Elise set down her fork. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Then don’t.”

Elise stared out the window, considering. “I don’t think Daisy would mind if I explained her condition to you. I’ve heard her tell others about it, people who aren’t that close to her. I think she’s actually trying to educate people about the condition.

“She has endometriosis. The way Daisy explained it, tissue that’s supposed to be lining the uterus appears in other parts of the body. It can be minor or really nasty. Her case is kind of in the middle but getting worse. It can make it hard to have a baby, so if she wants one, she needs to have it soon.”

The possibility that Daisy’s life might be in danger sent an icy wave of fear flooding through Chance. “It isn’t like cancer, is it?”

“No, no!” His sister patted his hand. “The way she explained it, it’s as if a bit of your heart tissue landed in your elbow.”

“Excuse me?”

“It would beat, just like it always does, so you’d have this weird pulsing elbow. So this female tissue, well, it behaves normally, only it’s in the wrong place. That can cause a lot of pain. Especially once a month.”

“I get the picture,” he said.

Chance wasn’t sure whether Daisy’s endometriosis had anything to do with her decision to flee from his house and avoid him afterward. It certainly introduced a complication that would affect any man she married. But a guy worth his salt married for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.

Wait a minute. Why was he thinking about Daisy in connection with marriage?

They weren’t even dating, let alone close to becoming engaged. In fact, she’d just thrown him out of her apartment.

Elise regarded him shrewdly. “So have I put you off my friend?” she asked.

“You mean because she has this condition?” he said. “No.”

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She stood up and carted her dishes to the counter. “Me and my big mouth.”

“I’m your brother.”

“Yeah, but she likes you.”

“You think so?” The observation lifted his spirits.

“I’ve seen Daisy around a lot of guys,” Elise said. “You’re different. It wasn’t anything she said or did, exactly. It was that, well, I could tell she was aware of you every second.”

He waited, hoping for more concrete details of the way she’d looked at him, or a comment she’d made after the party.

“You’re doing the dishes, right?” said his sister, seemingly unaware of his hunger for more details about the elusive Daisy.

ALL FRIDAY MORNING Daisy’s stomach churned. At first she thought she might be coming down with a virus, but toward lunchtime she got hungry.

It wasn’t the first time she’d felt queasy since the doctor changed her medication. It hadn’t helped that, lacking medical insurance because she was self-employed, Daisy had allowed a few weeks to elapse while she waited to have her new prescription filled through a cheap mail-order pharmacy.

Going on and off medication must have played havoc with her hormones. Yet she couldn’t justify the cost of another doctor visit when she felt certain the situation would resolve itself as her system adjusted.

“You feeling better?” asked her assistant, Sean, as he carted a collage from Gallery III into the back room. They had to take down one exhibit and put up the new one today.

“Yes. In fact, I’m starving,” she admitted. “Is that the last piece?”

“All done,” he confirmed.

Daisy stepped into the bare-walled gallery. She’d been visualizing the new exhibit ever since she’d arranged for the one-woman show months ago. It would be the artist’s first major exhibit in the United States, and invitations to Saturday night’s wine and cheese opening had been mailed last week.

Shakira Benjamin was a gifted African-American painter and teacher who’d had a studio in Germany before relocating to Mesa, near Phoenix, about a year ago. Daisy felt lucky to have her affiliated with the gallery.

“What now?” asked Sean, joining her. A recent college graduate, he wore his blond hair long and unstyled, hanging over the shoulders of a blue workshirt.

As usual, bits of sawdust clung to his jeans. The loft where he lived and worked on his wood sculptures was no doubt coated with the stuff.