Midnight Man by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

working full-time with him, with a man who understood her. Understood her feelings almost before she knew them herself. A man she always felt comfortable with, not like…
     
    If only…
     
    She sighed.
     
    “You’ve got a lot of thoughts circling around in that pretty head of yours. Care to share?” Todd drained his tea and leaned forward elegantly to put his cup down.
     
    Suzanne poured more tea into his cup and then hers. “Actually, I was thinking what a great couple we’d make. Just think of it. We get along really well; we like the same things and have almost the same tastes. With just enough of a difference to make it interesting. I’ve learned a lot about antiques from you and I’ve dragged you kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. We never fight and…what?”
     
    Todd was smiling and shaking his head. “Wouldn’t work, sweetie. Never in a million years.”
     
    Suzanne rolled her eyes. “Well, I know that. I was just speculating—“
     
    “No, it wouldn’t work not for that reason, but for another one.”
     
    Another one? Suzanne straightened. “Well, why not? Except for the biggie, of course. I mean we really do get on, and—“
     
    “Yes, we get along. Too well, in fact.”
     
    Suzanne smiled and shook her head. “There’s such a thing as getting along too well? Wow. Have the divorce lawyers heard about that one? What does it mean—to get on too well?”
     
    His head tilted, green eyes studying her, Todd was silent.
     
    “What?” she asked.
     
    “You really want to know this?”
     
    “Of course I do. I want you to explain that thing—that getting-along-is-the-kiss-of-death thing.”
     
    “You know what I mean already, without me spelling it out for you. It’s just that you won’t acknowledge it. And it’s the reason you haven’t lost your heart to anyone and the way you’re going, you never will. I know you haven’t dated anyone in quite a while but when I first met you, I watched you date some eminently suitable men. Men of discernment and class, who shared your tastes in music and theater. It got to be this pattern. You’d meet a man, enjoy his company for a few evenings and then—“
     
    Suzanne shifted uneasily on the couch. What was this? So what if her love life had been undergoing a little slump lately? She’d been busy with work, after all. Todd didn’t have to make a big deal out of it. “And then?” she prompted, trying not to sound cross, trying to sound bored.
     
    “And then, boom, you dump him. And start all over again.”
     
    Well, that was rich, coming from Mr.-Love-Them-And-Leave-Them, the man who’d taken the one night stand to an art form. She pouted. “You make me sound…shallow. And impossible to please, and—“
     
    “Restless. And unsatisfied. The men you were dating didn’t excite you, sweetie. And how could they? They were you. In male form. Talking about the Century Theater playbill and the new Scorsese film and how beige is the new black. You don’t need that. You get that from me and from Claire. You’re such a feminine woman, Suzanne. You need the opposite. Someone yin to go with your yang. Someone to stir your juices. Someone…someone really…male.”
     
    Suzanne closed her eyes. She knew someone who had a lot of yin to her yang. Someone who whipped her juices into a froth. Someone really, really male.
     
    “Someone tall, and dark and with shoulders out to here,” Todd’s baritone continued dreamily. “With short black hair just faintly silver at the temples, that early Gianni Agnelli look, you know? And eyes to die for. Yum.”
     
    Suzanne’s eyes popped open at that and she glared at Todd, sitting smugly on his Sanderson cabbage rose couch. She would have thrown a pillow at him, but she might miss and tea stains were hard to get out of silk.
     
    Todd smiled knowingly. “Food’s really good at Comme Chez Soi, isn’t it? It’s that new chef of theirs. But then how would you know? You didn’t