She made a noise like a scaldedcat.
“I didn’t really know you,” he added hastily. “You were just a sexy woman I’d been fantasizing about while I wrote the last few chapters of the book. I’d planned to ask you out, but I had a pile of deadlines that had built up while the book took up all my time. I was just getting clear of them when you came down and the book fell out.” He winced in retrospect. “You have no idea what that did for my ego, seeing you believe I needed thatbook.”
“Just as you can have no idea what it felt like for me watching you tell all of America about your littleexperiment.”
Damn, had he said that? He didn’t entirely remember everything he’d said on Ginger’s show. What with the hot lights, the noisy studio audience, his nerves at finally being outed as Lance Flagstaff…the whole thing was a bit of a blur. One thing he did remember clearly,however.
“I also told all America that I loveyou.”
“That was nothing but phonyP.R.”
He understood her feelings, sympathized with them even, but this was too much. Anger speared through his groveling. “What the hell are you talking about? I love you. I told every viewer on that show and now I’m telling you, if you hadn’t already figured it out. I love you and I want to marryyou.”
Maybe other proposals had been made at the top of the lungs in extreme frustration, he didn’t know. He only knew that his first effort at asking a woman to be his wife had been made so loud they’d be hearing him in Oregon. And for all his bellowing, Shari didn’t look inclined to sayyes.
She shook her head. “Yesterday, those words would have meant everything in the world tome.”
“What abouttoday?”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘A day late and a dollar short’? Go home, Luke. I’m tired andsick.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else tosay.
She sighed heavily.“I’m sorry, too. I thought you were the man I’d been looking for all mylife.”
“I am that man,” he said frantically. He’d spent most of his life working to make sure no woman ever looked at him as the man she’d been waiting for all her life. Now he knew that if Shari stopped thinking he was that man, his life would lack any meaning atall.
“I am so angry with you.” She clenched both fists as she said it and he actually felt the heat of herrage.
“I told you I love you. I want to marry you. Doesn’t that meananything?”
She shot him a contemptuous glance. “It means you don’t know any more about love than your father does. News flash! When you love someone you don’t lie to them, you don’t use them as an experiment to…to prove your stupid bookworks.”
He threw up his hands and yelled right back at her. “All right. You don’t believe me. I giveup!”
He yanked the door open, picked up his suit bag andleft.
He’d barely gone a step when he heard the door open again behind him. With the wild hope that she’d decided to give him another chance surging in his belly, he turned back, only to watch his roses come flying out the door behind him, end over end like a dozen red-costumed circus acrobats flipping in perfectsynchronization.
As they flopped to the industrial beige carpet in the apartment hallway, he thought about just leaving them there to die, but somehow he couldn’t do that, not when they’d started the evening with him in such highhopes.
He kneltto retrieve the roses and walked to nosy Mr. Forrester’s door andknocked.
When it opened, he said, “Here. Give these to yourwife.”
