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opaque green glass that made up Alec’s door. She acknowledged her familiar faults—not tall, not blond, not beautiful—but consoled herself that she had, as her salary had grown in the last few years, made something of an effort to buy more fashionable professional clothes and had even exchanged her haircuts at the local Quickie Cuts for a quarterly visit to an actual stylist.
    She tugged at the hem of her short skirt and felt like an idiot for trying to dress to impress this morning. Maybe she was a late bloomer, or maybe growing up with just her father and three older brothers for role models had kept her from acquiring the requisite skills in cosmetics, fashion and flirting know-how. Whatever the cause, though, it still added upto the same thing: she was never going to snag the man she longed for.
    Up until today she’d kept telling herself that it was just a matter of time. All she had to do was keep bringing him his Krispy Kremes, booking his travel plans, making his dinner reservations and picking up his dry cleaning. In her naïveté, she’d actually thought that if she kept doing all those things, he would eventually realize he couldn’t live without her, both professionally and personally. But that was before this morning, before Alec had given her one final nudge out of the nest and she’d fallen from her fantasies to the cold, hard, unforgiving earth.
    She sighed, smoothed her crisp, tailored suit jacket and gauzy skirt, straightened her glasses and told herself again that all that foolishness was over and done with. Then she turned the knob and marched confidently into Alec’s beautiful, richly decorated office.
    He didn’t look up as she entered, and even though his dark head of wavy hair was tipped down, Daisy could imagine the concentration in his deep, indigo eyes. She noticed the way his black shirt hugged his strong shoulders as he scribbled notes on a quadrille pad. The well-developed arms she’d spent much too much time gawking at over the past couple of years flexed and tightened with the movement.
    The sharp edge of the envelope dug into her palm as she clutched the letter. So what if he was a looker? She absolutely, positively, wasn’t going to let that sway her now. She’d been hiding out behind this sweet, agreeable, I’ll-wait-forever-for-you-to-notice-me facade far too long. It was time to be who she really was, so she put one hand on the sleek leather chair that faced his desk and cleared her throat firmly.
    Alec looked up, stretched lazily and poured on that heart-melting smile of his, all white teeth and hot charm and oozing charisma. “Hey, Daze.”
    Normally that smile could make her stomach tighten and her heart go pitter-pat, but not anymore. Even a crush as stubborn as the one she had on Alec couldn’t survive her humiliation when she’d realized he wasn’t asking her to go to dinner to celebrate a job well done. It wasn’t his fault, really, but she’d known at that very moment that she had to get the hell away from him. It was her only hope.
    Without a word, she handed him the envelope, and his chair squeaked in protest as he reached out for it. “What’s this?”
    She squeezed the back of the chair so hard the smooth leather creaked beneath her grip. “My letter of resignation.”
    His smile shrank a little and one dark eyebrow shot up. “Now say, ‘April fools.’”
    In spite of her resolve to be strong, nervous waves kicked up in her stomach. “This isn’t a joke, Alec.”
    Long, quiet seconds ticked by, one after another, but the silence was by no means calm. In fact, she started to imagine they were two gunfighters, each waiting for the other to twitch.
    A moment later he caved when he unfolded his six-foot-plus frame and stood, looming over both his desk and her. “Aren’t you happy here?”
    A headache flowered behind her eyes and she wondered