"So what do you do on Sundays?" Mona held up one hand. "No, wait. Let me guess. You go through all the trade papers, making lists of which antique auctions and estate sales you can hit the next week. Harley, get a life!"

"Fine," Harley grumbled, knowing there was but one way to shut up her assistant. She flipped to the address section of her organizer and ran her pencil down every page. She was up to the letter S before she realized she wasn't going to find a date in here. She hadn't made many male acquaintances since her divorce. Her fault, really. She hadn't been in the mood.

She'd thrown herself into her business, reminding herself of her own self—worth. Proving that it wasn't something inside her that had driven Brad to other women.

She shut the organizer. "Okay, who was that guy you and Gibson fixed me up with?"

"Which one?"

"Remember? The four of us did the museum thing. Omri. He wasn't too bad." Harley picked up her pencil. "What's his number?"

"Omri. Hmm." Mona examined the lacquer on her nails. "Not a good idea."

"Why not?"

"He's in Tibet."

"Tibet?"

"He's entering the monastery."

Harley tossed her pencil in the air. "Great. I drove the man to a life of celibacy."

"I don't think you had a lot to do with it."

"You're probably right. He did spend the evening praising the Dalai Lama." Harley sighed. "Too much competition for me."

"That's just it." Mona leaned forward, her face expressive. "You don't have to compete. You're stunning. When are you going to realize it?"

Harley glanced from Mona's dramatic black hair and ruby lips to her own reflection in the mirror. Tucked beneath the navy—and—taupe designer suit was a body that wasn't half bad. But unlike a certain unnamed assistant, Harley wasn't one to flaunt.

As far as makeup went, well, her eyes were already a huge sleepy—looking blue. If she added anything more than a coat of mascara, she resembled a three—year—old who'd gotten into her mother's cosmetics. And the bow of her mouth was so plump that applying lipstick gave her the look of a forties' starlet.

Her hair was hopeless. Wheat—colored wisps escaped from the topknot she'd tucked it in. She shook her head and the strands tumbled to her shoulders in a heavy mass of fifteen different blondes. Her dimples weren't a bad touch but she looked a lot like the Keebler elf when she smiled. She glanced back at Mona.

The other woman's jet black brow arched. "Well? What do you think?"

"Okay, I guess." She finger—combed her hair from her forehead. "I just don't like to fuss."

"Judging by this business—card business, you don't need to."

"Can we forget this business—card business? Please?"

"Are you kidding? C'mon. Tell me everything. Start with what he looked like."

It was no use. Mona would never give up. "He was wearing a classic Italian suit. His hair was short." Harley gestured above her ears "Not military—style but that precision model cut. It was dark… but not as dark as his lashes. They were spiky. And long. His eyes an incredible icy green." Harley shivered and sighed. "He was very… continental. And entirely too scrumptious for me."

Mona tapped a wine—dark nail on the arm of her chair. "He sounds perfect. When are you going to call?"

"Never. I spent four years married to a man too gorgeous for his own good—and for mine. Brad spent so much time admiring himself and getting up close and personal with his exercise groupies that he forgot he had a wife."

Harley shook her head. "No more studs for me, thank you very much. I want a man who knows how to treat a woman." She pounded her fist on her desk. "I want attention. I want worship. I want my man to drool at my feet."

"Maybe you'd better get a dog."

"Exactly my point. I'll never find what I want because I'm too picky to settle for less."

Mona pushed up out of her chair, smoothing down the mandarin collar of her dramatic black tunic. "Well, I'm off. It's Friday night and Gibson has promised me candlelight, wine, and shrimp Florentine at his place."

Harley got to her feet, laid her arm across Mona's shoulders, and walked her friend to the door. "Have a good time for me, too."

"If I make up for what you've been missing, you won't see me for months."

"Very funny," Harley mumbled but Mona was already halfway down the block.

Lowering the front window's lace—and—linen shade, Harley flipped the sign to Closed and wandered back through the store. She swept her palm over the smoothness of a refinished oak chiffonier, lingered on the lavishly carved details of a carousel horse, and fingered an iridescent carnival glass punch bowl before returning to her desk and the more mundane tasks of running Golden's Touch.

The mundane no longer held any appeal. All Mona's talk of men and fun had sparked to life a restlessness Harley was finding difficult to keep tamped down. She wished she had an ounce of Mona's boldness when it came to relationships. But Brad's infidelity had made her wary of involvement.

No, that wasn't exactly true. Her wariness had much deeper and more personal roots than an unfaithful husband. It had started years before, once she'd been old enough to realize that her parents' love for each other wasn't normal. Or healthy.

What it was was obsessive. Smothering. Consuming. And that destructive emotion had frightened her more than the times early in her childhood when Buck and Trixie had left Harley and her sister home alone for days.

She'd vowed years later to never settle for less than pure and perfect love. A love founded on mutual respect and seasoned through time with friendship and passion.

Brad had happened along during one of her weaker moments.

The first time he'd asked her out, her sorority sisters at the University of Texas had shrieked with envy. Later she'd come to realize it was her lack of big Texas hair and her fresh farm—girl face that appealed to him. When they were together, he received the attention.

But she'd been blindly enamored, and young, and naive enough to believe he'd grow to love her with the same intensity. She'd still believed it four years later when she'd found him in bed with one of her sorority sisters who'd had a layover in Houston.

Brad had moved out as Harley had asked, giving her time to reconcile her feelings. Catching him in the parking lot of his health spa with one of the club bunnies who notched hard bodies on her bedpost cinched Harley's decision. She was done.

She'd thrown herself into her business then—a business Brad had never been crazy about. Easy enough to understand. When he'd walked through the shop, he'd been outshined by the beauty of aged wood, beveled glass, etched crystal and gold.

Harley glanced around at the merchandise she offered, every piece with a history of its own. Mona's right, Harley thought. I'm petrifying. A quick stain and varnish and I'll blend right in. It was pretty pathetic that a thirty—year—old woman got her thrills from a Louis XV instead of a flesh—and—blood Louis.

She wasn't a total hermit. She did go out. And she wasn't afraid to take risks. Every time she accepted one of Mona's fix—ups she was taking a big one. Mona and her friends existed on a plane that belonged in a whole other dimension.

A monk. Good grief.

Harley picked up the business card.

Gardner Barnes

Excalibur's King of Prince William's Knight

915—555—1782

A risk? A thrill? Or sheer stupidity?

Whichever, she picked up the phone and punched in the number.

She wanted to hear his voice one more time. An experiment to test what she was sure she'd imagined. The tingle at her nape, the dampness behind her knees, the tightness in her lungs.