A Man for All Seasons by Heather MacAllister Page B

fully appreciated before—and drop-dead handsome—which she’d definitely fully appreciated—he managed to stun her speechless.
    It’s basically a black suit, she told herself. A bunch of fabric. But that fabric broadened his shoulders, narrowed his waist and lengthened his legs. There was a lot to be said for tailoring.
    Marlie was staring but couldn’t help it. He’s not your type, her sense of self-preservation protested weakly as a massive reconfiguring of what Marlie found attractive was underway. It was like reformatting her hard drive and wiping off all the sexy-men-in-jeans files and replacing them with James Bond clone files. Which, Marlie now thought, were not bad files at all.
    And then Ty smiled, which was just killer. She didn’t even care that he knew it.
    â€œIsn’t he handsome?” Axelle asked.
    â€œYes,” Marlie agreed, and sighed, all pride gone.
    Still smiling, Ty gave her a mock bow, allowing her to save face and pretend she’d been kidding with the sigh.
    Except she hadn’t been.
    â€œWe upgraded his dinner jacket.” Axelle smoothed the already smooth satin lapel and Ty turned his smile her way.
    Marlie felt a pang. Sure it felt like good old jealousy that Ty was gaga about Axelle and not her, but it really and truly was only a sign that she was ready for a man in her life again. Like now. Right now.
    â€œYou both look stunning,” Marlie said, so they’d know she wasn’t jealous. “Axelle, you’re going to look so beautiful up on the stage. Silver was a good choice.”
    â€œThank you, Marlie.” Axelle tore her gaze away from Ty. “I thought pewter was a fresh color for the season.”
    Okay, it was called pewter instead of silver. Whatever. Marlie was through gushing. They were gorgeous. They knew it. She wished they would leave.
    â€œAnd thank you for working so hard this afternoon,” Axelle said. “I hope we get bidders from the website.”
    â€œI do, too.” Especially since Marlie had invested in extra webcams so she could show the action as well as close-ups of the items. “I’ll be watching and handling everything from here and Randy is going to be sitting right in front with his laptop. We had a dry run a little bit ago.” She’d already told Axelle all this, but the woman was a maniac about details. “Everything works great. Now go.” She made shooing noises as Ty flashed her another smile.
    Her breath caught. He hadn’t meant to smile at her like that, had he? That sexy, full-of-promise smile? No, that was leftover from the smile he’d given Axelle.
    Calm down. But her heart beat hard just the same.
    They left, after subjecting Marlie to a touching scene where Ty draped Axelle’s wrap around her shoulders. Good thing, since when Axelle turned to go through the door, she appeared to be missing the back of her gown. Marlie wondered if Ty could make it all the way to the auction without ripping the thing off her.
    Alone, Marlie felt antsy and restless. This afternoon, when she’d been setting up in the hotel ballroom, Axelle had introduced her to several men and they all seemed very nice. But.
    But you don’t want ‘very nice’, you want Ty.
    No, she didn’t. She wanted a man. Marlie tried visualizing a man. Any man who pushed her buttons. Ty popped into her mind. Get out of my head, she thought irritably. The problem was that there weren’t any other men in her head. So she studied The Twelve Men of Christmas, flipping through their bios and pictures on the site. They’d revved her engine the other day, but now, not even the drummer, her favorite, was doing anything for her.
    She thought of Ty and the warm fuzzy feelings started again.
    Not good. So she thought of Ty being irritated, Ty being oblivious, Ty with his stuff all over her house, and the fact Ty had never looked at her the way he looked at other women.
    Still