The List by Anne Calhoun Page A

peering over her shoulder to offer him a little smile. “Hello, Daniel.”
    He leaned against the island that formed the boundary between the loft’s kitchen and living space, a bottle of beer in one hand. Tonight he wore a lightweight linen blazer, Oxford, jeans so faded and washed they were white at all the interesting places, and a pair of running shoes. She’d not seen him, nor heard a word from him, since he left her town house. A dangerous spike of need shot through her at the sight of him. She wasn’t often wrong about people, but she’d been very wrong about Daniel.
    “I think there’s a fire escape at the back of the building,” he said. “If you’re feeling the need to get your feet off the ground.”
    After that conversation she felt like her feet were twelve inches off the floor. That was an introduction that could change her life. “We’re on the second floor,” she replied. “That’s hardly worth it.”
    “What is worth it?”
    “Ten flights,” she said, picking a number at random.
    “You pulled that number out of thin air,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice.
    “I did,” she said archly. “Getting a rush is largely situational. The second floor might be enough, given the right circumstances.”
    “So these aren’t the right circumstances. But the last time I saw you was,” he said, not asked, the confident bastard, as if he were narrowing down the world into two categories: what got her off and what didn’t. How had she mistaken him for a college professor?
    Across the high-ceilinged room Dierdre directed two men carrying her rolled-up rug to the entryway while her husband pulled the iPod from the speaker dock, cutting off the background music mid-Adele. Trent scrolled through the menu, then set the iPod back in the speaker dock. Something heavily Latin pulsed into the air, and he swept his wife into his arms. Tilda felt an odd combination of emotions, satisfaction tinged with just a hint of envy. Normally she was satisfied to connect people who were meant to be together. Every time she sold someone the tools to memorialize everything from gratitude to love, every time she matched someone on her list, or simply introduced two people who might enjoy knowing each other, she’d proved that she understood that most basic of human needs, to see someone and be seen by them in turn. Tonight, however, she wanted the thing she’d resolved never to want: something for herself.
    “I introduced them,” Tilda said, apropos of nothing.
    Daniel shifted his weight, drawing close enough for her to feel his body heat, smell soap and skin. No cologne or aftershave, just his unique scent. Tonight his towhead hair was standing up in a crest that on a lesser man would have looked ridiculous but on Daniel looked effortlessly stylish. “As Lady Matilda?”
    “Yes.”
    “Stationery and introductions. I guess the two go together. Why do it?”
    “Connect people?” She flicked another glance at him. “I have a knack for it. I can tell what will work for someone, and what won’t.”
    “Yes, but why do it? Why do
you
do it?”
    “You said it yourself. Stationery and introductions go together,” she said, watching as loose groups of dancers formed among the couples.
    “Dance with me,” he said.
    “I don’t dance,” she replied.
    At that he came to stand in front of her, feet braced, arms folded, obviously amused. “You don’t dance.”
    “I do not.”
    His smile widened. “Like Darcy.”
    “Perhaps,” she said. She tried not to stare at his mouth, or let her face flush as she remembered exactly what that mouth had done to her. “A Jane Austen fan?”
    “I wouldn’t go as far as fan, but I’ve read her.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ve got an English degree,” he said.
    “I wasn’t far off with a college professor guess, then, was I?”
    “I considered it, but academia wasn’t really right for me.”
    “But police work was?”
    “I want to understand why things happened, and