To See The Daises ... First by Billie Green Page B

She was a woman, not a puppy who had followed him home. He couldn't put her in a box and take her out to pet her when it pleased him. He didn't own her—had not even the smallest right over her, in fact.
    Pulling the door shut behind him, he walked back to the couch and began pulling his purchases from the large sack. The jeans and shirts he had bought for her had been simple to buy, but the underwear . . . God, the underwear had been another matter entirely.
    He laughed mockingly at himself as he remembered how he had left the apartment in self-defense, to escape his own thoughts as he tried not to listen to the rustling of the covers in the next room. First, he had made a half-hearted attempt at writing; then, when he recalled that Sunny had eaten his lunch, he had spent an enthusiastic thirty minutes concocting a monumental sandwich, which he had then left half-eaten.
    So the shopping trip had been more for his peace of mind than out of necessity. He had lingered as long as he dared over the choosing of her outerwear, but eventually he had been forced to consider the delicate, frothy pieces of lace that women wear beneath their clothing.
    It had proven impossible to choose them without imagining Sunny wearing them. A vivid imagination was a curse to a man in his condition, for it had been beyond his scope to pick out the skimpy underthings without picturing how they would look next to her ivory skin.
    You're crazy. You know that, don't you? Going on middle-aged crazy. About-to-reach-forty crazy. And he was finally facing up to the most damning symptom of all: being captivated by a woman more than a decade younger than he.
    He sat heavily in the shabby armchair, relaxing a little as he watched the shadows slowly stretch across the room. They grew larger and longer as the day wore on, finally merging to engulf him and the room, dulling the sharp edges of the day, giving the apartment and its furnishings a soft, homey look it lacked in the harsh reality of full sunlight Heaving a deep, ragged sigh, he felt he was at last seeing things in their proper perspective. She had appeared to him at a time when he was at his most vulnerable. Since his parents were dead, his work had been his only family. And without that he had nothing to tie him to the world. In giving up his old way of life, he had been left a man without a home.
    Although he knew he had made the right decision, he had felt alone in a way he couldn't have imagined a year ago. The writing was important to him, but how long could a man live inside his own head? The balloon had to land sometime and when it did, who would care? Who would be there to greet him?
    He knew now that he had been looking for that someone. And, unwilling to accept a substitute, his search had been hopeless from the beginning . . . until he had stumbled across Sunny. In her, he sensed he had found the innocent, new world he had been seeking. In her, he had seen all the virtues he had hoped existed somewhere on this earth.
    But now that he was thinking logically he realized that none of those things existed outside his mind. Sunny was a figment of his own fertile imagination.
    The overwhelming, instantaneous attraction he felt was not a magical, mystical thing. It was a combination of his own barely acknowledged longings and good, old-fashioned lust. Her personality and her circumstances were the stuff of fairy tales, but she, herself, was still a real live, flesh-and-blood woman, and all the imagination in the world wouldn't change her into Guinevere. Once he came to grips with that, although the attraction would probably remain—how could it not?—the fascination he felt for her would, of necessity, have to dim.
    A faint sound from the bedroom pulled him out of his deep reverie. Ben realized suddenly that he was sitting in total darkness. As he switched on the lamp beside him, he heard the sound again and walked to the bedroom door, opening it silently.
    The drapes she had pulled against the