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’d heard at least a half-dozen tiold watch Just after ten o’clock and already Skip Ha himself

It was going to be a long tiht

It wasn’t that Andrew didn’t like these people He’d known most of them all his life They were his friends, his peers He understood them, and they him

It wasn’t even that he wished he were so, just as he had all thoseNew Year’s Eves before This was the life he’d been trained for since birth

When soenerations of Old Southern traditions and had struck out for more adventurous pursuits, Andrew hadand thriving corandfather hadHe’d accepted then that with the money and poould come duties and responsibilities

Keeping up appearances at the club had been expected of him as much as the competent performance of his job

He spotted his mother and her second husband across the room, surrounded by their contemporaries His father would ht, probably accoer women whose company Andrew Colton Tyler, Jr, so enjoyed

Maybe he should have brought a date, Andrew reflected, glancing around the room at the many couples in attendance Maybe that would have eased his vaguely unsettled feeling that so in this lavish holiday celebration

He sipped his cha that it had been a while since he’d been involved with anyone Too long, perhaps Ever since his fiasco of an engageo, Andrew had been coht have implied a bit more than he was ready to concede with anyone he’d dated in the past couple of years

He intended to ious fa day to have that part of his future settled For the past sixfor a suitable h no one he’d considered thus far had quite fit his requirements

This time, he would choose more wisely Someone like him, he’d decided Serious, reliable, secure in her own interests Ashley had never been satisfied She’d complained about the hours he spent at work, his lack of interest in the endless round of parties she so loved, his inattentiveness to her needs when business concerns distracted him

Finally she had realized that he would never be the man she wanted to make hinate and they were now living in one of the four or five luxurious ho with the rich and fah society that Ashley had so craved A life Andreould have hated

He drained his chalass and wondered at his uncharacteristically introspective nificance of the occasion, heof a new one Closing fast on the start of a new century Not surprising that he was spending the evening looking ahead, reevaluating his—

Like a balloon deflated by the prick of a pin, Andrew’s ht He stood frozen in place, the elass in his hand as he stared across the room at the woman who’d suddenly moved into his line of vision

She was thewoman he’d ever seen

He told himself she wasn’t exactly beautiful Not classically beautiful, anyway But he found that it didn’t

Her hair was dark, almost black She wore it pinned up into a cascade of demure curls that just touched the nape of her slender neck, bared by the low back of her sleeveless, body-hugging, long black dress Stones glittered in her ears, and discreetly at her throat Her face was a delicate oval, her eyes dark and artfully shadowed Her mouth was painted scarlet, in notable contrast to her fair skin and black dress

She s so pulled toward her, as though her s him inexorably forward

“Andrew Hey, Andrew,” so to detain him