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He held it away from her. “I just want to know. What’s the appeal? That a guy’s going to charge in on a white steed and carry you off, and you’ll live happily ever after?”
“I don’t need a man to rescue me,” she muttered, sitting back and wrapping her arms around herself. “I can do my own rescuing.”
“That,” he stated drily, “is up for debate.” He handed the book back to her.
She shoved it in her bag with a decisive movement. He decided to be a humanitarian and move on. “So what are you doing in London? Work or play?”
“I’m doing a favor for my boss.” She grimaced and pressed the can tighter to her head. “It was supposed to be a quick in and out on my way home from Italy.”
“Just your luck,” he grinned. “You picked the one faulty elevator in London.”
“Please don’t remind me.”
“What line of work are you in?”
She took a sip of her water. “Communications... You?”
“I own an entertainment company, based in New York.” He leaned back against the wall, keeping up the small talk he abhorred as it seemed to be putting a bit of color back into her cheeks. “Was Italy work too?”
She shook her head. “I was doing a cooking course with my girlfriends in Tuscany. We rented a villa on the coast, chilled out and learned how to make a mean bruschetta.”
“That will make your man very happy.”
“I didn’t do it for a man, I did it for myself.”
He noted the defensive edge to her voice. “No man in your life, then?”
She set her jaw. “No.”
He wondered why he liked that idea. “How many of you were in Italy?”
“Eight of us, including me.”
He smiled. “The Italian men must not have known what hit them.”
She shot him a sideways look. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I can only imagine the impression eight of you made on the locals...Tuscany will never be the same, I’m sure.”
Her mouth curved. “My friend Jo was a big hit with the Italian men. She’s a bit of a one-woman wrecking crew.”
He gave her a considering look. “I’m sure she wasn’t the only one.”
She blinked. Looked away. Shy, he registered in astonishment. Were there actually any of those women left in Manhattan? It had been so long since he’d met one he’d thought they were extinct.
A loud creak split the air. He dropped the water, his heart slamming into his chest as he braced his hands on the floor. Isabel launched herself at him, wrapping her limbs around him. He held her close as the elevator swayed and groaned beneath them, his breath coming hard and fast.
What the hell?
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_97612320-dcc8-5813-8e68-e54d253b843f)
“WHAT WAS THAT?”
Isabel screeched the words in his ear, wrapping her arms around his neck in a chokehold. The car rocked beneath them, but this time more gently, without the bloodcurdling creak. He sucked in a breath. “It’s just shifting,” he told her, hoping that’s all it was. “You’re okay.”
Her chest rose and fell rapidly against him. Seconds ticked by. The swaying slowed and then stopped. “Isabel, we’re fine,” he murmured, his heartbeat regulating as he brought his head down to hers. “I promise you, those cables don’t break.”
She drew in a deep breath, then another, stayed pressed against him. As his cortisol levels came down, his awareness of her skyrocketed. Her fingers were dug into his thigh, her light floral scent filling his nostrils. Her thoroughly touchable curves were plastered against him. And God help him, it was making him think improper thoughts. Like how much he’d appreciate those slender fingers wrapped around another part of his anatomy...
She drew back, her face chalk-white. Exhaled a long, agitated breath. Realized where her hand was. He struggled to wipe his expression clean as she lifted her horrified gaze to his, but he was pretty sure from the way her eyes widened and the speed with which she snatched her hand away, she’d known exactly where his head was at.
“I am so sorry,” she murmured. But she was still in his lap, clutching his shoulder for dear life, and he was in severe danger of getting extremely turned on. Worse when she caught her plump bottom lip in her teeth and hell, he wished she wouldn’t do that. He wanted to kiss her, and not the “Sunday walk in the park” variety.
Her pupils dilated, but she didn’t go anywhere. He cleared his throat. “If this was your book,” he drawled mockingly, “this’d be the part where I ravish you in the elevator, no?”
She was off his lap in a flash. She sat back against the wall, her shoulders pressed against the paneling. “Yes, well, that’s why they have security cameras in elevators, don’t they?” she pronounced stiffly. “To prevent that sort of behavior.”
He had to stop himself from laughing out loud. “That sort of behavior? How very Victorian of you.”
She fixed her eyes on the wall opposite her. “I think this elevator’s getting to me.”
She wasn’t the only one. He waved a hand at her. “Think of it as extreme exposure therapy. After this you’ll definitely be cured.”
“Or I’ll never set foot in an elevator again.”
“Let’s work toward the former.” He gestured toward the can that had rolled to the corner of the elevator. “Put that on again.”
She lifted it to her forehead. Stayed plastered against the wall like a modern painting, her white, pinched face a halo against the dark paneling. He cursed inwardly. He needed a distraction or this wasn’t going to be pretty. What in the world would he say to his sister Gabby, who was severely claustrophobic?
“I have an idea,” he suggested. “Let’s play a game.”
“A game?”
“You tell me something no one knows about you and I’ll do the same.”
She lifted a brow. “I’m channeling my sisters here,” he offered grimly. “Humor me. If you go all panicky, it’s not a good thing.”
“Okay.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. “In seventh grade, when Steven Thompson asked me to dance at the school mixer, I told him I’d sprained my ankle.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“I adored him.” She opened her eyes. “I’d idolized him for years. But I thought my sister had put him up to it, like I was some kind of charity case, so I turned him down.” She grimaced. “Turns out she hadn’t.”
“Ouch. So the poor guy got rejected for no good reason?”
She nodded. “I was persona non grata after that.”
“And you females wonder why men aren’t gallant anymore. We stick our necks out for that.”
She gave him a wry look. “I hope you’re using the royal ‘we,’ because I can’t imagine you have ever been rejected in your entire life.”
And that’s where she was wrong. The one time he had been, the only time it had mattered, he’d been left for dead by the woman who’d meant everything to him.
“Nobody goes through life unscathed,” he said roughly. “You should have given the guy a chance. Maybe you scarred him for life.”
“Since he was dating Katy Fielding by the next Monday, I highly doubt it.” Cynicism tainted her voice. “Okay, your turn.”
He thought about it. And for some strange reason, he was dead honest. “I wish I’d made different decisions at times.”
Her gaze sharpened on him. “Is that a general observation or something you’d care to elaborate on?”
Most definitely not. He’d shut the door on that part of his life a long time ago. Never to be opened again. “A general observation.” He rested his gaze on her face. “Sometimes in life you’re only given one shot. Use it wisely.”
Her eyes stayed on his, assessing, inquisitive. Then she let it go with a sigh. “This interview I have tomorrow? I don’t even know if I want the job. But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
He frowned. “Why don’t you want it? I assume it’s a step up?”
“Fear,” she said simply. “I’m afraid of what happens if I get it.”
“Take it from me,” he counseled, “fearing the unknown is far worse than facing it. I have no doubt you’ll knock them dead, Isabel. Just be your quirky self.”
She looked insulted. “Quirky?”
“Tell me it doesn’t fit.”
“Well...maybe just a bit.”
She jumped as the phone rang. He pushed to his feet, walked over and picked up the receiver. But the news wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Two and a half hours.
He hung up. “We have to sit tight for another couple of hours.”
Isabel’s face fell.
“Think on the bright side,” he said, sliding down beside her and giving her a wicked look. “You can read me excerpts from your book. It was just getting good.”
* * *
Exactly two and a quarter hours later, at about the time Izzie’s flight was scheduled to take off from Heathrow, a rescue team arrived.
She and Alex stood to one side as the crew unscrewed a panel from the top of the car and dropped a ladder down, a burly, safety-cable-laden rescuer climbing in moments later with two harnesses slung over his shoulder.
“Ready to get out of here?” he asked them, a wide grin splitting his face.
“You’ve no idea,” Izzie murmured, flashing a sideways look at Alex. She really wasn’t sure what she would have done without him. She had a sneaking suspicion she would have lost it completely.
“All right then,” the technician said, strapping one of the harnesses around Izzie. “The next floor is about eight feet above us. We’re going to climb up the ladder, out the top of the elevator and up onto the lobby floor.” He snapped the harness into place and stepped back. “Keep moving, don’t look down and you’ll be fine.”
Every limb in her body went ice cold. They wanted her to climb through an elevator shaft?
“I’ll be right behind you,” Alex said quietly. “It’s mind over matter, Isabel.”
Yes, but she didn’t have a mind left! Her legs started to shake; her breath came in short, frantic bursts. “But what if—”
Alex took her hands in his, wrapping his fingers around hers. “There is no ‘what if.’ We’re going to climb out of here and it’s all going to be over, okay?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, absorbing the quiet confidence in his voice, the warmth of his hands around hers. “You’ll stay right behind me?”
He nodded.
“Okay.” She pulled in another big breath and let go of his hands with a decisive movement. “Let’s do it.”
The technician strapped the other harness around Alex. Then they started up the ladder, Alex following Izzie. Her legs were shaking so hard she had to inject every bit of concentration she possessed into each step, her hands clutching the side of the ladder for balance.
“One step at a time,” Alex murmured, anchoring his hands firmly around her hips to steady her. “You’re doing great.”
She didn’t feel great. Her heart was in her mouth, acid stung the back of her throat in the very real threat she might throw up, and she felt as if she was going to collapse in a puddle.
She forced herself to keep moving, her slow climb taking her up to where the ladder emerged from the car. She looked down. Gasped at the endless plunge into darkness.
“Don’t look down,” the technician said, turning around. “Keep going.”
But her legs wouldn’t move. “I can’t,” she whispered. “My legs, they—they’re shaking so much I’m afraid I’ll—”
Alex stepped up on the ladder behind her, his hands digging into her waist. “You can do this,” he insisted firmly. “I’m right here and I’m not letting go. Just put one foot in front of the other and we’ll be out of here in a minute.”
The heat of his hands penetrated the thin cotton of her dress. Sank into her skin, warming her. Grounding her. “Mind over matter, Isabel,” he whispered, his hands tightening. “Move with me.”
She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus on the strength of his hands around her waist. He would not let her fall. He would keep her safe...
She started climbing again, focusing only on putting one foot in front of the other as they emerged from the elevator, walked across the top of it and climbed the ladder toward the floor above. Step up, make sure her foot was securely on the rung, bring the other foot up. Repeat. She said it over and over again in her head as she did it, Alex’s hands never leaving her waist. And then, someone was reaching down and grasping her by the arms and lifting her to solid ground.
Alex stepped up behind her, the look of grim relief on his face making her knees go weak. “You okay?”
She nodded. Swayed as her shaking knees turned to mush. He closed his arms around her and pulled her close, his chin coming down on top of her head. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s over.”
Izzie had the strange feeling that once here, she might never want to leave. She buried her face in the rock-solid wall of his chest, her limbs shaking so hard she wondered if they’d ever stop.
“The paramedics are downstairs in the lobby, waiting to check you out,” the burly rescuer said. “Sorry to say, the generator’s still out, so you’ll have to take the stairs.”
Since Izzie never intended to get on another elevator in her life, that was just fine with her. But by the time they’d descended twenty-three flights of stairs and she’d gotten thoroughly poked and prodded by a young medic she was done.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” the medic asked, sticking up four.
She waved her hand at him. “I’m good, really. I hardly bumped it at all.”
“It was a hard knock,” Alex interjected, holding his cell phone away from his ear. “Let him do his job.”
Izzie made a face. “Four,” she sighed. “And I’m not seeing double...no halos, nothing...”
