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Okay. He tried to think of something to say or do to help her out. Not being afraid of anything himself, he found it difficult to understand this sort of thing.
“I learned this meditation technique once at a temple in India—” he began to say tentatively, but then Claire slumped against the wall and began sliding down it and he realized she’d fainted.
He leaped across the distance between them, catching her before her head hit the ground. Her hair was soft and silky against his hands, and he could smell her shampoo as he gently guided her onto the carpet. Vanilla. Nice.
A quick once-over revealed that her skirt had ridden up a little, and that her legs were skewed awkwardly, but her eyelids were flickering now and he decided he’d rather stick his head in a crocodile’s mouth than be caught adjusting Claire Marsden’s clothing while she was semiconscious. Still, he couldn’t help noticing that the shortened skirt length belied his previous impression of her legs. Not bad. As a rule, he preferred tall, slim, model-esque women, but Claire’s legs were really something of a surprise. Almost as though she could read his mind, Claire made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, and then her eyes popped open.
CLAIRE CAME OUT of the empty darkness and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly as she tried to reorient herself. Where was she? What had happened? She felt the ground under her back. And why was she lying on the carpet? And then Jack’s face loomed over her and she found herself staring into his concerned blue eyes.
“You okay?” he asked, and it all came flooding back.
They were trapped in an elevator. With no hope of escape for hours. A dizzying tide of fear rushed back up at her and she clamped down on it fiercely. It had been years since she’d allowed this childish terror of enclosed spaces to master her. But while she could suppress it for the short trip up to the fifteenth floor each day, being stuck in a tiny elevator car for several hours was more than her powers of self-control could manage. She’d been grimly hanging on to her calm ever since they’d ground to a halt, but the news that they were going to have to settle in for a long wait had been too much.
“Claire? You all right?” Jack asked again.
He looked funny upside down, she noted, feeling a little detached as she tried to keep her fear at arm’s length. Like an alien, his mouth where his eyes should be…
“Hello? Are you in there?” he asked, waving a hand in front of her face.
At last she snapped her attention back.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I think.”
“Afraid of small spaces?” he asked simply.
“Since I was a kid,” she admitted, hating telling him, of all people.
“Ever fainted before?” he asked, clearly trying to ascertain the extent of her phobia.
“No. But this is the first time I’ve been stuck in an elevator,” she said, managing to dredge up a small smile.
He blinked at her, and she realized that this was probably the first time she’d ever done anything except glare at Jack.
“You have lips.”
Her turn to blink. “I beg your pardon?”
He shook his head, made a forget-it gesture in the air with his hand. “Nothing.”
She narrowed her eyes. Nothing? She didn’t think so. “You said I have lips. What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
He sighed, scanned the roof as though looking for inspiration, then shrugged. All of this upside down, him hovering over her prone body.
“It’s just that most of the time when you see me you have no lips,” he said.
She stared at him. “I assure you, these are not detachable,” she said.
He looked skeptical. “Except when you see me. Then they disappear. Like this.” He gave an example, thinning his lips into a prim, ungenerous line.
“I do not do that,” she said, even as she felt her mouth assuming the usual tense expression she wore around him.
Damn him.
“You’re doing it right now.”
She stretched her mouth wide and forced her lips to assume a more relaxed expression.
“Happy?”
“That’s better,” he said approvingly.
She could feel her lips thinning again at his smug response.
“And there we go again,” he observed.
She closed her eyes for a moment. This was insane. She was trapped in an elevator with the company’s number-one playboy having a conversation about her lip posture while lying flat on her back.
“Feeling faint again?”
She blinked, recognizing that the fear that had been lapping around her knees had receded to toe-height.
“No. I feel…better.”
He looked pleased and a little proud. He’s been distracting me, she suddenly realized. With that thought came an abrupt awareness that her legs were sprawled out inelegantly and her skirt hiked up on one side. She reached a hand down to rearrange her skirt even as she moved to sit up. A heavy male hand landed in the middle of her chest.
“Take it slow,” Jack warned, and even though he’d taken his hand away she could still feel the heat and weight of it as she slowly sat upright.
She glanced around the elevator car. Nothing much had changed since she hit the deck: same brushed metal sides, same industrial carpet base, same small, inadequate light.
She knew he was watching her carefully, and she made an effort to appear calm, biting down on the sensation that there simply wasn’t enough room, or air, or anything in this tiny little space….
“Okay, this meditation technique I was telling you about,” Jack said suddenly, and she suspected that her rising panic might be more than obvious.
“I’ll be okay,” she said, wishing it were true. Wishing the doors would simply slide open and let her out.
“Humor me. Close your eyes.”
She shook her head stubbornly, and he snorted his exasperation.
“For Pete’s sake—just let go for a second. That’s all I’m asking,” he said. “You can stitch yourself back up nice and tight once we’re out of here.”
She blinked, more stung by his comment than she’d have thought possible. For a moment there she had forgotten what he thought of her, that he was her enemy. Afraid he’d see her reaction, she closed her eyes obediently.
“Great. Now, starting on your next inhalation, I want you to concentrate on your left nostril. Pretend your right nostril is blocked, and concentrate on breathing up your left nostril to the point between your eyes. And then exhale down your right nostril, again concentrating on the sensation. Then, in through the right, and out through the left. Keep repeating it until you feel better.”
His voice was slow and calm, and even though most of her mind was busy being annoyed and hurt and scared, she managed to focus on her breathing. A few breaths later, and she was really getting into it, feeling the sensation of air traveling up one nostril and down the other. A few minutes of this, and a lovely calm was starting to build inside her. She popped an eye open to find Jack had moved back to his side of the car, and was sitting down, his back to the wall.
“This is pretty good. Thanks.”
“Nothing to do with me—thank the ancient yogis of India.”
“I will, next time I see them. But in the meantime, I really appreciate it.”
She maintained some serious eye contact when she said it, wanting him to know that she acknowledged his help, that she wasn’t the kind of person she suspected he thought she was. He simply nodded, once, letting her know her message had been received and understood.
Silence slipped between them, and for the first time she became aware of how stuffy it was becoming. She unbuttoned her suit jacket and shrugged out of it. She regarded it for a moment—it was an expensive suit, a treat she’d bought herself for her birthday last year. Oh, well. Sacrifices had to be made if they were going to be stuck in here for hours on end. She rolled it up and placed it behind her, making a pad to lean against. And then she sat, alternately studying her hands, or the tips of her shoes.
It was like being stuck at all of the most disastrous parties of her teenage years rolled into one. She knew she should say something. In fact, a dozen conversational gambits suggested themselves to her, but they all felt wrong. For starters, she’d been arguing flat out with Jack not ten minutes ago. Ten minutes before that, he’d been handed half her project on a silver platter. And then there was Katherine’s lunchtime exposé about Jack’s…talents. If that wasn’t enough to stifle conversation, Claire didn’t know what was.
How she wished her friend had kept her insider knowledge to herself. The last thing she needed was to develop some stupid awareness of Jack as a man. She was stuck in an elevator with him, for Pete’s sake. She didn’t want to know that he was great in bed, and had a fantastic body. It was bad enough that she’d been mentally undressing him while they waited for Morgan earlier. She flicked a look across at him, but her glance skittered away again when she saw that his shirt was sticking to his sweat-dampened skin, giving her a very nice idea of just how well muscled and proportioned his chest was. She could even see his dark, flat male nipples through the damp fabric….
This man is your nemesis, she told herself fiercely. He represents everything you loathe in men. Determined to get over her stupid preoccupation, she deliberately reminded herself that in addition to having a broad, sexy chest, long, strong fingers and knowing, all-seeing eyes, Jack had stolen her parking spot this morning.
A surge of annoyance raced through her. That was better. Suddenly he was just a man again—an annoying man who regularly operated as a thorn in her professional side. She tapped one shoe toe against the other, then followed with a little heel click as she relived that frustrating moment of finding his car in her space. There was no way he didn’t know that was her usual spot. He’d have to be either blind or stupid not to know, and she knew he was neither. So—
“Why did you park in my spot this morning?”
She nearly bit her tongue off as she spoke her thought out loud. Now it was out there, however, and there was nothing for it but to pretend she’d meant to challenge him all along.
“I wasn’t aware that we’d been assigned parking spaces. Was there a memo sent around? I must have missed it,” he said, and she felt her buttocks clench with annoyance.
A memo. Very funny. Any sexual thoughts she’d had about Mr. Annoying receded at a rapid pace.
“You know exactly what I mean. You usually park over near the pillar in the middle. And I always park near the stairwell. It’s a system, a habit. And it works. So why did you take my spot this morning? And don’t tell me you didn’t know it was mine, because you gave yourself away when you wagged your keys at me this morning.”
“You’re not serious? You’re really all bunged up over a stupid parking spot?”
She sat up straighter at the disbelieving scorn in his voice.
“It’s not the spot, it’s the principle. Tell me you didn’t do it just to annoy me and I’ll drop it. But first you have to look me in the eye and say that pissing me off was not on your agenda when you filched my spot this morning.”
He rolled his eyes. “Do you know how juvenile you sound? Let me guess—only child, not used to sharing, right?”
She felt a small, familiar stab of regret, and she pushed it down, back into the place where it belonged.
“Look me in the eye and I’ll never mention it again,” she dared him.
Jack shook his head as though she’d just suggested he pull his underpants over his head and run around making chicken noises.
She simply raised an eyebrow and waited. Finally he got sick of rolling his eyes and telling her she was unbelievable.
“All right. When I parked my car in that spot this morning, pissing you off did not in any way inform my decision,” he said, but at the last minute he broke eye contact and his gaze wandered somewhere over her shoulder.
“Huh! You liar! You big fat liar! You did do it to piss me off!” she gasped.
“Okay, you want the truth? You’re right—I did do it on purpose. You’ve parked in that spot every single day for the past year. I thought it was time you had a change.”
She nearly swallowed her tongue.
He thought it was time she had a change?
“You thought it was time I had a change? You—a man who hasn’t yet grasped the basics of ironing—thought it was time for me to have a change?”
She realized her mouth was hanging open and she shut it with an audible click.
“Yeah. I did.”
His earlier words came flooding back, something about her stitching herself back up nice and tight. Added to his original assessment of her as prissy, it made a pretty unattractive picture. Suddenly she got it—he thought she was some repressed, neurotic career woman. The type of person who had to have routine, made sure she ate all the five major food groups and was never late paying her bills. The idea so outraged her that she couldn’t stop the challenge popping out her mouth.
“You think I’m uptight, don’t you?”
Her temper increased another few degrees when he simply raised an eyebrow at her.
“Answer me!” she demanded, and even to her own ears she sounded shrill and shrewish. He waited until the echo from her screech had died before spreading his hands as though presenting a fait accompli.
“I rest my case.”
She stared at him, very aware of the pulse beating madly at the base of her neck. She hated that she was behaving this way, hated that he could crank her up so easily. Most of all she hated that just five minutes ago she’d been imagining his bare chest, while he was sitting there thinking she was uptight and repressed.
Across the elevator car, Jack yawned ostentatiously, making a show of checking his watch, all of it meant to imply he was waiting for her next “snappy” comeback. Her temper boiled over and without thinking, she slid off one of her imported Italian leather pumps and slung it across the room at him. Unfortunately, hand-eye coordination had never been her strong suit and it simply bounced harmlessly off the wall next to his head.
It did shock him though, which gave her great satisfaction.
“There’s another one where that came from, so keep your stupid male chauvinist generalizations to yourself,” she warned him.
She started as her shoe landed in her lap with just enough force behind it to make her realize he was much better at ball sports than her.
“That’s how much of a male chauvinist I am. I respect you as an equal so much I know you can take what you dish out,” he said, and the complaint about him nearly hurting her died on her lips.
Sneaky bastard.
If her first throw had connected, she could have hurt him, and they both knew it. By giving her back some of what she’d dished out, he was forcing her to acknowledge her own double standards—that it was okay for a woman to hit a man, but not vice versa.
A taut silence stretched between them. She bit her lip to contain the hundred and one explanations, justifications and motivations for the way she lived her life, to prove to him he’d got it wrong, got her wrong. She wanted to tell him that her bedroom at home looked as if a bomb hit it, that she laughed at dirty jokes and that sometimes she even drank her beer straight from the bottle. She wasn’t uptight or prissy, she was just very professional at work. And very committed to her training schedule.
Thinking all this through helped take the edge off his words. He was just using some pathetic playboy measuring stick to assess her, and because she didn’t match his idea of what a woman should be, he labeled her repressed and uptight. Just because she didn’t wear tight miniskirts to work and fall all over herself to giggle at his jokes and wear her cleavage like the latest fashion accessory. Just because she was an achiever, and hardworking, and focused.
The truth was, he was probably scared of her. Threatened. It was typical, really—putting her down so he could build himself up. Almost, she felt better. Almost.
Unbidden, a memory popped up: the dinner she’d had with her old college friends last month. There had been lots of excited chatter as they caught up on the four years since they’d all last hooked up. Sue had been full of her kids’ antics, her husband’s achievements and her own dream of selling her handmade quilts on the Internet. Georgia had been excited about her upcoming wedding to the fabulous Greg, as well as being quietly proud of achieving partner in the law firm where she worked. And Claire had shared her achievements with the magazine, and talked about her chances of winning the upcoming statewide triathlon semifinal. She’d gone home that night feeling contented and replete after a good catch-up with her old friends. Now she remembered a look she’d caught Georgia and Sue exchanging. Was it possible they’d felt sorry for “poor Claire” and her empty life? When she’d apologetically left the table to take a quick cell phone call from someone at Hillcrest Hardware, had they talked in hushed tones about her being uptight and dronelike? About how alone she was—still single—and how she was filling her empty hours with meaningless exercise?
Suddenly Georgia’s suggestion that Claire should meet her friend Tony—a really amazing, laid-back guy—took on a whole new light.
Hell, maybe everyone thought she was uptight. Miserable, she hunched down against the wall.
She racked her brain, trying to think of the last time she’d done something spontaneous and impulsive. There’d been that time when she’d snuck in the back way at the movies with her boyfriend…but that was when she’d been sixteen, and didn’t really count anyway as she’d practically wet her pants with terror she was so worried about getting caught.
What about that time she and some triathlete friends had gone skinny-dipping after a late night beach party? Except that she had been one of only a few who’d chosen to swim in their underwear instead of going the full skinny….
