Chapter 1 #2
Retracing my steps, the same way I entered, I exit the restaurant toward the bank of elevators to take me to my suite.
Me and one other person are on the gold-plated, mirrored elevator when the doors start to close.
“Please hold it,” a silky voice calls out a hairsbreadth before they shut.
I stab the button with my finger in time. The metal doors slide open, bringing me face to face with Alyssia.
Her eyes form perfect circles when they meet mine. Now, I’m able to give the color of her eyes a more precise name: toffee brown, like my favorite candy when I was a kid.
My gaze rolls over the powder blue sweater dress that hugs the generous swell of her breasts, fastens to her slender waist, and blossoms out to accommodate her curvy hips. The knee-high black boots she’s paired with the dress draw my attention to her thighs. Perfect size to accommodate my hands.
“Thank you,” she murmurs while sliding past me to move toward the back of the elevator.
I hit the door close button, and within seconds we’re rising up from the ground floor. The other guy gets off at the tenth floor, leaving me and Alyssia alone.
To get my mind off of Alyssia’s thighs, I start to think about the videos I’ve saved to watch once I get back to my suite. When that fails to keep my attention, I switch to thinking over this weekend’s strategy.
“Progressive corners, long straights, and problematic braking zones …” I talk to myself of what I know about the track, until there’s a sudden jolt.
I grasp for the wall, bracing myself, but there’s stillness, accompanied by silence.
The typical whirring that accompanies the upward movement has ceased.
One glance over my shoulder toward the button panel, and the two red dashes in the place where numbers of the floor level should be, tell me all I need to know.
The silence is broken by a tiny shriek from the only other person in here with me.
Alyssia turns to me. “Oh, my God, are we stuck?”
Her eyes wildly roam the unmoving elevator as if searching for a secret escape hatch.
“It appears so,” I finally respond to her question, and then hit the emergency call button.
“What? That’s a joke, right? You’re joking?” She begins repeatedly jabbing the call button. “We can’t be stuck.”
My instinct is to reach for her hand to spare her pointer finger from the beating it’s taking due to how aggressively she’s hitting the button.
She pauses, her eyes momentarily dropping to her hand in mine.
“Do you see that?” I nod at the red light that rings the emergency button. “The staff have already been notified. They know we’re stuck in here.”
Alyssia snatches her hand free, shaking her head. “That’s impossible because we’re not stuck. No, no, no,” she mumbles, pacing while fanning herself with the collar of her sweater dress with one hand and massaging her left shoulder with the other.
It isn’t hot in here by a long shot.
“Are you claustrophobic by chance?” I ask.
Her head whips around. The panic taking ahold in her eyes concerns me.
As someone who squeezes my body into confined spaces for a living, the deer at the opposite end of someone’s headlights reaction is the last thing you want at a time like this.
“No,” she answers shortly. “I’m not claustrophobic. I just don’t like tight spaces.”
Call me crazy, but somehow I know telling her that’s pretty much the same thing won’t go over well right now.
“Besides, we’re not stuck,” she says, her voice continuing to spiral higher. “This thing is going to start moving again at any moment, right? Right? Right?”
Each ‘right’ is punctuated by a press of the emergency button.
Each one causes me to flinch from the restraint it takes to not grab her hand again.
“Of all people this could’ve happened to,” she mumbles. “Of course it would happen to me. I have zero luck.”
She starts rubbing her right shoulder with her left hand while pacing once again.
I say the only thing that comes to mind.
“Why did your facially challenged boyfriend dump you?”
Her body jerks, hand dropping away from her shoulder, and then comes to a complete stop, not unlike what the elevator did moments ago. Alyssia blinks up at me, her eyes meeting mine.
I decide, or maybe it’s decided for me, that I like having her eyes on me.
“What did you say?” Disbelief peppers every word.
“Your ugly boyfriend. The one that dumped you. Why?”
“Were you … How did you?” She gasps. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“Yes. So?”
She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times. “You shouldn’t listen to strangers’ conversations. Besides, Hudson wasn’t ugly.”
I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans, giving her a once over. “Your friend seems to think so, and frankly, I think she has better taste than you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Beg all you want but I’m a damn catch and you overlooked me because I was too gorgeous. Why’d the troll dump you?”
“Troll?” she blurts, then covers her face with both of her hands, shaking her head. “This is absurd. You have no right to question me,” she claims.
“Then your friend was right. He must’ve been hideous.”
“He wasn’t,” she insists.
“Your friend thought so. You still haven’t answered my question.”
Her hands drop away from her face and her eyes narrow. The fissure of heat that runs down my spine threatens to flood this elevator, turning the temperature up, and giving Alyssia something to really fan herself over.
“What question is that?”
“Why did the troll dump you? Did he find out that you have a secret fetish for ugly guys?”
She gasps again, driving me to continue.
“Okay, wasn’t that. Did he discover something really embarrassing like you have a sixth toe?”
I have to stifle a grin when her eyes bug out of her skull.
“I don’t have a sixth toe.”
“Are you sure?” I glance down at her booted feet and then back up at her.
“Even if I did have a sixth toe, is that something to make fun of?”
I point to my chest. “You’re upset with me? But your facially challenged boyfriend is the one who broke up with you over it.”
“I do not have a sixth toe!” She stomps her foot.
I hold up my hands in mock surrender. “So you say, but …” I drift off and allow my gaze drop to her feet.
“And I’m not about to take off my boots to prove it to you either.”
“Suit yourself.”
She begins pacing again.
“Did he get tired of you snoring in the middle of the night?”
She pauses and glares.
“That’s it isn’t it? You know they have machines to help with that sort of thing.”
“I don’t snore.” Her voice drips with ice.
“How do you know? You’re asleep when it hap—”
“He said I was emotionally unavailable,” she blurts out as she begins walking back and forth again. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” She throws up her hands in frustration.
Alyssia stops and turns to me.
“I mean, isn’t that what women say about men?” She doesn’t wait for my answer. “But not Hudson. He’s getting a Ph.D. in psychology so he thinks he knows what he’s talking about. Guess what his dissertation is on?”
“I’m going to say—”
“Yeah, emotional vulnerability in romantic partnerships or whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, you shouldn’t eavesdrop on private conversations.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have private conversations in public.”
“I wasn’t having the conversation.” She points to her chest, and I have to force my eyes not to follow that finger.
“My friend was. I was trying to change the subject.”
I make a sucking sound with my mouth and cock my head to the side, contemplatively. “Gotta say, that’s kind of a point for the troll’s case on emotional unavailability.”
Her lips fall open.
My stomach muscles clench at the round shape of those parted lips.
“What the hell gives you the right to judge me? You don’t even know me. You’re just a stranger that—”
“Pulled you from the edge of a panic attack in a stuck elevator,” I finish for her.
She stands there speechless, the air surrounding us charging in the silence. A buzzing starts in my ears as our eyes lock in on one another’s. Neither of us dare to look away.
“Hello?” Crackles through the elevator’s speaker.
Alyssia startles out of her stupor, turning toward the emergency button.
“Is anyone in there? Mr. Townsend?”
I glance up toward the elevator’s camera and wave before pressing the button.
“We’re here.”
“We’ll have you out right away.”
Regret washes over me.