doors had almost slid to a complete close when a tanned arm shot into the narrowing gap. The doors automatically bounced open, and she gritted her teeth as Jack stepped into the car.
She refused to look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her as the elevator gathered momentum and sped downward.
Silence stretched between them. She kept her eyes glued to the floor indicator, just wanting an out from the elevator, this day, her life.
“Look—” he began to say, but she cut him off.
“Spare me. You’ve never liked me, and I’ve never liked you, so don’t bother mouthing some empty platitude at me, okay? Of all the unpalatable aspects of this deal, you I find the most difficult to swallow.”
She’d planned on exiting grandly into the foyer on these cutting and deeply satisfying words, but all of a sudden the lights flashed once, then blackness descended at the same time that the grinding shriek of metal-on-metal filled the car and the elevator shuddered to a halt.
3
“WHAT THE—?” Jack exclaimed.
“What’s happening?” Claire demanded at almost the same time.
“Probably just a freak glitch,” he said into the darkness, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded.
“You’re an expert on elevator technology now, are you?” she asked sharply.
He couldn’t see her, but he rolled his eyes at the corner he guessed she was occupying.
“No, I’m being optimistic. Would you prefer I start reciting the Lord’s Prayer and scribbling my will on the back of an envelope?”
Silence. Good. He was sick of her attitude and misdirected anger. As for that dig she’d made just before the elevator went crazy…It had been a long time since someone had told him to his face that she didn’t like him. And he was surprised at how much it annoyed him.
An emergency light flickered to life above them and he moved to the control panel. The pale, inadequate glow allowed him to find the compartment which hid the emergency phone, and he pried it open and reached for the receiver.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” he asked, suddenly aware that his heart was pounding faster than usual.
Okay, so this was a bit scary. And maybe he should forgive Claire for being a tad shrill. He glanced across at her as the continuing silence on the other end of the phone sunk in. Her face was pale, taut. Frightened.
“Nothing,” he said.
As if she didn’t trust him to know the difference between a live phone and a dead one, she crossed to take a listen herself. He leaned against the side wall, elaborately casual as he waited for her to confirm his initial assessment.
“You’re right,” she said.
“Wow, that must have really hurt,” he couldn’t resist saying.
She shot him a look that would have turned lesser men to stone.
“What, didn’t expect to have to actually stay and cop the consequences of all that mouthing off?” he asked, for some reason feeling really angry with her now. “I know you probably prefer to just hit and run, but unfortunately we appear to be stuck for the short term.”
He watched, fascinated, as the color flooded back into her cheeks and her eyes burned with an angry light. Pretty impressive, a part of his brain acknowledged. She even drew her shoulders back and inhaled sharply, and, for the first time ever, he found his eyes dropping to her suit-encased chest.
“It’s easy for you to stand there all smug and confident. Did you just have your idea taken away from you and handed to someone completely undeserving? Did you just get treated like some token office bimbo? No. Because you’re a man. A racquetball playing, big-game-fishing, bungee-jumping man with a stupid red sports car and the right equipment between his legs to get ahead in this company.”
If he’d been a cartoon, his hair would have been streaming back from his head as if he’d just stepped out of a wind tunnel. Whoa, but this was one angry woman. And he could see her point, really he could. But he didn’t like the way she was sighting her feminist crosshairs directly on him.
“Listen, I had nothing to do with what just happened in that meeting. You think I want anything to do with this? And if we’re talking about tokenism, I’m the one who’s being wheeled in as the token male on this project for appearance’s sake. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Don’t you dare mock me!” she warned him.
“Then don’t you blame your problems on me,” he countered. “I can’t see why you’d make me the bad guy in all this. Contrary to your belief, I have never disliked you. I barely know you.”
She raised an eyebrow skeptically, her whole attitude one of disbelief.
“I know what you said about me,” she shot at him.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard.”
Genuinely baffled, Jack raised his hands in the air, palms up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have better things to do than spend my spare time hanging around talking about you.”
That got her! The color was back in her cheeks, and she glared at him fiercely.
“You called me prissy! So don’t you dare stand there pulling that Mr. Innocent act,” she hissed at him.
Jack frowned. What the hell was she going on about? He’d been speaking the truth when he said that he didn’t spend his time sitting around talking about her.
“Sorry, but I think you’ve got that wrong, lady,” he said bluntly.
“Really? We’ll just have to ask my good friend Katherine Kirk when we get out of here then, won’t we?”
Although his expression didn’t change, Jack felt a moment of doubt. Now that she mentioned it, he could vaguely remember having a beer with Katherine some time ago after work. He’d just had a run-in with Claire in an editorial meeting and come out second best….
He made a mental note to thank Katherine for dumping him in it.
Claire was waiting for his response, hands on her hips.
“Well? What do you have to say to that?”
He shrugged. He’d said it, might as well own it. It wasn’t as though it wasn’t true. “Prissy might have been overstating it. You can be pretty anal, though.”
She made a hissing sound, kind of like a kettle about to blow its top, then opened her mouth to retaliate just as the phone rang. They both jumped, startled. Praying this was good news, he reached for the receiver with alacrity.
“Hello?” he asked, feeling her eyes on him, sensing her hopes, like his own, beginning to rise at this contact.
“This is Ted Evans from
