Fortune's Heirs: Reunion. Marie Ferrarella
pleased. She felt better already. “Sounds good. What time?”
“Make it eleven-thirty. I’ll get off early so we can beat the crowd.”
“You’re on,” Gloria said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven-thirty.”
She was smiling as she hung up the receiver, all thoughts of Jack pushed aside. At least for the time being.
Chapter Ten
Preoccupied, Gloria didn’t see Jack until she physically got on the elevator the next day.
She thought her radar would have warned her that the one person she desperately wanted to avoid was in the area. But just as she’d rounded the side that led to the bank she’d heard the bell sound for an arriving elevator car and, in a hurry to get the ride to the thirtieth floor in a cylindrical tube over with, she made a dash for it.
And narrowly avoided colliding with the tall, well-built man coming in from the other side.
Face to cloth, Gloria recognized the cut of the suit first. Custom. Hand-sewn. The cologne was a close second. There was no one else in the elevator to share the ride with them.
Her heart froze just as the doors closed behind her. She took a step back and looked up at him. Her verbal skills lagged behind by a full beat.
“Jack.”
“Gloria.” He acknowledged her presence a bit curtly. But she was the last person he wanted to run into, literally or otherwise. He was on his way to a private meeting with his father about the Gloria situation. After that little incident in the shop, for which he wholeheartedly accepted the blame, he definitely wanted out. According to her own words, her shop would be ready for business within the week. Her insurance was in order, as was her inventory. And she had a security firm coming out to safeguard the store against break-ins. There was no reason for him to stick around. He wasn’t aware of the bank holding anyone else’s hand so tightly.
His eyes washed over her. She was bundled up in a three-quarter-length suede coat. Suede had never been a turn-on for him.
Until now.
Maybe he should have arranged to meet his father for dinner instead, he thought darkly. There was precious little chance of her turning up at his father’s house.
Damn it, why did she feel like a cross between a James Bond martini and a malt every time she ran into him? Stirred and shaken.
Gloria forced a smile to her lips. “Looks like we can’t seem to avoid running into one another.”
He decided that his best bet was to stare straight ahead at the steel doors. “Looks like.”
As talkative as ever, she thought. Maybe she should have been grateful for that, but she wasn’t. She hated silence when she was uncomfortable and right now after yesterday she was very uncomfortable.
What was he thinking? Had he relived that kiss over and over again the way she had? Or did he regret the impulse that had prompted him to turn her knees into churned butter?
Or had the whole thing been so insignificant he wasn’t wasting any time at all thinking about it?
Gloria cleared her throat, summoning words to fill the silence. “I’m on my way to meet my sister for lunch. Christina,” she added for good measure in case he had forgotten which sister worked here. When he made no effort to respond, she pressed, “You?”
A trace of confusion marred his perfect forehead. “Me, what?”
Was he tuning her out completely? “Who are you going to see?”
Jack turned his face forward again. “My father.” To get me off this damn assignment from hell once and for all.
“Oh.” Extracting words out of the man was like trying to pick hot coals out of a fireplace. They came swiftly, but sparingly. “Tell him I said hi.”
Jack made no reply, merely nodding that he’d heard her. According to the flashing numbers at the front of the car, the floors were flying by.
Not fast enough to suit him, he thought. The space within the smooth, steel-gray walls was filling up with her perfume and it was getting to him. Arousing him. Making him remember what her lips had felt like pressed against his.
Ten more flights to go.
And then the elevator jerked to a stop. The light went out, leaving them in complete darkness.
The next moment he felt his arm being clutched. “Clawed at” was more like it.
“What just happened?”
Her voice was breathless, panicky. Just like when the truck had struck his car flying through the intersection. “It’s just a malfunction. Don’t start screaming,” he warned.
He thought he heard her swallow. “I won’t.” She sounded utterly unsure of her promise.
“It’ll only be a few seconds,” he assured her. This was a relatively new building. Fortune-Rockwell had moved out of its old home office into this one less than five years ago. Everything was supposed to be state-of-the-art.
Which meant that these kinds of things weren’t supposed to happen.
“The lights are bound to come back on.”
Extricating his arm, he put his hands out to feel for the wall in an attempt to find the phone. Somehow he got turned around and he found her instead.
Instantly he pulled back his hands. Whatever he had touched—and he had a real suspicion what that had been—was incredibly soft, even if it was packaged in suede.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s okay.”
Her reply was barely above a whisper. He could hear the fear mounting in her voice. “We’re going to be all right,” he told her firmly.
“I know we are.”
Although she didn’t sound quite so sure she believed him.
Just as he wondered if she was going to faint, an auxiliary light came on. The illumination it cast was dim, but at least they were no longer in the dark.
Her skin looked almost translucent, he thought, glancing at her face. “There.” Jack indicated the emergency light source. “See?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I can.” She could see just how small, how confining, the space was. For some reason the dim light only made it feel that much smaller. A tightness was taking hold within her chest.
“And so can I,” he told her. And what he saw was unadulterated fear. The same fear that had been in her eyes when he’d pulled her out of the car when the air bag had deployed. “It’s going to be all right,” he repeated. The words felt empty, hollow, highlighting the frustration he felt.
She turned desperate eyes on him. “When? When is it going to be all right?”
“As soon as the lights come back on.”
He knew his answer wasn’t very reassuring. Nothing frustrated him more than not having control over a situation. Annoyance strumming through him, he opened the panel just above the keypad of floor buttons and extracted the closed-circuit telephone receiver. “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”
There was no answer. For a minute he felt like hitting the receiver against the wall, but losing his temper wasn’t going to solve their dilemma. He tried his cell phone. There was no signal. When it rained, it poured.
“The power must be out.” Gloria’s voice was hardly above a whisper. She could feel her throat closing up again.
He shook his head. “The phone lines are on a separate circuit.” Swallowing a curse, he hung up the receiver. “Maybe some of the other elevators are out, too, and whoever is supposed to be answering the phone is out