Can't Get Enough (5 page)

It felt like a plan. If only she didn't still want to scream at
someone. Her hand shook a little as she reclaimed her bag and
briefcase, and she took a deep breath before exiting. To her relief,
the waiting area near the elevator bank was empty, and she pressed the
call button stiffly. A car eased its doors open almost immediately, and
she stepped in and pressed the foyer button. The 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
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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."
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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.

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"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 Security. I'm making contact to ascertain the
exact number of persons in lift number six," an officious voice asked.

"Well, Ted, there are two of us, and we'd sure as hell love to get out
of here." Claire made an exasperated noise that he guessed was supposed
to signal her wholehearted agreement.

"Two. Right. Well, uh— Who am I talking to?"

"Jack. Jack Brook."

"Right. Jack. You're the one with the red Porsche, yeah? Nice little
number," Ted said, his tone all male appreciation. "It's an early 2002
model, right? The one with tiptronic transmission? Very nice." Jack
reined in his frustration. This guy didn't seem to have a real tight
grasp on the urgency of their situation.

"About the elevator, Ted," he hinted.

He glanced up as Claire shifted restlessly, a frown creasing her
forehead as she no doubt wondered what was going on. He could imagine
her reaction if he told her Ted wanted to talk cars.

"Well, we've got a bit of a situation here, Jack. There's been a major
power blackout across this whole part of town—something about a fire at
the power plant—and most of the building's services have shut down.
Air-conditioning, security systems, elevators. You know." Jack rolled
his eyes. Claire shook her head with confusion.

"What's going on?" she asked.

He tried to look reassuring as he returned his attention to Ted.

"So there are other people stuck in elevators?"

"Sure are. Only two of the twelve cars were empty. Elevator four has ten people in it," Ted reported with relish.

Jack grimaced. Ten people would make for a cozy lift compartment. Thank God it was just him and
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Claire. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted her frown deepening. On
second thoughts, maybe a cozy, friendly elevator wasn't such a bad
option….

"So how long are we talking here? Half an hour? Ten minutes? What?" he asked, deciding it was time to force Ted to the point.

"Can't tell you that just yet. We've contacted the manufacturer, and
they're sending a team out." Jack tried to control the sinking
sensation in his gut.

"So…we could be talking hours here," he said reluctantly. He could feel
Claire stiffen even though she was as far from him as she could get.

"That's not good enough," she said, striding across to pull the receiver from his hand.

"Who am I talking to?" she demanded.

He resumed his lounging position against the wall. He was all for
making a little noise if it was going to get them rescued sooner, but
he wished her the best of luck up against the remarkably prosaic Ted.
Jack inspected his fingernails as Claire quizzed the security guard,
trying to suppress the swell of satisfaction he felt when she returned
the receiver to its cradle a few minutes later, her shoulders slumped:
she hadn't gotten any further than he had.

"Could be worse. Could be ten people in here," he said lightly, taking
in her white face. She was silent as she crossed back to her side of
the space, but he could see her hands were shaking as she brushed her
hair back from her face.

Damn.He took a deep breath, then let it out. She was scared. Anyone
could see that. And as much as she probably deserved for him to simply
ignore her, he couldn't turn his back on her distress.

"Listen, I'm sure they'll have us out of here soon. I think I remember
reading somewhere that elevators have manual override functions where
they can just winch us down." He kept an eye on her, noticing her chest
was heaving a little now.

"Ah, Claire, you wouldn't happen to be a little claustrophobic at all,
would you?" he asked. She was concentrating fiercely on the carpet in
front of her toes, completely unresponsive now. 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 inIndia—" 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.

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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-esquewomen, 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 OUTof 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?"

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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.