Читать книгу The Millionaire And The Glass Slipper - Christine Flynn, Christine Flynn, Mary J. Forbes - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Amy couldn’t see a thing. In the darkness of the stalled elevator, she couldn’t hear anything, either. No Muzak. No mechanical grind and whir that might indicate a frozen pulley motor. The construction noise from the tenth floor that had tormented the building’s tenants all week was gone. Except for a terse, “What the…?” seconds ago, even the big man next to her remained silent.

As far as she could tell, Jared Taylor—all six-foot-two, beautifully masculine inches of him—didn’t move from his corner. Neither did she as she waited a handful of seconds to see if anything else would happen.

Nothing did.

“Are you claustrophobic?” she heard him ask into the dark.

“I haven’t been before.” She drew a cautious breath. The way her day was going, however, discovering a new phobia was entirely possible. So far, she’d overslept, which meant she’d missed her bus so she’d had to take her car to work. She’d dented her fender pulling into the parking garage because she’d been in such a hurry, then arrived late to find that the receptionist had quit. She’d then nearly knocked over the firm’s newest client because she’d been worrying about a call she received last night from her grandmother and hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. Now, the Fates had pulled the plug on the power. “But there’s a first time for everything,” she conceded. “How about you?”

“The only thing that bothers me right now is not knowing why we’re stalled.” He paused, listening. “I don’t hear a fire alarm. If someone had tripped one, the elevator should have gone straight to the first floor and opened. It must be something else.”

The mail she’d hugged landed on the floor. “There’s a phone by the doors.”

She had absolutely no desire to stand there conjuring scenarios. Apparently, neither did he. Even as she reached out to find the brass panel to the right of the elevator doors, she felt him moving beside her.

She reached the panel first. Groping over it in the dark, she felt his arm bump her shoulder as he reached past her.

His palm landed on the back of her hand. Since her hand wasn’t covering what they were both looking for, she pulled her fingers from beneath his and patted farther to her right. As she did, his sleeve brushed her cheek. Or maybe her cheek brushed his sleeve. Whichever it was, she could feel his big body at her back. His heat permeated her sweater as his hand, or maybe it was his elbow since he seemed to be reaching over her, bumped a spot above her temple.

He must have heard her quick intake of breath.

“Sorry,” he muttered, his deep voice above her. “What did I hit?”

“The side of my head.”

She thought she heard him swear. She knew for a fact that she felt his hands curved over her shoulders and ease along the sides of her neck. As if feeling for the point of impact, his palms slid up and cupped above her ears.

“Where?”

She barely breathed. “My temple.”

“Which side.”

“Right.”

His left hand fell to her shoulder, the fingers of his right eased into her hair as if feeling for a knot.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Her heart was already doing double-time. The feel of his big hands should have put it into overdrive. Yet, his touch, the concern in it, the gentleness, seemed almost…calming. Or would have had she let herself truly consider it.

“I’m…fine. Really,” she murmured. “You didn’t hit that hard.”

The disquiet in her tone had changed quality. J.T. heard it as certainly as he’d felt her go still the moment he’d touched her. Realizing he was the reason for both, aware that he’d reached for her without thinking, he eased his hands away.

“There’s an emergency button by the phone.” Urgency returned to her voice. “Below it, I think. Here. I’ve got it.”

She must have pushed the button. Or someone trapped in one of the other two elevators had just as anxiously sent the emergency signal. Somewhere in the shaft below them, an alarm began ringing.

Conscious of that distant sound, more conscious of the lingering feel of her soft hair against his fingers, he took a step back to give her room when she said she’d found the phone.

“Joe, is that you?” she asked after half a minute went by. “This is Amy from the twelfth floor. I’m stuck in the elevator with a client. I’m not sure,” she said after a moment. “Somewhere around the ninth or tenth floor, I think.

“We’re okay,” she continued. “We’d just like to know what’s going on.

“Will do,” she finally murmured. “Thanks.”

J.T. heard a patting sound as she searched for the receiver’s cradle. It was followed by the click of plastic against metal when she found it and hung up.

“The power’s out in the whole building. Something tripped the main breaker.”

The construction, he thought. He remembered hearing the distant sound of a power saw when he’d first come in. “Did he say anything else?”

“Just that we’re not supposed to panic. If the power doesn’t come back on soon, they’ll call the fire department to come get us.”

“Are you okay with that?” A heavy hint of masculine caution laced the deep tones of his voice. “The not panicking part?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve never been stuck in a dark elevator before.”

Thinking she sounded okay for now, hoping she’d stay that way, J.T. leaned against the elevator’s back wall. “Who’s Joe?”

“The building’s maintenance supervisor. He’s been here forever.”

A moment ticked by. Another. From a few feet away, he heard her draw in a long, deep breath.

“These things don’t just fall down the shaft,” he told her, “if that’s what you’re worried about. There are redundant systems in place to keep that from happening.”

“How many?”

“Aside from the static brake, there’s at least one safety and a governor. Since we’re nowhere near being over weight capacity, that system should keep us right here until the power comes back on.”

“You know that for certain?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Because I’ve read the specs when I’ve designed these things into buildings. Different companies have different features, but they all have the basic safety elements.”

A considering silence preceded her quiet “Oh.”

Silence intruded once more. Within seconds Amy could practically feel it echoing off the walls. Or maybe, she thought, crossing her arms tightly around herself, what she felt was the disturbing combination of nerves and the memory of the heat that had shot through her when she’d first met his eyes. They were the color of old pewter, the deep silver gray of a cloudy sky. But that was all she’d noticed before that odd heat had caused her to look away.

She’d never really felt that disturbing, intriguing sensation before. That…electricity, she supposed. She’d heard about it. Read about it. Tried to imagine it. But not once in her twenty-five years had she actually experienced the jolt that had made her heart feel as if it had tightened in her chest and darted warmth straight to her belly.

She’d felt the sensation again when he’d curved his hand over her shoulder and slipped his fingers through her hair. Only, then she felt something else, too. Something she hadn’t even realized she’d craved until she’d felt his compelling touch. Simply to be cared for, to be cared about.

“So,” she said, too uneasy with the elevator situation to refute the wholly unwanted admission. Not that what she’d felt with him mattered, anyway. Men like Jared Taylor, tall, dark and gorgeous men with ambition, sophistication and drive paid no real attention to her. Certainly, not the sort her beautiful, equally sophisticated stepsister received. She’d seen the way he’d straightened when Candace had walked in, caught the way his eyebrows arched ever so slightly as his glance moved along the length of her body. She’d seen the quick, reciprocating interest, too, as Candace had checked out his left hand. He hadn’t been wearing a ring. Amy had noticed that herself when he’d helped her pick up the files that had scattered at their feet. If the guy was single, odds were that Candace would have him asking her out by the end of their next meeting.

Silence had intruded again, heavy, uncomfortable. Later, she could wonder if she’d ever find a man who would look at her with that unmistakable, purely male interest. Right now, she just needed for him to talk to her. Or to talk herself. That silence did nothing but let her too active imagination head in directions she really didn’t want it to go.

“So, Mr. Taylor,” she began again.

“It’s Jared,” he corrected. “And you’re…Amy…?”

An introduction seemed totally reasonable under the circumstances.

“Amy Kelton,” she replied, and would have offered her hand had she any idea where to find his.

“Kelton? Are you any relation to the Kelton in Kelton & Associates?”

“Mike Kelton was my father. He owned the agency before he passed away.”

“He did?” He seemed to hesitate on a number of levels. “I mean, I’m sorry. About your father.”

“Thanks. Me, too.” It had been nearly five years, but the shock of her dad’s sudden death and its unsettling aftermath still caught her off guard at times. Mike Kelton had been a man in his prime. Or so everyone had thought when he’d gone out one morning for his usual run, and promptly suffered a massive coronary.

“The firm went to his wife,” she explained, her tone matter-of-fact. This man was a client, after all. As long as the firm bore her father’s name and she was part of the team, she would protect its members—no matter how ambivalent she personally felt about some of them, or how invisible she usually was herself. “She was his business partner. Jill Chapman Kelton. She’s Candace’s mom. You would have met her, but she’s touring a client’s plant today.”

J.T. frowned into the sea of black that prevented him from seeing features he remembered mostly as being delicate. Her eyes were dark, long-lashed and shot with flecks of gold, though why he remembered that from the few seconds she’d actually made eye contact with him, he had no idea.

From the nearness of her voice, the young woman who apparently held more interest in the firm than he would have ever suspected, remained by the wall a couple of feet away.

He knew the agency was a mother-daughter enterprise from his own quick research into the firm and Candace’s recitation of the firm’s hierarchy a while ago. She’d even pointed out the classy, silver-haired version of herself in the photos on her trophy wall. What Candace hadn’t mentioned was that her assistant was her stepsister, and that her mother had inherited the firm from Amy’s dad. Not that she’d had any reason to mention it, he admitted to himself. He hadn’t asked anything about the company that would have given her reason to bring it up.

“So you’re interning,” he concluded, thinking it the only way to explain the younger stepsister’s subordinate position. “You’re in college and learning all the jobs on the way to becoming a partner yourself.”

“Actually…no. I’m Jill and Candace’s assistant, the bookkeeper and gofer for just about everyone else.”

“You’re not going to be part of the agency?”

“Not in any way other than I already am. The company belongs to Jill.” Candace would become a partner in a few months, though. Her mother had promised her a quarter interest when she turned thirty. If Candace wanted to tell him that, she could. It wasn’t her place. “My only financial interest in it is in what she pays me.”

“Are you okay with that?”

A shrug entered her voice. “I have to be.”

He hadn’t expected the acceptance in her response. Or maybe it was the resignation. Baffled by whatever it was, his basic sense of fair play insisted that she should have shared the ownership of what appeared to be a very successful operation, not merely been there to support the women now running it.

“Why do you have to be?”

“Because I need the job to help support my grandmother,” she admitted, too concerned about being trapped to care that he was so blunt. They were talking. That was all she cared about just then. “Jill pays me too much to go anywhere else.”

“Do you live with your grandmother?”

“No, I… No,” Amy repeated, and promptly told herself she really should shut up. At the very least, she should change the subject. She couldn’t begin to deny the unease she felt knowing she was ten stories up, trapped in a box with nothing but whatever mechanical wizardry he understood but she didn’t to keep it from dropping to the basement. She just wasn’t in the habit of sharing her problems with people she knew, much less with a stranger she’d be faced with again when he returned for his next appointment.

“Then, she lives with you,” he concluded.

“She’s in an assistant living facility.”

“What about your stepmom?” he asked, before she could move on. “Why isn’t she supporting her?”

“Because Grandma Edna is my responsibility. She’s my mom’s mom and the only real relative I have left,” she allowed, though she might not have added the latter had she not been where she was. If the elevator fell, there wouldn’t be anyone to see that the increasingly eccentric older woman was properly cared for. Edna could be a handful. Jill couldn’t stand her.

“Can we talk about something else, please? Tell me about your company,” she suggested, desperately wanting not to think about falling down the shaft. “You must be excited about pulling it all together. Is having your own firm something you’ve always wanted?”

J.T. didn’t know which caught him more off guard just then; her obvious resignation to her position in the company, the abrupt change of subject, or her assumption that he felt any excitement at all about his possible venture.

She’d also just confronted him with the sudden need for an acceptable explanation for his own circumstances.

He could hardly tell her that the idea of starting his own company had nothing to do with realizing a dream. It had simply been the logical thing to do, given what his father had thrown at him. He couldn’t tell her, either, that once he’d decided what he had to do, that he’d approached the task with the same methodical, get-it-done attitude he intended to tackle in his pursuit of Candace-the-potential bride. There had been nothing resembling excitement involved.

The thought gave him pause. Standing there with the dark masking his disquiet, he couldn’t honestly say he felt energized, eager or enthusiastic about much of anything he did anymore. Even his last climbing trip in the Swiss Alps had left him oddly dissatisfied and restless. It almost had been as if pushing himself to conquer yet another mountain was no longer enough.

He didn’t care at all for that unexpected thought, or the strange, empty sensation that came with it. Certain both were there only because he was being pushed to do things he didn’t want to do, he dismissed the matter as inconsequential—and simply told her what he could of the truth.

“I didn’t start thinking about my own firm until a couple of months ago. It just seemed like it was time.”

“To break out on your own?”

“Something like that.”

“Then, this isn’t a goal you’ve worked toward for a while.”

He hadn’t been prepared for the conclusion in her voice. Or, maybe what he hadn’t expected was her insight.

A hush fell between them, long seconds passing before her soft voice finally drifted toward him.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Overstepping myself. I didn’t mean to pry.” Sympathy joined the apology in her tone. “I just assumed that starting your own firm was something you’d wanted to do.”

She clearly recognized that it was not.

For a moment J.T. couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t sound like confirmation—or like too much of a protest. He handled his life the same way he played poker. Straight-faced and close to the vest. He wasn’t given to showing his hand. Yet, in a matter of seconds, this quietly unassuming woman had recognized his ambivalence and pretty much called him on it.

Feeling exposed, not caring for the sensation at all, he dismissed her perception as a fluke. At least, he did until he considered what he’d learned about her job and realized she might well be wrestling with her circumstances, too. The inherent unfairness in her situation did strike a vaguely familiar chord.

“What would you do if you didn’t have to work for the agency?”

Amy shifted against the wall, uncomfortable with having trespassed onto sensitive ground. She wasn’t usually so straightforward with a client. Not that Jill had her deal with any of them directly very often. Most of her contact was over the phone or by mail. It was just that this man’s vague responses had left her with the feeling that his new venture had been precipitated by something unexpected. A divorce, perhaps. Or a problem within the firm he now worked with. Personality problems within the partnership. Cutbacks.

Whatever the reason, he didn’t seem to her to be at all enthused about striking out on his own. She’d simply responded to that. Much as she’d responded to his touch moments ago, and the tension she sensed in him now.

That faint tension seemed to reach toward her, wrap itself around her, increase her own.

Not at all sure what to make of her reactions to him, she tried to ignore them all. “If I could do anything…”

A faint thud sent her heart into her throat.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounded like something hitting metal.”

“Might have been a door. Is the stairwell near the elevators?”

“It’s just around the corner.”

“They’re probably evacuating the building. Go on,” he coaxed, sounding far less concerned than she felt. “You’d… what?”

The elevator doors were too thick to hear much of anything else going on beyond them. It was also possible that they were stuck between floors, which meant they were further insulated by the six or so feet of crawl space and whatever else existed between the building’s various levels from anyone who might pull the doors open from the outside.

Thinking of how big he was, how quietly powerful and confident he seemed, she inched closer to his voice. “Get a degree in marine biology,” she said, “find a research position, then tackle the rest of my life list.”

More concerned with being stuck while everyone else was leaving than with the list she’d barely begun to complete, she strained to see if she could hear anything else.

All she heard was the curiosity in Jared’s voice. “Life list?”

“It’s a list of things I want to do before I…” die wasn’t a word she wanted to use just then. “Before I’m too old to get around,” she concluded.

“Getting your degree is at the top of it?”

“At the top was to buy my own home.” Having her own home had been at the top of her list ever since her father had married Jill and sold the one she’d grown up in. She’d promised herself then that she’d someday have a home no one could take from her. “I did that a few years ago,” she told him, ever grateful for the down payment allowed by the modest insurance policy her father had kept for her.

Trying to stay focused, she thought about the next item on the old piece of blue notepaper she kept tucked in her nightstand drawer, and skipped right over it. Admitting her hope—her need—to have a family of her own felt far too personal, especially since he was undoubtedly only trying to distract her from thoughts of where they were.

“Next is to dive off the coast of Australia,” she added, thinking her odds of accomplishing any of that roughly equal to acquiring a fairy godmother. She had neither the prospects, the time nor the money her dreams required. Given her present obligations, she wouldn’t for a very long time. “And in the Bahamas and Hawaii.” It was also a wish list, after all.

The curiosity in his voice remained as he asked how long she’d been diving. She told him her dad taught her when she was eleven, but that she hadn’t done much in the past couple of years. “No time,” she explained, thinking she’d love to be on any of those islands just then. Anywhere to be away from where she was.

Maybe she was a little claustrophobic after all. Or maybe the unease she felt was fear of falling.

She didn’t realize she’d spoken her last thoughts aloud. At least, not until she felt him move closer and his hand touched her arm.

The moment it fell away, she realized what he’d done.

He’d let her know he was right there, close enough to reach, if she needed him.

“You’re doing fine,” he assured her.

“Do you think we should try to get out?”

“Doing anything other than staying where we are for a while would probably just get us into bigger trouble. They know we’re here,” he reminded her.

“In the movies, they show people going through the little door up there.”

“What they don’t show in those movies is that the hatch is usually bolted from the outside. Even if this one isn’t, I’d rather not crawl around on top of this thing trying to find a way out in the dark.” J.T. didn’t mind an adrenaline rush. He’d hang off a cliff face suspended by ropes and gladly spend the time working out his next move and enjoying the view. But that kind of risk was different from hanging onto greased cables while standing on a box that would start moving the instant the power came back on. He’d have little control in that situation. Being in control was what his life had been about for as long as he could remember.

“I wouldn’t have a clue where I was in relation to anything else,” he admitted, willing to bet the best Bordeaux in his cellar that she didn’t really want to crawl around up there, either. “I have a thing about wanting to know my next move.”

“So we forget the hatch,” she murmured. “What about prying open the doors?”

“The problem there is if we’re between floors and one of us is crawling out when the power comes back on.” Had he been alone, he probably would have already tried that. He’d risk his own neck. He didn’t care to risk anyone else’s. “The car will move. The floor remains stationary. It’s too easy to get crushed.”

He thought she shuddered.

“And you know these things because you’ve worked with elevator companies,” she concluded flatly.

“Call it a perk.”

Amy swallowed. “Thank you for sharing.”

He liked her bravado. Most of the women he knew would be in need of major hand holding by now. “Let’s give them a while. If we start needing food and water, I promise, we’ll come up with something.

“So,” he continued, thinking it best to move on from the scenarios he’d planted in her head. With the time being wasted just standing there, he would have thought he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment, too. Almost. “Why diving?”

It wasn’t often that he met anyone he found particularly intriguing, much less anyone who truly surprised him. Never would he have imagined her wrestling air tanks and weight belts to play tag with eels off the Great Barrier Reef. As docile as she’d first seemed, he wouldn’t have thought there was an adventurous bone in her slender little body.

“Because I like the way I feel when I’m doing it.”

“How’s that?”

“Free,” Amy said easily. She no longer cared what he asked her while they waited. She was just grateful for the distraction he offered, and for his solid presence. Had she been trapped there alone, she might well be huddled in a corner by now. “I don’t feel that anywhere the way I do in the water. There are no restraints. It’s just you and this whole other world. It’s all just so…different. So…natural.” So peaceful, she started to add, only to go silent as awkwardness abruptly crept through her.

Describing the abandon she felt in all that unhurried quiet didn’t seem as simple as telling him about goals that probably weren’t extraordinary at all to someone who seemed as urbane as this man did. Even in the dark, she ducked her head. “It’s hard to explain to someone unless they’ve been there themselves.”

Moments ago she’d moved closer. Not by much, J.T. thought. Just close enough that every breath he drew now brought her subtle scent with it. He couldn’t figure out what it was. It seemed too light to be perfume. Her shampoo, maybe. Body wash.

Already more aware of her than he wanted to be, he thought about moving himself. She was clearly growing more uncomfortable, though, and trying her best to mask it. So he stayed where he was. Despite whatever discomfort or awkwardness she felt, she also seemed to feel safer near him.

“You don’t have to explain it to me.” He offered the assurance as he turned from the back wall, edged to the wall adjoining it. She was right there, presumably with her back against the panels. With his arms crossed, he let his jacket sleeve rest lightly against her upper arm. She could move closer if she wanted. Or away, if she chose. “I know what you mean.”

Though he sensed hesitation, she stayed where she was.

“You do?”

“I haven’t been diving in years,” he admitted, wondering if he hadn’t just felt her relax a little. He preferred to be on the water, pushing for speed and battling the wind for control. “But I sail for the same reason.” Especially to an island that I want to build a home on someday, he thought, and overlooked the agitation that came with the idea of potentially losing access to it. “I haven’t had time to indulge myself lately, either.”

“Did your father teach you?”

That agitation seemed determined to be felt. She couldn’t possibly know that his relationship with his father bore no resemblance whatsoever to what she’d apparently shared with hers. He just wasn’t about to tell her how many times Harry had raised his preteen hopes about them doing something together, only to attend a meeting instead. How many times he’d fallen asleep outside his dad’s office to show him something he’d made or a paper for which he’d received an exceptional grade only to have a housekeeper wake him and tell him his dad had left. Old Harry had been far too busy building his technological empire to bother with anything so mundane as what might matter to a kid.

“I learned with a friend. We borrowed his brother’s boat and basically taught ourselves.”

He’d been grounded for a week when Cornelia had discovered what he’d been doing and told his father about it. He’d been grounded for another week for risking his neck because Cornelia had insisted they could have capsized the boat and drowned. He’d never been worried, though. By the time she’d found out what he’d been up to, he’d become a pretty good sailor.

“How old were you?” he heard Amy ask.

“Twelve.” He hadn’t thought back so far in years. “I decided then that I’d have my own sailboat someday.”

“How long was it before you bought one?”

The smile in her voice seemed to say that she didn’t doubt his determination for an instant. Drawn by that, he might well have told her about the series of boats that had led to the forty-foot sloop he currently kept docked in Seattle. But even as he opened his mouth he remembered that he needed her and everyone else in the ad agency to think him a relatively average guy. He had no idea what she and her stepsister did or didn’t share with each other, but he didn’t want to say anything he wouldn’t want repeated. He strongly suspected that a modestly successful architect wouldn’t trade-in million-dollar sailboats the way most men did cars.

Grateful once more for the dark, he told her only that he bought a small one when he was eighteen. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her any of this as it was. He wasn’t in the habit of talking about his childhood to anyone. There’d been good parts and bad. He’d survived it. End of story. But he was spared having to wonder at how easily the young woman beside him had drawn him out when the elevator jerked.

Amy’s breath caught as she grabbed for him. Jared’s hands clamped around her upper arms. In the awful seconds while she waited for whatever would happen next, she didn’t know if he pulled her to him to keep her from losing her balance, or if he was simply bracing them both. All she knew for certain was that he’d pulled her into his arms, that his body felt as solid as steel, and that she could do nothing but hang on.

With her heart battering her ribs, she buried her head against his chest.

Beneath her feet, the floor remained still long enough for her to become conscious of being surrounded by his heat—an instant before the elevator started to descend. Slowly. The way it always did.

Her pulse still racing, she opened her eyes, drew a quick, decidedly cautious breath. The scents of citrus aftershave and warm male filled her lungs as she blinked at the strip of cashmere between the soft wool lapels fisted in her hands.

The lights had come back on.

“Are you okay?”

His voice came from above her, the rich sounds of it a quiet rumble beneath the strains of the Muzak once again filtering through the speakers.

Looking straight ahead, all she could see was the wall of his very solid chest. She didn’t want to move. For that unexpected, too-fleeting moment, she felt very safe where she was. Sheltered. Protected. She hadn’t felt anything remotely resembling that alien sense of security since long before her father had died.

The feeling vanished with her next heartbeat.

Glancing up, her eyes met his. With her head tipped back, she was close enough to see shards of silver in cloud gray eyes, the carved lines bracketing his beautiful mouth. Already aware of the compelling feel of his arms, she nearly forgot what he’d asked.

He’d gone as still as stone. Or maybe it was she who failed to move as his glance skimmed her face and settled on her parted lips.

For one totally surreal instant, it seemed as if he was about to close the negligible distance between them. Yet, even as her heart nearly stalled at the thought of his mouth on hers, a muscle in his jaw jerked. His hold on her eased.

Releasing her grip on his lapels, she stepped back just as he did.

It was only then she remembered that he’d asked if she was all right. Considering the knotted state of her nerves, she most definitely was not.

“I’m…yes, of course,” she murmured, jamming awkwardness beneath a thin layer of composure. He was watching her, rather curiously from the feel of his eyes on her as she scooped up her stack of mail while the elevator continued its descent. “I’m…fine. I’m just sorry you had to wander under the little black cloud that’s been following me around all day. That’s probably why I nearly ran you over in the office, and why you got stuck in here with me now.” Refusing to consider what else could go wrong, she aimed a commendably calm smile at the cleft in his chin. If she’d learned anything from her years in advertising, it was that perception was everything. If you appeared in control, everyone thought you were. “The good news is that it’s me, not you, and that bad days get better.”

“What about bad weeks?”

“Those are the ones that build character.” Or so her grandma said.

“Bad months?” he asked, and watched as her smile made it to her eyes. Something knowing shifted in those doe-brown depths.

“That’s when you need to find something to do that takes you away from your problems for a while. Whatever you’re dealing with won’t go away,” she warned him, “but for that hour or that day, you’ve taken away its power over you.”

The elevator stopped. Even as her smile fell away, the doors opened to a lobby crowded with office workers. Before J.T. could ask what sort of thing she would suggest as an escape, or what else had happened to her that day, she’d slipped into the mass of people grumbling about having had to walk the however-many flights they’d taken to get to the ground floor, only to now have to wait for an elevator to go back up.

He moved into the crowd himself, stopping a lawyer-type in a three-piece suit to ask what had happened to the power. The man told him that one of the building’s floors was being gutted and remodeled. A worker had apparently shorted an electrical line and tripped the building’s main breaker.

J.T. had barely thanked the guy before he glanced back to see if he could catch a glimpse of short and shining brown hair. He saw no one familiar, though, as he moved through the surge of people and out the building’s tall glass doors.

Frowning at himself, he stepped out into the early fall air. He was on the brick-paved transit mall. MAX, the commuter train, rattled by on its light-rail line. A bus idled at the light on the corner. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to kissing her. With her mouth inches from his, her scent and the feel of her coltish little body drawing him closer, he’d come within a heartbeat of seeing if she tasted as sweet as she looked.

Sweet. He’d never met a female he would have described that way.

He shook his head, plowed his fingers through his hair. He really needed to focus here. He fully intended to get to know her stepsister. Even if Candace hadn’t seemed to be an excellent candidate for the hunt, Amy wasn’t at all the sort of sophisticated, worldly female that normally attracted him. The sort of woman who’d developed a certain cynicism about the opposite sex herself. When he entered the game, he preferred an equal playing field. The young woman he’d just spent the past hour with probably didn’t even know there were rules. One of which had always been that a woman not get too close.

It occurred to him, vaguely, that the way he’d played for years might need to change. For now, though, all he cared about was that he’d caught himself before he’d done anything foolish. Circumstances had pretty much thrown her into his arms was all. With his first priority being to save his position at HuntCom, he had more to worry about than a young woman who possessed far more insight about his feelings for his backup project than he was comfortable with.

Amy hurried past a curved, Plexiglas bus kiosk, her arms wrapped tightly around her bundle of envelopes as she glanced back over her shoulder. She saw no sign of Jared Taylor on the tree-lined sidewalk. As tall and imposing as he was, he would stand out in any crowd, but he’d already disappeared.

She could still almost feel the strength in his hands when he’d helped her to her feet back in the office—right after she’d plowed into him and scattered files at feet. Just as she could almost imagine that same warmth filling her whole body when he’d held her in the elevator—moments after she’d practically crawled inside his jacket when the elevator had lurched. When he’d let go of her, the way his broad brow furrowed had made it abundantly clear that he’d wondered what on God’s green earth he’d been doing. At least he’d been gentleman enough to pretend nothing unusual had happened while she’d rattled on about having had a bad day.

She turned the corner to the post office, trying to shake off the entire unsettling encounter. She just hoped he wouldn’t say anything about her to Candace. She especially hoped he didn’t let it slip that she’d mentioned having to take care of her grandmother or make a comment about her having had a less-than-stellar day. The last thing she needed was to give Jill’s admittedly beautiful, undeniably well-intentioned daughter any reason to caution her about maintaining professionalism with their clients, or to give her a pep talk about what she needed to do when things weren’t going right.

Candace’s solution for everything was either a new man or a shopping trip. While Amy loved to hit sales, the home where her grandma lived had raised its rates so her budget had become tighter than ever.

As for finding herself a man, she was beginning to think she might be in the home herself before that ever happened. It seemed as if every female she knew was married, engaged, involved or on the mend from a broken relationship and had sworn off for the duration. Candace always had a man in her life. She went out more in a month than Amy had in the past two years. It was just that Amy’s obligations to Jill, the agency and her grandma—and the fact that her frequent visits to Edna seemed to be a turnoff for some men—had kept her from getting beyond a few first dates and casual friendships. Then there was what Candace called her totally naive belief in happily-ever-after instead of happy-enough-for-now.

She’d always wanted the fairy tale. She wanted a man she loved who loved her back. She wanted family to be as important to him as it was to her. She wanted to have children with him, to share with him, to grow old with him. As long as she was thinking about it, it also would be nice if the guy made her feel what she’d so fleetingly experienced with Jared Taylor. Even the pleasant sensations she’d felt from a couple of the more charming frogs she’d kissed hadn’t touched her in as many ways as just being held by that man.

For now, though, she’d just take care of the mail, hurry to the printers to pick up the copies of the family photos she’d had made for Edna with the hope of jogging her failing memory—and promise herself that the next time she saw Jared Taylor, she wouldn’t let preoccupation with her personal concerns embarrass her again. It had been worry about her grandmother distracting her when she’d so unceremoniously plowed into him by the reception desk.

Unfortunately, a little over a week later, that same concern had just compounded itself. She just didn’t have time to deal with that worry at the moment. Fifteen minutes before he was to arrive for his preliminary presentation, she received a reply to her latest e-mail request for a routine credit check on their newest client. Like the other companies from which she’d requested information, this one claimed no credit, employment or academic history available on an architect named Jared Taylor.

Professionally, the man didn’t seem to exist.