Читать книгу Perfect Proposals Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 12

PAIGE’S phone rang, but no matter how hard she reached, how hard she tried, it was never enough. She couldn’t connect.

She woke up with a start, her heart thumping in her chest, her legs entangled in a mess of sheets, to find light pouring through her bedroom window. A quick glance at her bedside clock told her it was after ten. Once she realised it was a Sunday she relaxed. Wow, she hadn’t slept in that late in—

The buzzing of her landline told her she hadn’t dreamt that part at least.

She reached out, grabbed the phone, lay back on her bed with the back of her hand over her eyes to block out the light. Expecting it to be her mum, she sighed, ‘Hiya.’

‘Sleep well?’

Words became impossible as her mouth fell wide open. She had to swallow, twice, before saying, ‘Gabe?’

‘Making sure you got home okay last night.’

Her head was spinning. How did he get her number? She hadn’t given it to him. He’d looked her up? He’d looked her up! Oh, calm down. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s just being gentlemanly. Though what he’d done to her up against the doorjamb the night before was so far from gentlemanly she had to cross her legs to keep from suffering a relapse.

‘Paige?’

‘I hardly had to brave the night. I’m four floors down.’

‘As I well know.’ The heat in Gabe’s voice had Paige sliding deeper under her sheets. Until he added, ‘By way of a lift that, according to you, is contrary.’

‘You still think I’m making it up, don’t you?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. In fact I’ve developed a soft spot for the thing.’

She could all but see his seductive smile down the phone. Feel his warm breath on her neck. His hot hands on her skin. How had she convinced herself a night with Gabe Hamilton would be enough? Maybe it would have been, if either of them had come with protection. And maybe she’d turn into a monkey at the next full moon.

Whatever might have been, after last night he’d been left wanting, and she was left wanting more. And not just getting out there and dating again more. Him more. Big dark Gabe Hamilton more. That was what came of diving in head first when she’d meant to test the water with a tentative toe. But it was too late to think about what she should have done. She was in this thing now. Why not make the most of it?

‘Where are you?’ she asked. Her body began to feel hot and soft by turns at the hope he would say he was outside her door.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘Liar,’ he rumbled. Not only did the man have a voice that could send a nun into a fit of hot trembles, he knew what to do with it. ‘I’m at Customs. Tearing the place down in search of my bed.’

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘Not so much. You?’

‘I slept fine.’ Deep, dreamy, delicious.

The low notes of Gabe’s laughter vibrated down the phone. And Paige bit her lip so as not to say anything else incriminating.

‘Glad to hear you’re safe and sound. And well slept. Now I’ve gotta see a man about a bed. See you ‘round, Eighth Floor.’ And then he was gone.

Paige pressed the phone to her hot ear a moment longer before she let her arm flop sideways, the phone dangling from her hand. She stared at the ceiling, at the bouncing blobs of sunlight reflecting off the prism dangling from the corner of her dressing-table mirror.

He’d checked to see if she made it home. Which was actually quite lovely. Kind of a good guy thing to do, in fact. But then he’d made no noise about when, or even if, she’d see him again before Friday’s party. Which was a decidedly bad boy thing to do.

She rolled onto her tummy and pressed her face into her pillow. If only he were outside her door with a condom tucked in the back pocket of his old jeans. Then he could have his wicked way with her, and they’d be even, and that would be that. Perhaps. Probably not.

It was a Sunday, she had nowhere else to be, so she closed her eyes and pictured herself flinging open her front door to find him standing there after all, though this time in her head he wore black leather trousers, a loose white shirt open to the navel, an eye-patch. He was so big and tall he’d fill her small kitchen—

Her eyes flew open and she sat up with a start as she remembered the wedding dress in its fluorescent bag still hanging over her dining chair.

She rubbed the heels of her palms against her eye socket and breathed out hard. Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror. Her eyes were smudged with old eyeliner, her hair a scrambled mess. And her mouth? It tasted like three-week-old bread.

Looking as she looked, with a wedding dress in her kitchen, hearing one note of that voice and she would still have let him into her apartment in half a second flat. No, she would have dragged him in. Had she completely lost her self-control?

That was that. Until his party Friday she was using the stairs.

As Gabe leaned against the wall of the lift transporting him silently to the fifteenth floor offices of BonaVenture Capital he couldn’t help comparing it with the one at the Botany Apartments. Light, bright, luxuriously spacious and prompt as this one was, it hadn’t the added benefit of having deposited pure temptation in the shape of a leggy blonde at his door two nights before. He knew which he preferred, hands down.

He was quite sure this casual dalliance would end up being a most welcome postscript to the unwelcome trip. Casual being the key word.

He liked women. Downright adored some of them. He’d been raised by a strong woman—his gran, after his parents died a week before his tenth birthday—so he respected the hell out of them. But his work kept him on the move, which made casual more workable. That, and the fact that the one and only time he’d attempted a hearts and roses relationship he’d been burned to a crisp.

He shifted his stance, but the discomfort that had settled over him remained. He preferred not to look back to that time. It was a big black hole in his past with the capability to suck him in if he gave it half a chance. Being back in Melbourne, heading into the BonaVenture offices where it had all come to a head made it nearby impossible not to remember, but he was determined to try.

And if losing himself in the warm, willing arms of Paige Danforth every now and then helped, then who was he to argue?

He was rubbing at the bite marks she’d left on his shoulder when the lift dinged. He pressed his feet into the floor and held his breath, only to lose it in a rush when the doors opened to an expansive foyer with a shining dark wooden floor, blood-red walls, and sunlight seeming to pour from every corner of the place even though he couldn’t see a single window.

He glanced back at the floor number to make sure lifts all over the city hadn’t suddenly gone mad.

It was only when he looked up that he saw a sign twice as long as he was tall advertising BonaVenture Capital in elegant white type that he was sure he was in the right place. This was his company, only nothing like it had been when he’d last been in Melbourne. Two years before? Three? Now he remembered Nate carrying on about paint swatches during a lot of emails and calls at one point. He’d agreed to Nate spending whatever he liked on the refit so long as he didn’t have to read another memo about the critical difference between Egg White Omelette and Alabaster Dream. Whichever way Nate had gone, it worked.

‘Wow,’ he bit out, shocked laughter rumbling in his chest.

Shrugging his laptop bag higher on his shoulder, Gabe slowly walked through the foyer dodging the hive of men and women in sharp suits bustling back and forth to and from hallways hidden away to the sides. To think it had been less than ten years since they’d started their venture capital firm with Nate’s trust fund, Gabe’s hard-earned savings from every job he’d had since he was twelve years old, and a business plan mapped out on a handful of beer napkins in a dark corner of their favourite pub while their college mates downed shots at the same table.

He remembered like it was yesterday, walking through the city the next morning, while the grey city turned gold with the magic touch of sunlight, feeling as if his life was finally about to begin. As if he literally had the whole world at his feet. As if brilliance was within his grasp.

And then a smidge under three years later he’d nearly lost it all. And he’d spent every second of the last seven years of his life making up for it.

He pressed his boots into the expensive floor and for the first time since that time he let himself wonder if they might have finally pulled through.

‘Buddy!’ Nate said, appearing from nowhere as if by osmosis. He must have noticed the surprise on Gabe’s face as he laughed loud enough to turn heads. ‘So what do you think? Gorgeous right?’

‘Egg White Omelette?’ he asked, pointing a thumb at the company name.

‘Plain old White,’ Nate said.

‘Who’d have thought?’

‘Want to see your office?’

‘Hell, yeah,’ Gabe said. Though for half a second he wondered if he deserved anything more than a hole in the wall considering how often he used the place. But Nate’s excitement soon had him feeling a glimmer of anticipation at what lay beyond the doors Nate had led him to. ‘So what does a partner in a schmancy joint like this get for his buck?’

Nate grinned as he opened the doors with a flourish to reveal a corner office big enough to host a pool tournament. Huge gleaming glass desk. Acres of lush dark carpet so thick you could swim in it. And that was it.

Gabe found himself forced to school his face so as not to show his intense disappointment at its lack of … something. Nate had decked it out exactly the same as his apartment. Bare. Static. Distinctly lacking garnish.

Nate slapped him on the back. ‘I’ll give you a minute to settle in. Take a lap or ten. Spin around like Julie Andrews on the hilltop.’

Then he was out of the door, leaving Gabe alone in the big empty room.

Feeling tight and antsy, he whipped the beanie off his head and ran his fingers hard through his hair, realising it needed a cut. At the rustle of his leather jacket sleeve it occurred to him he was probably the only person on the entire floor not in a suit.

‘And this is why I don’t come back here,’ he told the walls, which could only be Light Grey. Turned out slapping on a fresh coat of paint didn’t nullify his history with the place after all. He could feel it pressing in on him from every angle.

The only time he hadn’t felt the pressure was when he was with Paige. Deep in the rush he got when a blush rose up her elegant neck. In pounding lust every time he witnessed the love-affair her teeth had with her bottom lip. Drunk on the taste of her sweet skin. Unleashed by the bottomless wells of desire clouding her big blue eyes.

That was that. When he wasn’t doing what he came to Melbourne to do, he’d bury himself to the hilt in a most agreeable leggy blonde. And once the job was over, he wouldn’t be seen for dust.

His relief was short-lived when he saw Nate’s arms were filled with a pile of daunting-looking binders. Throwing them on the desk with a hearty thump, Nate said, ‘No need to tell you, I’m sure, how hush-hush this has to be.’

Gabe merely stared at Nate while he waited for the irony to sink in that he was telling that to the one man who’d learned that lesson the hard way.

‘Right,’ Nate said, with the good grace to look sheepish. ‘Now read up. And then I need your take. Are we going to list BonaVenture on the stock market, or what?’

Paige walked along the promenade, the heels of her ankle boots clacking rhythmically against the cobblestones, her long skirt clinging to her tights with static, her wool scarf flapping behind her. No wonder she loved winter. It had been nearly two days since her sexual jump start, and still every shift of fabric on her skin felt like a caress.

Her stomach rumbled expectantly at the scent of warm food flowing from the open doors of the run of restaurants below the apartment buildings lining the waterside. What the heck? She’d order The Brasserie’s melt-in-your-mouth steak and chips to go.

It had been a good day. The girl who delivered morning tea had brought her favourite raspberry and white-chocolate muffins. The first product for Ménage à Moi’s summer line arrived into the warehouse and looked gorgeous; all luscious fabrics and rich decadent colours, as sexy and sensuous as Carnival itself.

In fact she couldn’t remember enjoying her work so much in a good while. The past few months she’d found herself growing frustrated there too, hence the hyper-motivation to get the Brazil proposal off the ground. Discontent seemed to have crept into more parts of her life than she’d realised, which made no sense. Her life was exactly as she’d always planned for it to be. A great apartment, a great job, a great social life, and all of it on her own terms. What more could she want?

She shook her head. What mattered was that things were looking up. At work, and in the bedroom if the number of men who’d smiled at her that day was anything to go by. She’d felt so many eyes on her it was as if she were surrounded by a cloud of flirtatious energy. She’d smiled back but kept on walking. Happy to take her time, now her wheels were back on the track.

Her mobile beeped. For a brief second she imagined a naughty message from Gabe, not that she’d heard from him since that phone call the morning before. The one that had left her with so much idle sexual energy she’d cleaned her entire kitchen, oven included.

Until she remembered he didn’t have her mobile number, as only her home number was listed. He didn’t even know which apartment was hers as far as she knew, only her floor. Enough to track her down if he wanted to. Which in nearly forty-eight hours he hadn’t.

Why hadn’t he? Unless his phone call the day before had really been about making sure she’d made it home all right and nothing more.

She shook her head again. They weren’t dating. They were barely even lovers. She’d taken this thing as it had come so far and would continue to do so until it faded. Or he left. And that was that.

Nevertheless, when she checked her phone it was with a level of anticipation that left her knees quaking so much she had to pull over to the side of the cobbled path. When she saw the message was from her mum Paige’s good mood took a little trip sideways.

Miss you, darling, the message read. Paige grimaced. She knew that tone. It was the one where her mum was feeling sorry for herself, and wondering, even all these years later, if divorcing Paige’s dad had been the right thing to do.

Miss you too! Paige tapped into her phone, looking up every second or two to make sure nobody barrelled into her. Want me to come over for dinner?

You’re busy. You probably have plans.

Paige bit her lip at the thought of the steak and chips for one she had planned. But her day really had been so good. And if she had any intention of retaining the new lightness in her step she really needed it to stay that way.

Next weekend, then, she tapped in. Shopping. Last of the big spenders.

Perfect. Love you, baby.

Paige slid her phone into her huge bag with a sigh.

She loved her mum. They’d always been close. They’d had to be. When her dad was home, it felt as if he was biding his time till his next tour. And when he was off overseas playing cricket it was for months at a time. And as it had turned out most of that time was spent shacked up with some girl or another while her mum looked the other way …

Paige would never let herself be taken advantage of in that way. Never let someone mean so much it would be to the detriment of her own dreams. Never be made a fool of for love. Not for all the raspberry white-chocolate muffins on the planet.

When she felt the deepening evening crowd parting around her, Paige shoved her hands under her armpits to get the feeling back into them as she walked a little more slowly home.

Her recent malaise really made no sense at all. Her life was perfect because she was in complete control.

And she knew how to prove it.

Gabe lounged on his huge uncomfortable leather couch; still in his jacket and boots, legs splayed in front, neck resting against the hard back, eyes closed to the cool moonlight spilling over him.

He’d read so many memos, reports, and projections regarding taking BonaVenture public there was no doubt the company was in better shape than he and Nate could ever have dreamed it could be. He should be feeling damn proud. Vindicated. Relieved. Instead he was so restless he could barely sit still.

Gabe reached for his keys, suddenly needing to go … somewhere, anywhere but the big, empty, cold, lifeless room in which he sat. In which his every thought seemed to echo. Tracking down the one thing that seemed to quiet those thoughts seemed as good a place to start as any.

He paused at his front door when he realised he had no idea which apartment number was hers. To hell with it—he’d knock on every door till he found the right one.

He opened his door, the lift dinged, and the doors slid open. And as if he’d conjured her from thin air, there Paige stood, soft and pink-cheeked, her blonde hair gathered off her face in a wind-tousled knot.

He opened his mouth to joke about the errant lift being his new best friend for having brought her to him again, but at the slow lift and fall of her chest, the quick swipe of her tongue over her plump bottom lip, his throat came over too tight and every muscle in his body was hit with a sudden dull ache.

If he’d had any illusions that the lift had brought her there by accident, they went up in flames the moment Paige lifted her right hand and unfurled a row of condoms. The silver foil wrappers swung from her fingers, glinting at him and sending tracks of fire through his veins.

A growl rose in his throat, and along with it the urge to throw her over his shoulder and drag her back into his cave. But it seemed she had ideas of her own.

She stepped out of the lift, tucked the edge of a condom wrapper between her teeth, and slid a pin from her hair, allowing it to tumble over her shoulders.

She dropped a couple of inches of height as her boots hit the floor with a double klump klump. Next came her scarf, uncoiling from around her neck far too slowly before it pooled at her feet. Then, as she watched him from beneath her long lashes, her breaths coming harder again, her fingers moved to the top button of her cardigan. Gabe had to dig his toes into his shoes until they hurt in order to stand still, knowing he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t let this play itself out.

The long strip of silver foil still dangled from her teeth as she padded his way, and slowly, achingly slowly, undid each button until she opened it to reveal beautiful soft skin and a pale pink lace bra, the dark circles of her nipples drawing his hungry gaze.

As she came level with him she slid the demure cardigan from her shoulders, her breasts pressing forward, her back arching. When she hooked the cardigan on the end of one fine finger and twirled it over her head, at the aroma of her hot skin wafting past his nose his patience finally gave out.

Gabe lifted her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder fireman style and a whoosh of her laughter filled his lofty apartment.

The second he’d seen her all the blood in his body had headed for his groin. The second he touched her he was rock hard, ready. It took every ounce of self-control he possessed to place her down gently. Her stockinged feet landed with a soft touch on his hard floor.

She took the row of condoms from between her teeth, tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans, her hands lingering on his backside a moment. He gritted his teeth to keep from exploding on the spot as her soft hands moved up his torso to press his jacket aside. She shoved it down his arms and to the floor, and then she was on her toes, her hands beneath his T-shirt, his muscles clenching at the firm touch of her determined fingers.

And then her mouth was on his. Hot, lush, bliss. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her bodily off the floor to feel her body against the length of his. All he could think was so hot, so soft, so beautiful. The urge to get her horizontal was getting harder to push back, when he remembered belatedly that he still didn’t have a bed.

Irrelevant. His apartment might be stark, but his imagination was not.

He backed her into the pool of light by the kitchen, needing to see her, to live through her every reaction. Her breath hitched as he bunched her skirt in his big hands, only to come in contact with a hard man’s worst nightmare. Tights. He glanced down. Dark pink, they were, like the colour of her skin when she blushed. Hell. Was she trying to kill him? When she started to shimmy her skirt down, her body rubbing against his, he was sure of it.

He thanked everything that was good and holy that the tights were going south as well. Like a man in trouble, he sank to his knees to worship those legs. Drinking in the tiny V of her G-string, her pale thighs. His hands were so dark against her pale skin as he circled her lean calves, traced her fine ankles, spent extra time on the soft spot behind her knee when he saw it made her shake.

When her fingers slid into his hair, hard and reckless, he placed a single kiss at the juncture of her thighs, marking his place, before he kissed his way up her beautiful body. The curve of her stomach, the dip of her navel, the jut of her hip, the shadow of her breasts and back to her mouth, hot, ready, waiting. The gates of heaven.

When he lifted her and plonked her on the kitchen bench, she cried out and flinched as her warm bottom met the cold granite. He swallowed her gasp, and it turned into a groan. Her lovely long legs hooked around his waist, pulling him to her with an urgency he understood.

When the heat at her centre bore against him and his tether ran out.

Pants off. Condom on. He hooked her underwear to one side and nudged the head of his penis against her centre. The swift intake of breath as he stretched her killed him just a little more.

His eyes met hers to find them wide. But hungry. Her nostrils flared with every intake of breath and her cheeks were so pink with desire he couldn’t stand it any longer. He plunged into her. She cried out, pleasure and shock twisting on her face before she tilted her hips to take him deeper, tighter.

If he’d thought her mouth the gates of heaven, deep inside her was heaven itself. So hot, and tight, her muscles clenching around him as together they found a perfect rhythm.

He opened his eyes to find hers on his. Like twin blue flames, hypnotic, drawing him in until he felt the ache build deep inside. He needed every last effort to hold back, even as he rocked into her, deeper, harder. He stopped breathing altogether when her mouth dropped open, her eyes turned to liquid, her breaths to short sharp gasps, and her fingers to talons in his back as she came. Then, after a moment of the most gripping stillness, his world crashed around him in waves of hot, hard, liquid heat.

He came to and found her shaking in his arms. The chill of unheated air touched his skin, turning his sweat to ice. He lifted her off the bench, wrapping his long arms around her until their combined body heat warmed them both.

Her eyes caught his and he took her in. The cool blonde exterior. The wild heat pulsing so close to the surface. Just what he needed. For now.

He opened his mouth to say … who knew what? But she silenced him with a kiss. Soft, sensual and steadying.

Then with a light scrape of fingernails across the stubble of his cheeks, she moved away, stepped into her skirt. Padded through his still-open front door to find her clothes, putting them back on as she went before twisting her long, dishevelled hair back into a makeshift knot.

And then she was in the lift and gone, leaving him with his pants still around his ankles.

‘Dear God,’ Gabe said, running his hands over his face. That had been hot. Scorching. And they hadn’t said a single word to one another the entire time.

He pulled up his jeans, leaving the fly undone, and leant his weary self against the kitchen bench, imagining her in the lift, skin pink from ravishing, clothes rumpled, lips swollen, pretty blue eyes as dark as night. And impossibly he found himself getting hard for her again.

Gabe pushed himself away from the bench, and padded into his bedroom on the way to his shower. He nearly tripped over his laptop bag, which had remained unopened since he’d walked in the door. In fact it had remained unopened all day.

He couldn’t remember a day in the past several years he hadn’t spent glued to the thing, searching out the next big idea. Collating, researching, and filling his head with every nuance of it so that he would not fail to land it. His gran had raised him to work hard, and make her proud. And since the time he’d failed her so spectacularly on the latter, he’d redoubled his efforts at the former. And while he’d never quite managed to regain that flicker of brilliance he’d felt the night BonaVenture was born, he’d never seen failure since.

But rather than feeling antsy at not working himself to exhaustion, he felt smug as hell. BonaVenture was so healthy it was radiant. And he’d had himself some mind-blowing sex with a beautiful woman who seemed so in tune with his preference to have a good time and not push for anything more, finding her was nothing short of serendipitous.

If he didn’t let himself enjoy the spoils of his labour every now and then, what the hell was the point?

As Paige waited in the foyer for the lift the next afternoon, she was still in a bit of a daze, wondering where she’d found it inside her to head to a man’s apartment, strip for him, have her way with him, then leave.

She’d never done anything like that before, but she liked it. After years of being so categorically careful, a little recklessness was a revelation. Even a relief. The world seemed that bit brighter, colours richer, the spring in her step springier. She’d even had an even more awesome day at work. Probably something to do with great sex being good for the blood vessels or some such thing.

Maybe she should indulge in a fling every now and then from now on; find some stranger to give her life the occasional splash of panache. Airports could be the new bar. Find someone looking lost and lonely and bam! Her next date.

She was laughing out loud when the lift doors opened, but all her confidence turned to mush when she got in the lift that afternoon to find Gabe already on board, lounging resplendently in the back corner. His dark eyes connected with hers, lit, burned, and it was all she could do to keep blushing from head to toe.

Funny, because now they were even, or nearabouts. Though perhaps she still owed him an orgasm. She stepped inside the lift, feeling his dark eyes on her, and thought it seemed as good a time as any to remind him as much—

‘Good afternoon, Ms Danforth,’ a female voice said.

And Paige leapt fair out of her skin. Her gaze jumped sideways to find Mrs Addable from the ninth floor tucked into the front corner, stroking Randy, her Russian Blue whose hair was the same solid dark grey as his owner’s.

‘Mrs Addable, hi,’ Paige mumbled as she slipped into the gap, behind Mrs Addable, and beside Gabe, who looked straight ahead even while his body heat reached out to her like an invitation. ‘Randy okay?’

Mrs Addable rolled her eyes. ‘He’s decided he’s too good for his litter tray. We now have to take a constitutional down to the garden near the parking lot four times a day.’

Mrs Addable’s eyes slid over lounging Gabe to Paige, who was standing as still and upright as a tower. The older woman’s sharp eyes softened to a dull gleam.

‘You’re Gabe Hamilton,’ Mrs Addable said.

‘That I am,’ Gabe’s deep voice rang out.

Paige had to swallow hard so as not to tremble as the sound reverberated deliciously through her bones. She remembered all too well the feel of his breath against her cheek that came with the exquisite sensation of having him inside her.

‘Gloria Addable. 9B. I heard Sam the Super talking to Mr Klempt the other day about your arrival.’

‘Pleasure to meet you, Gloria.’

‘Likewise, Gabe.’

No Mr Hamilton, Paige noticed. She’d lived in the building for two years and had yet to progress from polite surnames from anyone in that apartment bar the cat.

‘Sam said you’d had some trouble with your bed?’ Mrs Addable added, eyes now front, watching the movement of floor numbers, the slow strokes to Randy’s back causing the cat to purr.

‘True, yet I’ve managed remarkably well,’ he said, pulling himself upright, bringing him closer.

Paige looked directly ahead, not daring to meet his eyes. Yet she felt a beat pulse between them. Two. Three.

‘I have a spare mattress I can send up,’ Mrs Addable tried again. ‘It’s only a single, but …’

While Mrs Addable droned on about the history of her single mattress, Paige felt Gabe move closer still. Close enough when she breathed the sleeve of his jacket brushed against the sleeve of hers.

Then he said, ‘My bed arrived this morning.’

Forgetting propriety completely, Paige shot her gaze straight to his. ‘It did?’

Mrs Addable’s snort of triumph barely touched the edges of her sub-conscious. Gabe’s dark and dangerous eyes had a funny way of blocking out everything else.

His voice was low as he said, ‘The service lift, it seems, is less touchy.’

‘That’s great,’ Paige said, adding a belated, ‘For you.’

Gabe’s cheek lifted in the beginnings of the kind of smile that meant big trouble for her. ‘I’m glad—for me—too.’

The lift binged and when Paige and Mrs Addable both turned with expectation towards the doors, Gabe took the chance to slide his finger down the edge of Paige’s. The shock of his touch shot through her like a bushfire, spreading in half a second flat to the whole of her chest and the ends of her curling toes.

The door opened to the fourth floor. Where nobody was waiting. And stayed there.

Mrs Addable sighed. ‘It’s okay, Randy. We’ll get there eventually.’

As the lift went up and down the next ten minutes, Paige locked her knees, and bit her bottom lip, and prayed for the strength not to moan out loud as Gabe’s thumb traced circles over the wildly fluctuating pulse at her wrist, making her so woozy she saw spots.

And for the first time since she’d moved into the building she was thankful she had a Machiavellian lift.