“God, don’t do that. I swear I’m going to hang a bell around your neck,” she snapped, brushing her long hair back with a shaky hand and trying unsuccessfully not to let him see how much he’d startled her.
He didn’t look remotely sorry. The corners of his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile. He’d worn that expression before, and it was usually followed by something infuriatingly sarcastic. Not today.
“Yes, I’m ready,” she added, grabbing her notebook with fingers still twitchy from leftover adrenaline. “Alex is on the front desk and we only have a couple of check-outs, so he should be fine.”
“Excellent,” David said, already halfway to the elevators, as if the meeting might start without him. “They changed the location—the wedding group asked for a last-minute brunch.”
Lena raised an eyebrow as she rushed to catch up with him. Not an easy task, with his long legs. Then again, his ass was worth admiring in those jeans.
Bad Lena!
She forced her mind back to the subject at hand. “So now we’re meeting where?”
“Top floor,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him toward the service elevator. “The dining room in the penthouse suite. It should be relatively quick.”
Of course he’d say that. Of course he didn’t notice how her heels slapped a little harder against the floor as she hurried to keep up with his long-legged stride, or how her nerves prickled at the idea of being trapped in a luxury suite with her three handsome bosses. She pretended to roll her eyes, mostly at herself. She did enjoy the eye candy around here, although Nick was newly off the market.
She smiled at that thought. Kate was awesome and shaping up to be a great new friend.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and they stepped inside. She hit the button for the top floor. The cold whoosh of air conditioning brushed over her skin, goosebumps rising in contrast to the balmy heat of the lobby. Even with the vestibule for climate control, the lobby ran much warmer than the rest of the building.
“So what’s this meeting for?” she asked, leaning back against the mirrored wall as the elevator began its ascent with a hum.
David didn’t look up right away, his head bent over his ever-present tablet. His long fingers tap-tapped across the screen, flickers of blue light reflected on his dark-framed glasses.
“Oh, reviewing the staff changes, including you,” he added with a sideways glance and a slight curl of his lips that made her cheeks suspiciously warm. “Some minor operational updates—Ivory Island progress, stuff like that.”
The elevator gave a sickening lurch, and Lena lost all desire to prod him further as she flailed for balance. Her notebook thumped to the ground, and her stomach flipped. David reached out, one strong hand gripping her elbow as the elevator rocked again and then lurched to a shuddering stop.
The lights blinked out.
Just like that, they hung suspended in a coffin-sized steel box, nothing but the muted whir of the emergency fan and her pounding heartbeat filling the silence.
“What is going on?” she asked, her voice rising an octave. She tried to sound annoyed, but it came out closer to panic in her own ears.
“Don’t know,” David replied, as though they weren’t now trapped in a steel tube dangling god knew how many floors above ground. A moment later, light flared from his phone’s flashlight, casting eerie shadows across his face. “The doors aren’t responding.” He tapped the button panel to show her—nothing. The digital display over the doors was dark.
“You can fix this, right? Or open the doors manually?” Lena’s breath shortened. A burning wave of hysteria pushed up into her throat. Her skin prickled—too hot and too cold all at once.
David already had his tablet out, his eyebrows drawn in that focused way she saw almost daily, like nothing existed but whatever data flowed through his mind.
“Sweetheart, I can do anything from this tablet,” he said with a wink and a sexy grin that normally would prompt her to snark back. This time it grounded her—like verbal smelling salts—temporarily soothing.
Confusing.
David? Sexy? Since when? Not that she hadn’t noticed before—it would be kind of hard not to—but noticing differed from her stomach doing a full gymnast floor routine while he stared at a screen and saved their lives.
Deep breath. No time for a mental spiral.Not when her own feelings betrayed her, pressing heat up her throat and making her hyperaware of the limited square footage in this elevator.
“Anything?” she asked, hugging her arms tight around herself.
The tablet’s screen bathed David’s face in its bluish light—his gaze flicking across code and system readouts he considered actual conversation. His brows scrunched in his typical concentration pose.
“Controller’s offline—that’s the core system that manages movement and… well, everything else.” He paused, tapping away, before continuing, “It shouldn’t happen even with an outage. We’re layered with fail-safes…” His voice tapered off.
Lena swallowed hard; her skin felt clammy now, her temples damp. The darkness pressed in on her. She focused back on David, her current lifeline to sanity. “Can you get it back online?” Her voice wobbled.
He looked up at her then, really looked. His eyes searched her face, his expression softening at whatever he saw there.
