When The Lights Go Out...

“I’ve got a grip on it. If I can just bend it without breaking it…”

With a clatter, the nail file and the knife fell from the widening crack in the door through which two sets of long, strong-looking fingers were emerging.

“It’s opening!”

“Forget the comb. Help me push the doors.”

Blythe tucked the flashlight into her waistband. Moving closer for leverage, she put her fingertips through the opening and pushed with all her might. Her toe connected with something, the file or the knife, and kicked it through the space below the elevator car. For a moment she froze, listening as it fell down, down, endlessly down the elevator shaft to the basement thirteen floors below. She thought she might faint just waiting for it to hit bottom.

“Keep pushing.” He sounded desperate.

“We have a slight problem,” she said, willing her voice not to tremble. “You’re pretty far up from the floor, actually. If I keep pushing and the doors suddenly open, I’m going to fall down the elevator shaft. Not that anybody would miss me particularly, but I would hate the fall itself, if you know what I…”

“Stop pushing.” It was an order. “Let me think.” While he thought, a shoulder emerged through the opening above her. “Okay, you step back and pull on the left side—”

“My left or your left?” She was still poised in the middle, one hand on each side of the opening, prepared to die.

“Your left. And I’ll push the door to your right. Got it?”

She already had both hands gripped on one door, tugging. “Got it.”

“We’re almost there, almost there, don’t give up.”

With a terrifying suddenness, the doors popped open. Blythe fell backward. A suitcase landed on her left knee, followed by a body swinging a smaller bag. It felt like a huge body, a huge, trembling body. It covered her completely. Crisp hair brushed her face.

For a moment he just panted, then he said, “I think I love you. Will you marry me?”

Panic and all, she felt a smile rising to her face. “Let’s hold off on total commitment until morning, shall we?” she said.

“You’re right.” He puffed out the words, still not rolling away from her. “I was being impulsive. Names first. I’m Max. Max Laughton. And actually, I already have a date tonight. Have to meet my obligations first. Unless,” he added, sounding hopeful, Blythe thought, “she didn’t make it home.”

“What floor does your date live on?”

“Twenty-third. I just got into town and it’s a blind date, kind of a crazy situation…What’s wrong?”

The darkness, the fear, the tension, the relief had finally gotten to Blythe completely. She was shuddering beneath him, and gasped the words out between hysterical giggles.

“I’m your date,” she gurgled. “Hi. Welcome to New York.”

“YOU OKAY?” MAX ASKED the little person struggling along beside him when they’d reached the fifteenth-floor landing. “Want a rest? You must be worn out. Did you have to walk all the way home from the Telegraph?”

“Um-m,” was all she said, or moaned, from a spot that just about reached his shoulder. She wasn’t what he’d expected. From the sultry, purring voice on the phone that had asked him out for a night on the town as soon as he got to New York, he’d expected her to be more substantial, a blond bombshell, openly and deliberately provocative. Her voice had been full of heat and promise. When he’d quizzed Bart about her—Bart being a longtime friend of his parents and an uncle figure to him—all Bart had said was, “Candy Jacobsen? It’ll be quite a welcome.”

Max didn’t need any light to know that this woman was small, with fluffy hair that looked as if it might be red. She was sexy all right, but didn’t act as if she knew she was sexy.

Of course, people often presented a different picture of themselves on the phone. Whatever she was, she’d saved his life and that made her okay with him. More than okay. A person whose feet he’d like to kiss.

“Why…did you come…so early?” she panted.

“I was supposed to come as soon as I got to town.”

“Not…seven o’clock?”

“No.” He paused and aimed the flashlight at his watch. “Even if I misunderstood, it’s after eight now.”

“How time flies.”

It was merely a whisper. “Not in an elevator, it doesn’t,” he said, glancing down at the top of her head. They’d reached the seventeenth floor, and she already sounded completely winded. Her shoulders, narrow little shoulders in some kind of a T-shirt, were bent over as she focused on the lighted steps, probably counting them. She must be exhausted, had probably been exhausted the whole time she was rescuing him.

His heart swelled with compassion and something else—budding heroism. Yes, it was time for him to show the stuff he was made of. Time to be a macho man.

“You’re pooped,” he said by way of launching his plan.

“I’m fine,” she gasped.

“No, you’re not. Wait a second.” He shouldered his briefcase, grabbed her handbag over her squeak of protest and slung it over his other shoulder, then handed her his larger bag and swept her up into his arms.

“Save your strength,” she cried, and began to wriggle.

“You’re not helping,” he said. She might be little, but hanging on to, say, a hundred-pound wriggling tuna, who was dangling a thirty-pound suitcase way too close to the family jewels, had never been one of his life’s goals. “Besides,” he groaned, unable to help himself, “what am I saving it for?”

“Later?” she said and looked up at him, pointing the flashlight directly at their faces. She wore an oddly quizzical look. Maybe she had had “quite a welcome” planned for him. His body responded to this idea, but he told it to calm down. He needed the blood equally distributed through his veins to make it up the last six flights of stairs.

When he dumped her just inside the stairwell door so she could fumble through her handbag for the key, his knees were trembling in a way that was hardly heroic. He hoped she didn’t notice how he staggered behind her down the dark hallway to her door. He’d hoped that when she opened it, the last rays of sunlight would come flooding through her apartment windows, but the room was in shadows. Once he made it inside, he knew he was washed up.

“That was so sweet of you,” she was saying, “to carry me the rest of the way. I’m all rested, and you have to be dead on your feet. Sit down, for heaven’s sake. I have to get out the candles first, but then would you like a drink?” Her voice faded. Drawers opened and closed. “Water, definitely, but I imagine you could use something stronger. I sure could. We have a pretty good selection. What’s your pleasure?”

He’d made it to a sofa he’d spotted in her flashlight beam, where he collapsed facedown with the word, “Scotch,” on his lips. It might be the last word he ever uttered. How ignominious.

BEARING A LIGHTED CANDLE, Blythe crept toward the sofa. When he was in range of the light, she simply had to stare at him for a while, at his broad shoulders in a black polo shirt, a tapered back, a narrow waist and a butt to die for—firm, contoured and thoroughly male. His long legs were encased in black jeans, his thigh muscles bulging against the fabric.

His thighs. She was going all tight just thinking about them wrapped around her. This idea of Candy’s hadn’t been such a bad one after all.

“How do you like your Scotch?” It came out like a moan.

It took him a long time to answer, and when he did, his words sounded as if they were smothered by goose down, which, in fact, they were. “Rocks.”

Candle in hand, Blythe scurried to the freezer, automatically pressed a glass to the ice-maker button and remembered nothing was working. She stuck her hand in the storage bin and pulled out slick, already melting cubes.

She was going to make it all up to him. No more guilt. Even though this was Candy’s idea, not hers, he’d gone through hell to get to her and she’d make sure he wasn’t sorry. She already knew she wouldn’t be. Any man who’d carry her up six flights of stairs had to be as sensitive as Candy had promised.

Forgetful, maybe. She was sure Candy had said he was coming at seven o’clock, and for him to get stuck in the elevator, it meant he’d arrived around four o’clock. But then, Candy was often careless about details.

The important thing was that he was here. They’d have a drink together, she’d give him a chance to rest and come up refreshed, and then they’d see what course nature took.

Who was she kidding? One look at his back and she was ready to go at it like bunnies. For mental health reasons only, of course. When she got a look at his front, she might become uncontrollably aggressive about getting this therapy.

Blythe paused on her way out of the kitchen. If he wanted to. If he found her desirable. That was still the big if. Even a sensitive man had to feel something before he could—well, could.