Looking After Dad

Jess gulped down the giggle. He was in no mood to join her in mutual mirth. Indeed, if her lips as much as twitched she would be inviting mayhem.

‘The bottle was secure when I took it out of the box half an hour ago,’ she continued, now resolutely straight-faced, ‘and all I’ve done is come here.’

Pulling a white handkerchief out of his pocket, the man began to mop his face and hair. ‘You ran?’ he asked, and answered his own question. ‘Yes, when you barged into the lift and damn near knocked everyone flying, you were bright red and panting.’

Jess’s lips tightened. He exaggerated. There had been no danger of her knocking into anyone. Nor did she appreciate his ‘bright red’ comment, which made her sound like a beetroot. To be wearing grungy clothes was disadvantage enough without him downgrading her appearance.

‘I have an appointment and am short of time,’ she said, in a taut justification.

‘So you jogged and bounced up the champagne?’ His lip curled. ‘Great!’

The lift was slowing for the sixteenth floor. When the doors opened should she make a quick exit? Jess wondered. Escape might be the coward’s way out, yet it was tempting in that it would save her from more embarrassment and the risk of further condemnation. But, though the lift had dallied on the point of stopping, it suddenly speeded up again. Floor sixteen had come and gone.

With a disgusted look at his now sodden handkerchief, the man pushed it gingerly back into his pocket. ‘Pity the cork didn’t pop when the lift was full, then you could’ve drenched en masse and really had a chuckle,’ he said, in a low, gravelly voice which, she registered, contained a trace of an American accent.

‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Jess protested.

‘You just didn’t think?’

She glowered. Must he be so accusing and patronising—and so right?

‘No,’ she was forced to agree.

Again the lift reduced speed, dawdled tantalisingly around the seventeenth floor and went at full lick again.

‘Do you suppose we might break down?’ she asked, in sudden alarm.

Enduring his company now was bad enough, but to be trapped with him—maybe for hours!—would be a real bed of nails.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing would surprise me,’ the man said, as though she might have been tinkering with the lift’s motor and was responsible for its malfunction. ‘But if we’re marooned I shan’t be a happy bunny, especially as I also have an appointment and—’ looking down at his suit, he spread his hands in a curt gesture of impatience ‘—I’m wet through.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jess said again.

‘I should damn well think you are!’

She bridled. She resented being bawled out quite so thoroughly.

‘Tell me, are you always this tetchy?’ she enquired.

‘When I’m doused in champagne from head to foot, pretty much.’

‘It was an accident,’ she defended.

He arched a brow. ‘The hand of fate?’

‘Yes.’ Putting down the bottle, Jess rooted around in her sports bag and found a tissue. ‘Let me soak up the worst.’

In grim silence, her victim held out his arm and she began to blot at his sleeve. All of a sudden, she halted. The tissue she was using was the one she had used to wipe her fingers and now a streak of pale lemon mayonnaise smeared the fine navy cloth.

The man raised his eyes as if appealing to the heavens to grant him forbearance. ‘Why don’t I strip off all my clothes and you can jump up and down on top of them,’ he suggested, ‘and perhaps kick them around the floor for a while?’

Jess gave a strained smile. She wanted to kick herself—and him. ‘It won’t stain,’ she vowed, finding a wad of new tissues and frantically scrubbing, and to her huge relief the mayonnaise disappeared.

As he stood erect and cautious, she mopped the wet from his shoulders and started to dab at his chest. Her pulse rate quickened. She might be performing a practical chore for a hostile stranger, yet it was difficult to ignore the muscled physique beneath his clothes. It was also difficult not to imagine what he would look like if he did strip naked. Lithe, honey-skinned and of Greek god proportions.

‘No more,’ the man instructed, taking a sudden step backwards.

Jess looked at him. He wanted her to stop, but why? Surely he had not recognised her rising tension and—oh, horror—sensed her vivid imaginings?

Don’t be silly, she told herself, he’s not a mind reader. It must be a case of him being affected by the physical contact, too. Even if her face had been red and might still be a little pink, she was not too hard on the eye. Indeed, her combination of blonde gamine looks, tall, slim figure and long legs had been known to make men go weak at the knees.

Jess was smugly congratulating herself on having unsettled him, when she realised that the damp tissues had begun to break up and were leaving tiny white flecks over his jacket. She groaned. Why, when he had confirmed her assessment of him as not suffering fools, must she play the clown with her every move?

‘I should never’ve got up this morning,’ she muttered.

‘It would have made my life one heck of a sight easier,’ the man agreed stingingly.

‘The bits’ll come off,’ she said, refolding the tissues to a dry patch.

He raised a long-fingered hand. ‘Leave it,’ he ordered.

‘But—’

‘Would you do me a favour and keep away from me? Well away.’

She stuffed the tissues back into the sports bag. So much for trying to help—and so much for her sex appeal. The only way to make his knees weaken would be to hit them with a mallet!

The lift was stopping and when Jess looked at the panel the light showed that, in her do-gooder confusion, the slow-pause-start procedure at the two previous floors had passed unnoticed and they had reached their destination. Heaven be praised.

‘I’ll pay for your suit to be cleaned,’ she said, delving in amongst her swimming gear to find her purse.

‘Thanks for the offer, but there’s no need.’

‘I’d like to pay.’

The man hoisted a brow. ‘With what—notes which glue themselves to the hand or dye the skin bright purple or give off that fragrant aroma of swimming pool which I’ve detected? If you don’t mind, I’ll pass.’

Her temper flared. The yellow flecks burned in her hazel eyes. Where pure unvarnished sarcasm was concerned, he ranked as a Grand Master.

‘I do mind,’ she began to insist, but he ignored her.

‘I’ve enjoyed spending time with you. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Indeed, my only regret is that we shall never meet again,’ he said, his tone as dry as dust, and as the doors slid aside he stepped out onto the wide pale-carpeted corridor and strode away.

Jess stuck out her tongue at his broad back. It might have been a juvenile yah-boo response, yet it felt immensely satisfying.

She frowned down at the note which she held in her hand. Her instinct was to chase after him and thrust it stubbornly into his pocket—why should he be allowed to dictate everything?—but after a moment she returned it to her purse. She had no wish to be ordered to keep away again and, in any case, once she embarked on a full-time painting career she was going to need all available cash.

Her eyes went to the champagne-spattered walls and patch of soggy carpet. The lift required attention. Walking out to drop the empty bottle into a convenient waste bin, she looked up and down the corridor. The stranger had disappeared off to the right, but in the distance on the left two women in overalls were chatting beside a vacuum cleaner. She alerted them to the state of the lift and asked for directions to the ladies’ room.