Close Up

“Okay, lift me up. I’ll try the window.”

Sean was disappointed, but he still grinned. Clearly, being alone with him even for twenty minutes was such a temptation she was willing to tackle the window. It would totally suck if she were unaffected, but she obviously was not. This he could work with. She still had some feelings for him, even if they were simply sexual. He could fan the flames of her desire, coax her into his bed, and say goodbye to their marriage and Kristine properly and on a positive note.

He had enjoyed their marriage, and frankly, he didn’t want it to end in bitterness. If she was determined to divorce him, then he wanted to go out with a bang. Literally.

So he squatted on his haunches and cupped his hands together to make a perch for her. Kristine kicked off her heels, and while she gave his hands a dubious look, she took a deep breath and put a foot into his hold. Her skin was warm, and her knee bumped his chest. She squawked as her balance failed and her foot fell onto the floor.

“You have to hold on to my shoulders.”

Kristine gave him a look, as if she was convinced this was a ploy to get into her panties. Which he supposed it was, though he’d had absolutely nothing to do with the door being locked. He wasn’t taking the blame for that.

Now that he thought about it, why was the door locked? It didn’t seem like something a caterer who didn’t normally work in the building would do. He’d been so distracted by seeing Kristine that the obvious had bypassed his attention. “So this Allison, have you worked with her before?” he asked Kristine as she stepped into his foot again, fingers lightly perched on his shoulders.

“No. I’ve had this job for only two weeks. I just got back to Minneapolis.”

Well, at least she hadn’t been fifteen minutes away from him for months without communicating. That would have been something of a kick in the nuts to hear. “Has the gallery used this caterer before?”

“I think this is the caterer they always use, yes.”

Huh. So was it really just an accident? He supposed it must be, unless the caterer was an international art thief clearing out the gallery as they spoke. For a second, he wondered if they should call the cops, but the gallery sounded dead silent and Kristine distracted him from his thought processes. She wasn’t doing anything. One foot was still on the floor, and her waist was still tantalizingly close to his face. His mouth.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. What am I supposed to do?”

He grinned. “You have to reach for the ledge. You pull and I’ll lift you up.”

“This is not going to work. Forget it.”

His phone rang. It was Michigan. “Excuse me, Kristy, this is my assistant.” He tapped at his phone to answer it. “Hello?”

“There’s been an accident and I’m sitting here completely stopped. Looks like a semi rolled and three lanes are blocked. So, um, it may be a little longer than twenty minutes. I’d guesstimate an hour.”

Sean should be more annoyed than he was. “Okay, thanks. Sorry.”

He hung up and said to Kristine, “There’s an accident on the highway and Michigan is in the thick of it. He estimates an hour before he gets back here.”

“Oh, geez.” She eyed the window. “That’s a long time without air.”

He wanted to laugh. “There is plenty of air. It’s fine.”

“I’m a little claustrophobic. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. I’ll try the window.” She took a deep breath and went for it, reaching for the ledge and attempting to haul herself up while he gave her a boost.

Sean waited until she had a grip on the window before he let go of her foot and stood so he could grip her waist for stability and to give her an extra lift. But Kristine panicked and started slipping, her feet flailing.

“Ack!” she screamed.

“Damn it,” he muttered with a grimace as her heel connected with his groin.

“Sorry,” she said, breathless, scrambling for a purchase on the ledge. But it was a lost cause. Kristine dropped to the floor, stumbling backward into him.

“Okay, we need to rethink our strategy,” he said, readjusting his throbbing cock.

She shot him a dubious look. “Did we have one to start with?”

Sean laughed. “No. Probably not.”

She smiled at him fully and without inhibition for the first time since he had walked into the gallery, and damn, but it was a thing of beauty. Kristine possessed the kind of smile that could make even the surliest old man’s blood quicken a little bit. Kids and old people adored her, and Sean had, too. He’d fallen for that smile, and the reappearance of it made him more determined than ever to take her to bed. To get closure. He needed that.

“This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t wearing a skirt,” she added.

“So take it off,” he suggested.

Hey, if you didn’t ask...

“Yeah, great idea. Then I’ll scrape the heck out of my legs on the window. Then when I drop down to the street, I’ll be in my underwear. No, thank you.”

“You’re going to have to hike your skirt up to your waist anyway to swing your leg over, so you’ll still be flashing. I could give you my pants.”

Her eyebrows shot straight up. “What? So then you will be pants-less?”

The idea made sense to him. “Yes. You put on my pants, which will protect your skin and your modesty, then you come around to the front door, and unlock this door to let me out and I put my pants back on.”

“Won’t your pants get ruined? They look expensive.”

Sean shrugged. “Pants can be replaced.” Other things could not.

Pulling his shirt out of his pants, Sean undid his belt and smiled. “Take your skirt off, gorgeous.”

* * *

UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, Kristine would have loved that type of command. But this was just...weird. The whole situation was so not what she had expected out of this day, and she was having a hard time keeping up. Sean was daring her—it was obvious. He didn’t think she would do it. Or maybe he did think she would. After all, he knew her fairly well, or he had once upon a time, and she was nothing if not impulsive, and always up for proving she had a certain amount of nerve.

The logic was sound. Wearing his pants would keep her from getting scratched up. They were trapped in this room for at least another sixty minutes or so if she didn’t crawl out the window, and she wasn’t lying: enclosed spaces made her nervous. It wasn’t an elevator, that was true, but the idea of being trapped made her heart beat faster and her palms sweat. Not to mention the front door was unlocked, leaving a very expensive exhibit unmonitored. There was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of photography out there, and for all she knew, it was being stolen right now while she debated whether or not she could handle taking off her skirt in front of her ex—or almost ex—husband.

If she were playing with fire by stripping to her panties in front of him, well, so be it. Her ass was on the line here, quite literally, and she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

So she reached behind to unzip her skirt. “Close your eyes.”

Sean snorted. “Are you joking?”

It was stupid, but she felt self-conscious. She hadn’t been to the gym lately. Okay, ever. Plus she was wearing granny panties. If she were ever to be in the presence of Sean again in her underwear, and she had pictured it on occasion, she had not imagined it would be in a dusty storage room while she wore cotton panties that basically came up to her armpits. She had also imagined herself younger. “No, I’m not.”

“I’m not closing my eyes, so forget it.” Sean unzipped his pants and shoved them down, before stepping out of them. “Here you go. Take ’em or leave ’em.”

Kristine cleared her throat. Maybe he wasn’t actually the one who needed to close his eyes, because she found herself staring quite steadily as Sean stripped to his boxer briefs. His thighs were rock solid, definitely more substantial than they had been at twenty-one, and while the dress socks looked just a tiny bit silly, what those black briefs contained did not make her laugh. That was an erection, and she was fighting the urge to drool. Afraid of what she would sound like if she spoke, she grabbed the pants out of his hands and stepped into them.

She hauled them over her hips, thank God. Buttoning them, she then unzipped her skirt and tried to shimmy it over the pants. It required a lot of skirt tugging and holding the pants in place with a death grip, but in the end, she managed to get the skirt off while keeping the pants on. Glancing down at herself, she had to smile. The pants were too long, tight in the hips, and saggy in the waist. Her midriff was showing between her sweater set and the pants. “Well, this is quite the look.”