After-Hours Negotiation: Can't Get Enough / An Offer She Can't Refuse

“I know, talking about it doesn’t make it any better. But surely we could pry the doors open a bit, get some fresh air in?” she suggested hopefully.

But he just shook his head.

“Sadly, I left my pry bar at home this morning. Unless you have one in your bag?”

She huffed at him impatiently, already reassessing the good will he’d generated during their movie banter. Amusing he might be, but scratch the surface and he had a solid core of annoying just waiting to be expressed.

Pushing the wet curls back from her forehead, she rolled her head back on her jacket-pillow and stared at the ceiling. This waiting was bringing new meaning to the word bored. She remembered seeing some pages from the local paper stuffed in amongst the rubble in her handbag, and she reached for them in desperation. Never had reports on the local school fair or lost dogs seemed so enticing. She unfolded the pages and realized with disappointment that they were from the classifieds section of the paper. She remembered now that she’d grabbed them because she needed to arrange for a plumber to look at her dishwasher.

Still, desperate times bred desperate measures, and she found herself perusing every single ad. Plumbers, gardeners, electricians. She found three spelling mistakes and about a million grammatical errors. But who was counting, right? She was about to flip the page when she saw a small photo ad for a car dealership. The flash of red paintwork caught her eye and she squinted, trying to work out what make of car it was in the tiny photo. A Mustang! And a convertible, if she wasn’t mistaken. Excellent. She settled back to enjoy a good ten minutes’ worth of fantasizing about owning a red Mustang convertible. By the time she’d killed a quarter of an hour imagining herself cruising around with the roof off, her practical side was beginning to assert itself. The roof probably leaked, parts would be expensive, and there was nothing at all wrong with her late-model sedan. Besides, she wasn’t a red convertible kind of girl. Sighing, she rolled the pages back up and put them to one side.

“Could I…?” Jack asked, eyeing the paper greedily.

“It’s pretty dull stuff—but you’re welcome to it.” She flipped the paper over to his side of the elevator and tried to think of something else to occupy herself. She’d seen an interview with a guy who’d been held captive by South American freedom fighters once. He’d been locked up on his own for months and months, and he claimed he held on to his sanity and his purpose by having imaginary conversations with his family, acting out both sides in his cell.

She slid a sideways look at the man lying beside her. She’d never hear the last of it if she had an imaginary conversation with her father. The idea was so absurd, she almost laughed out loud. Not the least because she couldn’t begin to imagine what a real conversation with her father might be like. The familiar feeling of anger twined with rejection stole into her belly, and she steeled herself against it. Harry was not a good investment for hopes, emotions and dreams.

The sound of Jack’s stomach growling saved her from further naval gazing.

“Have another mint,” she said, tossing the roll of candy across to him.

She returned to her mindless study of the elevator’s ceiling, her eyes sliding across the familiar configuration of emergency light, utility access and the ubiquitous expanse of brushed steel.

She allowed her heavy eyelids to close, then sat up straight, inspiration energizing her.

“The utility access!” she crowed excitedly, scrambling to her feet.

Jack was staring up at her from his prone position, a shiny scrap of foil from the mint roll curled on his chest.

“Huh?”

“The utility access, in the ceiling. We can open it, let some of this hot air out. Surely there must be cooler air out there in the elevator shaft?” she said.

He liked the idea, she could tell by the way his eyes darkened to a deeper blue.

“Smart thinking, 99,” he said in a really appalling Maxwell Smart voice.

“As an impressionist, you make a great elevator mechanic,” she told him playfully, then caught herself up short.

Was she flirting with Jack Brook? She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes as he eased himself to his feet and brushed himself off.

She had to admit, she’d come a long way from her initial impression of him. He wasn’t as big a swine as she’d always imagined. In fact, he was quite kind, she decided, remembering his deft handling of her claustrophobia. Admitting that Jack Brook was not the devil incarnate she’d always classified him as was like opening herself up to the suggestion that the world might not be flat: too much was predicated on all her previous assumptions and judgments. Their whole past relationship was founded on the basis that she didn’t like him, he didn’t like her and never the twain should meet.

“Hinges at one end, catch at the other. I don’t think we’ll even need that crowbar of yours,” Jack was saying, and she snapped her focus back to the current issue and away from the scary thought that more than just her claustrophobia was getting a workout in here.

The ceiling was quite high, she suddenly realized.

“Can you reach it?” she wondered out loud, and he gave her a pitying look.

“I think we’ll be fine,” he said confidently.

But when he reached casually for the catch they both quickly saw that even standing on the very tips of his toes, he could only just get his fingertips on the mechanism. He didn’t so much as glance at her once he realized he’d spoken too soon, so she leaned against the side of the lift and watched as he jumped up and down futilely a few times, his hands flailing uselessly against the catch each time he made contact with the roof. He finally gave up and turned to her, a warning expression writ large on his face.

“Don’t say a word.”

“Did I even open my mouth?” she defended herself.

“You don’t need to. Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

She hung back a moment, not really sure how to go about this.

“Come on,” he said impatiently.

She stepped forward slowly, deeply reluctant to be in physical contact with him. It just didn’t seem…right.

“What should I—” she began, but Jack was already bending forward to grab her around the waist and lift her toward the ceiling. At about the same time her feet left the ground she became aware of his face pressed into her cleavage, and she stared down at his dark head, appalled.

CHAPTER SIX

“COME ON, I’M not Atlas, for Pete’s sake,” Jack grumbled, his words muffled by her breasts.

Oh, boy. A thousand and one sensations skittered along her nerve ends and she closed her eyes against the assault. His stubbled cheeks rasped faintly against her skin, and she could feel his breath, hot and moist, with each impatient word. His arms were two strong bands around her body, his chest against her belly, her legs hanging a foot or two off the ground.

He made an exasperated noise, and she belatedly looked toward the ceiling, but it was miles away.

“This isn’t going to work,” she told him, and the tension in his arms relaxed abruptly and she dropped back down to earth, sliding along his body all the way.

Her heart was beating out of control, and somewhere deep inside, something long-ignored awoke and lifted its head to look around drowsily. Desire. His skin had been hot and smooth and hard, and it had been way, way too long since she’d been held by a man. She didn’t need to look down at herself to know that through the mere act of talking into her cleavage, Jack had managed to turn her nipples into two embarrassing declarations of arousal.

And for my next act, I shall implode with humiliation, she thought as she hurriedly crossed her arms to hide her traitorous nipples.

How on earth could her body react to Jack like that? It was as though she was suddenly being held captive by some strange alien force. Come on, she told her body, the guy’s a poster boy for everything I dislike in a man. We’re complete opposites. We have nothing in common. He doesn’t even like me. How can you do this to me?

But her body wasn’t taking any calls. Instead, it was resolutely hanging on to the memory of his flesh against hers, his hands splayed firmly across her back, the prickle of his whiskers on her breasts.

“Okay, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of smart ideas,” Jack said, his own arms crossed over his chest now.

Ideas? Boy, did she have ideas. Instantly, her out-of-control body imagined a dozen X-rated scenarios, all of them involving Jack naked, ready and willing. She fought the urge to cross her legs and squirm.

“Um. Sure. You could…you could go down on all fours and I could stand on your back,” she finally managed to say past the lump of misguided lust in her throat.

He uncrossed his arms, and she watched, almost hypnotized, as the muscles along his chest and stomach rippled in reaction. Cool. Make him do it again, her body urged.

“I know it would probably satisfy some deep inner need for you, but you are not standing on my back to reach for the sky,” Jack countered.

“Okay, okay.” Desperately she searched around for another idea, anything, before he realized she was acting like a crazy woman, her eyes practically falling out of her head ogling him.

“What about a shoulder ride?” she suggested.