Marie Ferrarella – Fortune's Heirs: Reunion: Her Good Fortune / A Tycoon in Texas / In a Texas Minute (страница 23)
Granted, places didn’t scare him. But the thought of risking his heart, of somehow winding up again in that dark, empty abyss without the one he loved, scared the hell out of him.
Imprisoned him just as her fears imprisoned her.
Maybe they weren’t that different, after all. Compassion washed over him.
“They’ll be here soon,” he promised again, this time more softly.
She looked up at him with eyes that belonged to the child she had been.
“No, they won’t.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. She was struggling again to keep the hysteria at bay. To keep a tight lock on the panic that was scraping jagged nails inside of her, trying to break free. “If the whole building is out, it’s going to take them a long time to get here in order to help us.”
Eyes wide, Gloria looked at the four walls surrounding her. She felt as though they were closing in.
She forced air into her lungs, praying she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of Jack.
“I know I’m an adult,” she began slowly, as if trying to lay down a foundation for herself, something steady for her to build on. Even as she did so, a feeling of futility began to take hold. “That this is all in my head. But I just can’t…I can’t…”
He took her hand in his, catching her before she could verbally and mentally take off to places neither of them wanted her to go. “Tell me about yourself.”
The abrupt order caught her off guard. She blinked. “What?”
“Tell me about yourself,” he insisted. Male-female communication had somehow slipped beyond his realm. He tried to remember conversations he’d had with Ann when they were just getting to know one another. “Did you go to the prom in high school? Try out for the cheerleading squad?”
Stunned, Gloria stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. And then he heard a gratifying sound. Despite the pinched look between her brow, she began to laugh.
Jack couldn’t remember when he’d heard a lovelier sound.
“Do I look like the cheerleader type to you?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m not sure.” As he spoke, he found himself running his fingers through her hair. It felt incredibly silky to the touch, which was probably how the rest of her felt, too. “All I know is that you look like the kind of girl everyone in school would have noticed.”
“They did.” Gloria sighed, suddenly weary beyond words. She closed her eyes for a moment. But the next second, they flew open again, as though afraid that if she didn’t keep vigil, the walls would rush up around her and flatten her. “But for the wrong reasons.”
When he looked at her quizzically, she realized that she was going to have to elaborate.
He thought that Gloria had finished when she suddenly said with a careless shrug, “Some people are nasty drunks. I was a happy one.”
The word “drunk” made something tighten within his chest. He remembered Ann. Remembered the way she’d giggle when tipsy. Looking back, it seemed to him that she was almost always giggling at the end.
“You drank?” He looked at her with new eyes as alarms went off in his head.
Too busy looking inward, Gloria missed the edgy look in his eyes. She nodded.
“I drank an ocean of alcohol, trying to drown my insecurities. But all that drinking did for me was give me another problem,” she confessed. “Took me a long time to come to terms with that.”
“You don’t drink anymore?” There was skepticism in his voice. Ann had pretended to be “cured,” too. More than once. And each time, he’d believed the lie. Hoping it was the truth.
“Nothing that’ll give me a buzz. These days, my drink of choice is diet soda or sparkling nonalcoholic cider, nothing strong.” She wasn’t going to allow herself to fall into that trap again. “Hitting bottom made me want to surface again, to breathe fresh air.” She looked around the dim interior. The walls
Taking her chin in his hand, he moved her head until her eyes were level with his. She was sinking, he could see it. Jack banished the feelings that threatened to take over. Her drinking wasn’t the issue here. Keeping her from succumbing to terror was.
“Keep talking,” he ordered.
Heat and fear combined to make her irrational. “Why, so you can gather ammunition against me to take to your father?”
For a moment a scowl returned to his face. He reined in his temper. Maybe arguing with her could make her forget how she felt about being confined in the elevator. “Is that what you actually think of me? That I’m some kind of a snitch who goes behind people’s backs?”
She wiped the back of her sleeve against her forehead. There was no air. No air. Frantic thoughts assailed her from all sides. She was going to melt. The cable was going to snap and they were going to fall twenty stories. She desperately tried to keep her mind on the conversation. “Going behind my back would imply secrecy. You’ve made no secret of how you feel about me.”
He wanted to keep her talking at all costs. If she focused her anger on him, she might not think about being trapped. “And what’s that?”
She blew out an annoyed breath, as if she was tired of playing games. “That you feel you’ve been saddled with something, someone beneath you.”
His eyes held hers for a moment. No, not beneath him, he thought. The woman was clearly his match in every way. Maybe that was what he had against her. “Your intuitive skills aren’t as sharp as you think they are.”
“Oh?” Just then, she heard what she took to be the cables, creaking. They
She clutched at his arm, staring up at the ceiling. “What was that?”
“Maybe the power trying to come back on,” he lied. He was beginning to feel a little uneasy himself, but not because of the small space. His unease came from having her so close to him. From the fact that she seemed to fill up every space with her essence.
Her breathing was audible now. “Or the cables about to snap.”
“Not going to happen,” he assured her. “There’s emergency equipment that comes on as an auxiliary fail-safe measure.” He searched for a way to explain what he was saying so that it would penetrate the fog of fear crowding her brain. “Each floor has what amounts to brakes that come out and stop the car from plunging down to the ground floor.”
She didn’t look as if she believed him. Maybe she had already gone into shock, he thought. What the hell were you supposed to do with a person in shock? Keep them moving? Have them lie down?
He decided to compromise. Jack slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Sit down,” he instructed quietly. “Take a deep breath and hold it.”
But she shook her head, her hair flying from side to side. “I can’t. My lungs feel like they’re going to explode.”
If she kept on breathing like that, she was going to hyperventilate. He couldn’t let that happen. Desperate for a solution, he let his instincts take over. Instincts born of inspiration, of need and, perhaps, of more than a touch of desire.
Jack brought his mouth down to hers.
At first she struggled against him, not because she didn’t want to kiss Jack but because she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.
But then her breathing began to regulate itself as the center of her attention slowly shifted from the very real fear that, despite his assurances about the emergency fail-safes that had been put in when the elevators were installed, they were going to fall to their deaths, crushed inside a silvery coffin.
Instead, her focus turned to the kiss that was swiftly setting fire to the very blood in her veins.
Panic abated in increments.
Gloria felt herself being pressed against him, felt the length of his body imprint itself onto hers. Felt her response as desire, hidden behind thin bamboo walls, broke through, seizing her. Making her tighten her arms around him.
Her heart was pounding, but for an entirely different reason than before.
He’d meant only to divert her. To keep her from hyperventilating. He hadn’t meant to get caught up in what amounted to an unorthodox first-aid application. Not like this. To make matters worse, she’d just shared something with him that had brought back memories he didn’t want to deal with, that made him relive Ann’s last days.
Maybe that was it. Maybe that had made him vulnerable.
And maybe it was none of the above. Maybe it just had to do with the woman in his arms. The woman he’d had an underlying yearning for since the first moment she had looked up at him with those incredible soft-brown eyes, turning his stomach to jelly and nearly turning his mind to mincemeat.