“I thought I was.”
But she shook her head. “No, talk to me. Get my mind off this.”
Maybe if he could get her to talk about her fears, it would help her to deal with the situation. “What is it with you and tight places?”
Ordinarily she might have said something flippant, or even denied that there was a problem the way he was implying. But the man had eyes. He could see there was a problem. Could hear it, too. There was no disguising her reaction, no matter how hard she tried. “I don’t like them.”
He laughed shortly. “That’s rather obvious. Any particular reason?”
Instead of answering him immediately, Gloria took off her jacket, tossing it on top of her coat. She opened the top two buttons of her blouse. Even in this light, he could see the perspiration along her forehead and on her cheeks. It wasn’t that hot in here, he thought.
Jack watched in fascination as she pulled her blouse out from the waistband of her skirt, fanning her middle with the shirttails.
When she paused and raised her eyes to his, he said, “Don’t stop on my account.”
She hated the feeling of desperation that was eating her alive. She should have outgrown it by now, risen above it. “It’s hot in here.”
It wasn’t the heat she was feeling and they both knew it, but he let her have her lie.
“And panicking is going to make it seem hotter.” He waited for a second, certain she would continue. But she didn’t. That alone told him that the situation was dire. The woman never missed a chance to talk. “You didn’t answer my question. Any particular reason confined spaces make you break out in a sweat?”
“Yes.”
They weren’t making any progress. “And that would be?”
Gloria’s eyes shifted from his face. This wasn’t something she talked about, at least not to anyone outside of her own family and even that was rare.
She glanced toward Jack. He was still waiting. Okay, maybe he deserved to know why she’d clawed his arm. At the very least, it would pass the time.
She took as deep a breath of the increasingly hotter air as she could and began.
“When I was a little girl, my family lived in Red Rock. My parents still live there.” A slight smile faintly crossed her lips. “It was as developed then as it sounds.” For just an infinitesimal second, she was that little girl again, free of the demons she had acquired. “Wonderful place to grow up,” she testified. “My brothers and sisters and I had no end of places to play.”
And then her expression sobered. “There was this one field that ran behind an abandoned old house. We used to call the house the Spooky place—”
“Very original,” Jack commented, never taking his eyes off her. Watching emotions cross her face in the dim light.
“We were kids,” she reminded him. And then, as he continued to watch her, she seemed to brace herself before she went on. “One day, we were playing hide-and-seek.” Her breath began to grown audibly shorter. “The way we had a hundred times before.”
She was going to stop. He saw it in her eyes. “And?” Jack prodded.
Gloria raised her chin, a shaky defiance trying to take hold. And failing.
“And I fell into this abandoned shaft. I found out later that it was an old well that had gone dry.”
Suddenly she was there again, in that hole. The dirt walls threatening to close in on her with every grain of dust that fell. Tears rose to her eyes as she remembered the terror that had gripped her.
“Christina ran for help while my brothers and Sierra talked to me, trying to keep me calm. Christina came back with my mother who’d called the fire department. More and more people kept coming, blocking out the light. It took what felt like forever for them to get me out. I was six at the time,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, “and convinced that I was going to die.”
Gloria caught her lower lip between her teeth as she looked up at him again. “I stopped being fearless that day.”
Chapter Eleven
Jack remained quiet as she talked, studying her. He could see that she was reliving the incident with every word she uttered.
He couldn’t imagine experiencing that kind of overwhelming fear. He strode through places—small, large, beneath buildings and on the top-floor balcony of a New York skyscraper—without any thought of harm coming his way, knowing nothing would spring out to trigger an attack.
Are you really that different? a small voice whispered, coming out of nowhere to mock him.
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.”
Breathe, Glory. Damn it, breathe. Nice and slow and steady. In, out. You know how to breathe, don’t you?
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.
Too late.
“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. You opened the door, now you have to step through. “I was desperate to block out my fears. Claustrophobia, among other things.” She let the phrase hang for a moment, more than a little reluctant to go into any detail.
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 had grown closer together. Her blouse was sticking to her body. She opened another button, but that didn’t do anything to help. Just reminded her of how powerless she was at trying to control the situation. “Kind of what I want to do now.”
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 were going to fall down the shaft. Her throat closed so tightly she was afraid she was going to asphyxiate.
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.
Kissing her only made him want her with a fierceness that was every bit as overwhelming as the claustrophobia he knew she was wrestling with.
Suddenly he realized that he had to step back, had to get air himself. Logic demanded that he try to clear his head.
But he didn’t want to.
Didn’t want to give up this wild surge that was pulsating through him, forging a path through his body. Making him aware of himself as a man.
He hadn’t wanted, truly wanted, a woman since Ann had died, leaving him to wander emotionally isolated in this world. Oh, there had been biological needs since then, but he could always separate himself from them, step outside his body and watch as he went through the physical motions of having sex, his mind absent from the process.
Right now his mind was in full attendance and there was no separating anything. The logic that always presided over his life had somehow gotten lost.
Nothing mattered except that he wanted to make love with Gloria. Wanted to get lost within her as they kept the world at arm’s length.
This wasn’t like her, not anymore, Gloria kept telling herself. She didn’t do things like this anymore: give up who and what she was with an abandonment that was so swift it all but jarred her very teeth. But all those encounters that had taken place in her past had been governed by inebriation. Her brain had always been liberally soused, the ability to think lost inside of a bottle.
But not this time.
She was stone-cold sober, drunk only on this sensation that was vibrating through her like the strings of a harp that had been plucked. She was drunk, but only on the idea of making love.
When his hands caressed her, Gloria moaned audibly, wanting him to touch her everywhere. To both soothe and stoke the fire that his nearness had created.
Gloria sucked in her breath. She felt his wide, capable hands delving beneath the blouse she’d pulled free earlier.
“You’re trembling,” he whispered, his breath warm on her neck.
He was going to pull away. She could feel it. She couldn’t let that happen. Without admitting it, she knew where this was going. Needed this to go there. Needed him to make love with her.
“This isn’t the time to withdraw,” she breathed, pressing harder against him.
Jack felt completely, hopelessly, lo
st. The willpower he thought was second nature had somehow turned into so much sawdust. If she’d backed away, cried, asked him to stop, then maybe the willpower he’d treasured could have been resurrected. But every indication she gave him was that she wanted this as badly as he did.
He hadn’t the strength to back away, to leave her of his own accord.
Still, he watched her eyes in the dim light for signs of fear, or mounting panic that had to do not with the enclosed space, but with what was happening.
Instead of fear, he saw desire.
Desire that mirrored exactly what was going on inside of him. He knew this was wrong. Clear-thinking adults didn’t make love suspended above the twentieth floor of a skyscraper that had been pitched into darkness. He didn’t make love like this. Mindlessly, and with complete abandonment.
Hell, he hadn’t made love since Ann died. He’d had sex. And each time had left him completely unsatisfied. Not wanting more, just wanting something. Something that wasn’t there.
Something that whispered to him now. Making every fiber within his body yearn.
With swift, sure movements, Jack pulled her blouse away from her shoulders, pressed his lips to every inch of her soft flesh as it was exposed. His own breathing became as labored as hers.
His fingers worked the clasp that held her bra in place.
When she shivered against him as the lacy material fell away, he felt a volley of passion being fired through him that all but turned his body rigid with desire. He slid the button holding her skirt together out of its hole, then pulled it from her.
The dimness caressed her like a familiar lover. His gaze passed over her. Gloria was wearing nothing but heels and underwear. His stomach pressed itself against his spine.
Gloria could feel anticipation vibrating throughout her whole body, priming her for the final moment that she both craved and wanted to hold at bay so that she could savor the approach of the final moment. It felt as if her whole body was humming.
She forced her breathing to grow steadier, as if that would somehow keep her hands from shaking as she swiftly yanked his custom-made jacket and pants off of him.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 12