by Amy Garvey
“Olivia? Olivia, it’s me. Rhys.”
She blinked in the dim hallway, wriggling away from him. Rhys? My God, he was a bad penny. A big, gorgeous, sexy bad penny. “What are you doing down here? You scared me to death.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, kneeling to examine her ruined snack. “Not a good day for cake around here, yeah?”
“Apparently not.” She groped for the light switch, and then knelt beside him. There was a dark smear of chocolate frosting where the cake had skidded across the floor, and the plate had cracked down the middle when it hit the concrete of the service corridor. She sighed. “Let me get a broom.”
“No, let me. My fault, after all.” He followed her down the hall to the broom closet, and she couldn’t help cursing herself for coming downstairs. Or at least for coming downstairs in her oldest jeans and her ratty gray NYU sweatshirt. And her slippers! Oh yes, very attractive.
Not that she’d expected to run into anyone down here, of course. That was the whole reason she’d taken the fire stairs and had planned on using the service elevator on the way back. It wasn’t a good idea to run into guests in the lobby after midnight with pilfered food, in clothes that were essentially pajamas.
But Rhys Spencer was a lot of things she hadn’t expected, wasn’t he?
She propped open the door to the broom closet and reached for the light switch, but nothing happened when she flicked it on. “I guess the bulb burned out,” she said, and then gasped because Rhys was following her into the closet.
“Don’t—” she started, but it was too late. He’d knocked the door away from the wall, and it swung closed behind them with a bang.
Uh-oh.
“Bloody hell,” Rhys mumbled. “Sorry about that.”
She shook her head in the darkness as he rattled the knob.
“Hey, what’s this now? It won’t open,” he said.
“That’s because it sticks.” She fumbled toward the wall, kicking a bucket as she went and drawing her slippered foot backward with a wince.
“What do you mean, it sticks?”
“I mean it sticks,” she explained, squinting into the dense, stuffy darkness. Where she was standing with a man she barely knew. A very sexy, currently outraged man.
She sighed as he rattled the doorknob again. “And now we’re stuck.”
Seven Minutes in Heaven. That was the name of the kissing game, wasn’t it? She’d heard stories about it—plenty of them, with a lot of wet, slobbery details—in the cafeteria during seventh grade, even though she’d never played it herself.
A boy and a girl, alone in the dark. In a closet, in fact. With nothing to do but kiss.
Well, actually, based on some of the stories she’d heard, quite a few things aside from kissing went on, but still. She’d never wanted to play the game with anyone but Joshua Burkle, and that was mostly because he had soft brown eyes and he’d been nice to her when she dozed off during Shannon Kesslar’s reading of Juliet’s death scene in English and fallen out of her chair.
Rhys was certainly a much more appealing candidate. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t a mouth-breather, at least.
Or he would be a more appealing candidate if he’d stop pounding on the door, she thought, wincing as he launched a fresh assault. His knuckles were probably raw by now.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered for the tenth time in as many minutes, and she heard him crossing the floor. Toward her, she thought. “Why hasn’t the sodding door ever been fixed?”
“The handle’s on back order.” She was fairly sure she was talking directly to his chest. It was distracting, because he smelled wonderful—a combination of something woodsy and sharp, and something she suspected was simply Rhys. “It’s an old door.”
“No,” he said with exaggerated surprise.
She poked him—or tried to. The space was so dark, she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her, and instead she wound up jabbing a mop handle, which clattered over backward.
“I’m over here, love,” he said, and the smile in his voice was as bright and warm as a well-lit room. Then she felt his fingers close around her hand, and she swallowed hard.
“I can tell you one thing good about a broken doorknob,” he added. “Being stuck in this closet with you.”
“What’s good about that?” The question came out in a whisper.
“Oh, I can think of a few things,” he murmured, and let go of her hand to wind his arms around her. “We can…uh…keep each other warm.”
Seven minutes in heaven, here I come, the part of her brain not overwhelmed by his nearness whispered. But what she said was, “It’s too hot in here already.”
“We can keep each other company,” he murmured into her ear.
God, he was…so close. So big. So warm and strong and firm and…absolutely unknown. A kiss was one thing—a kiss would be, she was sure, so very, very nice—but the rest? Here? Now?
Ignoring the voice of her hormones, which was nodding and shouting, Here! Now!, she said in the most teasing tone she could muster, “I like being alone.”
His lips hovered against her earlobe, hot and soft. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I was doing better before I knocked over your cake and locked us in the closet,” he admitted, but as he did he left a trail of light kisses down the side of her neck, and she trembled.
“That wasn’t very smooth, no,” she said, and wriggled out of his reach, bumping into what felt like a broom in the process. “And you have to stop that. I can’t even see you. I don’t even know you!”
He sighed, a soft breath of disappointment in the close, dark space. “What do you want to know?”
Good question. The obvious one was, “Why are you flirting with me?” but that wasn’t exactly a confident way to begin a discussion. A dozen more whirled through her head—Are you going to kiss me? Do you know how sexy your accent is? Why couldn’t you sleep? Oh God, you’re not in the room with the squeaky box spring, are you? When are you going to kiss me?—but when she opened her mouth, she heard herself asking, “What’s your favorite color?”
Clearly, she was beyond help.
But Rhys simply snorted, a good-natured sound. “Don’t have one. You?”
“Sky blue,” she said automatically, and then stopped. “What do you mean, you don’t have one? Everyone has one.”
“Everyone picks one so they can answer that question,” he argued, and she heard shuffling as he lowered himself to the ground. “Sit. We may be here for a bit.”
She did, feeling her way past the broom and brushing her hand against something that felt like a stiffened string mop. Shuddering, she settled onto the concrete beside him, aware of the warm length of his thigh. “You really don’t like one color over another?”
“I like green apples, and ripe pumpkins, and a nice, bloody, purple piece of filet mignon,” he said after a minute.
“Okay, what’s your favorite food?”
“No such thing,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll eat almost anything if it’s prepared just so.”
“You’re not making this easy,” she said with a frown. “Come on, what’s…what’s the meal you’d want if you were on death row? Your last meal.”
“Why? What have you heard?”
She slapped his thigh gently. “Come on. Play along.”
“All right then.” He grabbed her hand before she could pull it away and twined his fingers with hers. “Kobe beef, a bottle of fifteen-year-old Laphroaig, and a dark chocolate torte. You?”
“I’m not going to death row,” she said with a laugh. “What’s Laphroaig?”
“Single malt scotch, love. Best on the planet.”
“So you intend to go out drunk and sick to your stomach?”
“I don’t intend to ‘go out’ at all,” he protested. “And you said play along—it’s your turn.”
The feel of his thumb tracing circles on the back of her hand was h
ypnotic. She did her best to ignore it, and said, “Okay. Um, mashed potatoes, turkey, and apple pie.”
His snort this time was incredulous. “Blimey, love, I need to teach you how to eat. There’s more to life than plain potatoes, yeah?”
Food snob. “Well, I like them,” she answered. “New question. What’s your favorite…” She trailed off, thinking. “I know. What’s your favorite swear word?”
“I don’t think you’d want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“You’ll blush.”
“I don’t…blush,” she said weakly, feeling her cheeks flaming already.
“You don’t blush, and I’m the king of England,” he laughed. “My turn. Why wouldn’t you go out for dinner with me tonight?”
She sighed. The man was nothing if not persistent.
“The sous chef quit this afternoon,” she said lightly. “And Josef was still in a temper about the whole thing. I can’t cook, but I can run interference. Or try to.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, letting go of her hand.
Bewildered, she said, “That I can’t cook?”
“No, that you were short a sous chef.” She could feel him shaking his head in disgust. “I could have stepped in, you know.”
“Rhys, you’re a guest,” she protested. “My guest. I know this place is a little…well, eccentric, but usually we don’t require guests to make their own drinks and fix their own meals. I mean, we do have some standards.”
“Brilliant,” he said dryly. “I’ll keep that in mind if something falls on my head.”
“Hey!”
“Something to think about, love.” She heard rustling, and then he was closer, his arm winding around her shoulders. “If your uncle is determined to run you out of this place, you’ve got to be on top of your game, yeah?”
“I don’t think I have a game,” she said wearily, but she didn’t shrug his arm away. The weight of it was a comfort in the dark, as much as a temptation. It was horrifying to admit how easy it would be—and how good it would feel—to crawl into Rhys’s lap and forget everything but what they could do in seven minutes. Or seventy. “Maybe you can teach me.”
He squeezed her shoulders gently. “Don’t worry, love. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Bloody hell, I’ve got to get out of this sodding closet,” Rhys grumbled sometime later, pounding on the door for the third time in as many minutes. “Does your custodial staff keep banker’s hours? Where is everyone?”
Still curled on the floor, Olivia answered sleepily, “It’s probably not even four yet.”
“Are you mad? We’ve been in here for days,” he protested, rubbing the side of his hand, sore from pounding.
“Rhys, are you…are you claustrophobic?”
If only. It would have been much more pleasant, if not exactly more manly, to pass out from terror than admit to Olivia why he needed out, and now.
“Certainly not,” he said with authority, shifting his position against the stubbornly stuck door. Bloody hell, if he didn’t take a piss soon, he was going to explode. “But this isn’t my idea of a brilliant way to spend the night, you know.”
“You’re the one who let the door shut,” she pointed out with a yawn.
Oh, sure, it was a perfect time to cast blame. “You’re the one who didn’t mention that I shouldn’t!”
“Well, I didn’t think you were going to follow me into the broom closet.”
“Yeah, my fault completely,” he said dryly. At least arguing was a distraction.
“A baby was born in here, you know,” Olivia said suddenly. “In the forties. An unmarried maid was trying to work as long as she could, and the baby came early. She named her Callie, too.”
He blinked, momentarily confused. “And this has what to do with me locking us in the broom closet?”
Silence. “Nothing,” she said finally, and the embarrassment in her tone produced a stab of guilt. “Just something I thought you might find interesting. I guess you don’t want to hear about the Balinese sword swallowers who were here in the early sixties.”
He laughed out loud at that. “You are quite a surprise, Olivia Callender.”
She was, too. A bit more every minute. It was a miracle that she’d let him kiss her neck earlier, for starters. He was moving fast, especially for someone like Olivia, and he knew it. But a tiger didn’t change his stripes, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to try.
He was honest, at least. It was part of the reason he liked food, in fact. Food didn’t lie. An apple was an apple, however you sliced it.
The thing was he thought Olivia was, too. After the women he’d encountered in L.A., especially, she was a breath of fresh air.
He hadn’t expected it, the women. Sure, there’d always been some, food groupies for Christ’s sweet sake, at the restaurants in London. But L.A. was a whole new kettle of fish. One that had been left out in the California sun, too.
The competition had been bad enough. The producers had prided themselves on their mad challenges. A fusion of Italian and Asian cooking—for breakfast. A lunch menu for six-year-olds featuring mushrooms and broccoli. A wedding reception menu for a hundred—on a five-hundred-dollar budget.
Wankers, he thought darkly. As if most chefs had to face any of those particular issues. Still, he’d made it to the finale—on sheer will power alone, he sometimes thought. There weren’t many people you could trust not to stab you in the back when two hundred thousand dollars was at stake. In fact, there were exactly none. Not that he’d expected to trust anyone in the first place—his mother, and later Clodagh, had taught him the folly of that long ago. But it was still a bit of a shock to find himself swarmed with women who made Barbie dolls look natural. Not a genuine thing about one of them, from their breasts to their noses to their motives.
But Olivia…Olivia was nothing but real. Just the memory of her blinking at him on that sidewalk was enough to make him grin. She hadn’t a shred of artifice in her bones. He liked that.
And if she asked outright, he’d have to admit to her that he hadn’t been wandering around the hotel only because he couldn’t sleep. He’d been lying in that lonely bed upstairs, and every time he closed his eyes he’d seen her face.
Stunned and scared when her uncle made his nasty threat. Determined when she announced in the bar that the bloke would never take the hotel away from her.
And his brain had spun into gear again, clicking through everything he’d seen of the hotel, everything Olivia probably needed to change to make the place a success—all the ways he could help her save it, not that she’d asked, or he’d ever done anything remotely like it before.
And he’d known he had to get a look at the Coach and Four kitchen, when no one was about to interrupt him. He was a chef, after all. If she was going to pull this rotting old mausoleum out of the trash heap, that was one of the places to start.
Not that he’d planned to call it a rotting old mausoleum, of course. Not to her face. It wasn’t lying if you simply omitted part of the truth.
He was no white knight. Nothing humble about that, just plain truth. But Olivia…what was it about Olivia that had him stumbling all over himself to come to her rescue?
He already knew all the reasons why he wanted to kiss her. And touch her. And listen to her sigh…
Stifling a groan, he moved away from the door. Christ, he had to piss. That last glass of beer after dinner had been a mistake, not that he’d expected to be stuck in a closet overnight.
He expelled a noisy sigh, and he heard Olivia shifting her position on the floor.
“I think you’re going to kill me,” she said matter-of-factly.
He blinked. “Kill you? Why?”
“Because I just remembered that there’s a transom over this door.”
He could practically feel her blushing. “A transom, yeah?”
“Yeah.” She bumped into something and mumbled, “Ouch.”
“Shouldn’t it be a bit brighter in h
ere with a window over the door?” he said absently, turning to reach as high as he could above the door.
“It’s wooden,” she explained, and he felt her, soft and warm, beside him. “It still cranks open, I think, but no one ever uses it. We’d need a ladder, though, and I think there’s one against the back wall…”
“Hold on,” he said through gritted teeth. He’d find the sodding ladder if he had to trip over every bucket and mop in the place, and break both legs to do it. If there was a transom up above that door, he was going through it.
Before he exploded.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, as he clattered past God only knew what, pawing the air for anything metal with rungs.
“What are you sorry for, love?” His knuckles scraped against something solid and cool. Bingo!
“For not remembering sooner.” She sounded humiliated and very small in the darkness. “We could have been out of here hours ago.”
They wouldn’t have been in here in the first place if the bloody door wasn’t broken, but he wasn’t going to remind her of that. Not her fault, he told himself as he maneuvered the ladder—none too gracefully—through the cramped space. Something crashed to the floor and Olivia yelped.
“Not to worry,” he said as he propped the ladder against the door. “If you’d remembered earlier we wouldn’t have played getting to know you.”
Brilliant, the way he could feel her blushing in the dark.
“Stand back now,” he said as he set his foot on the lowest rung. “I don’t know how sturdy this thing is.”
“Rhys, no!” Her fingers closed tentatively around his calf. “Let me do it. I’m smaller than you are, for one thing. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Or, well, get even stucker.”
No chance. He reached down to untangle her fingers. “I don’t think so, love. For one, whoever goes through needs to do it backward. You’re not about to dive headfirst out of the transom, are you? And I’m taller. When I drop, the fall won’t be so far.”
He hesitated when she was silent. It made sense, didn’t it? Not that he relished the idea of twisting into some pretzel of a position to get his legs through the thing first.