He was better off keeping his confessions to himself.
“Our outlook doesn’t seem too good.” He strolled over to the door and beat on it again.
“Oh, stop it,” she said. “We’ll get out of this just fine if we wait.”
The cellar was silent, except for the hum from the humidifier through the vent.
“Come over here and keep me company instead of brooding.” She patted the floor beside her.
“What do we talk about?” he asked.
“There’s plenty.” She did a little wiggle movement and tried to close the gap in her dress again. He stole a glance at the exposed golden skin on her waist.
“What’s up with the dress?”
“Don’t get me started.” Her cheeks reddened. “It fit a month ago. Back fat strikes out of nowhere, I tell ya.”
“It still . . . looks good on you.” Her dress could’ve been on backward and she’d rock it like nobody’s business.
“There’s no need to be nice about it.” She cleared her throat. “How about you tell me how things are going with that chemistry instructor you were dating? At our last lunch you said she might work out.”
“Not so well. A few weeks ago, she got a job out of state and moved on.”
“I’m sorry. She sounded nice.”
He crossed the room and tapped against the bottles in their slots. Unease touched his stomach. He didn’t like talking about other women with her. Time to change the subject. “I remember seeing something in the other room. I’m going to see what it was.”
He headed into the secondary cellar room and she trailed behind him. After he switched on the light, he noticed an indentation in the wall. A tiny half-inch gap, rectangular in shape, gutted out from the wall.
“Is that a food elevator?” she asked.
“I think so.” He took a look around the room. “Looks like they do private wine tasting down here.” He searched for a door handle but didn’t see one. Instead, he found a panel behind a metal cover. With a quick press of the red button, the elevator door unlocked and he opened it.
“How nifty.” She looked inside and then backed out so he could take a peek.
The elevator had to be no more than three feet by three feet. He twisted himself to angle his head inside. There wasn’t a top to the box, only a dark shaft extending upwards. The faint hum of the kitchen above drifted toward them: dishwashers and stove ventilation systems.
“Hello!” His voice echoed up the shaft. She joined him and they tried a few times to get someone’s attention.
“It’s too loud up there for them to hear us.” He backed out. “Maybe we can still call for help.” He searched the counter until he found a scrap of paper. Using a pen, he scribbled, Trapped in the cellar, please send help for Max and Renata. He put the note in the elevator and sent the rescue request upward. “Let’s hope for the best.”
The elevator reached the top, but on the control panel, the light to indicate someone opened the door on the other side never lit up.
Twenty minutes later, the light still hadn’t come on.
That idea had failed. Renata had a better chance of success crawling up the shaft in high heels.
“Do you think someone will check it?” she asked.
“According to the instructions on this panel, the other light should be blinking.”
She sighed. “Which means no one is there to see that we sent something up the elevator.”
“Pretty much.” Frustration made it hard for him to think straight. He took a seat on the floor and rested his head in his hands.
“We can’t just give up.” She hesitated, but then took a spot next to him, curling her legs under her. The wood floors weren’t that warm either.
“I think there’s a towel on the counter.” He picked up the burgundy towel, marked with a capital “B” in white and handed it to her. “Use it to sit on.”
“Thanks.” She held tight to the side of her dress as she sat.
He took a seat next to her, making sure some space separated them. Time stretched on for a bit with nothing to do but sit. The need to say what was on his mind continued to nag at him. Once in a while he glanced up to check the elevator, but no one had opened the top door.
“We’re in a room full of liquor and we can’t even enjoy it,” she murmured.
He chuckled. “I got my wallet. You thirsty?”
“Not yet. But I might want to get slammed if we don’t get out of here in time.” She yawned.
His watch read eleven thirty. They had an hour and a half until the wedding photos began. And no prospect of getting out before then. He lost himself to his thoughts, when he noticed Renata’s head droop forward. He tilted his head to the side to see her plop farther forward. Wearing a small smile, she laid her head back against the wall—not the most comfortable option—and she closed her eyes again.
Amused, he watched her drift to sleep. She was gorgeous when she dozed off. In college, he couldn’t count how many times during group study at the library that she’d fallen asleep on the table. Max did a study—nonscientific—determining Renata could fall asleep in under twenty seconds. She averaged ten during finals.
A few strands of her hair had fallen over her face like before, but he resisted the urge to brush them back again. Might as well let her sleep. She didn’t wake up, though, as her head drifted away from him. Towards the hard edge of the counter.
His hand snaked out and, ever so gently, caught the side of her head before she got a free concussion. She didn’t stir and allowed Max to guide her to rest on his shoulder.
She sighed and Max’s resolve melted away as his arm held her in place. Friends can do this for each other, he reminded himself. But a friend wouldn’t enjoy the smell of her sweet shampoo or feel the need to brush her hair out of her face. A friend didn’t imagine her walking hand in hand with him. He placed his free hand in his lap for good measure.
Seconds turned into minutes. At least a half hour passed. Renata slowly woke up. “Mmmmm . . .” She sat up and rubbed the side of her neck. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Not long.” The deep timbre to his voice reflected the desire pooling within him so he coughed a bit and shifted away from her. His shoulder had gone numb, but he didn’t mind. He rolled his limbs to get the feeling back.
“I shouldn’t have stayed up so late.” She glanced at him. “Sorry about that.”
He couldn’t resist teasing her. “You need to work on that drooling problem, too.”
She slapped his arm. “I do not!”
“You wanna wipe off the wet spot on my shirt?”
She leaned in close to him again and his breath caught. “I don’t see one.” She giggled. Only to stop abruptly when their gazes locked. Her eyes were gorgeous—a catlike hazel with bits of light gray along the edges.
Slowly, she backed away from him. “I don’t drool.”
“So you say,” he whispered back.
With nothing left to say on the matter, they grew quiet again. He played with his cuff links self-consciously. “Why do cellars have to be so cold?” She adjusted his jacket on her shoulders.
“This place isn’t too bad. Now, the time we volunteered for the Kappa Tau Tau Polar Bear Plunge is another story.”
“I can’t believe we jumped into a pool with over fifty bags of ice . . .” She groaned, leaning in again to give him a sour face. He liked having her all to himself. “That’s a memory I’d like to suppress. A third of that house was full of horny college boys. Most of them weren’t afraid to show it.”
“Did they ever try anything?” He tried not to sound serious, but most likely failed.
“Not while you were around.”
“Did anything happen when I wasn’t around?” His voice was quiet.
She smiled. “Just once, but it was a long time ago.” He watch
ed her take in two deep breaths. “One of the guys touched my arm, but I backed away. When that frat boy’s come-on line of, ‘Don’t be that way, baby,’ didn’t work on me, he tried to put his arm around me.”
Anger flashed inside Max. If he would’ve been there, he’d have put that asshole in his place. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She shrugged. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“We should look the guy up to see if he’s still in Colorado. We could invite him to a playground and I could beat him up,” he said.
“No need,” she said. “The last thing we need is your mug shot shown on the news.”
He snorted. “The perfect Cops episode.”
“You got my text message, right?”
He nodded since every word had been seared into his memory. He smiled at her, but disappointment flicked at him again. He crossed his arms and tried to keep his cool.
Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “All my experience finally paid off. I can’t wait to go condo hunting in Salt Lake City.”
“Sounds like fun.” He tried to sound enthusiastic and failed. “But will you have time with your schedule to go up there? You have little time to have fun as it is.”
“I’ll make the time somehow. If I can find a way to travel across the country and date I can do this.”
He snorted. “On most days all we do is text each other. How do you expect to date?”
“I don’t really. It’s never been an ideal situation for me to have a relationship. A man would tie me down and make me feel guilty for traveling all the time.”
Renata always had excuses. “What if you found a guy who didn’t mind? Who’d always be there even if you were gone?”
She made a sour face. “In what alternate universe can I find him? Nobody likes long-distance relationships.”
“Says who? You’re pretty certain about things.”
She shivered. The need to wrap his arm around her again hit him. He feigned stretching out his legs to add distance between them. Getting close to her right now would just make it harder on him. “Nothing in this world is certain—especially when it comes to dating. Right now I just want a challenge and I believe I’ll find that in Salt Lake City.”
Another question lingered in his mind. He might as well let it all out. “Do you remember the bet we made with each other in college?”
Chapter Four
Renata quickly looked away from his penetrating eyes. She didn’t like the nervous feeling stirring around her stomach when he asked such questions. His eye color tended to change with the seasons and now it resembled a soft jade.
“Have you forgotten?” he asked.
“No,” she blurted. Every once in a while she thought about it. “I was so foolish in college. Thinking about marriage should’ve been the last thing on my mind.” Their hands brushed and she got up. “Yet, somehow I thought it would be cool to see who’d get married first.”
Why did she suddenly feel weird with him? Where did this strange vibe come from?
“I’m kinda shocked you’re not engaged, to be honest,” he said. “Or even married with a kid.”
He sounded friendly, but his words still kicked her. If everything had worked out with her last boyfriend, she would’ve been where Max described. Her last love had such rugged good looks and wry jokes. She’d imagined they would settled down in a Denver suburb and she’d balance a corporate job and a white-picket-fenced house.
With him she would’ve won that bet and got married.
“What about you?” she asked. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “I’ve tried pretty hard to find good-looking women for you.”
He chuffed. “You need to stop helping. Your blind date a few weeks ago wouldn’t let me say a single word the whole time, but that wasn’t the worst part. After dinner she invited me to have a drink at her house—the one she shares with her parents. Talk about a shocker when I tried to kiss a grown woman with her dad waiting up. I was forced to spend an hour talking to the guy.” He laughed. “With all those probing questions he asked, I should’ve left my resume and a blood sample.”
Renata coughed, suddenly unable to stifle a laugh. “They don’t know you like I do.”
Max was a successful man. He had a cushy job with a university, benefits, and his own house. He’d finished grad school two years ago and he’d been the smart one in their strange college crew. The one everybody said would get some big engineering firm job, or go to a university and earn all sorts of research grants, and then fly to all sorts of places to give important lectures.
“So you’re giving up,” she teased. “There’s no girl out there for you?”
He grinned and leaned back, resting his head on his hands. “A gentleman never tells. Even the trainwrecks need to stay in Vegas, like my uncle used to say.”
“Oh, c’mon. There has to be somebody you like. You always tell me eventually.”
He shook his head with a sly smile. The liar. The way he gazed at the wall with a content look on his face almost made her frown. But why should she feel jealous? She had never thought of Max as more than a friend. Over the years she’d come to depend on him—as a friend, though. Men were far too much of a distraction and her plump bank account told her she was better off without them.
But as she sat in this quiet room next to him, doubts filled her mind. With his arms folded behind his head, she couldn’t help but notice his wide shoulders or the way his tailored shirt clung to his fit frame. Even his slacks, over his stretched-out, long legs didn’t hide all the running he did like clockwork in the early morning.
She labeled the sprinkle of freckles along his nose as “cute.” Couldn’t she find him cute and still be friends? His jaw twitched and her not-quite-safe friend made her heart skitter.
“I’m thirsty,” she declared. “You interested in popping open one of the bottles?”
“Might as well give a toast to the bride and groom.”
The wedding. Every time she thought about it she wanted to run to the doors and bang on them until her fists hurt. Why did this have to happen on Tessa’s most important day? As her big sister, Renata was supposed to protect Tessa and be the positive person for once. Renata usually clung to her cynical ways, but today she had the responsibility of being the heroine her sis needed.
Being stuck in a cellar kind of stepped on her superhero cape.
“Do you have a preference instead of red wine?” She’d be better off for a momentary distraction. Even the liquid kind.
“I’ll let you pick.”
She scanned the shelves in the room. The selection was pretty good with some rare ones sprinkled here and there. A Chateau Montrose from 1960 in one slot. If her memory served her right that was half a grand per bottle. In another she spotted a cask of Glenfarclas Malt Scotch Whiskey from 1956. A smooth Scottish whiskey. During her traveling, she’d had the opportunity to experience expensive wines and ales. “I actually like drinks with a bite.”
Max chuckled. “A hammered officiant isn’t a good look. I’m supposed to be the dependable guy.”
She laughed at the horrifically silly thought of Max, drunk off his rocker, and the silliness was a welcome feeling. “Now, this I don’t mind opening.” She pulled a familiar top out and got what she expected. “W.L. Weller bourbon, circa 1986. This should have a nice burn to it.”
“Are you sure?” He produced two shot glasses from the other room.
“What else can we do until someone rescues us?”
“Other than drink?” His eyes danced darkly. “Probably a lot.”
She tried to ignore his sexual innuendo with a shrug, but her hands trembled as she pulled the cap off. She estimated this bottle would set her back about a few hundred bucks. Might as well get the wedding started off right!
Max held the glasses and she filled each up to the brim. “Are you sure
about this? We’ll face consequences later.”
She took a generous gulp of her drink and then ran her finger along the rim, managing to avoid his assessing gaze. “Step up to the plate, Max . . .”
“Oh, I see how it is.” He clinked their glasses together and downed his drink. Before she could raise her glass, he slammed the empty cup on the counter. His eyes practically mocked her. See? I can play tit for tat. “Your turn.”
“I think I’ll sip mine.” She tried not to laugh.
“Pour me another one,” he said. “So I can go slow.”
“You’re gonna be drunk in a few minutes, aren’t you?” she chided.
He quirked an eyebrow and she couldn’t resist returning the expression. “I’ll be just fine if I take it easy.”
“Yeah, right.” The slight upturn of the side of his mouth into a smile brought heat to her face. Was she really watching him run his tongue across his lower lip? She sucked in a breath. The very idea that she wanted to taste his lips knocked her off-kilter. “I’ve actually never seen you drunk. Do you know what that feels like?”
“I don’t like losing control.”
“That’s a pity. Why not show you can?” And she was just the gal for the job! “Wanna play a game?”
“What kind of game?”
“Truth or dare is always fun.”
“Do I need to take that glass away from you?” He reached for the glass, brushing their bodies together, but she shied away from him.
“Only if you want to do something else other than drink.” Where did that come from? Now that had to be the liquor talking.
He didn’t back down. “Go ahead then.”
“Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” The words came out deep and smooth, enough to rattle her insides.
“Have you ever done something so crazy you could’ve been arrested? Something I don’t already know.”
This Wedding is Doomed! Page 9