Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “Whoa,” Rochelle said, rocking on her feet at the jolt.

  The car stopped, and Rochelle kept her eyes on the doors. But Travis still had her box. That gave him maybe five minutes, if he took it to the basement for her, which he had every intention of doing. She liked men who could do man things? Well, he was volunteering here and now to do every single man thing there was. Starting with carrying this box.

  It took a few seconds to register that the doors weren’t opening. And that both the “1” and the “B” were still lit up on the floor indicator. Rochelle punched the button once more, and the car lurched again, then stopped. The lights flickered and died, and there was darkness for a split second before some kind of emergency lighting came on.

  Rochelle sucked in an audible breath, but Travis had already set the box down and was pushing the “Door Open” button. The elevator didn’t move, but at least it wasn’t lurching anymore.

  “Huh,” he said.

  She was reaching around him and punching buttons herself now. Every one of them. And the car still wasn’t moving.

  “How high up do you think we are?” she asked.

  He considered. “Twenty-five, thirty feet, maybe.”

  “Oh.” She let out her breath in a long, controlled sigh. “Don’t really want to fall, then.”

  “We aren’t going to fall. We’re good, I promise. When was the last time you heard about an elevator falling?”

  “Die Hard.”

  He couldn’t help smiling. “Movie.”

  “Still. It made an impression.”

  Damn, but she made him laugh. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “No service. How about you?”

  “They don’t work in here.” She paced a step forward, then had to stop. Nowhere to go. “All right. Calming down.”

  He put a hand on her back and rubbed once, and she jumped. “Hey,” he said softly. “We’re all right. I promise. It’s going to be fine.”

  Her head swung around, and he said, “What? That was wrong?”

  She sighed. “Never mind. You confuse me.”

  He might be trapped, but he wasn’t feeling too bad at all. “Makes two of us. Let’s try something else. It’s a little obvious, but . . .” He opened the door in the wall panel and pulled out the receiver, then waited until he got an operator.

  By the time he hung up the phone, Rochelle wasn’t looking happy.

  “Hour and a half at least,” he said. “They dispatch out of Spokane.”

  She was pressed against the far wall with her arms crossed over her chest, nothing about her body language suggesting she was stuck in an elevator with her dream man.

  “Want to sit down?” he asked. “Since we’ll be here awhile.”

  She looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t arrange this somehow, did you?”

  He had to laugh. “Not enough skills, sorry. And I don’t usually trap women. Not even ones I like as much as you.” He got an involuntary jerk of her head for that. “The elevator getting stuck—that’s bad luck. Me getting stuck in it with you? That’s maybe not such bad luck. From my point of view.”

  “You always take the elevator to go down a couple flights?”

  “Only when somebody special is in it.” He got an almost-smile for that one that she instantly wiped off her face. “And I’ve got . . .” He slung the backpack he’d been carrying over one shoulder around to the front, opened it, and rummaged around in there. “A bottled water and a candy bar. What do you think? Picnic?”

  She’d uncrossed her arms, anyway. “What kind of candy bar?”

  “Snickers.”

  She sighed. “Had to be my favorite.”

  “I do like a woman who enjoys her chocolate.” He indicated the floor. “Shall we?”

  She dropped down to the tiled floor, and he sat down a careful couple feet away from her, both of their backs against the wall. He could tell that, if she’d had a moment of weakness during their hydrangea episode, she’d had plenty of time to think it over since, and he hadn’t come out on the winning side of the equation.

  “Stupid building. Stupid budget cuts,” she muttered. “Did I mention that this freaks me out?”

  He yanked the top open on the water bottle and handed it over to her. “We’ll be all right. Sit tight and wait, that’s all. Of course, if I were really a hero, I’d be figuring out how to get out of this thing and rescue you. Or I’d already know how from my Navy SEAL training.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “You were a SEAL?”

  “Nope. That’s why I’m not rescuing you. We need any emergency computer programming, though, we’re all set.” He held up the Snickers bar and waggled it. “Got this, though.”

  “Almost as good.” She smiled at him, finally, and he grinned back, broke the candy bar in two, and handed her half.

  They sat and chewed a minute in silence. This was his big chance, and he didn’t want to blow it. “So,” he finally settled on. “You always work on Saturday? I’m surprised.” Neutral topic.

  “I like to start off the year ahead of the curve. Get everything organized. Surprised why? That I take my job seriously?”

  Not so neutral. “No. You’re a capable woman. Pretty hard not to notice that.”

  “I wish you’d quit it.”

  “What?”

  “Being nice.”

  He laughed out loud. “What else would I be doing?’

  “Oh, you know.” She shrugged and didn’t look at him. “Grabbing me. Or at least telling me that you knew how we could spend the next couple hours. Like that’d be my big treat, being put on my back on a floor that gets mopped about once a month.”

  That sobered him up fast. “You don’t have a real high opinion of men, do you?”

  She started to speak, then stopped and thought, and he watched her face. “Depends on the man,” she finally said. “I like some men just fine. I like my dad. My brothers and most of my cousins, too. A few others. But you know, if they’re related to you, they’re not thinking with their . . . well.”

  He stopped chewing for a moment, then swallowed, and she handed him the water bottle. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s that.”

  “And I know,” she said, “that I did the same thing with you. There were two of us making that decision. And this would be the part where I tell you that I don’t usually do things like that, and you pretend to believe me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t strike me as much of a liar. So go ahead.”

  “Well . . .” She fussed with her shirt, pulling it down, then settling it around her waist. He watched, which was a mistake, because looking at Rochelle’s shirt was way too distracting. It was light purple, with some kind of swirly pattern, and it was thin. If he looked closely, he could almost see through it to the pale skin beneath. Not that he was trying to see through her shirt. Much.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Do that. For the record.”

  He took another sip of water and thought a second. “Right. Minefield. I’m going to say, I’m still glad you did it with me. And that I’d be happy to know I was the only one.” Then and now.

  “Politically incorrect,” she said. “Possessive, with no right to be.”

  “Guilty again. Or just a man willing to tell you the truth.”

  “Which would be why, of course . . .” You said you’d call me and you didn’t. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to.

  “No. That would be me being stupid. In all sorts of ways. So, since we’re here talking anyway—why did you do it? How did I get that lucky?”

  He wasn’t sure she was going to answer at all, but she finally said, “Just the usual thing. I guess I don’t always think with my higher powers myself. I sure wasn’t doing it that night. But I’d done so much holding back, not wanting to get another reputation in this town after my divorce. When you look like me, it’s not that hard to do.”

  “Plenty of guys volunteering to help you take the fall, I’m sure. Divo
rced, huh? So tell me. Why would a man who had a woman like you let her go?”

  She glanced quickly across at him, then away, and he said, “Yeah, I know. I did that. But I’ve just told you I was stupid, because you’re . . .” He took a breath and went for it. Might as well put it on the line. “You’re smart, honest, funny as hell, obviously hardworking, and about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” She shifted slightly, and he thought back over what he’d said. “Am I not supposed to say you were hot? That you’re still hot? I’m trying hard here. Give me a clue. Help me out.”

  The way she was sitting, with her knees drawn up, had that little skirt falling up her thighs a bit, and he couldn’t help a quick glance. They looked exactly as good as they had nine months earlier. They looked terrific. He didn’t dare look down her shirt, because it was a V-neck. Not a low one, but it didn’t matter. There was no way that glance would be quick. A man could drown in her body, and be happy to go.

  “I’m not going to talk about my ex,” she said, and he forced his mind back to their conversation. “No bad-mouthing the ex.”

  “True,” he said, “if this were a date. But we’ve gotten that out of the way. There’s not much you could say that would make me lose interest. So come on. We’ve got a couple hours here. Let’s tell stories.”

  “You going to tell me yours, too?”

  “If you’re into bad drama,” he said, and she laughed, her blue eyes lighting up, and he smiled back at her.

  “Right,” she said. “My ex. You asked for it. My daddy didn’t like him, but I’d had a crush on him since the eighth grade. I thought he was hot. Which used to be a problem of mine. In the past. So eventually, I married him, and he spent a few years proving my daddy right. He had the same job as my dad, you see.”

  “What job is that?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Hired man. And because you’re not from here, I’ll clue you in. There’s a wide world of difference between a farmer and a hired man. Except not with my dad, there isn’t.” She looked fierce now. “There aren’t many men in this town more stand-up than my dad, and everybody knows it. But sometimes, when you’ve got a good dad, you don’t realize that not all men are that good. You don’t get it. I didn’t get it.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “I had a good dad myself. Always thought I’d grow up to be like him, I guess, like it was inherited. Like it was automatic. I found out it wasn’t that easy.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  He shook his head. “You first.”

  She looked like she still wanted to ask, but she went on. “It wasn’t the best, but I did what you do. Told myself it wasn’t so bad, that this was real life, that nobody was perfect. I was coming around to it, but I was coming around slowly, because my parents have been married thirty-two years, and I wanted that. Anyway, I don’t like to give up.”

  She reached for the water bottle. Her hand brushed his, and the hair rose on his arm at the contact. He watched her take a long swallow, her head back, her throat working, and he was in two places at once. He was listening. He was. She had his attention, and her words had even touched that still-aching spot in his heart. But he was watching her swallow, and . . . damn.

  She put the bottle down, not seeming to notice. “Until the day I went to a work with a fever of a hundred and one, and my boss sent me home again. It was winter, and Lake was home, too. I thought I could climb in bed and he’d bring me soup or something. Ha.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Walked in on him and a waitress from down at the Kozy Korner doing the horizontal tango, that’s what.”

  “Ouch.”

  “And you know what was the worst? What he was doing to her, he’d been too lazy to do to me for a good long time. There he was, though, going out of his way, giving her the good stuff.”

  “Ah.” He glanced down her body again. He couldn’t help it. “That your favorite?”

  He could tell she was remembering exactly the same thing he was. “Not too many women out there who don’t enjoy that, I’ll bet. Which you already knew.”

  His heart had been beating harder ever since he’d stepped into the elevator with her. Now, his pulse rate kicked up into another gear as he remembered her on that white hotel bed, gloriously naked, his body sliding down hers before his hands went to those thighs and pushed them slowly apart. He remembered the way she’d moaned before he’d even started, the way she’d shifted under his hands, unable to wait, and the rush it had given him. And how determined he’d been to make it good.

  If he got the chance again, he’d be making it better. “Good to know,” he said, his voice coming out strangled in spite of his best efforts at casual. “Just in case.”

  She shook her head, the blonde hair swaying. “You get me off track.”

  “You aren’t the only one.” He fought to remember what—what else—they’d been talking about. “We’ve got an hour to go, easy, so you may as well tell me what happened next.”

  “Well—I think there are two kinds of people. The kind who see something like that and run, and the kind who make somebody else run.”

  “Ha. Kicked his ass out?”

  “Right out into the snow. Both of them. Barely gave them time to grab their clothes. Until I remembered that the house went with his job, and I didn’t want it anyway. But not before I set fire to my wedding gown in the burn barrel out back, along with his collection of concert T-shirts.”

  His laugh bounced off the elevator walls. “Bet that hurt.”

  She sighed in reminiscence. “Don’t piss me off. Especially when I have a fever.”

  “I’ll remember that. What kind of music?”

  “Heavy metal. You like metal?”

  “I hate it. Sounds like screaming to me. Makes me agitated. Life’s agitating enough as it is. That the right answer?”

  She took another swallow of water, and he watched her again, but this time, he was smiling as well as watching. “Yep,” she said. “That’s the right answer. So I moved to town, got my own place, and to my everlasting surprise, my life got better. The divorce was a whole lot easier than the marriage. Didn’t have to pretend I wasn’t kicking butt at my job so he wouldn’t feel bad, didn’t have to watch my paycheck disappear on beer and weed. I had it all. Except, of course, that my eggs are drying up by the day.”

  That one caught him off guard. “Wow. Sucker punch to the gut there.”

  She looked right at him. “No point messing around. Literally. No time to mess around. I’m thirty-one. The other reason I don’t go home with guys I meet in bars.”

  “Got it.”

  “So,” she said. “With that in mind, want to reconsider our chat here?”

  “You know what?” He smiled at her, got a smile in return. “I’m going to keep on going. Guess I like to live dangerously.”

  “All right, then. Unfortunately, so do I.” She straightened her legs, wriggled closer to the wall, and tugged her skirt down her thighs.

  He watched her do it and said, “You’re killing me here. You do realize that.”

  She flipped one corner of the skirt up, revealing most of that luscious thigh, and he about had a heart attack. “It’s a skort,” she said. “I rode my bike, and I didn’t want to flash the whole town. So you can wipe that picture right out of your head.”

  “You know what picture I had in my head?”

  “What, that wasn’t it?”

  “The skirt one? Keeping our clothes on in case somebody showed up early, except for a couple strategic items? Yeah. That was pretty much it. But I was going to be chivalrous. I was going to be the one on the floor on my back. It was going to be a sacrifice, though. So you know.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, nice. You always have to be on top?”

  “No. I sure don’t. The sacrifice would have been being in the perfect spot to watch you, and not taking off your clothes.”

  It took her a second, but she fired right back at him. “You just hang on to your fantasy.”

 
“Thanks. I believe I will.” He smiled at her, and he could swear her pupils dilated. Just like that, he got a kick of lust down low in his belly that had him shoving a knee up fast.

  “So,” she said after a minute. “I looked you up, you know. You come by that in-charge thing the honest way, I guess. And there I was hoping it was because you were a rancher.”

  “How’s that?” Let’s stay with the clothes, he didn’t say. Or without them. He could remember exactly how she’d sucked in her breath that first time he’d slid his hand inside her shirt. He wanted to hear that noise again.

  She made a wide circle with the water bottle she still held. “Come on. Keep up. Rich start-up guy? Owned your own company? Invented some . . . some . . .”

  “With a partner,” he said. “Yeah. I did that.” OK. Not the clothes. Alas. “An internal communications app for companies that turned into a whole software bundle. We were trying to develop a multiplayer game—a great game, by the way—and the app was a by-product that turned out to be the thing the market wanted. I could tell you more about it, but you’d want to run screaming from the room, and that’s not an option, so . . .”

  “Because I’m not smart enough to understand?” Her eyes were flashing now.

  “No. Because it’s boring.”

  That made her smile, but she pressed on. “So why aren’t you still doing it? Why would you be taking about ten thousand dollars to teach a couple classes for one semester in north Idaho? It’s hardly even minimum wage, and it’s nobody’s road to the big time.”

  He put a hand to the back of his head, gave it a scratch, and grimaced. “Sure you don’t have a few softball questions we could warm up with?”

  “Hey. You went straight to my marriage.”

  “That’s true. I did. Well, we’ll call this two birds with one stone. Because it’ll also explain why I took off on you the way I did. I got back to San Francisco and walked right into a big ol’ mess. Which was my fault.”

  She didn’t answer, just kept looking at him, and after a minute, he went on. “That partnership of mine ended in a bang, not a whimper. And then some other things happened.”