The Millionaire And The Glass Slipper

He thought she shuddered.

“And you know these things because you’ve worked with elevator companies,” she concluded flatly.

“Call it a perk.”

Amy swallowed. “Thank you for sharing.”

He liked her bravado. Most of the women he knew would be in need of major hand holding by now. “Let’s give them a while. If we start needing food and water, I promise, we’ll come up with something.

“So,” he continued, thinking it best to move on from the scenarios he’d planted in her head. With the time being wasted just standing there, he would have thought he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment, too. Almost. “Why diving?”

It wasn’t often that he met anyone he found particularly intriguing, much less anyone who truly surprised him. Never would he have imagined her wrestling air tanks and weight belts to play tag with eels off the Great Barrier Reef. As docile as she’d first seemed, he wouldn’t have thought there was an adventurous bone in her slender little body.

“Because I like the way I feel when I’m doing it.”

“How’s that?”

“Free,” Amy said easily. She no longer cared what he asked her while they waited. She was just grateful for the distraction he offered, and for his solid presence. Had she been trapped there alone, she might well be huddled in a corner by now. “I don’t feel that anywhere the way I do in the water. There are no restraints. It’s just you and this whole other world. It’s all just so…different. So…natural.” So peaceful, she started to add, only to go silent as awkwardness abruptly crept through her.

Describing the abandon she felt in all that unhurried quiet didn’t seem as simple as telling him about goals that probably weren’t extraordinary at all to someone who seemed as urbane as this man did. Even in the dark, she ducked her head. “It’s hard to explain to someone unless they’ve been there themselves.”

Moments ago she’d moved closer. Not by much, J.T. thought. Just close enough that every breath he drew now brought her subtle scent with it. He couldn’t figure out what it was. It seemed too light to be perfume. Her shampoo, maybe. Body wash.

Already more aware of her than he wanted to be, he thought about moving himself. She was clearly growing more uncomfortable, though, and trying her best to mask it. So he stayed where he was. Despite whatever discomfort or awkwardness she felt, she also seemed to feel safer near him.

“You don’t have to explain it to me.” He offered the assurance as he turned from the back wall, edged to the wall adjoining it. She was right there, presumably with her back against the panels. With his arms crossed, he let his jacket sleeve rest lightly against her upper arm. She could move closer if she wanted. Or away, if she chose. “I know what you mean.”

Though he sensed hesitation, she stayed where she was.

“You do?”

“I haven’t been diving in years,” he admitted, wondering if he hadn’t just felt her relax a little. He preferred to be on the water, pushing for speed and battling the wind for control. “But I sail for the same reason.” Especially to an island that I want to build a home on someday, he thought, and overlooked the agitation that came with the idea of potentially losing access to it. “I haven’t had time to indulge myself lately, either.”

“Did your father teach you?”

That agitation seemed determined to be felt. She couldn’t possibly know that his relationship with his father bore no resemblance whatsoever to what she’d apparently shared with hers. He just wasn’t about to tell her how many times Harry had raised his preteen hopes about them doing something together, only to attend a meeting instead. How many times he’d fallen asleep outside his dad’s office to show him something he’d made or a paper for which he’d received an exceptional grade only to have a housekeeper wake him and tell him his dad had left. Old Harry had been far too busy building his technological empire to bother with anything so mundane as what might matter to a kid.

“I learned with a friend. We borrowed his brother’s boat and basically taught ourselves.”

He’d been grounded for a week when Cornelia had discovered what he’d been doing and told his father about it. He’d been grounded for another week for risking his neck because Cornelia had insisted they could have capsized the boat and drowned. He’d never been worried, though. By the time she’d found out what he’d been up to, he’d become a pretty good sailor.

“How old were you?” he heard Amy ask.

“Twelve.” He hadn’t thought back so far in years. “I decided then that I’d have my own sailboat someday.”

“How long was it before you bought one?”

The smile in her voice seemed to say that she didn’t doubt his determination for an instant. Drawn by that, he might well have told her about the series of boats that had led to the forty-foot sloop he currently kept docked in Seattle. But even as he opened his mouth he remembered that he needed her and everyone else in the ad agency to think him a relatively average guy. He had no idea what she and her stepsister did or didn’t share with each other, but he didn’t want to say anything he wouldn’t want repeated. He strongly suspected that a modestly successful architect wouldn’t trade-in million-dollar sailboats the way most men did cars.

Grateful once more for the dark, he told her only that he bought a small one when he was eighteen. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her any of this as it was. He wasn’t in the habit of talking about his childhood to anyone. There’d been good parts and bad. He’d survived it. End of story. But he was spared having to wonder at how easily the young woman beside him had drawn him out when the elevator jerked.

Amy’s breath caught as she grabbed for him. Jared’s hands clamped around her upper arms. In the awful seconds while she waited for whatever would happen next, she didn’t know if he pulled her to him to keep her from losing her balance, or if he was simply bracing them both. All she knew for certain was that he’d pulled her into his arms, that his body felt as solid as steel, and that she could do nothing but hang on.

With her heart battering her ribs, she buried her head against his chest.

Beneath her feet, the floor remained still long enough for her to become conscious of being surrounded by his heat—an instant before the elevator started to descend. Slowly. The way it always did.

Her pulse still racing, she opened her eyes, drew a quick, decidedly cautious breath. The scents of citrus aftershave and warm male filled her lungs as she blinked at the strip of cashmere between the soft wool lapels fisted in her hands.

The lights had come back on.

“Are you okay?”

His voice came from above her, the rich sounds of it a quiet rumble beneath the strains of the Muzak once again filtering through the speakers.

Looking straight ahead, all she could see was the wall of his very solid chest. She didn’t want to move. For that unexpected, too-fleeting moment, she felt very safe where she was. Sheltered. Protected. She hadn’t felt anything remotely resembling that alien sense of security since long before her father had died.

The feeling vanished with her next heartbeat.

Glancing up, her eyes met his. With her head tipped back, she was close enough to see shards of silver in cloud gray eyes, the carved lines bracketing his beautiful mouth. Already aware of the compelling feel of his arms, she nearly forgot what he’d asked.

He’d gone as still as stone. Or maybe it was she who failed to move as his glance skimmed her face and settled on her parted lips.

For one totally surreal instant, it seemed as if he was about to close the negligible distance between them. Yet, even as her heart nearly stalled at the thought of his mouth on hers, a muscle in his jaw jerked. His hold on her eased.

Releasing her grip on his lapels, she stepped back just as he did.

It was only then she remembered that he’d asked if she was all right. Considering the knotted state of her nerves, she most definitely was not.

“I’m…yes, of course,” she murmured, jamming awkwardness beneath a thin layer of composure. He was watching her, rather curiously from the feel of his eyes on her as she scooped up her stack of mail while the elevator continued its descent. “I’m…fine. I’m just sorry you had to wander under the little black cloud that’s been following me around all day. That’s probably why I nearly ran you over in the office, and why you got stuck in here with me now.” Refusing to consider what else could go wrong, she aimed a commendably calm smile at the cleft in his chin. If she’d learned anything from her years in advertising, it was that perception was everything. If you appeared in control, everyone thought you were. “The good news is that it’s me, not you, and that bad days get better.”

“What about bad weeks?”

“Those are the ones that build character.” Or so her grandma said.

“Bad months?” he asked, and watched as her smile made it to her eyes. Something knowing shifted in those doe-brown depths.

“That’s when you need to find something to do that takes you away from your problems for a while. Whatever you’re dealing with won’t go away,” she warned him, “but for that hour or that day, you’ve taken away its power over you.”

The elevator stopped. Even as her smile fell away, the doors opened to a lobby crowded with office workers. Before J.T. could ask what sort of thing she would suggest as an escape, or what else had happened to her that day, she’d slipped into the mass of people grumbling about having had to walk the however-many flights they’d taken to get to the ground floor, only to now have to wait for an elevator to go back up.

He moved into the crowd himself, stopping a lawyer-type in a three-piece suit to ask what had happened to the power. The man told him that one of the building’s floors was being gutted and remodeled. A worker had apparently shorted an electrical line and tripped the building’s main breaker.

J.T. had barely thanked the guy before he glanced back to see if he could catch a glimpse of short and shining brown hair. He saw no one familiar, though, as he moved through the surge of people and out the building’s tall glass doors.

Frowning at himself, he stepped out into the early fall air. He was on the brick-paved transit mall. MAX, the commuter train, rattled by on its light-rail line. A bus idled at the light on the corner. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to kissing her. With her mouth inches from his, her scent and the feel of her coltish little body drawing him closer, he’d come within a heartbeat of seeing if she tasted as sweet as she looked.

Sweet. He’d never met a female he would have described that way.