Her Good Fortune Read online

  Jack glanced back at her. She’d shed her coat in a heap on the floor. “Come here, give me your shoulder.”

  He watched her tongue lightly run along the outline of her mouth and tried not to let it affect him. “Why?”

  Exasperated by the situation and by the fact that there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to negate the mounting anxiety in her eyes, he snapped, “Because I didn’t have any breakfast this morning and I’m hungry.” Taking her arm, he pulled her over to the wall. “I need it for leverage, that’s why.”

  Removing his shoes, Jack clamped his hand on her shoulder. She wobbled a little, then braced herself. The phrase “iron butterfly” teased his brain. “You’re sturdier than you look.”

  “So they tell me.”

  He raised his foot as far up as he could, getting it onto the railing. Gloria spread her legs apart, taking a stance as he pushed off her shoulder and rose up parallel to the wall. There was a space between the ceiling and where the sides ended. He secured his fingers along that ridge. Moving in half inches, he managed to make it to the trapped door.

  Holding on with one hand, he pushed the panel with the other. It took a little doing, but the panel finally gave way. Jack moved it to the side. Clearing an opening large enough to accommodate him, he pulled himself up with his arms.

  Watching his every move, Gloria held her breath. She saw him disappear through the opening. For a moment she was alone. Alone in a small space. Just as she had been all those years ago. Perspiration was forming all up and down her spine. She could feel her blouse adhering to her back.

  Damn it, stop panicking. It’s not going to do you any good, she insisted silently.

  Gloria forced her feet to move until she was standing directly under the opening that the panel had covered. She craned her neck. There was nothing but darkness outside the car.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Disappointment resonated through her like a death knell.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “No lights, not even slivers of light between the floors. No nothing.” Which, as far as he could see, could mean only one thing. “It looks like there’s some kind of power failure going on in the building.”

  Her breath felt almost jagged as it caught in her throat. “Do you think it’s affected the whole city?”

  “Probably just us,” he told her in the calmest voice he could muster.

  And then he looked down into the car. She’d been right. He had to do something. “Look, I’m going to try to see if I can get to the next floor.”

  “No!” Her sudden cry surprised him. Her next words surprised him even more. “Don’t leave me.”

  She wasn’t being rational. “Gloria, I—”

  “Don’t leave me,” she repeated, the urgency in her voice growing.

  He supposed there was no way of knowing just how far up he was going to have to climb before he could get out. And if he left her, there was no telling what condition she’d been in by the time he could get back to her. He made his decision.

  “Okay, stand back,” he ordered. “I’m coming down.”

  She moved to the opposite wall, pressing her back up against it, her eyes never leaving his face. Gloria held her breath as she watched him jump down. He winced as he landed.

  “Are you all right?”

  He’d landed wrong on his ankle. Testing it now, he shrugged. “I’ll live.” And then he looked at his clothes. “But I don’t know about my suit.”

  She tried to smile and succeeded only marginally. The space around her was growing smaller. “Can’t stay clean around me, can you?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.” They both jumped when the elevator phone rang. Jack grabbed it. “Hello?”

  “Hello? This car number seven?” a deep male voice rumbled against his ear, carrying beyond the receiver.

  Jack glanced up at the certificate housed behind glass. It okayed the car for service. He squinted to make out the number.

  “Yeah. We’re stuck.”

  “So are all the other elevator cars.” The technician sounded harried and resigned at the same time. “Power’s out throughout the building. You’re going to have to hang tight.”

  Gloria was directly behind him. Desperate, she grabbed the phone from his hand and yelled, “How long?”

  “Dunno. We’re working as fast as we can.” There was a pause, as if the technician was calculating time. “Couple of hours, maybe more.”

  “A couple of hours?” Her eyes widened as her claustrophobia threatened to take over every square inch of her. She could feel it cutting off her air, making her want to gasp.

  “Can’t be helped,” the technician informed her.

  Jack looked at her as she handed him the phone. “Is the blackout confined just to this building?”

  “Looks more like a few blocks. As close as I can tell, a grid went out.” Then, because nothing could be solved on the phone like this, the technician said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  And suddenly the line went dead.

  A fresh assault of panic struck Gloria. She felt as if they’d been abandoned.

  “No, wait, wait,” Gloria cried as she grabbed the receiver from Jack. But there was no one on the other end to hear her.

  They were alone, she thought, anxiety coarsely rubbing against her. Alone for who knew how long?

  Very gently, Jack pried the receiver out of her hand. The woman had a death grip, he thought as he removed her fingers from the phone and hung up.

  The annoyance he’d initially felt had turned to protectiveness. “He’ll call back when he has something to say.”

  Lips pressed together, she nodded. But when she spoke, there was despair in Gloria’s voice. “We might be dead by then.”

  Maybe he could kid her out of it, he thought. “You always exaggerate like that?”

  Instead of answering him, she turned desperate eyes up to his face. “Talk to me.”

  “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 ti
me.

  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

  J ack 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 he
r 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.