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Above us, Mikey swears a blue streak. “You two want a little privacy?” he yells into the elevator, not hiding the sarcasm.
Jeremy winces. “Randy, get the power turned off. Mikey, get your hands on the building keys. Ask the lady downstairs. ”
Mikey swears again. “Just no more stupid stunts!” he orders before heading for the stairs.
And now I’m alone with Jeremy.
Still clinging to the handrail, I look up at him. He’s not wearing the whole fire-fighting regalia outfit. Instead, he’s in a very official-looking dark blue uniform with short sleeves that show off his bulging arms and a belt with a lot of helpful-looking gadgets on it.
I wonder once again if he has to have his uniform specially made because his arms are seriously ridiculous. I guess it’s the sort of trivial thought that goes through your head when your life is on the line.
I bite back the giggles before they get full-on hysterical. “That was dumb,” I point out. “Now we’re both stuck.”
“It was dumb,” he agrees. “If one of my men did something like this, I’d suspend them for a week.” He sighs. “But not as dumb as accusing you of trying to blackmail me. I’m really sorry about that.”
He leans closer and for a moment I think he’s going to pull me into his arms but instead, his enormous hand lands on mine and begins to pry it gently away from the guardrail.
“Relax,” he says in that deep, rumbly whisper of his. “If we need to get out of here fast, I want you to be ready to go.”
I soften my hand into his and let him unpeel me from the handrail. My fingers actually ache, and I wonder how tightly I was holding on. Then he unglues my other hand, and now he’s got both my hands wrapped in his.
“Come on, let’s sit.” He eases me gently to the floor and I lean into him, letting him wrap his huge strong arms around me. “Not letting you go until we’re out of here, okay?”
“You do this for all your trapped-in-an-elevator victims?”
“Only the sexy librarian ones.”
I lean into him. It feels good to have a strong body to lean on, like I can be weak and vulnerable and he’ll just absorb it all and replace it with his own strength.
There’s a long pause. “What the hell, Jeremy?” I finally sigh. “You really hurt my feelings.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “For what it’s worth, you hurt mine too.”
“I’m sorry,” I concede. “I should have said something about the interviews.”
“How many jobs have you applied to?”
“About a dozen.”
I feel him draw in a deep breath. “Well, good for you. You should know what all your options are. I shouldn’t be trying to keep you here against your will.”
I shuffle so that I’m looking him in the face. “It’s not that I want to leave,” I insist. “It’s that my job here isn’t tenable if nothing changes.”
“I get it,” he concedes with obvious reluctance. “It’s not like we’ve even known each other that long. It’s just…I thought things were good with Christine, until they weren’t. But once it was over, I realized they were never quite right, and I was able to see what I really wanted.” He pauses to study the elevator ceiling. “Things with you just felt really right, you know?”
He’s already talking in the past tense… and that’s when I realize I’m not ready for past tense.
“Jeremy, I’m not good at relationships,” I confess. “I don’t get emotionally involved, and when I do, I have a tendency to run. Commitment scares me. Apparently-perfect guys who are incredibly into me really scare me.”
“Apparently perfect, huh?” He lets a smug smile cross his face.
I slap his shoulder. “I’m being vulnerable here. My point is, I don’t have a lot of experience with serious relationships. I guess I don’t really have any. Plus with the Addison, and my job being up in the air… Maybe if you could promise to slow down a little, and I promise to try to not run away, we could sort of meet in the middle and see where things go?”
He gives me a long, searching look. “I think that’s fair, and I’ll do my best to meet you in the middle. But no more secrets, okay?”
“Okay.”
I’m still stuck in an elevator with no apparent way out, so I can’t say I relax completely, but this feels nice, it feels right. I relax a bit more deeply into his broad chest.
