He shook his head. “This reunion, it’s not a time machine, we can’t go back. We’ve all grown up.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. He walked purposefully toward the door now, shoulders tight, body language closed. “Let’s just go back up.” She was about to speak when there was a crashing sound outside, a shelf falling. The cellar door slammed shut, the echo like a gunshot. John lunged for it, pushed his shoulder against it. Chloe rushed to help him, but it was stuck firm. They were sealed in.
20
Chloe looked around the small,stone-encased chamber that they were locked in. It suddenly felt more like a crypt than a cellar. The kiss still hummed on her lips, but any thought of it was fast giving way to the horror of being trapped underground with no light source, no toilet, and no one who might think to check on them for hours.
“The shelf must have fallen in front of the door,” John said, stating the obvious.
“So how do we get out?” Chloe cried, pressing her weight against the door, then shoving it in frustration.
John pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. “No reception. You?” Chloe checked her phone. Not a flicker.
“What are we going to do? Who knows we’re down here?” she asked, her voice high and strained.
“Don’t worry,” John said. “Elaine knows I’m down here, so does the head butler. They’ll come looking for the wine in a minute.”
“Or they’ll just settle for the cheap stuff,” Chloe muttered, shivering slightly.
“Thatisa possibility,” he admitted, taking his jacket off and giving it to her. “Here.”
“Thanks.” She slipped it on—it was warm and smelled of his cologne. She hugged it around her, inhaling the smell.
“Rob will come looking for you,” he said, clearing his throat as he sank down onto one of the upturned crates. She looked down at her watch, which now blinked yellow. Would Rob sense what she was feeling and know to come? She didn’t even know whether the device was in range from down here.
“What do we do until then?” she asked, and now her mind leaped straight back to the kiss and she felt a flutter in her stomach. Rob kissed like a well-rehearsed dancer who never missed a beat. But that kiss with John, brief as it was, had been something else entirely. It wasn’t a dance, it was a match struck, dropped on dry kindling. Wild and unscripted…dangerously intoxicating. That was the kind of kiss people burned the world down for. Even now, she could still feel it—not just on her lips, but in her fingertips, at the back of her knees, a smoldering glow, desperate to be reignited.
John crouched down and set the torch upright on the floor, so it cast a cone of amber light upward. Then, without looking at her, he stepped toward her and slipped his hand into the jacket draped around her shoulders. Her breath caught in anticipation of what he might do, but then he dipped into the inner pocket and his hand drew back holding a bottle opener.
“We could open something?” he said, glancing at the shelves.
She exhaled. “Sure.”
John turned two crates on their sides as makeshift seats, then selected a dusty bottle of port and cracked it open with a quiet flourish. He offered her the first sip.
“I don’t know if I like port,” she said, eyeing it warily.
“Is that what Indiana Jones would say?” he asked, his voice lighter suddenly. “I thought you were always up for trying new things.”
“Oh I am,” she said, taking the bottle from him, trying not to worry about what she would do if she needed the loo. You never sawthatinThe Last Crusade, the damsel saying, “Will you excuse me while I do a wee behind this rock?”
She pressed the cool glass lip to her mouth and the sweet, dark liquid filled her senses. He was right, it was delicious. She licked her lips and passed the bottle back to him. He drank from the same spot; she watched his mouth, touching the place hers had just been. Her pulse quickened and the walls of the cellar pressed closer.
She drew John’s jacket tighter around her shoulders, her knee brushed his, but neither of them moved. “They’ll notice we’re gone soon, right?” she asked.
“Sure, twenty minutes, max,” John said, his voice firm, reassuring.
Now that they’d embraced their immediate predicament, Chloe felt a fresh wave of embarrassment over the kiss, the seismic reaction she’d had. There was no getting away from it.
“I’m sorry, about kissing you just now,” she said quietly, and even in the half-light, she could see his cheeks burn.
“I’m sorry if I confused things,” he said, then added after a beat, “You’re with Rob. I don’t want you to do anything you’d regret.”
Was that why he’d stopped, because of Rob? She felt a thrum of hope, an ember stirring. How could she explain that Rob wasn’t real, that he wouldn’t mind? You couldn’t cheat on a machine, could you? She didn’t want to lie, but the truth was impossible.
She reached for the port, then asked with a smile, “Why didn’t you kiss me like that back then?”
John laughed, dragging a hand through his hair. “You never looked at me then like you’re looking at me now.” And there it was again, embers glowing hot in his eyes. He glanced away, but she didn’t. Studying him, it struck her how unique his face was, not perfect like Rob’s but lived in, perfectly imperfect—the small scar on his forehead, his slightly crooked front tooth, the patch on his chin where stubble didn’t grow, the smile lines around his eyes, and the serious slope of his nose. It was a face that told a story. Were these feelings for him new, or had they been here all along, just waiting to be unearthed?
