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Chapter 1
Amanda
The PA system for SolutionX paged me for the fifth time.“Amanda Starkey, please come to the seventh floor. Amanda Starkey, seventh floor, please.”
I was hurrying as fast as I could, if the stupid elevator would ever kick itself into gear.
“Come on, Bessemer!” I stabbed at the button for the seventh floor again, but the stupid elevator doors still wouldn’t close. No wonder SolutionX was selling the Blanik Building and moving to a new location. The whole place was one step this side of being condemned. I’d miss Mike on a Bike, the bicycle courier, and not much else about this location.
Bessemer the Elevator lurched; it hiccupped. It might choose to move at last. The doors screeched toward closing. Yes! I tightened my high ponytail a little higher on my head. A low buzzing filled the air, as if a call to adventure mixed into this elevator trip to the seventh floor.
Gasp—this elevator might be taking me to my moment, where I’d finally be chosen for the creative team on the Amzaz ad campaign!
“Hold the door please.” A hand shot into the breach.
“Aw!” I could’ve twisted Calvin Turner’s hand right off. And not just because he was making me late for my seventh-floor page-a-thon. “Bessemer was finally starting to move.”
Calvin petted the brass wall. “Bessie’s like an old mare. You have to know how to finesse her.” His perfect hair and his never-rumpled electric blue suit stepped in front of the panel. “There, there, sweetheart. Take us where we need to go, please.” He spoke softly, almost sexily, his lips a quarter inch from the metal and round buttons.
“You’re gross.” And Bessemer was a he, not a she.
“I’m not gross. I know how to get what I want.”
Unfortunately, that might’ve been true. From what I gathered, Calvin Turner had sowed so many wild oats he could’ve qualified for a farm loan. I knew for a fact he’d asked out every girl on the third floor.
Make that, every woman on the third floor except me.
Of course, I was way too smart for that whole chiseled mass of baseless confidence that strolled like clockwork past my cubicle on his way to the coffee hub every morning. Oh, yes, don’t forget he also peppered me with tormenting words about my motivational picture on the wall beside my desk as he passed.
The newly minted executive was charm itself.
“Quit breathing on the other floors’ buttons, would you? Don’t you know about Bessemer’s fatal quirk? If you even hover a finger over the button, the elevator will sense it.”
“She’s highly sensitive to touch?” There was flirtation in Calvin’s eye—for the first time ever directed at me.
Luckily, I was impervious. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t have time to stop on every floor.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Wanna make a bet?” I muttered. On the word bet, Calvin’s eyes caught fire. “Never mind. Pretend I didn’t say that.”
“What type of bet?” He was still flirting with the panel. Dimwit.
“Don’t you hear them paging me nonstop? Be a prince and step away from Bessemer’s panel. You’ll save everyone from annoyance.” Except me, of course.
A gleam lit his eye. When, oh, when, would I learn not to poke the bear?
“What will you give me?”
“An iota of respect?” Bessemer’s doors creaked. They might shut! “Come on. It’s finally ready to move. Don’t tempt fate.”
“You’re saying fate is all around us, Amanda Starkey?” He placed a hand against the panel and leaned over me, a look in his eye smoldering as if he thought he was too good-looking to be resisted. “And that I’m tempting?”
“What you are is insufferable.” And tempting.
At that moment, the doors shut and Bessemer jerked upward. Movement! Soon they could stop paging me for the folio layouts I’d formatted and printed, staying late last night because the hardest job to do is the one you never start, or so says the wisdom of the hobbits.
“Even if you’re not tempted, Bessie will succumb to my charms.” He waved his other hand much too close to the fourth-floor button.
