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Sure, he was kind. He had nice eyes. But his arms were skinnier than mine, his hands just a bit too clammy, and the thought of having sex with him—let alone a lifetime of having sex with him—was enough to send me bolting from the seamstress shop, my mom’s wedding dress dragging on the concrete as I sprinted back to the hotel.
I didn’t want to marry Ethan.
And I had a feeling that Ethan didn’t want to marry me either.
Did Caroline already call her son and tell him that I’d physically freaked out at the sight of myself in my mom’s wedding dress?
I groaned.
Call.
Phone.
I’d left my phone in my purse, sitting in the dressing room at the tailor’s shop.
I tugged out of his arms, heedless of his warning, and backed into the corner, slowly sinking onto the carpeted floor of the elevator.
What did I do?
“You don’t happen to have any alcohol on you?”
“Ah, no. Can’t say that I do.”
I stifled a panicked laugh because if there was a bottle of whiskey in front of me, I’d chug straight from that bitch and do it with a smile on my face.
My dad was going to cut my ass off for this.
My big, good-smelling companion was nothing more than a faint outline in the weak light coming from the panel on the wall, and he watched me for a minute, then turned toward the panel, apparently satisfied that we weren’t dangling over the ground by a fraying elevator cable. I sank my head into my hands and tried to focus on deep, steady breathing.
“Do you have your phone on you?” he asked.
I kept my head in my hands. “If I did, I’d be on it right now. I’m assuming you don’t either.”
He cleared his throat. “If I did, I’d be on it right now.”
My head lifted, and I pinned him with an ineffectual glare.
He continued, probably because he couldn’t see my face clearly to see how very little I was amused. “Left it in my hotel room. That’s why I didn’t get out of the elevator at the lobby. I was headed back up there to get it.”
My eyes had slowly adjusted to the light in the elevator, and I caught a glimpse of his hard profile as he stared at the buttons. The sloping mass of his shoulders hunched in as he tried to find the help button.
He pressed it, and nothing happened. Then he pressed it again.
No disembodied voice on the other end, telling us help was on the way.
Those ice chips in my veins got just a little bit bigger.
“Fuck.” He stood back from the panel and surveyed the small enclosure. “My kingdom for a flashlight,” he muttered.
I exhaled a harsh laugh. “I have one in my purse.”
“Does your purse happen to be hidden underneath that skirt?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” I answered primly. My face was warm because I was in a wedding dress, in an elevator, with a tall, lumberjacky stranger, and I’d just essentially set off a grenade on my personal and family life.
And I’d left my purse in the shop next door in my haste to avoid a panic attack in front of my would-be mother-in-law and the very nice seamstress who had very nice plans to alter my mom’s very nice dress.
All in all—not my best day.
