by Patricia Mar
“God, no,” she thought, “not with those three staring at me while I wait…”
“Stop!”
She stuck her arm between the closing doors and, certain it was about to get crushed to a pulp, was preparing a loud burst of bad language, when a providence intervened from inside, and the doors opened again as if by magic.
Chapter 3
The Bermuda Triangle
“Thanks,” she said, once she’d recovered from the shock of all that handsomeness. Because, lo and behold, there was a knight in shining armour standing right there in front of her. This was like something straight out of some cheesy romantic novel. Well, it was about time something interesting happened to her, she thought.
The man looked at her with his dreamy eyes. No, not quite dreamy – mostly curious, or perhaps annoyed? There wasn’t a sound. No, that’s not actually true: there were phones ringing in the distance, which almost broke the spell, but somehow didn’t. Sara slowly slipped into the lift next to this Adonis, and the lift doors closed.
This can’t be happening, the little voice in her head kept repeating. It’s him – it’s him…
The model!
That wonderful being, with a body that would put a statue to shame, was standing right there next to her – fully clothed, though the healthy nudity in the photos she had so carefully studied with her sister was bouncing around in her brain.
Her heart was hammering away like the drums in a heavy metal band. Their arms were almost touching – only a few centimetres separated them, and Sara could feel his warmth through the thin fabric of her jacket.
What the hell was that god who descended from Mount Olympus to live amongst mere mortals called? If she hadn’t been so distracted by those pictures of his sculpted buttocks, she might have noticed his name in the article accompanying them.
Salivation: zero. Pulse: racing. This must be how fifteen year olds feel when they have the incredible good luck of meeting their favourite member of One Direction. Her hormones were going crazy.
And the funny, or possibly pathetic, thing was that this Adonis didn’t seem to have noticed her. Of course, he had kept the lift door open to stop her from getting squashed into an omelette, but he certainly wasn’t casting any appreciative glances her way. Clearly, even if he was Adonis, she was no Venus.
Her heartbeat slowed with the sudden disappointment, which instantly turned into a vague feeling of depression. Never before had someone like her caught the eye of someone like him.
But did she even want him to notice her? What was the point, when in a matter of seconds he would be gone forever? Very dramatic, but also pretty realistic. Wanting to shore up your ego after having it punctured by Huey, Dewey and Louis up there on reception didn’t justify losing your grip with daydreams that unrealistic.
She was already putting it out of her mind when suddenly the lift lurched and, thrown off balance, she instinctively grabbed the arm of the mysterious model.
Another jolt.
This was no time to indulge herself in thoughts of the muscles of the man standing next to her, thought Sara – what the hell was going on? She lifted her eyes to his face and found that this time he was looking back at her.
Don’t panic, don’t panic just because he’s staring at you! If the situation had been different she would have been gratified, but in this case her panic had a much less noble origin. The elevator had stopped moving, the lights had gone off and a red emergency light had come on, casting a gloomy hue over the cramped space. It was like being in a cave in hell.
“Fantastic!” muttered the girl, straightening up and letting go of her lucky handhold. “Are we stuck?”
The man hadn’t yet spoken – in fact he’d walked away from her and gone to the lift doors, which remained closed, and had begun to push at them experimentally before giving them a couple of bangs with the side of his fist.
Sara, who could sense the palpable nervousness of her fellow prisoner, watched him moving around with undisguised agitation.
At last she heard him speak. His voice was so husky and warm that under normal conditions it would have made a rock hot and bothered, but in that situation it sounded worried. “Can you hear me? Is there anybody there? We’re trapped in here!” Sara could hear a trace of anxiety mixed in with a fairly marked foreign accent.
The frenetic movements he began to make told her that the situation was desperate. The man started randomly pressing all the buttons on the control panel near the doors. How could she tell him there was no point?
Sara moved over to him and with a friendly gesture laid her hand on his arm and said, in the kindest, calmest voice she could muster, “Don’t worry, they’ll have us out of here in no time, you’ll see.”
The man turned around and peered at her. God, he was gorgeous – it was a shame that his features were contracted into a grimace. “I suffer from claustrophobia – do you know what that means?”
Well, that was news that Sara would rather not have received.
The model turned and peered around him like a trapped animal, staring at the metal walls as though they might suddenly close in on him and crush him, the way they nearly did to Han Solo and friends in Star Wars.
She ran a hand over her forehead, trying to think of something intelligent to say. “Take a deep breath – they’ll have us out of here in no time.”
“Do you think so?”
Hope, that’s was what he needed. Still moving restlessly, he loosened his tie as though he was choking, took it off and stuck it in the pocket of his leather jacket. God, he was like a caged lion!
“Of course they will, we’re in a building full of offices! It’s all just business here, they need the lifts working to make all their Euros! They’ll have us out of here in no time at all.”
Okay, maybe she’d gone a bit over the top with the enthusiasm, but too much was better than too little.
He looked at her and gave her a half smile which was actually more like a grimace of pain. There was obviously an anxiety attack on its way – the signs were right there on his face. Not that Sara knew what the signs actually were then, but the sight of him getting more and more agitated was making her extremely nervous. Any other girl would have probably paid to be locked up in a small space with this god-like hunk who looked as though he’d fallen from the heavens, but she was beginning to regret having taken the same lift.
Well, she thought, I’d better do what I can to get him to relax: he looked as though he was about to go into a full on nuclear meltdown, and if he did, Sara didn’t want to be near him when he exploded – although there wasn’t really anywhere to go in that sardine tin.
She reached out her hand to him without actually realising that she was introducing herself. “Hi, I’m Sara De Michele.” Ah, finally she’d found a flaw in that monstrous beauty – his hand was as slippery as an eel. She looked him straight in the eyes and saw beads of sweat sliding down his forehead in the dim light.
“I’m Daniel – Daniel Gant.”
He seemed to be making an effort to keep his voice under control.
That’s what he was called! Daniel Gant. Was he English? American? Australian? He certainly spoke pretty good Italian. “Pleasure to meet you, Daniel, now… Let’s try and relax, okay? Why don’t we sit down, eh?”
And without waiting for an answer, she slid to the floor, leaning back against the wall and staring upwards. She preferred not to think about the colony of microbes she’d probably squashed beneath her bottom – she’d worry about washing her clothes later.
“I suffer from claustrophobia. I’m going to die in here.”
They weren’t exactly the words that Sara wanted to hear. He was getting decidedly agitated. Houston, we have a problem.
With a brisk, nurse-like move she took him by the hand and pulled him down, forcing him to sit beside her. “Try and relax – you’ll see that we’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”
Daniel ran a hand through his hair fretfully and leaned against t
he makeshift backrest. “I don’t know how long I can handle this. It’s not the first time I’ve been trapped in a lift.”
Sara looked at him sideways. What a career – male model and serial lift prisoner. Very eclectic.
“What happened?” she asked, curiously. It was a good sign if he wanted to make conversation.
“Believe me,” he replied, staring straight at her, “you don’t want to know.”
Was he trying to hypnotise her or just frighten her? Whatever it was, it was working.
“Maybe you should focus on something nice – close your eyes and think of a beach, the waves lapping on the sand and… What’s the matter?” she asked, noticing that Daniel was staring at her as though she were a kind of Rubik’s cube he had to solve. He didn’t look particularly willing to go along with her idea. Too bad, it was a good one.
Sara frowned. “Think of something…”
“What do you do?” he asked suddenly, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes. He bent one leg and rested one arm on his knee. Cool pose… shame there was no photographer to capture that epic moment.
Sara relaxed. “I’m unemployed, I don’t do anything. I came here to Inside Look for an interview today, but it all went wrong. My alarm clock didn’t go off, I missed the bus, there was a traffic jam and…”
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Oh great! I’ve walked into your personal Bermuda Triangle.” He sounded a little too resentful for her taste.
“Are you suggesting that I bring bad luck?”
She was shocked to say the least.
“I’m just saying that we got stuck in a lift during your personal nightmare.”
“I got into the lift second – maybe the lift has it in for you!”
He pulled a face and leaned back against the metal wall, crossing his arms over his chest. How rude! And after she’d tried to be kind and help him avoid an unpleasant anxiety attack.
Daniel’s drawn lips softened into a half-smile and once again became full and sensual. “You might be right – after all, lifts and me don’t really get on. I always try to avoid taking them if I can, but you know… Sometimes there’s just no way around it! Skyscrapers… There’s just too many stairs…”
Sara tried to maintain her composure even though she wanted to laugh. “Are you trying to be funny?” There was a note of reproach in her words. Perhaps he was ready to actually talk to her without being rude.
Daniel glanced at her sideways and smiled, genuinely this time. “Look, I’m not usually such unpleasant company, honestly, but believe me, at this precise moment I’m really struggling.”
“I thought it must be me who was the problem,” she joked, more to get him to talk than anything else.
He made himself more comfortable and turned to concentrate on her while he took deep breaths and distractedly unbuttoned his shirt, a movement Sara couldn’t help noticing. Flashes of the photos she’d seen danced before her eyes and the tasty looking section of his neck which was now on show confused her more than it should have. She had to concentrate on her interlocutor – dressed!
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, seemingly studying one another surreptitiously, until Daniel suddenly asked, “So the interview didn’t go very well?” He was trying to distract himself as much as possible, and actually even seemed interested.
“I didn’t even have an interview. I got here late and they’d already hired someone else. I really made a fool of myself – I’m never usually late. Today, destiny must have had it in for me.”
“Maybe destiny’s got something better in mind for you.”
Sara tilted her head to observe him better. Yeah, sure – destiny had reserved for her a two metre square honeymoon suite to share with that hunk!
“Or perhaps destiny was distracted and hadn’t read its appointments… ‘Today’s the day Sara gets a job at Inside Look” She smiled at him without a trace of resentment for his snarky jibe earlier. At the end of the day, he really was having a hard time of it, so she could forgive his rudeness.
Daniel laughed, a full, deep laugh that made her legs, stretched out on the floor of the lift, turn to jelly. God alone knew what a woman would do for a man like that.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Sara jumped and went red in the face – but fortunately, it would have been impossible to notice in the spectral light “I’ve seen some of your photo shoots.”
She said the first thing that came into her head. Bad idea, because it was one of those photo shoots that was disintegrating the few shreds of sanity she had left.
“So you know who I am?” he asked.
“Let’s say I do, but I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t remember your name.” She bit her lip. That might sound a bit ambiguous. “I mean, I don’t read fashion magazines much, it’s my sister Virginia who’s the expert.”
“And you were looking for a job here?” he chuckled, in a way that irked her.
“Do you need to know the names of all the models in the world to be a secretary here?” She wanted to puncture his ego. He was bound to have an overdeveloped one if he could show off his body and had a job where his appearance was worth its weight in gold.
“Touché! But I’m not all the models in the world.” Three cheers for humility, then. Hang on, was he flirting with her? In there?
Sara’s eyes fell upon a portion of flesh that had started to make her feel embarrassed and swallowed slowly. It was another of those moments – the ones straight out of a cheesy romance novel: the man and the woman are talking and sense a mutual attraction, and then the moment of truth… Clang.
What was that noise?
Clang…
There it was again, this time accompanied by the lift shaking.
Daniel’s eyes became wary, and his body started to tremble. Sara was beginning to feel scared too. Daniel jumped to his feet and started walking back and forth.
“I can’t breathe, there’s no air in here.” He took off his leather jacket and then his shirt, balled them up and then threw them angrily into a corner of the lift.
Sara got to her feet uncertainly. “Come on, take it easy, you’ll see…”
“You don’t get it, I can’t breathe,” he said, raising a hand to his throat as though to prove that he really couldn’t.
Another bang. Keep calm, Sara, we’re not going to fall… are we? With her hands she started fanning the model’s face, which was now contracted into a grimace of terror. His chest, dripping with sweat, pumped air at a dizzying speed. He was hyperventilating.
What the hell could she do to calm him down?
Slap him? Try suggesting that he think of something nice again? Insult him? Shake him?
With his low rise trousers and incredible physique, Daniel was gasping for breath as though he might pass out at any moment, and the worrying noises around them were increasing in intensity – never mind Mills & Boon, this was more like something out of Steven King.
Think, Sara – think!
“I can’t breathe!” Daniel kept whispering, as though she could actually do something about it.
The girl stared at him and summoned up all her courage because what she was about to do was absolute madness – she was risking all of her pride and self-esteem. She reached out, took his face in her hands and pulled him close, while he gave her a stunned look.
Sara took a deep breath, pressed her mouth against his soft lips and kissed him.
Daniel’s mouth squirmed in a strange and not particularly reassuring way. She was kissing an attractive man, and even if she did survive the lift crashing down the shaft the shame would definitely kill her – but if by kissing him she could distract and surprise him enough to stop him working himself into a state of hysteria then the sacrifice would have been worth it.
Hang on, was that Daniel Gant’s tongue that was trying to make its way into her mouth? That had found its way inside and was now carefully exploring? And were those Daniel Gant’s hands that were now gently
stroking Sara’s hips?
The girl’s heart began to pump furiously: she was in danger of getting drunk on oxygen – and on Gant. With a body and a mouth like this, this guy could be a sensual serial killer by profession.
Clang, and there was yet another jolt. She was about to die, but at least she would do it in the arms of Apollo while giving the hottest kiss of her life.
“Excuse me, are we disturbing you?” an amused baritone voice interrupted them.
Sara and Daniel broke off awkwardly and turned to look at the stocky man wearing the uniform of the firefighter and staring at them with a smirk. Yes, it probably did look like a slightly compromising, and perhaps even embarrassing, situation, what with Daniel shirtless and the two of them entwined like octopuses, busily snogging with a certain enthusiasm…
They climbed to their feet, and Sara straightened her suit while Daniel picked up his shirt and leather jacket.
“Thanks for getting us out!” exclaimed Sara shrilly, as she walked out of the elevator. The firefighter let her pass and she found herself in front of a wall of people. At least five of them – two more firefighters and a few curious onlookers.
She saw their expressions change from amusement to amazement as they looked from her to the inside of the lift and then back to her with renewed curiosity.
Sara turned round to catch Daniel’s eye, he looked as uncomfortable as she felt. He had re-assumed his cool exterior, though, and was speaking to their saviours. “Thanks for the help. I suffer from claustrophobia and this lady—”
“Yes, I saw,” said one of the others, “she was giving you mouth to mouth resuscitation.”
Daniel joined him in the laughter that followed. “Something like that, yes.”
She had been his benefactress, had sacrificed her reputation to distract him, the idiot, and now here she was, the laughing stock of the century.
While everyone’s attention was focused on Daniel, Sara took one, two, three quiet steps towards the back stairs. A few flights on foot wouldn’t kill her, the important thing was to get out of there in a hurry after this awful morning. Although it hadn’t all been awful: she was hardly going to forget a kiss like that – it was one of those that remains etched upon your memory, just like your first crush.
