by Mari Carr
They walked to the elevator side by side, neither of them talking, which was strange for her. Him not talking was actually the norm. Ryder’s side of any conversation between the two of them was usually him responding to her questions or comments. He was a quiet, introspective man, and Darcy wondered if that was part of his appeal. She was part of a huge family of boisterous, can’t-get-a-word-in-edgewise people—the male relatives as loud and talkative as the women, especially when sports and wagers were the topics.
Ryder seemed to spend a lot of time in his own head, alone with his thoughts, and Darcy was dying to get a glimpse inside. He also projected an air of alpha male that she found super sexy. She’d spent too many nights recalling the way he’d wrapped that belt around his hand the evening he’d come home drunk all those years ago.
Since then, Darcy had become fascinated by the concept of domination and submission. Her cousin Caitlyn had married a Dominant man, and she had probably answered at least a million and twelve of Darcy’s questions about their relationship in the past couple of years.
Of course, Ryder wasn’t all work and no play. Darcy had caught more than a few glimpses of his playful side with Clint and Vince. The way he teased and joked around with his sons reminded her of her close relationship with her own dad, Aaron.
However, it was safe to say that most of the time, and with the exception of the boys, Ryder was serious and reserved, a sexy mystery, which simply ensured he kept Darcy captivated.
Ryder didn’t glance her direction as they stepped onto the elevator. Instead, he pushed the button to the bottom floor and waited as the doors closed.
The man was completely oblivious to her feelings for him. Which she could admit was her own fault. After all, she worked overtime to act completely natural around him, though she knew her family suspected her feelings.
It was hard enough to know her crush was one-sided, so there was no way she’d make a jackass of herself mooning over him or making him uncomfortable with unrequited feelings.
They’d only descended a few floors when the lights flickered. The elevator stopped rather abruptly, and Darcy had to quickly reach out to the side wall to steady herself. The lights went out completely for a second or two before emergency backup lights flashed on. They were much dimmer than the real lights—more pale gold than bright, fluorescent white.
Darcy took a deep, steadying breath and closed her eyes. “Please start moving again,” she whispered. Their offices occupied the entire fifteenth floor of one of Baltimore’s tallest skyscrapers. If she had to guess, she’d say they hadn’t passed the tenth floor yet.
Ryder sighed. “Dammit.”
“No.” Darcy shook her head. “Not dammit. Don’t say dammit.”
He turned to look at her and grimaced. “It would appear the power has gone out.”
“Can we open the doors?”
Ryder shook his head. “No. I’m fairly certain we can’t.” He pressed the emergency call button, and Darcy could have cried in relief when a voice responded.
“This is Ryder Hagen. The elevator has stopped.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hagen. This is Rodney at the security desk. There’s a power outage and it appears to have taken down a large chunk of the city. I’m trying to find out now how long they anticipate it will be out.”
“Okay. Will you let us know when you find out?” Ryder asked, looking put out, but also at ease, considering their situation.
“Of course, sir,” Rodney replied.
“There’s no way to get us out of here?” Darcy asked Ryder, hating how breathy her voice sounded. It was as if her throat had closed and she suddenly couldn’t get any sound through.
“Is it possible to open these doors manually?” Ryder asked the man on the other end of the call button.
“I’m afraid not, sir. Are you alone?”
Ryder glanced around the elevator. “Isn’t there a camera in here, Rodney?”
“Camera is down due to the power outage.”
“I see. There’s another person trapped as well. Darcy Young.”
Darcy swallowed hard, wishing Ryder wouldn’t use the word trapped.
“Are you both okay?” Rodney asked.
“We’re fine.”
Darcy wouldn’t use the word fine, either. Because she was not fine.
“I’m sorry to say I think you’ll both have to sit tight at this point. As I said, I’ll let you know how long the expected outage time is as soon as I find out.”
“Thank you,” Ryder said, taking his finger away from the button, then looking at her. “So we’re stuck.”
Darcy nodded slowly, working overtime to contain the freak-out threatening to erupt.
She must have been successful because Ryder didn’t appear to notice her distress. He put down his briefcase, took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and leaned against the back wall of the elevator casually. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Meanwhile, she was struggling not to throw up.
They both stood there, silent for a few minutes, as the reality of the situation sank in. Ryder was taking it in stride, though she knew him well enough to know he was probably more inconvenienced than annoyed.
As for her. Well, she was trembling inside so bad, she didn’t know how she wasn’t breaking bones.
Darcy jumped when Rodney’s voice crackled through the speaker again.
“Mr. Hagen?”
Ryder stepped back to the call button. “Yes.”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Darcy shook her head. “No, no bad news,” she muttered.
Ryder glanced at her as he spoke to the man. “How long?”
“Looks like several hours. Pretty bad transformer fire in a substation. A lot of the city is currently without power. Nine-one-one is being bombarded with calls, so I’m not sure I can get anyone here to help you out.”
“I understand,” he said.
Darcy didn’t. She really fucking didn’t.
“No firefighters?” she asked Ryder. “Can’t they break people out of elevators?”
“You heard him, Darcy. They’re fielding a million calls right now,” Ryder explained, his finger off the button so the man couldn’t hear. “This doesn’t exactly constitute an emergency. We aren’t in danger or injured.”
Darcy and Ryder were going to have to agree to disagree on what constituted an emergency because, in her mind, this was a big one.
Darcy considered calling her dad. Aaron Young was a cop, and he’d hightail it over here to try to get her out if he knew she was stuck. But she couldn’t do it. As much as she was freaking out inside, she knew there would be others who would need him more. It wouldn’t be right to drag him away from his job just because of what she knew was an irrational fear.
Ryder pressed the button. “We appreciate you letting us know, Rodney.”
“I’ll be in contact if I’m able to get anyone here to help. Otherwise…”
Ryder went ahead and finished the man’s comment when it was obvious he didn’t want to point out they were well and truly stuck. “Otherwise, we’ll simply wait until the power comes back on.”
Ryder returned to his previous spot, leaning against the back wall. She watched as he completely removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. If she weren’t struggling for air, Darcy would have found his actions hot. But at the moment, she couldn’t get enough oxygen to her brain to appreciate Ryder’s sexiness.
Oh God. Was the air thinning out? Were they going to suffocate?
Ryder pointed to the bags she still held. White-knuckled, actually. “Might as well get comfortable, Darcy. It looks like we’re going to be in here a few hours.”
Hours.
Oh God.
She couldn’t do hours!
Then she glanced down and realized… “Vodka.”
“Are you proposing we get drunk?”
“It couldn’t hurt.” In her case, it could only help. She lifted the bag, pulling out a
bottle.
She was surprised when Ryder took the bottle of Grey Goose from her and opened it before handing it back.
“Ladies first.”
She grinned, lifted it in a silent cheers, and took a drink, wincing slightly. “Oh, what I’d give for some orange juice.” Darcy handed it to Ryder, who took a longer swig.
“I’d prefer vermouth and an olive.”
“Shaken not stirred, James?” she teased, grateful for the conversation. If she’d been trapped alone, she’d be in the fetal position in the corner already.
“Shhh. My identity is a secret.”
“Careful, Ryder. That’s dangerously close to a sense of humor.” Darcy laughed as he put the cap back on the bottle and set it on the floor between them. She and Yvonne teased him about his general lack of silliness. The man was the epitome of buttoned-up and serious.
“I’ll tread lightly,” he deadpanned, causing her eyes to widen. Two jokes in a row. This was a record.
Darcy slid down the wall at her back until she was sitting. Ryder followed suit, sighing heavily.
“Not exactly the Halloween you had planned,” he said.
She shook her head. “Nope. By now, I would have expected to have put a dent in Sunnie’s spiked punch, and everyone would have raved over my Wonder Woman costume.”
“I can see you as Wonder Woman,” Ryder said. “God knows Clint sees you that way.”
Darcy was touched by Ryder’s compliment. She was crazy about his son too. “Was Clint doing anything for Halloween?”
“He’s spending the night at his best friend Charlie’s house. Charlie’s mom was planning to take them out trick-or-treating. He’s Mario to Charlie’s Luigi.”
“Clint will rock a Mario costume.”
Ryder nodded. “The kid is video game crazy.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
Ryder rolled his eyes, though he didn’t look annoyed as much as amused. Darcy, Vince, and Clint had spent literally hundreds of hours in the past four years, either online together or whenever she was babysitting or visiting with Yvonne, playing all sorts of video games. They’d gone through a major Mario Kart phase, and they were now obsessed with Fortnite.
Ryder said she was a bad influence on his sons, but she knew he didn’t mean it, especially considering the number of times he’d come over to watch them, asking questions about whatever game they were playing, as if he’d like to join in. She’d offered him the controller countless times, but he always shook his head and said he preferred to “leave the gaming to the professionals.”
“No Halloween costume for you?” she asked.
“I’m wearing it right now. Haggard businessman stuck in an elevator.”
“I guess this is karma trying to teach us both a lesson about working so late on a Friday night.”
Ryder shrugged one shoulder. “I work later than this most Fridays.”
“Why?”
Ryder frowned. “Why what?”
“Why do you work such long hours? You don’t have to. I know you’ve got plenty of people working for you who would take on more duties if you’d let them.”
“I like to work,” Ryder said, but given the way he didn’t quite look her in the eye, she realized he was lying.
Darcy rested her head back against the wall as she considered that. She’d met Ryder shortly after his wife died, and the first word that popped into her mind whenever she considered how to describe Ryder—after sex-on-a-stick—was workaholic.
Ryder picked up the bottle of vodka and took another drink before offering it to her. She smiled her thanks and drank. Maybe if she was lucky, the alcohol would work its way through her system and help her find a way to relax. As it was, she was very close to having a full-blown panic attack, complete with hyperventilating.
It was bad enough Ryder didn’t see her as anything more than Yvonne’s younger cousin, the babysitter. The last thing she wanted to do was make an ass of herself by coming completely unhinged in the elevator.
She’d like to capture his attention. But not that way.
As it was, this was the longest the two of them had ever been alone together, if she didn’t count the night he’d come home drunk. Which she didn’t, because it had been obvious the next time she’d seen him that he didn’t remember that conversation at all.
No, their “alone time” was the few minutes when he got home from work when she was watching the boys, and they’d say a couple awkward words, he’d pay her, and she’d drive home.
After putting the boys to bed, she’d always wait with anticipation, hoping Ryder would get home before Leo, then feeling like shit the whole way home, hating that she was so young…and invisible…to the only man who’d ever made her heart race.
“Maybe,” she started, trying to figure out some way to distract herself from the fact the walls appeared to be closing in on them. “Maybe we could play a game or something.”
Ryder glanced at her. “Like twenty questions?”
She shrugged. “I hate twenty questions. Spin the bottle?” she joked. Well, half-joked. She’d dreamed of kissing Ryder so many times, there was a part of her that now believed they actually had.
God. Pathetic much, Darcy?
“Not much suspense in that. Besides, I’d hate to spill any of the vodka. It sounds like we’re going to be in here for a while.”
She wished he wouldn’t remind her about that. “I’d suggest Truth or Dare, but there aren’t a lot of dare options.”
“Not appropriate ones.”
Darcy quietly drew in a surprised—okay, aroused—breath as she looked in his direction, letting her mind fill in all the inappropriate—alright, kinky—dares she’d like to try with him.
Ryder, as always, was clueless to her reaction. Instead, he glanced at his phone. She suspected if she wasn’t here, he’d simply continue to work, answering emails on his phone until the battery died or the power returned.
“What about just the truth part?” she asked.
“Is that a game?” Ryder looked up, and then—she was pleased to notice—he slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket.
“We’ll call it a get-to-know-you game.”
“We’ve known each other for four years. You’ve been in my house about a hundred times.”
“And yet, I don’t feel like I know you as well as I should.”
Ryder studied her face for a moment, and it seemed to Darcy like he was actually just now realizing she was there and might want to talk. She swallowed down the hurt of always being invisible to this man. “I suppose you’re right. Okay. How do we start?”
“We can just take turns asking whatever we want to know.” Darcy slipped off her shoes, tucking one foot underneath her other leg as she turned toward him. “For example, what do you think is the best movie ever made?”
Ryder didn’t even hesitate to respond. “That’s easy. Blade Runner.”
Darcy wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”
He quickly added, “The old one with Harrison Ford. Not the new one.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Ryder scowled. “Of course it does. So what’s your answer to that question?”
“The Princess Bride.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Darcy. That is not the best movie ever made.”
“You must be crazy. It has everything you could ever want in a movie. Pirates, sword fights, humor, kidnapping, true love, scary creatures, Billy freaking Crystal. Have you ever seen it?”
“You exposed my son to that movie when he was eight years old. I’ve seen it more times than I care to admit.”
Darcy grinned. Vince had been too cool for The Princess Bride, but the same did not hold true for Clint. “Clint loved it the first time we watched it.”
“I’m aware.”
“I want a love like Buttercup and Westley.”
“Darcy—” Ryder began, but she cut him off. She’d been around him enough to know he had more than a healthy amount of cynicism, esp
ecially when it came to romance and love. Which struck her as odd, considering he’d been married before.
“I mean it. I want someone to love me with that much passion, to be willing to fight to the pain for me. I want to be put up on a pedestal and treated like a princess.”
“Nice to know you have such reasonable, achievable goals.”
She laughed at his sarcasm. “I’m not asking for something I wouldn’t give back in return. When I fall in love, it’ll be with my whole heart. I want a relationship like my Pop Pop and Grandma Sunday had. I know The Princess Bride is just a movie, but I also know for a fact that kind of relationship can exist in real life. Pop Pop had it. And my parents have it. Leo and Yvonne too.”
“I hope you get it,” Ryder said, though his tone implied he didn’t believe she would. “And for the record, I stand by my choice for greatest movie ever made.”
Darcy tilted her head. “Does Clint watch Blade Runner with you?”
Ryder held her gaze, then sighed. “No. He typically leaves the room about fifteen minutes in.”
Darcy lifted one hand in a “there you go” gesture. “And yet, he’ll watch The Princess Bride over and over. I rest my case. Your turn to ask a question.”
Ryder asked her who her favorite singer was, and mercifully, the time began to pass quickly as they passed the bottle of vodka back and forth, covering every topic from politics to religion to cooking shows.
“Okay,” Darcy said, the vodka making her bolder with each passing question. “Who was your first kiss?”
Ryder, who’d rolled up the sleeves on his dress shirt, looked more relaxed than Darcy had ever seen him. Like her, he’d slipped off his shoes, and he leaned back against the elevator wall. He actually seemed…younger. And it occurred to her that, while he was only ten years older than her—thirty-four to her twenty-four—there were times when that age gap felt much vaster. Probably because Ryder had already lived a lifetime—finding success in his career, marrying, raising a son and stepson—while Darcy was still at the beginning of…well…everything.
