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“Like, dangerous? Are we going to be stuck here for hours? Or plummet to our deaths?”
“Why do you sound like those two alternatives are equally horrible?”
“Well, are we?”
“Unlikely.” He steps closer to the panel and presses the emergency call button. When a voice cuts through the static asking if we need help, he responds. “Hey, this is Martin Harris from the twenty-sixth floor. Car four seems to have stopped.”
“Yep. We’re aware of the problem,” the voice replies. “It’s the first really hot day of the summer. We’re having a rolling brownout. You know what the power grid is like.”
I step forward and brush Martin’s hand aside so I can push the emergency button myself. “But you have a generator, right? You’ll start it up or whatever and we’ll be moving again in just a few seconds, right? Right?”
“Um … yeah… That’s what’s powering the emergency lighting and intercom system. We don’t expect this to last long enough for us to turn on the bigger generator. It takes a while to get up and going. If the brownout lasts longer than thirty minutes, that generator will kick in.”
“Thirty minutes? Are you joking?” When there’s no response I look to Martin. “Is he joking?”
Instead of answering, Martin shrugs out of his suit jacket, folds it over his arm, and lowers himself to the floor. “You should make yourself comfortable. We might be here a while.”
“He’s not joking, is he?”
Martin stretches his legs out in front of him, one out straight, the other bent at the knee with his forearm propped on it. He tips his head back and closes his eyes.
Is he napping?
How can he be this relaxed?
I pull my crossbody messenger bag off and let it slide to the floor. I try to sit, but don’t even get my butt to the floor before I pop back up and start pacing in tight circles.
“I can’t believe I’m stuck in an elevator. With you of all people.”
He cracks open his eyes. “Why me of all people?”
I gape at him. Why indeed?
Because he’s Margaret’s grandson. The rich one who pays for her care but never visits. The one who she talks all the time about how much she misses him. The one I had thoughts and opinions about before I even met him. And then I did meet him. And he was—is—disconcertingly handsome. Attractive in that nerve-wracking way that makes me act stupid. Which I did. And I handed him an egg.
Who does that?
The point is, I don’t ever feel like a competent adult. I feel like a silly twelve-year-old cosplaying at being an adult under the best of circumstances. Maybe it’s because I’m young at heart (to quote my mom) or because I’m still in grad school. Whatever the reason, I always feel like I’m one incident away from having my adulthood revoked. And people like Martin Harris—competent, suit-wearing, wealthy people—always make me feel more like that.
Even when I don’t hand them an egg.
But you know what doesn’t help?
The fact that I have all this nonsense swirling in my head about him and he had the gall to ask why him. Because now it’s clear that I’ve been obsessing over our initial meeting for the past month, and he hasn’t given it another thought.
Instead of answering his question, I ask one of my own. “What are you even doing in this building?”
He raises his head and opens his eyes. “It’s my building.”
“You own a building?”
“No.” More smirking. “My offices are in this building.”
Oh. Yeah, that does make more sense, even if it is clearly going to deprive me of the chance to bitch at him about his elevators being crap.
Still in a foul mood, I grumble, “Of course you would be something horrible like a soulless businessman or greedy finance guy or evil lawyer.”
His smirk gets more … smirkier.
