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“Sorry it took me this long to get to you. I was out on an interview and didn’t check my e-mail until just a few minutes ago.”
There was a rattling sound. “I tried that,” she said. “Jiggled the handle a dozen times.” Four dozen times. Then pounded the paneled wood, kicked the doorjamb, silently screamed at the walls that had kept her captive since discovering that the lock had inconveniently jammed.
In her childhood home, there had been a downstairs powder room with a tricky door like this one. Unpredictable, unidentifiable elements would cause it to stick, stranding dinner guests on occasion, and confounding the handyman who’d been called to fix it a number of times. They’d eventually replaced the entire mechanism.
This baby was outta here as soon as today.
“What are you doing in there anyway?”
“That e-mail thing you mentioned.” When she realized she’d missed Cassandra’s message about their sperm donor, she’d figured it was past time she reconnected with the larger world. More progress, she’d thought, as during Wayne’s illness and the months after his death she’d been unable to drum up any interest in such a thing as Internet access. “I spent the morning rearranging the furniture and setting up my computer.”
And then spent the afternoon frustrated by her confinement…and the fact that she had to rely on a man—on Noah—to come to her rescue.
Still, she felt mostly relief when she heard the door pop open. Noah stood in the entry, his gaze taking her in. Then she stared, too. She’d never seen him look like this.
Damn. He was a stranger to her, and she’d had to appeal to him for aid.
In a well-tailored gray suit, Noah looked older, harder, more sophisticated than she could have imagined. Against the crisp shirt, opened at the collar, his tanned skin was smooth and golden, his eyes laser blue. There was a striped tie jammed into the breast pocket of his jacket and the note of an unfamiliar, yet delicious aftershave drifted toward her as he walked into the room.
She took a hasty step back.
He ignored her nervous twitch and turned to manipulate the knob of the open door, twisting it back, then forth, then back and forth again. As she figured it would—her luck was going that way—it moved freely, normally.
Embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “Really. I know how to operate a door. It was stuck.” Shades of visiting the mechanic only to discover your car engine had abandoned its ominous clickety-clack-hum and returned to its usual steady purr.
Noah swung shut the door, fiddled with the handle again, paused. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I really do.” He turned to face her, a half-apologetic smile on his face. “Because we’re both stuck now.”
“No!” She rushed for the door and when he moved out of the way, tested it herself, using both hands to try to free it from its frozen state. The four walls had been close enough when she was alone within them, but to share the small space with Noah… “Oh, no.”
“Guess I shouldn’t have taken the chance and shut it.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry, Dean’s back in town. I’ll call him on my cell and get him to star in Rescue Ranger Round Two.”
Within moments, Noah had made contact, and in another few he flipped his phone shut. “Good news is, he didn’t crash into another car while laughing his ass off. Bad news is, he’s crosstown and with L.A. traffic, may be as many as a couple of hours from reaching us.”
Frustrated, she went back to jerking on the knob. As she’d known, it didn’t budge. Still, an annoyed grunt escaped her mouth and she didn’t stay her impulse to give the door another sharp kick. “Stupid thing.”
“Claustrophobic?”
“Not really.” I just didn’t want to confront you quite yet. And though she’d been all determination to do just that when she’d left Malibu & Ewe the other day, look how poorly that had turned out. She aimed another swift kick at the door.
“Juliet, you’re surprising me again.”
“Really?” Giving the knob a last ineffectual rattle, she figured she was out of excuses for avoiding eye contact and turned around. “What did I do now?”
He leaned against the back of the desk that she’d manhandled into the far left corner of the room. “Did you move all this stuff?”
“All by myself.” She was a bit pleased about that. It had taken a lot of pushing and shoving, rocking and sliding, but not only had she moved the desk, she’d chosen a new place for the media armoire and the small loveseat, matching chair, and low round table that sat between them. She’d even hung a large antique mirror on the wall. Maybe it wasn’t perfectly level, but she’d managed. “I’m stronger than I look.”
