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on hers until she focused on him. “Are you okay?”
Her lips parted. “The—the elevator... Are w-we stopped?”
He let out a long breath. “Yes. The emergency brakes kicked in.”
Relief filled her glazed eyes. But it didn’t last long. Her gaze darted, bouncing like a tennis ball off the metal walls, her quick, gasping breaths increasing in speed as her fingers dug into the tile floor and she tried to push herself into a sitting position. “I— I can’t—I don’t—”
He gripped her shoulders and pushed her back to the floor. “You need to calm down or we’re going to be in even more trouble here,” he ordered. “Deep breaths, in and out.”
She stared at him, chest heaving, eyes huge.
“Now.” He slid his fingers under her chin and held her immobile. “Breathe. In and out.”
She pulled in a breath. Then another. They were quick, shallow pulls of air, but more than before and gradually, her breathing slowed. “Good,” he nodded approvingly. “Keep it up.”
He kept her breathing in and out until the panic receded from her eyes and her face regained some color.
“Better?” he asked softly.
“Yes, thank you.” She pulled in another deep breath, blinked and looked around. “I can’t see...my glasses,” she murmured. “I must have lost them in the fall.”
He stood and searched for them. Found them in the corner of the elevator, miraculously intact. He carried them back to her, knelt down and slid them on her face. “You hit your head. Are you dizzy at all?”
She sat up slowly. Twisted her head to the left and right. “Not unless I think about the fact that I’m in here.”
“Then don’t.” He stood up and moved toward the control panel. Pulled the phone from behind a metal door and barked a greeting. The line crackled and a young male voice responded. “Everybody okay in there?”
“Yes,” Alex said grimly. “Are we stable?”
“Yes, sir. We had an issue with the generator, but the emergency brakes deployed.”
His heartbeat slowed, his grip on the receiver relaxing. “How long until you get us out?”
“We’re working on getting a crew over there as soon as we can. But by the time we do that and assess how we’re going to get you out of there, it may be a few hours.”
He flicked a glance at the white-faced woman on the floor. “By that you mean...?”
“The car you’re in is stuck between floors. In that situation, we either try to move the car manually from the control room and pry the doors open or we take you out the top. Obviously we’d prefer to do the former, but with the generator out that may not be possible.”
He moved his gaze over the bump on the woman’s face, the fact that he was going to miss his flight a far lower priority than her potential injuries. “The sooner the better.... The other passenger in here with me—she hit her head when we stopped.”
“We’ll go as fast as we can,” the technician promised. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Hurry up,” Alex muttered roughly and hung up. Telling the guy he owned half the building wasn’t going to make it happen any faster.
The woman watched him with those big brown eyes of hers, her tense expression only this side of full-on panic.
“When are they going to get us out of here?”
He walked back over to her and sank down on his haunches. “They have to get a technician here and see what’s happening. It may take a while.”
Her gaze sharpened on his face. “Don’t they just pry the doors open?”
He hesitated, wondering whether or not to tell her the truth. “We’re stuck between floors,” he said finally. “A generator’s out, which means they can’t move us.”
Her eyes widened, her hands flailing as she sat up and stared at him. “What?”
“Calm down,” he ordered. “They’ll find a way, but panicking isn’t going to help.”
Her throat convulsed. “How long did they say?”
“A few hours.”
“I can’t be in here that long.” She fixed her gaze on his. “I really, really don’t do elevators.”
He took her hands in his. They were clammy and she was shaking like a leaf. “Look—” he said, arching a brow at her. “What’s your name?”
“Izzie.”
“Izzie?”
“Short for Isabel,” she elaborated, distractedly. “But most people call me Izzie.”
“Isabel,” he elected to use instead, his tone firm but reassuring, “I promise you everything’s going to be fine. These guys handle situations like this all the time. They’re going to get a crew over here, figure out how to get us out and in a few hours you’ll be laughing this off.”
She looked at him as though he had two heads.
“Okay,” he conceded. “But you know what I mean. It’s going to be fine, I promise.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her teeth worrying her lip. “You’re sure? We aren’t going to drop again?”
“I’m sure.”
She lifted her chin. “All right. I can do this.”
“Good girl.”
She pressed her lips together. “Since you’re the only thing keeping me sane, you could tell me your name.”
“Alex.” He let go of her hands and pushed to his feet. Located her discarded bag and picked it up. “Anything in here we can use to get the swelling down on your head?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
“Can I look?”
She nodded.
He sat down beside her and riffled through it. The bag was a modern marvel of how much a woman could shove into a few cubic inches of leather. Chocolate, water, books, a brush, a full bottle of aspirin...
“Is there anything you don’t have in here?” he questioned drily. “I’ll never understand why you women feel you have to carry half your lives around with you. There is a drugstore on every corner, you know....”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
He pulled out a lint brush. “Really? You need to carry a lint brush with you?”
A pink stain filled her cheeks. “Have you ever sat on a cat-infested sofa in a black wool skirt?”
“Can’t say that I have,” he drawled. “You’ve got me on that one.” He pulled out a can of still-cold soda. “How about this? It could work.”
“Wait,” she gasped, sitting up. “My flight takes off in a few hours.”
“So does mine,” he returned grimly. “I think we can safely assume we’re not making it.”
“But I have to...” she burst out. “I have that interview in Manhattan tomorrow morning.”
“You’re going to have to reschedule your flight,” he told her, handing her the can of soda. “And hope you can get another tonight.”
She sliced a panicked look at her watch. He glanced at his. Two forty-five. There wasn’t a hope in hell he was making his flight to New York. Which was a problem; with Frank Messer trying to rip his company apart, he was putting out fires left, right and center, and the Sophoros