When The Lights Go Out...

She ought to look for another job, go somewhere she could feel successful, but she was scared to confront a break in her steady salary and benefits. She was alone in the big city.

She was alone in the big world was what she was. Or would be, if it weren’t for Candy.

If she got any more maudlin, she’d sound like a character in a soap opera. She’d be okay. She could take care of herself. She’d worked hard. That scholarship had given her an excellent education. She just hadn’t found the right job yet, that was all.

Her smile faded as she had a fleeting vision of herself in jeans and a sweatshirt, loading a host of bright-eyed children into a station wagon in the driveway of a spotless, warm and cheery white clapboard house in the suburbs that still smelled of the bacon and eggs she’d cooked for breakfast, the tuna fish sandwiches she’d lovingly packed in their lunch boxes along with rosy apples and bags of chips. This was her other dream, a dream far more important than the Lois-Lane-saves-the-paper dream.

What she really wanted was to be a wife and mother. In her spare time she might write a weekly column in the local newspaper, something on housekeeping. Or parenting. She’d volunteer at her kids’ school, of course, and might even run for City Council in a quiet little suburb in Connecticut or New Jersey where the major issues were fence height and lawn maintenance. She’d keep her brain active, but the children—and her superhero—would come first.

This was a secret she kept in her heart. She didn’t have a single friend, especially not Candy, who would understand. The aggressive, career-oriented women of Manhattan would view homemaking as a nightmare. To Blythe, who’d never had a home and family, it sounded like heaven on earth.

Unfortunately the scene needed a handsome, loving, sexy man to kiss goodbye while the kids piled into the car, a man who could understand and support her dream and even express his love for her and the children by boiling the eggs for the tuna fish salad. She’d find that man someday. Just not quite yet.

At long last, she stepped gratefully into the lobby of the building where she and Candy shared an apartment, expecting the relief of a delicious blast of air-conditioning when, of course, there wasn’t any.

Santiago, the day doorman, was still on the job. “Miss Padgett.” He sounded relieved. “You made it home.”

“Just barely,” she croaked. “All I want is a nice long shower—we do have water, don’t we?”

An uneasy look came over his face. “We have water.” He cleared his throat. “Not necessarily hot water, but water. What we don’t have is elevators.”

She and Candy lived on the twenty-third floor. “I thought the elevators had an emergency backup system.”

He shuffled his feet. “It’s not working. Guess it has to get electricity from somewhere.”

She’d already heard this from Bart. “I know,” she said kindly. “If I want a lesson in electrical engineering, I’ll have to get it from somebody else. Okay, so I’ll walk up.”

“It’s dark, and I mean dark, in the stairwells,” Santiago went on. “I bought all the flashlights the hardware store down the street had left. Take one. First come, first served. I’d walk up with you, but J.R. and I are the only staff here. We stayed on because the night shift didn’t make it in.”

She took a moment to send out hugs to people stranded on subways, stuck in elevators, hoping Candy wasn’t among them. “Have they closed the bridges and tunnels?”

Santiago nodded. “Eddie called in,” he said. “He can’t get out of Brooklyn.”

That definitely took care of her date-under-duress. “I knew we’d live to regret the age of technology,” Blythe said as she headed for the stairs that spiraled up through the building and ended closest to hers and Candy’s apartment. She opened the door and almost lost heart. With no windows in the stairwell, no light reached it at all. But it was the only way home. Grasping her flashlight, she aimed it up into the darkness and got her feet moving.

Second floor, third, fourth, fifth…

She’d never buy a StairMaster. Who needed one, as undependable as New York was.

Sixth, seventh, eighth…

When she’d trapped a wonderful husband and delivered numerous adorable children to worry about, she’d be grateful she’d opted for that house in suburbia. Two floors, three, max. She could hear some noise going on above her. It was comforting, knowing other people were in the building. She wouldn’t have that in suburbia, but then she wouldn’t be climbing twenty-two flights of dark stairs, either.

Ninth, tenth, eleventh…

The higher she climbed, the worse she felt about Candy’s friend. Now, thinking of him in a state of crisis, or worse, she wished she’d been more receptive to Candy’s idea, had let him take her into his arms, kiss her, let nature take its course, just as Candy had assured her it would.

At least pestered Candy for his “frigging” name!

She frowned. The heat and isolation were getting to her. She hadn’t done anything bad to Candy’s friend yet. She couldn’t have taken him into her arms and let nature take its course because he hadn’t gotten there. She still had time to make things right. Feeling she’d had a narrow escape from a level of guilt she’d never get over, she collapsed on the first step leading up to the twelfth floor, drew her knees up, rested her forehead on them and closed her eyes, reflecting on the true value of certain New York status symbols, the Upper East Side apartment, the higher floor.

The noise from above had increased in volume. She suddenly realized that what she was hearing was not the voices of neighbors but frantic pounding and shouting. It galvanized her into action. She could feel her hair standing on end. Someone was being attacked, maybe killed! What manners, to mug somebody during a crisis! And in such a nice, safe building! Was there no honor among thieves anymore?

She had a whistle and a can of Mace she’d carried around in her handbag for two years without needing them. She hoped they still worked. Where was the shouting coming from? She hated to retrace a single precious step. She’d start on the twelfth floor. Dredging up one last burst of energy, she raced up the steps and encountered a locked door.

Locked for security reasons, of course. She was pretty sure one of the keys she’d been issued when she and Candy moved in unlocked the stairwell doors. As the pounding intensified and the shouts grew louder, she searched the depths of her handbag for the ring of keys, found them and began jabbing them at the keyhole one at a time. At least the guy was still fighting off the mugger. A key fit, turned and she barreled out into the twelfth-floor hallway, shining her flashlight to the left and to the right, yelling, “Hands up! I’ve got you covered!”

The shouting stopped. The hall was silent. Nobody was being mugged that she could see. “Hello?” she said timidly. “Is somebody up here.”

“Yes.”

The voice came from right behind her and several feet above her. Blythe screamed. The flashlight flew out of her hands and the hallway plunged into total darkness.

2

“WHO SAID THAT? Where are you?” On her hands and knees, Blythe scrambled blindly for the flashlight. Her hand closed on it and she clutched it gratefully to her bosom, then remembered why she loved it so much and turned it back on.

“I’m in the elevator. Where did you think I was?”

She shone the light on the bank of elevators. “Which one?” she said. Her voice was shaking. She pounded on the first doors. “In here?” The second. It sent back a hollow sound. “Here?”

She was moving on to the third when she heard, “Stop, damn it. I’m right here in the middle.”

She stepped back. “Are you okay?”

There was a silence, then, “No, I’m not okay. I’m stuck in the elevator.”

“Besides that,” Blythe said.

“That’s enough,” he said.

“How long have you been in there?”

“Since the lights went out! Can we end the quiz? Is there a way to get out of here?”

She was calming down because she knew the answer to this one. “Yes,” she said, speaking slowly as if he were a child. “You pick up the emergency phone and say—”

“It’s not working. Neither are the lights. It’s really, really dark in here.”

Nothing is working, Bart had said. She was beginning to grasp the idea. “We’ve had a major power outage,” she said, “but we’ll get you out of there. Don’t you worry. Dial 9-1-1. Do you have a cell phone? Because I don’t.”

“I can’t get a signal.”

“I’ll go back downstairs,” she said at last, groaning at the very thought, “and see if J.R. or Santiago has something to pry open the doors.”

“No. Don’t leave.”

She paused. The man was admitting he was frightened. Claustrophobic, maybe. Or just a man trapped for hours in an inky-black box with no connection to the outside world until she’d come. He needed her. Some strong, unidentifiable feeling surged up in her heart. He actually needed her. She couldn’t let him down. “Okay, I won’t. Maybe I have something in my bag.”

“Can you see anything?”

“I have a flashlight.”

“Oh. A flashlight. I’d kill for a flashlight.”

Poor guy. She aimed the light at the doors. “Can you see this?”

“What?”

“A ray of light.”

“No.”

Some quality of his voice made her dump the contents of her handbag out on the hall carpet and aim the flashlight at the pile. She had a nail file. Still on the floor, she thrust it through the opening in the doors and wiggled it. “Can you see my nail file?”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Well, can you feel it?”

“Aim it higher. You sound like you’re way below me. The elevator must have stopped between floors.”

She stood and reached as high as she could to wiggle the file in.

“There it is!” He sounded like Columbus spotting land. She felt a tug on the file. “It’s not going to move the doors, though. Got anything bigger? Wait a minute. I’ve got a Swiss Army knife.”

“You have a knife?”

A spurt of air, something like a snort, came from above her head. “Everybody has a Swiss Army knife. Chill, okay? The knife doesn’t belong in the lead paragraph.”

It was an odd coincidence that he’d used a journalistic term—lead paragraph. “Okay. Sorry.” She reached for the nail file and found that a tiny sharp point had emerged from inside the elevator. “Now we’ve got two things through.”

“More, more.”

Blythe was staring down at her comb. It was plastic with a thick, solid handle and long wide-spaced teeth, the kind called an Afro-comb, the only thing Blythe could get through her hair when she’d been out on a windy day. It might work. She grabbed it and began forcing it through the practically nonexistent opening. One tooth took hold. Dizzy with excitement, she pushed harder.

“Ouch.”

She stopped pushing. “What happened?”

“Something hit me in the nose. I crouched down here to see if any air was coming through the doors, and…”

“This is good news,” Blythe assured him. “It’s my comb. Try to grab it and help me get it through.” She instantly felt a tug.

“I’ve got a grip on it. If I can just bend it without breaking it…”

With a clatter, the nail file and the knife fell from the widening crack in the door through which two sets of long, strong-looking fingers were emerging.

“It’s opening!”

“Forget the comb. Help me push the doors.”

Blythe tucked the flashlight into her waistband. Moving closer for leverage, she put her fingertips through the opening and pushed with all her might. Her toe connected with something, the file or the knife, and kicked it through the space below the elevator car. For a moment she froze, listening as it fell down, down, endlessly down the elevator shaft to the basement thirteen floors below. She thought she might faint just waiting for it to hit bottom.

“Keep pushing.” He sounded desperate.

“We have a slight problem,” she said, willing her voice not to tremble. “You’re pretty far up from the floor, actually. If I keep pushing and the doors suddenly open, I’m going to fall down the elevator shaft. Not that anybody would miss me particularly, but I would hate the fall itself, if you know what I…”

“Stop pushing.” It was an order. “Let me think.” While he thought, a shoulder emerged through the opening above her. “Okay, you step back and pull on the left side—”

“My left or your left?” She was still poised in the middle, one hand on each side of the opening, prepared to die.

“Your left. And I’ll push the door to your right. Got it?”

She already had both hands gripped on one door, tugging. “Got it.”

“We’re almost there, almost there, don’t give up.”

With a terrifying suddenness, the doors popped open. Blythe fell backward. A suitcase landed on her left knee, followed by a body swinging a smaller bag. It felt like a huge body, a huge, trembling body. It covered her completely. Crisp hair brushed her face.

For a moment he just panted, then he said, “I think I love you. Will you marry me?”

Panic and all, she felt a smile rising to her face. “Let’s hold off on total commitment until morning, shall we?” she said.

“You’re right.” He puffed out the words, still not rolling away from her. “I was being impulsive. Names first. I’m Max. Max Laughton. And actually, I already have a date tonight. Have to meet my obligations first. Unless,” he added, sounding hopeful, Blythe thought, “she didn’t make it home.”

“What floor does your date live on?”

“Twenty-third. I just got into town and it’s a blind date, kind of a crazy situation…What’s wrong?”

The darkness, the fear, the tension, the relief had finally gotten to Blythe completely. She was shuddering beneath him, and gasped the words out between hysterical giggles.

“I’m your date,” she gurgled. “Hi. Welcome to New York.”

“YOU OKAY?” MAX ASKED the little person struggling along beside him when they’d reached the fifteenth-floor landing. “Want a rest? You must be worn out. Did you have to walk all the way home from the Telegraph?”

“Um-m,” was all she said, or moaned, from a spot that just about reached his shoulder. She wasn’t what he’d expected. From the sultry, purring voice on the phone that had asked him out for a night on the town as soon as he got to New York, he’d expected her to be more substantial, a blond bombshell, openly and deliberately provocative. Her voice had been full of heat and promise. When he’d quizzed Bart about her—Bart being a longtime friend of his parents and an uncle figure to him—all Bart had said was, “Candy Jacobsen? It’ll be quite a welcome.”

Max didn’t need any light to know that this woman was small, with fluffy hair that looked as if it might be red. She was sexy all right, but didn’t act as if she knew she was sexy.

Of course, people often presented a different picture of themselves on the phone. Whatever she was, she’d saved his life and that made her okay with him. More than okay. A person whose feet he’d like to kiss.

“Why…did you come…so early?” she panted.

“I was supposed to come as soon as I got to town.”

“Not…seven o’clock?”

“No.” He paused and aimed the flashlight at his watch. “Even if I misunderstood, it’s after eight now.”

“How time flies.”

It was merely a whisper. “Not in an elevator, it doesn’t,” he said, glancing down at the top of her head. They’d reached the seventeenth floor, and she already sounded completely winded. Her shoulders, narrow little shoulders in some kind of a T-shirt, were bent over as she focused on the lighted steps, probably counting them. She must be exhausted, had probably been exhausted the whole time she was rescuing him.

His heart swelled with compassion and something else—budding heroism. Yes, it was time for him to show the stuff he was made of. Time to be a macho man.

“You’re pooped,” he said by way of launching his plan.

“I’m fine,” she gasped.

“No, you’re not. Wait a second.” He shouldered his briefcase, grabbed her handbag over her squeak of protest and slung it over his other shoulder, then handed her his larger bag and swept her up into his arms.

“Save your strength,” she cried, and began to wriggle.

“You’re not helping,” he said. She might be little, but hanging on to, say, a hundred-pound wriggling tuna, who was dangling a thirty-pound suitcase way too close to the family jewels, had never been one of his life’s goals. “Besides,” he groaned, unable to help himself, “what am I saving it for?”

“Later?” she said and looked up at him, pointing the flashlight directly at their faces. She wore an oddly quizzical look. Maybe she had had “quite a welcome” planned for him. His body responded to this idea, but he told it to calm down. He needed the blood equally distributed through his veins to make it up the last six flights of stairs.

When he dumped her just inside the stairwell door so she could fumble through her handbag for the key, his knees were trembling in a way that was hardly heroic. He hoped she didn’t notice how he staggered behind her down the dark hallway to her door. He’d hoped that when she opened it, the last rays of sunlight would come flooding through her apartment windows, but the room was in shadows. Once he made it inside, he knew he was washed up.

“That was so sweet of you,” she was saying, “to carry me the rest of the way. I’m all rested, and you have to be dead on your feet. Sit down, for heaven’s sake. I have to get out the candles first, but then would you like a drink?” Her voice faded. Drawers opened and closed. “Water, definitely, but I imagine you could use something stronger. I sure could. We have a pretty good selection. What’s your pleasure?”

He’d made it to a sofa he’d spotted in her flashlight beam, where he collapsed facedown with the word, “Scotch,” on his lips. It might be the last word he ever uttered. How ignominious.

BEARING A LIGHTED CANDLE, Blythe crept toward the sofa. When he was in range of the light, she simply had to stare at him for a while, at his broad shoulders in a black polo shirt, a tapered back, a narrow waist and a butt to die for—firm, contoured and thoroughly male. His long legs were encased in black jeans, his thigh muscles bulging against the fabric.

His thighs. She was going all tight just thinking about them wrapped around her. This idea of Candy’s hadn’t been such a bad one after all.

“How do you like your Scotch?” It came out like a moan.

It took him a long time to answer, and when he did, his words sounded as if they were smothered by goose down, which, in fact, they were. “Rocks.”

Candle in hand, Blythe scurried to the freezer, automatically pressed a glass to the ice-maker button and remembered nothing was working. She stuck her hand in the storage bin and pulled out slick, already melting cubes.

She was going to make it all up to him. No more guilt. Even though this was Candy’s idea, not hers, he’d gone through hell to get to her and she’d make sure he wasn’t sorry. She already knew she wouldn’t be. Any man who’d carry her up six flights of stairs had to be as sensitive as Candy had promised.

Forgetful, maybe. She was sure Candy had said he was coming at seven o’clock, and for him to get stuck in the elevator, it meant he’d arrived around four o’clock. But then, Candy was often careless about details.

The important thing was that he was here. They’d have a drink together, she’d give him a chance to rest and come up refreshed, and then they’d see what course nature took.

Who was she kidding? One look at his back and she was ready to go at it like bunnies. For mental health reasons only, of course. When she got a look at his front, she might become uncontrollably aggressive about getting this therapy.

Blythe paused on her way out of the kitchen. If he wanted to. If he found her desirable. That was still the big if. Even a sensitive man had to feel something before he could—well, could.

She put the tray of drinks on the coffee table and sat down on the floor right beside his face, or where his face would be if he ever came up for air, moving the candle as close to that spot as she could without setting her eyelashes on fire.

She gulped her water and gazed at him. Gosh, he had a beautiful profile. His hair was the very dark brown of good chocolate, the seventy percent kind, and his skin was a warm tan. She’d have to wait to see the eyes under those long dark lashes. They were probably brown. She had a preference for blue eyes, but she wasn’t going to cross him off on the basis of one little failure to meet specifications.

The distinctive scent of the Scotch seemed to rouse him. His head rolled toward her until at last she got the full impact of his strong, regular features—his straight, narrow nose and a mouth with a full, curved lower lip. Blythe felt her tongue curl in anticipation, and at that moment, his closest eye opened and squinted against the candlelight.

Miracle of miracles, his eyes were blue, a deep, dark, magnificent blue. At least one of them was. In due course, Blythe was sure she’d get a glimpse of the other one.

The closest eyebrow quirked up. “After all we’ve been through,” he said, sounding less breathless, “why do you look so surprised to see me? I mean, you made an offer, and under the circumstances, I’m damned glad I accepted.”

With a snap, Blythe brought her lower lip up to meet her upper one. The way he put it wasn’t quite the way it had happened. Candy had made the offer, but why quibble over details? Dear Candy, wise beyond her years, had been right. It was time to get over Thor—no, Sven—and the man to get her over Sven was lying right here in front of her, much too tired to be sent back down the stairs. He was trapped. She’d caught herself a live one.

Odd that Candy had called him “attractive,” not “the sexiest man alive,” and that she hadn’t mentioned his luscious baritone voice, which was making Blythe’s spinal column vibrate. But now that she’d met him, she realized it didn’t matter what his voice sounded like. When you had a body like that, a voice like his was just frosting on the beefcake.

The real question was: How had Candy let this one get away? More than that, why was she simply handing him over to Blythe? Now that was what you called a good friend.

Blythe smiled and moved a little closer. “I wasn’t actually expecting you to show up,” she admitted, feeling like a cartoon character with stars on springs popping out of her eyes. “Most men would have stood a woman up in these circumstances. Of course, there weren’t any circumstances when you got here.”

“I still would have shown up. I’m always at the right place at the right time. Rain, snow, sleet, hail, just like the postman. It’s part of my job.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Dependability is crucial in your profession.” She’d heard that people fell apart when their shrinks went on vacation. She wondered if he saw patients on Saturdays and Sundays. Maybe he could come to New York on weekends, or she could go to Boston.

Whoa. She was getting way ahead of herself. It was more likely that this would be a one-night stand, or rather a single therapy session to help her get over the disastrous effect Sven had had on her.

Maybe this sort of therapy was his specialty, which he used on all his female patients. An unexpected, uncalled-for bolt of jealousy made her scalp prickle.

“Take a sip of Scotch,” she said encouragingly. Time was passing. Since he seemed to have difficulty moving his head, she added, “Want a straw?” She held the candle even closer to his face, hoping she didn’t look too much like a witch trying to intimidate an agent of Satan, because he didn’t look at all like an agent of Satan, nor did she have any desire to intimidate him. Seduce him? That was something else altogether.

“No.” Two perfectly matched dark blue eyes glared at her as he righted himself on the sofa and reached for the glass. He downed it in one desperate gulp. “That’s the first liquid I’ve had since noon,” he said.