As the light illuminated for the eighth floor, she turned towards him. ‘I do like—’
Bang! The champagne exploded. The cork shot out from the bottle like the obligatory speeding bullet, whistled past the man’s ear and thudded with a thwack against the wall behind him. Ribbons of white foam followed, spurting crazily. All of a sudden, it was New Year’s Eve.
Startled, Jess jumped. She blinked. Her mouth fell open and she gaped. The man was being sprayed. He had brought his right arm up to shield his eyes, but froth was spewing over his dark hair, across the width of his broad shoulders, splattering like fast-melting snow on the pinstriped jacket.
‘Oh, dear!’ she bleated, holding helplessly onto the magnum with two hands as the foam turned into a high-pressure liquid jet.
Now champagne rained onto his face, swamped his sleeve, was flowing in fast bubbly rivulets down his suit.
‘Away,’ the man rasped.
Jess looked blankly at him through the downpour. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Hold the’bloody bottle away!’ he bellowed.
‘Oh...yes.’
She straightened up the magnum, which meant the champagne hit the roof of the lift like a geyser and showered down onto the two of them. Though only for a moment for, with a violent oath, the man leapt forward, grabbed hold of the neck and directed the torrent down and into a corner. There it gushed for a couple more seconds before diminishing into a harmless dribble.
‘For God’s sake!’ he rasped, glaring at her.
His eyes proved to be an astonishing pale blue, fringed with thick black lashes. They were beautiful eyes, the kind of eyes about which poets waxed lyrical and whose soft gaze would reduce maidenly hearts to marshmallow—though right now they blazed with the hard flame of anger.
‘I’m very sorry,’ Jess said. ‘Everything happened so fast, I was taken by surprise.’
‘But why did it happen?’ her victim demanded, swiping hanks of dripping jet-black hair back from his brow.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied, and stopped.
A giggle had bubbled up in her throat. He looked so furious and bedraggled that, all of a sudden, his plight took on a comical air and she was stricken by an acute urge to laugh. Or was it nerves? Whatever, if the last couple of minutes had been videoed and shown on prime-time ‘Candid Camera’ TV, audiences worldwide would be in tucks.
‘Don’t risk it,’ he warned, showing himself to be disconcertingly alert.
Jess gulped down the giggle. He was in no mood to join her in mutual mirth. Indeed, if her lips as much as twitched she would be inviting mayhem.
‘The bottle was secure when I took it out of the box half an hour ago,’ she continued, now resolutely straight-faced, ‘and all I’ve done is come here.’
Pulling a white handkerchief out of his pocket, the man began to mop his face and hair. ‘You ran?’ he asked, and answered his own question. ‘Yes, when you barged into the lift and damn near knocked everyone flying, you were bright red and panting.’
Jess’s lips tightened. He exaggerated. There had been no danger of her knocking into anyone. Nor did she appreciate his ‘bright red’ comment, which made her sound like a beetroot. To be wearing grungy clothes was disadvantage enough without him downgrading her appearance.
‘I have an appointment and am short of time,’ she said, in a taut justification.
‘So you jogged and bounced up the champagne?’ His lip curled. ‘Great!’
The lift was slowing for the sixteenth floor. When the doors opened should she make a quick exit? Jess wondered. Escape might be the coward’s way out, yet it was tempting in that it would save her from more embarrassment and the risk of further condemnation. But, though the lift had dallied on the point of stopping, it suddenly speeded up again. Floor sixteen had come and gone.
With a disgusted look at his now sodden handkerchief, the man pushed it gingerly back into his pocket. ‘Pity the cork didn’t pop when the lift was full, then you could’ve drenched en masse and really had a chuckle,’ he said, in a low, gravelly voice which, she registered, contained a trace of an American accent.
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ Jess protested.
‘You just didn’t think?’
She glowered. Must he be so accusing and patronising—and so right?
‘No,’ she was forced to agree.
Again the lift reduced speed, dawdled tantalisingly around the seventeenth floor and went at full lick again.
‘Do you suppose we might break down?’ she asked, in sudden alarm.
Enduring his company now was bad enough, but to be trapped with him—maybe for hours!—would be a real bed of nails.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing would surprise me,’ the man said, as though she might have been tinkering with the lift’s motor and was responsible for its malfunction. ‘But if we’re marooned I shan’t be a happy bunny, especially as I also have an appointment and—’ looking down at his suit, he spread his hands in a curt gesture of impatience ‘—I’m wet through.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess said again.
‘I should damn well think you are!’
She bridled. She resented being bawled out quite so thoroughly.
‘Tell me, are you always this tetchy?’ she enquired.
‘When I’m doused in champagne from head to foot, pretty much.’
‘It was an accident,’ she defended.
He arched a brow. ‘The hand of fate?’
‘Yes.’ Putting down the bottle, Jess rooted around in her sports bag and found a tissue. ‘Let me soak up the worst.’
In grim silence, her victim held out his arm and she began to blot at his sleeve. All of a sudden, she halted. The tissue she was using was the one she had used to wipe her fingers and now a streak of pale lemon mayonnaise smeared the fine navy cloth.
The man raised his eyes as if appealing to the heavens to grant him forbearance. ‘Why don’t I strip off all my clothes and you can jump up and down on top of them,’ he suggested, ‘and perhaps kick them around the floor for a while?’
Jess gave a strained smile. She wanted to kick herself—and him. ‘It won’t stain,’ she vowed, finding a wad of new tissues and frantically scrubbing, and to her huge relief the mayonnaise disappeared.
As he stood erect and cautious, she mopped the wet from his shoulders and started to dab at his chest. Her pulse rate quickened. She might be performing a practical chore for a hostile stranger, yet it was difficult to ignore the muscled physique beneath his clothes. It was also difficult not to imagine what he would look like if he did strip naked. Lithe, honey-skinned and of Greek god proportions.
‘No more,’ the man instructed, taking a sudden step backwards.
Jess looked at him. He wanted her to stop, but why? Surely he had not recognised her rising tension and—oh, horror—sensed her vivid imaginings?
Don’t be silly, she told herself, he’s not a mind reader. It must be a case of him being affected by the physical contact, too. Even if her face had been red and might still be a little pink, she was not too hard on the eye. Indeed, her combination of blonde gamine looks, tall, slim figure and long legs had been known to make men go weak at the knees.
Jess