The kinds of things that made her a little dizzy with desire just imagining them.
Forking up an enormous bite of cake, she bit into it and sighed. Chocolate was never a bad thing, but she was afraid even Josef’s sinfully rich dark chocolate cake wasn’t going to cut it tonight. If she wasn’t thinking about Rhys and all the ways he made her restless, she was thinking about Stuart and all the ways he made her nervous. She’d tossed and turned in bed for nearly an hour before she came downstairs. Usually she was asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.
But not tonight. Today had been one long, strange wake-up call. If she ever got to sleep again, she’d be lucky.
Taking her plate, she flicked off the lights and padded toward the door. It was eerily quiet tonight, and once the lights were out, she needed a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She knew the hotel like the back of her hand, but since her father had died it seemed…bigger. It was all hers now, even the few nooks and crannies she had never explored, and Stuart had managed to scare her into wondering if those unknown corners held anything but trouble.
And her father was no longer around to reassure her. To call the plumber or the electrician, or handle the odd guest who tried to short them on the bill. It was up to her to make sure the elevators were running and the upstairs hallways got vacuumed.
And the chandelier was checked out occasionally, she reminded herself grimly. Too late for that now.
Too late for a lot of things. But not for a soothing cup of tea with her cake, and maybe some mindless television. She needed to sleep tonight. She could deal with everything else tomorrow. Or possibly the next day.
Stepping into the service corridor outside the kitchen, she turned left to head toward the back elevator—and smacked into something that felt very much like a tall, strong man.
She let out a nervous shriek as her plate—and her cake, damn it—hit the floor, and two strong hands grabbed her upper arms.
“Olivia? Olivia, it’s me. Rhys.”
She blinked in the dim hallway, wriggling away from him. Rhys? My God, he was a bad penny. A big, gorgeous, sexy bad penny. “What are you doing down here? You scared me to death.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted, kneeling to examine her ruined snack. “Not a good day for cake around here, yeah?”
“Apparently not.” She groped for the light switch, and then knelt beside him. There was a dark smear of chocolate frosting where the cake had skidded across the floor, and the plate had cracked down the middle when it hit the concrete of the service corridor. She sighed. “Let me get a broom.”
“No, let me. My fault, after all.” He followed her down the hall to the broom closet, and she couldn’t help cursing herself for coming downstairs. Or at least for coming downstairs in her oldest jeans and her ratty gray NYU sweatshirt. And her slippers! Oh yes, very attractive.
Not that she’d expected to run into anyone down here, of course. That was the whole reason she’d taken the fire stairs and had planned on using the service elevator on the way back. It wasn’t a good idea to run into guests in the lobby after midnight with pilfered food, in clothes that were essentially pajamas.
But Rhys Spencer was a lot of things she hadn’t expected, wasn’t he?
She propped open the door to the broom closet and reached for the light switch, but nothing happened when she flicked it on. “I guess the bulb burned out,” she said, and then gasped because Rhys was following her into the closet.
“Don’t—” she started, but it was too late. He’d knocked the door away from the wall, and it swung closed behind them with a bang.
Uh-oh.
“Bloody hell,” Rhys mumbled. “Sorry about that.”
She shook her head in the darkness as he rattled the knob.
“Hey, what’s this now? It won’t open,” he said.
“That’s because it sticks.” She fumbled toward the wall, kicking a bucket as she went and drawing her slippered foot backward with a wince.
“What do you mean, it sticks?”
“I mean it sticks,” she explained, squinting into the dense, stuffy darkness. Where she was standing with a man she barely knew. A very sexy, currently outraged man.
She sighed as he rattled the doorknob again. “And now we’re stuck.”
Seven Minutes in Heaven. That was the name of the kissing game, wasn’t it? She’d heard stories about it—plenty of them, with a lot of wet, slobbery details—in the cafeteria during seventh grade, even though she’d never played it herself.
A boy and a girl, alone in the dark. In a closet, in fact. With nothing to do but kiss.
Well, actually, based on some of the stories she’d heard, quite a few things aside from kissing went on, but still. She’d never wanted to play the game with anyone but Joshua Burkle, and that was mostly because he had soft brown eyes and he’d been nice to her when she dozed off during Shannon Kesslar’s reading of Juliet’s death scene in English and fallen out of her chair.
Rhys was certainly a much more appealing candidate. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t a mouth-breather, at least.
Or he would be a more appealing candidate if he’d stop pounding on the door, she thought, wincing as he launched a fresh assault. His knuckles were probably raw by now.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered for the tenth time in as many minutes, and she heard him crossing the floor. Toward her, she thought. “Why hasn’t the sodding door ever been fixed?”
“The handle’s on back order.” She was fairly sure she was talking directly to his chest. It was distracting, because he smelled wonderful—a combination of something woodsy and sharp, and something she suspected was simply Rhys. “It’s an old door.”
“No,” he said with exaggerated surprise.
She poked him—or tried to. The space was so dark, she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her, and instead she wound up jabbing a mop handle, which clattered over backward.
“I’m over here, love,” he said, and the smile in his voice was as bright and warm as a well-lit room. Then she felt his fingers close around her hand, and she swallowed hard.
“I can tell you one thing good about a broken doorknob,” he added. “Being stuck in this closet with you.”
“What’s good about that?” The question came out in a whisper.
“Oh, I can think of a few things,” he murmured, and let go of her hand to wind his arms around her. “We can…uh…keep each other warm.”
Seven minutes in heaven, here I come, the part of her brain not overwhelmed by his nearness whispered. But what she said was, “It’s too hot in here already.”
“We can keep each other company,” he murmured into her ear.
God, he was…so close. So big. So warm and strong and firm and…absolutely unknown. A kiss was one thing—a kiss would be, she was sure, so very, very nice—but the rest? Here? Now?
Ignoring the voice of her hormones, which was nodding and shouting, Here! Now!, she said in the most teasing tone she could muster, “I like being alone.”
His lips hovered against her earlobe, hot and soft. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I was doing better before I knocked over your cake and locked us in the closet,” he admitted, but as he did he left a trail of light kisses down the side of her neck,