Ordinarily she might have said something flippant, or even denied that there was a problem the way he was implying. But the man had eyes. He could see there was a problem. Could hear it, too. There was no disguising her reaction, no matter how hard she tried. “I don’t like them.”
He laughed shortly. “That’s rather obvious. Any particular reason?”
Instead of answering him immediately, Gloria took off her jacket, tossing it on top of her coat. She opened the top two buttons of her blouse. Even in this light, he could see the perspiration along her forehead and on her cheeks. It wasn’t that hot in here, he thought.
Jack watched in fascination as she pulled her blouse out from the waistband of her skirt, fanning her middle with the shirttails.
When she paused and raised her eyes to his, he said, “Don’t stop on my account.”
She hated the feeling of desperation that was eating her alive. She should have outgrown it by now, risen above it. “It’s hot in here.”
It wasn’t the heat she was feeling and they both knew it, but he let her have her lie.
“And panicking is going to make it seem hotter.” He waited for a second, certain she would continue. But she didn’t. That alone told him that the situation was dire. The woman never missed a chance to talk. “You didn’t answer my question. Any particular reason confined spaces make you break out in a sweat?”
“Yes.”
They weren’t making any progress. “And that would be?”
Gloria’s eyes shifted from his face. This wasn’t something she talked about, at least not to anyone outside of her own family and even that was rare.
She glanced toward Jack. He was still waiting. Okay, maybe he deserved to know why she’d clawed his arm. At the very least, it would pass the time.
She took as deep a breath of the increasingly hotter air as she could and began.
“When I was a little girl, my family lived in Red Rock. My parents still live there.” A slight smile faintly crossed her lips. “It was as developed then as it sounds.” For just an infinitesimal second, she was that little girl again, free of the demons she had acquired. “Wonderful place to grow up,” she testified. “My brothers and sisters and I had no end of places to play.”
And then her expression sobered. “There was this one field that ran behind an abandoned old house. We used to call the house the Spooky place—”
“Very original,” Jack commented, never taking his eyes off her. Watching emotions cross her face in the dim light.
“We were kids,” she reminded him. And then, as he continued to watch her, she seemed to brace herself before she went on. “One day, we were playing hide-and-seek.” Her breath began to grown audibly shorter. “The way we had a hundred times before.”
She was going to stop. He saw it in her eyes. “And?” Jack prodded.
Gloria raised her chin, a shaky defiance trying to take hold. And failing.
“And I fell into this abandoned shaft. I found out later that it was an old well that had gone dry.”
Suddenly she was there again, in that hole. The dirt walls threatening to close in on her with every grain of dust that fell. Tears rose to her eyes as she remembered the terror that had gripped her.
“Christina ran for help while my brothers and Sierra talked to me, trying to keep me calm. Christina came back with my mother who’d called the fire department. More and more people kept coming, blocking out the light. It took what felt like forever for them to get me out. I was six at the time,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, “and convinced that I was going to die.”
Gloria caught her lower lip between her teeth as she looked up at him again. “I stopped being fearless that day.”
Chapter Eleven
Jack remained quiet as she talked, studying her. He could see that she was reliving the incident with every word she uttered.
He couldn’t imagine experiencing that kind of overwhelming fear. He strode through places—small, large, beneath buildings and on the top-floor balcony of a New York skyscraper—without any thought of harm coming his way, knowing nothing would spring out to trigger an attack.
Are you really that different? a small voice whispered, coming out of nowhere to mock him.
Granted, places didn’t scare him. But the thought of risking his heart, of somehow winding up again in that dark, empty abyss without the one he loved, scared the hell out of him.
Imprisoned him just as her fears imprisoned her.
Maybe they weren’t that different, after all. Compassion washed over him.
“They’ll be here soon,” he promised again, this time more softly.
She looked up at him with eyes that belonged to the child she had been.
“No, they won’t.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. She was struggling again to keep the hysteria at bay. To keep a tight lock on the panic that was scraping jagged nails inside of her, trying to break free. “If the whole building is out, it’s going to take them a long time to get here in order to help us.”
Breathe, Glory. Damn it, breathe. Nice and slow and steady. In, out. You know how to breathe, don’t you?
Eyes wide, Gloria looked at the four walls surrounding her. She felt as though they were closing in.
She forced air into her lungs, praying she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of Jack.
Too late.
“I know I’m an adult,” she began slowly, as if trying to lay down a foundation for herself, something steady for her to build on. Even as she did so, a feeling of futility began to take hold. “That this is all in my head. But I just can’t…I can’t…”
He took her hand in his, catching her before she could verbally and mentally take off to places neither of them wanted her to go. “Tell me about yourself.”
The abrupt order caught her off guard. She blinked. “What?”
“Tell me about yourself,” he insisted. Male-female communication had somehow slipped beyond his realm. He tried to remember conversations he’d had with Ann when they were just getting to know one another. “Did you go to the prom in high school? Try out for the cheerleading squad?”
Stunned, Gloria stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. And then he heard a gratifying sound. Despite the pinched look between her brow, she began to laugh.
Jack couldn’t remember when he’d heard a lovelier sound.
“Do I look like the cheerleader type to you?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m not sure.” As he spoke, he found himself running his fingers through her hair. It felt incredibly silky to the touch, which was probably how the rest of her felt, too. “All I know is that you look like the kind of girl everyone in school would have noticed.”
“They did.” Gloria sighed, suddenly weary beyond words. She closed her eyes for a moment. But the next second, they flew open again, as though afraid that if she didn’t keep vigil, the walls would rush up around her and flatten her. “But for the wrong reasons.”
When he looked at her quizzically, she realized that she was going to have to elaborate. You opened the door, now you have to step through. “I was desperate to block out my fears. Claustrophobia, among other things.” She let the phrase hang for a moment, more than a little reluctant to go into any detail.
He thought that Gloria had finished when she suddenly said with a careless shrug, “Some