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He handed her the disk and another file, then watched her snatch up the rest and start to rise. Snagging her upper arm, rising, too, he helped her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and aimed an apologetic smile at his chin before she reached across the desk to punch a button on the ringing phone.
Her tone totally professional, she answered with a brisk, “Good afternoon, Kelton & Associates,” as she dumped the files on the desk.
His glance ran over the curve of her narrow hips, down to where her slim skirt ended modestly at the back of her knees. Her slender legs were covered with dark gray tights. The black ballet flats she wore spoke of comfort and practicality. Nothing about the way she dressed could be remotely construed as provocative. Yet he found himself thinking her body looked as taut as the muscles in her arm had felt, when a tall, leggy blond in killer heels and a lipstick-red suit rounded the corner into the reception area.
“I’ll need ten copies of this report, too, Amy. And when you get a chance—” she continued, only to cut herself off when her head snapped up and she saw him standing there.
The young woman at the desk immediately transferred the call she’d answered and put another on hold. “This is Mr. Taylor,” she informed the blonde with a nod in his direction. “He just arrived. Ten copies,” she repeated, and slipped into the secretarial chair to straighten the files she’d dropped while telling whoever was on the line that the person he wanted to speak with wasn’t in but that she’d be happy to transfer him to her voice mail if he wanted to leave a message.
The thirty-something ad executive in the red power suit gave him an easy smile as she extended her perfectly manicured hand. In that same moment, she managed a blink-of-an-eye once-over that somehow managed to take in everything from his Italian leather shoes to the quality of his open-collared dress shirt and hand-tailored sport coat and the neat cut of his dark, slightly graying hair.
“Jared Taylor. I’m Candace Chapman.” Eyes the pure blue of a summer sky held his. Expertly applied makeup turned her strikingly attractive features flawless. “I’ve looked forward to meeting you. It’s always exciting to be in on the birth of a new company.” She tipped her head to one side, the motion causing her shining, shoulder-length hair to shimmer in the overhead lights. She snagged it back with her left, noticeably ringless, hand.
“Hold my calls, will you please?” she asked the young woman now heading into another hallway with the report she’d been handed. “Would you like coffee?” Candace asked him.
His attention diverted as much by the woman speaking to him as his reason for being there, he replied, “Please. Black.”
“And two coffees?” she called after her infinitely more nondescript subordinate.
“So, tell me, Jared,” she continued, only to quickly pause. “May I call you Jared?”
Since he’d been J.T. all his life, “Jared” would definitely take getting used to. “If I can call you Candace.”
“Of course.” The charming smile was back. “Anyway,” she continued, leading him past offices with employees at drafting tables, “you mentioned on the phone that you’re new to the Portland market. Are you planning to offer your architectural services only in Oregon, or all of the Northwest?”
She and the agency knew exactly how to make an impression. The first thing he noticed when she led him into her corner office at the end of the hall was an expansive view of the city, its river dividing east side from west and several of the dozen bridges linking them together. Then there were the industry and civic awards on and above a black-lacquered credenza behind the matching executive desk. Photos in sleek frames of Candace and an older woman who looked much like her shaking the hands of presumably important personages graced the opposite wall.
Rather than sit in the executive chair behind the desk, she headed for the end of the room and one of four barrel chairs spaced around a low cube-shaped coffee table.
“I’m not limiting myself,” he replied, as they settled themselves. “I’ll go wherever the client wants.”
She crossed her long legs, carefully adjusted her skirt and balanced a yellow legal pad in her lap. “And your market will be business developers?”
“And companies looking to build new facilities. I can handle anything from a single-level building to multilevel campuses with subterranean access and egress.”
“So we’ll need saturation in trade and financial magazines,” she concluded. “Do you mind if I ask what sort of advertising you do now?”
He told her he did none himself, then danced around the nature of his present situation by explaining that he was with a company that designed industrial complexes in Europe and Asia. He didn’t say a word that wasn’t true, he just omitted a lot as he went on to tell her that his partners didn’t yet know he was leaving. No one in the company did. Because of that, because he was striking out on his own, confidentiality was imperative.
It was as he was speaking of the need for discretion that he realized the associate she’d addressed as “Amy” had entered the room. With his back to the door, he didn’t see her until he noticed Candace give her a nod and she moved to his side.
Holding the small tray she carried low so he could take his cup, she accepted his “Thanks,” with a quiet “You’re welcome,” then set the tray with the other mug soundlessly on the cube.
The gaminelike woman was the antithesis of the chic advertising executive with the obvious business savvy and not-so-subtle sexuality. Even as the girl in gray slipped back out, her motions quiet, efficient, the woman across from him shifted to cross her legs the other way.
The motion immediately drew his glance to the length of her shapely calves. A man would have to be drawing his last breath not to notice legs like hers.
“No one outside the offices of Kelton & Associates will know of your plans until the time comes to unveil them,” Candace assured him. “Everyone from our assistant,” she said with a nod toward the now empty doorway, “to our graphic artists knows it would hardly be to our advantage to ruin the impact of an advertising campaign or alienate a client.”
“Just so we understand each other.”
She touched her pen to the corner of her glossy red mouth. “I’m certain we do. So,” she said, “talk to me about your vision. Do you have a mission statement?”
She asked intelligent questions, took notes, and spent the next ten minutes having him do the talking to get as much information as possible. He spent the next ten letting her impress him with previous work they’d done for their clients and confirming what he’d learned about the agency in his research. By the time Candace gave him a tour of the place and started introducing him to the various people on the agency’s creative team, she was well on her way to convincing him that Kelton & Associates was the firm he needed to launch his new venture.
It also became enormously apparent that Candace Chapman hadn’t a clue that he was Harrison Hunt’s son—and, unless he was totally misinterpreting her subtle cues, that she might be interested in something more than designing him a company logo and getting that logo recognized in the right circles.
The last thing he’d expected to find when he’d walked in the door was a possible candidate for the Bride Hunt. But he couldn’t deny the possibility staring him in the face. While she reminded him of any number of other beautiful, sophisticated women he’d known over the years, as ambitious and career driven as she seemed, she might well meet his criteria for a wife.
Because of that, and because of his father’s rules, he surreptitiously pocketed his Rolex on his way out of the graphics department. On his way into Film Media where he met Sid Crenshaw, their techno and art wizard, he made a point of claiming that every penny he had was going into his new business, so he really needed whatever campaign they designed to work. He wanted Ms. Chapman and the entire KA team, as she called them, to think him an average, modestly successful architect who lived part-time in Seattle, presently worked mostly overseas and wanted to open his own firm in the Northwest so he could return to living in the States.
He handled the logistics of paying the retainer without writing a check or otherwise exposing his identity by claiming to be in the process of setting up a separate account for his new firm. Candace didn’t bat a single lush eyelash when he said he’d return the contract she would send him with a cashier’s check for five thousand dollars to cover their preliminary work. She’d simply said that would be fine, and offered him her hand to seal the deal after they’d entered the reception area, where he found himself glancing around for the young woman who’d run into him when he’d first arrived.
“So we’re agreed,” Candace said, as he absently withdrew his hand. “We’ll have a preliminary presentation for you next week.” She tipped her head, her blue eyes steady on his. “If you have any questions or ideas in the meantime, call me. If you’re in town, I’d be happy to meet and discuss them.”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. Not “we’ll talk on the phone.” Rather, “we’ll meet.” He had to give her points for being direct. He liked that in a woman. It took the guesswork out of the whole dating thing.
Thinking he’d give her a call to meet for a drink after he looked at his schedule, he reached for the door. “I’m sure I’ll be in touch,” he assured her, and found himself taking one last glance toward the empty Lucite desk.
He was looking for her assistant. Not sure why, even less certain why he felt a twinge of disappointment at not seeing her, he moved into the hall, headed for the elevator and punched the down button.
He was in the process of dismissing that disappointment as being totally irrelevant when the elevator dinged, the door slid open and he heard a feminine voice down the hall call “Hold that, please?”
The missing assistant hurried toward him with an armload of manila envelopes, stacks of letter-size white ones and a half-dozen Express Mail packs.
He stepped inside the empty elevator, blocked the closing sensor with his arm.
“Oh, thank you,” she murmured, and stepped inside herself.
Moving to a back corner, she aimed a smile toward his chest. She said nothing else, though, as the doors closed and he glanced from his corner to where she stood hugging the mail. The overhead light caught faint hints of gold in her baby-fine brown hair as the elevator began its descent. A few of the wisps that fell beneath her eyebrows had caught at the corner of her long, dark eyelashes.
With her arms full, she pulled her focus from the descending floor numbers, ducked her head and lifted her shoulder to dislodge the strands. She’d yet to meet his eyes. Wondering if that was because she still felt flustered from their first encounter or if she was just preoccupied, he started to ask if she always moved at a run.
The lights flickered just as he opened his mouth.
An instant later, the lights went out as the elevator jerked to a stop.
Chapter Two
Amy couldn’t see a thing. In the darkness of the stalled elevator, she couldn’t hear anything, either. No Muzak. No mechanical grind and whir that might indicate a frozen pulley motor. The construction noise from the tenth floor that had tormented the building’s tenants all week was gone. Except for a terse, “What the…?” seconds ago, even the big man next to her remained silent.
As far as she could tell, Jared Taylor—all six-foot-two, beautifully masculine inches of him—didn’t move from his corner. Neither did she as she waited a handful of seconds to see if anything else would happen.
Nothing did.
“Are you claustrophobic?” she heard him ask into the dark.
“I haven’t been before.” She drew a cautious breath. The way her day was going, however, discovering a new phobia was entirely possible. So far, she’d overslept, which meant she’d missed her bus so she’d had to take her car to work. She’d dented her fender pulling into the parking garage because she’d been in such a hurry, then arrived late to find that the receptionist had quit. She’d then nearly knocked over the firm’s newest client because she’d been worrying about a call she received last night from her grandmother and hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. Now, the Fates had pulled the plug on the power. “But there’s a first time for everything,” she conceded. “How about you?”
“The only thing that bothers me right now is not knowing why we’re stalled.” He paused, listening. “I don’t hear a fire alarm. If someone had tripped one, the elevator should have gone straight to the first floor and opened. It must be something else.”
The mail she’d hugged landed on the floor. “There’s a phone by the doors.”
She had absolutely no desire to stand there conjuring scenarios. Apparently, neither did he. Even as she reached out to find the brass panel to the right of the elevator doors, she felt him moving beside her.
She reached the panel first. Groping over it in the dark, she felt his arm bump her shoulder as he reached past her.
His palm landed on the back of her hand. Since her hand wasn’t covering what they were both looking for, she pulled her fingers from beneath his and patted farther to her right. As she did, his sleeve brushed her cheek. Or maybe her cheek brushed his sleeve. Whichever it was, she could feel his big body at her back. His heat permeated her sweater as his hand, or maybe it was his elbow since he seemed to be reaching over her, bumped a spot above her temple.
He must have heard her quick intake of breath.
“Sorry,” he muttered, his deep voice above her. “What did I hit?”
“The side of my head.”
She thought she heard him swear. She knew for a fact that she felt his hands curved over her shoulders and ease along the sides of her neck. As if feeling for the point of impact, his palms slid up and cupped above her ears.
“Where?”
She barely breathed. “My temple.”
“Which side.”
“Right.”
His left hand fell to her shoulder, the fingers of his right eased into her hair as if feeling for a knot.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Her heart was already doing double-time. The feel of his big hands should have put it into overdrive. Yet, his touch, the concern in it, the gentleness, seemed almost…calming. Or would have had she let herself truly consider it.
“I’m…fine. Really,” she murmured. “You didn’t hit that hard.”
The disquiet in her tone had changed quality. J.T. heard it as certainly as he’d felt her go still the moment he’d touched her. Realizing he was the reason for both, aware that he’d reached for her without thinking, he eased his hands away.
“There’s an emergency button by the phone.” Urgency returned to her voice. “Below it, I think. Here. I’ve got it.”
She must have pushed the button. Or someone trapped in one of the other two elevators had just as anxiously sent the emergency signal. Somewhere in the shaft below them, an alarm began ringing.
Conscious of that distant sound, more conscious of the lingering feel of her soft hair against his fingers, he took a step back to give her room when she said she’d found the phone.
“Joe, is that you?” she asked after half a minute went by. “This is Amy from the twelfth floor. I’m stuck in the elevator with a client. I’m not sure,” she said after a moment. “Somewhere around the ninth or tenth floor, I think.
“We’re okay,” she continued. “We’d just like to know what’s going on.
“Will do,” she finally murmured. “Thanks.”
J.T. heard a patting sound as she searched for the receiver’s cradle. It was followed by the click of plastic against metal when she found it and hung up.
“The power’s out in the whole building. Something tripped the main breaker.”
The construction, he thought. He remembered hearing the distant sound of a power saw when he’d first come in. “Did he say anything else?”
“Just that we’re not supposed to panic. If the power doesn’t come back on soon, they’ll call the fire department to come get us.”
“Are you okay with that?” A heavy hint of masculine caution laced the deep tones of his voice. “The not panicking part?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve never been stuck in a dark elevator before.”
Thinking she sounded okay for now, hoping she’d stay that way, J.T. leaned against the elevator’s back wall. “Who’s Joe?”
“The building’s maintenance supervisor. He’s been here forever.”
A moment ticked by. Another. From a few feet away, he heard her draw in a long, deep breath.
“These things don’t just fall down the shaft,” he told her, “if that’s what you’re worried about. There are redundant systems in place to keep that from happening.”
“How many?”
“Aside from the static brake, there’s at least one safety and a governor. Since we’re nowhere near being over weight capacity, that system should keep us right here until the power comes back on.”
“You know that for certain?”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because I’ve read the specs when I’ve designed these things into buildings. Different companies have different features, but they all have the basic safety elements.”
A considering silence preceded her quiet “Oh.”
Silence intruded once more. Within seconds Amy could practically feel it echoing off the walls. Or maybe, she thought, crossing her arms tightly around herself, what she felt was the disturbing combination of nerves and the memory of the heat that had shot through her when she’d first met his eyes. They were the color of old pewter, the deep silver gray of a cloudy sky. But that was all she’d noticed before that odd heat had caused her to look away.
She’d never really felt that disturbing, intriguing sensation before. That…electricity, she supposed. She’d heard about it. Read about it. Tried to imagine it. But not once in her twenty-five years had she actually experienced the jolt that had made her heart feel as if it had tightened in her chest and darted warmth straight to her belly.
She’d felt the sensation again when he’d curved his hand over her shoulder and slipped his fingers through her hair. Only, then she felt something else, too. Something she hadn’t even realized she’d craved until she’d felt his compelling touch. Simply to be cared for, to be cared about.
“So,” she said, too uneasy with the elevator situation to refute the wholly unwanted admission. Not that what she’d felt with him mattered, anyway. Men like Jared Taylor, tall, dark and gorgeous men with ambition, sophistication and drive paid no real attention to her. Certainly, not the sort her beautiful, equally sophisticated stepsister received. She’d seen the way he’d straightened when Candace had walked in, caught the way his eyebrows arched ever so slightly as his glance moved along the length of her body. She’d seen the quick, reciprocating interest, too, as Candace had checked out his left hand. He hadn’t been wearing a ring. Amy had noticed that herself when he’d helped her pick up the files that had scattered at their feet. If the guy was single, odds were that Candace would have him asking her out by the end of their next meeting.
Silence had intruded again, heavy, uncomfortable. Later, she could wonder if she’d ever find a man who would look at her with that unmistakable, purely male interest. Right now, she just needed for him to talk to her. Or to talk herself. That silence did nothing but let her too active imagination head in directions she really didn’t want it to go.
“So, Mr. Taylor,” she began again.
“It’s Jared,” he corrected. “And you’re…Amy…?”
An introduction seemed totally reasonable under the circumstances.
“Amy Kelton,” she replied, and would have offered her hand had she any idea where to find his.
“Kelton? Are you any relation to the Kelton in Kelton & Associates?”
“Mike Kelton was my father. He owned the agency before he passed away.”
“He did?” He seemed to hesitate on a number of levels. “I mean, I’m sorry. About your father.”
“Thanks. Me, too.” It had been nearly five years, but the shock of her dad’s sudden death and its unsettling aftermath still caught her off guard at times. Mike Kelton had been a man in his prime. Or so everyone had thought when he’d gone out one morning for his usual run, and promptly suffered a massive coronary.
“The firm went to his wife,” she explained, her tone matter-of-fact. This man was a client, after all. As long as the firm bore her father’s name and she was part of the team, she would protect its members—no matter how ambivalent she personally felt about some of them, or how invisible she usually was herself. “She was his business partner. Jill Chapman Kelton. She’s Candace’s mom. You would have met her, but she’s touring a client’s plant today.”
J.T. frowned into the sea of black that prevented him from seeing features he remembered mostly as being delicate. Her eyes were dark, long-lashed and shot with flecks of gold, though why he remembered that from the few seconds she’d actually made eye contact with him, he had no idea.
From the nearness of her voice, the young woman who apparently held more interest in the firm than he would have ever suspected, remained by the wall a couple of feet away.
He knew the agency was a mother-daughter enterprise from his own quick research into the firm and Candace’s recitation of the firm’s hierarchy a while ago. She’d even pointed out the classy, silver-haired version of herself in the photos on her trophy wall. What Candace hadn’t mentioned was that her assistant was her stepsister, and that her mother had inherited the firm from Amy’s dad. Not that she’d had any reason to mention it, he admitted to himself. He hadn’t asked anything about the company that would have given her reason to bring it up.
“So you’re interning,” he concluded, thinking it the only way to explain the younger stepsister’s subordinate position. “You’re in college and learning all the jobs on the way to becoming a partner yourself.”
“Actually…no. I’m Jill and Candace’s assistant, the bookkeeper and gofer for just about everyone else.”
“You’re not going to be part of the agency?”
“Not in any way other than I already am. The company belongs to Jill.” Candace would become a partner in a few months, though. Her mother had promised her a quarter interest when she turned thirty. If Candace wanted to tell him that, she could. It wasn’t her place. “My only financial interest in it is in what she pays me.”
“Are you okay with that?”
A shrug entered her voice. “I have to be.”
He hadn’t expected the acceptance in her response. Or maybe it was the resignation. Baffled by whatever it was, his basic sense of fair play insisted that she should have shared the ownership of what appeared to be a very successful operation, not merely been there to support the women now running it.
“Why do you have to be?”
“Because I need the job to help support my grandmother,” she admitted, too concerned about being trapped to care that he was so blunt. They were talking. That was all she cared about just then. “Jill pays me too much to go anywhere else.”
“Do you live with your grandmother?”
“No, I… No,” Amy repeated, and promptly told herself she really should shut up. At the very least, she should change the subject. She couldn’t begin to deny the unease she felt knowing she was ten stories up, trapped in a box with nothing but whatever mechanical wizardry he understood but she didn’t to keep it from dropping to the basement. She just wasn’t in the habit of sharing her problems with people she knew, much less with a stranger she’d be faced with again when he returned for his next appointment.
“Then, she lives with you,” he concluded.
“She’s in an assistant living facility.”
“What about your stepmom?” he asked, before she could move on. “Why isn’t she supporting her?”