Asking for Trouble (2 page)

“So you ironed everything out and made other arrangements.”

“For the next night, yes.”

“I picked Sydney up at her office,” Tom said from the screen behind Rex. “Sydney’s car was in the shop, which was one of the reasons why she’d wanted to meet on Thursday—so she’d have a getaway car if the date was horrible. The other reason was that she’d known she was going to have to work late that Friday night.”

“Okay, so you got there. What happened after that?”

Tom looked down at the monitor and Sydney looked up at the screen behind Rex Swann. Through a maze and tangle of electrical wires and circuits, they shared one last moment of private, intimate exchange. Regret and sorrow passed between them, and so did resignation with the cosmic forces that had a tendency to clash and riot when the two of them were together.

The confusion with the day of the date had been a warning from the gods that Tom and Sydney were incompatible. Together they were the matter-antimatter paradox Scotty was always complaining about on
Star Trek.
They were the Bermuda Triangle, the black hole in the universe, and all the other catastrophic mysteries of life. Separately they functioned just fine, or so it had seemed.

Of course, neither one of them had suspected the forces their coming together would unleash. As a matter of fact, in the beginning, the forces they generated were pretty wonderful. ...

“S
YDNEY?”

“Tom?” Sydney bounced out of her chair at the sound of his voice in the next room. She fluffed up her short brown curls with her fingers, moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and smoothed down the clean, simple lines of the pink linen suit she’d changed into earlier. She was halfway to the door before she missed her shoes and dashed back to her desk. Seconds later, with a welcoming smile on her face, she swung wide the partially opened door to her office.

The smile froze on her lips. Excitement stuck in her throat. The videotape had shown a washed-out imitation of the real Tom Ghorman. In person, he was much more ... vivid, more lifelike and vital. Virile described the man in the videotape. There were no words to describe the sexy, raw maleness of the real Tom Ghorman; none to explain the elated, edgy, almost primal feeling he stirred in her.

Tom returned her smile. He was relieved to be in the right place at the right time at last and more than relieved by what he saw.

Tom was a hunch man. He’d talked to her twice over the phone and had been willing to bet his last dollar that the woman on the other end of the line looked as alluring and seductive as her low, throaty voice. And she did.

The excruciating moment when two strangers meet and covertly—or not so covertly—inspect, study, and judge the other dragged on.

Sydney’s gaze darted across Tom’s broad shoulders and chest, took note of his lack of a beer belly, his slim hips, and the length and strength of his legs. She was pleased to see that he’d worn socks and dress shoes with his gray slacks and navy sport jacket, instead of slipping his bare feet into dockers for the sake of chic.

Tom, on the other hand, let loose a long, low whistle and grinned at her the way a wolf would a lamb. Sydney was a long-stemmed all-American beauty. Her hair fairly bounced with good health, her green, almond-shaped eyes shimmered with excitement and enthusiasm. And her skin ... her skin looked petal soft with a fine rosy hue that came naturally from within.

“I sure hope you’re Sydney Wiesman,” he said. “I’m going to be real disappointed if you’re not.”

Sydney giggled, and then she wanted to kick herself. She’d planned to act sophisticated and cultured. She’d wanted to give him the impression that dating handsome men was a routine part of her life. She’d wanted to appear relaxed and confident, but the truth was, she was nervous as hell.

“I’m Tom Ghorman,” he said. He took several steps forward and held out a friendly hand. The urge to touch her was so sharp, he could taste it, and he knew right away that a handshake wasn’t going to cut it, but his options were restricted to the socially acceptable at the moment.

“I know,” she said, forcing herself to take his hand. “I recognized you ... and ... and your voice.” It had a tendency to send tickling shivers up her spine and make goose bumps on her arms.

His touch all but buckled her knees. She tolerated it for what she hoped was an appropriate amount of time, and then commanded her fingers—several times—to release his hand.

“That’s right. I keep forgetting that you have a slight advantage,” he said.

“I do?” Lord, she was glad to hear the news, but at a loss as to what the advantage was.

“You watched my tape and knew what I looked like.”

“Well, yes, but ...” She bit down sharply on the words “it didn’t do you justice,” and quickly substituted, “... but I couldn’t see how tall you were.”

“Or if I had a hunchback or a pot belly?” He smiled as he once again took slow inventory of all her best body parts. “I was afraid you’d have a wart on the end of your nose. But I hadn’t exactly planned on your being beautiful either.”

Sydney laughed breathlessly. Inside, she felt as if she were running the final distance in a marathon. Racing, racing, racing.

“Thank you,” she murmured. She hoped she wasn’t babbling. She closed her eyes tightly against the possibility as she turned and walked to her desk.

There had to be some means of dealing with the way the man looked, and with the way he looked at her. She would have sworn his eyes were green on the video, but they were blue, as clear and deep and bright as a summer sky. Wherever his gaze touched her, she felt bathed in a heat that would normally require a sunscreen. And, alas, she had none. She was vulnerable and unprotected.

“We planned this really well,” she said, making a poor effort at sounding detached. “I was just finishing up when I heard you.”

“This is the big corporation you were telling me about? The one you’re going to audit on Monday?” he asked as he followed her into the room, enjoying the subtle sway of her hips.

“Well, they’re not all that big, just complicated. A mortuary chain with a list of charitable contributions longer than my arm, to a company-controlled trust fund. Automatically, the IRS gets suspicious.” She chuckled at her thoughts and spoke them out loud. “Actually, I have to admit it does look a little suspicious. It looks as if they’re either laundering money or burying people for free.”

“And who ever heard of that, huh?” he asked, humor in his voice. “Dying’s expensive.”

“It is,” she said in all seriousness, acutely uncomfortable with the subject. “And I could see one or two freebies a year for tax write-offs, but they do so many that if the rest of the enterprise wasn’t doing well, they’d go out of business.” In a whisper she added, “Which is why I think they’re laundering money.”

“And why they’re going to get stiffed by the IRS?” he added in the same tone of voice, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Sydney groaned at his pun, but liked his quick, sharp humor. She gathered up her purse and was about to turn off the lamp at her desk when she heard him ask, “Do you like puns? I saw this great sign at a tire store on the way over here.”

“What’d it say?” she asked, glad to have something other than tax codes to talk about.

“Underneath their low, low prices it said, We Skid You Not.” He waved her through the door in front of him.

She chuckled and smiled. “I have a terrible time remembering punch lines. Do you like knock-knock jokes?” she asked, knowing that humor was a great way to break the ice with strangers, but wishing she had a more cultured selection of witticisms to choose from.

“Do frogs have tongues?” he answered. He was itching for a good excuse to touch her again. Indulgently, he placed a gentle guiding hand to the small of her back, deciding that the limits of acceptable social behavior were too narrow and a royal pain in the rear.

She was trying to remember if frogs did have tongues.

“I love knock-knock jokes,” he said helpfully, fascinated by the rapid changes in her expression, eager to know the cause and meaning of her every move.

“Okay. Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Crunch.”

“Crunch who.”

“God bless you.”

The last three words hung in the air like a rain cloud about to burst. She looked at Tom, who was already staring down his nose at her. She shrugged, wishing she could hide under the wall-to-wall carpeting. “It was the only one I could remember. My nephew told it to me.”

“Knock-knock,” he said, his gaze wandering over her face.

“Who’s there?” The question was real. She wanted to know who the man beside her was, with eyes so keen and clear they seemed to look straight into the heart of her.

“Mrs. Highwater.”

“Mrs. Highwater who?”

“Mrs. Helen Highwater,” he said, and then he grinned. “I have a nephew too.”

“How old?” she asked, relaxing a little. Tom Ghorman was a nice man, she decided instantly. He’d had the chance to make her feel like a jerk and had let it slip by.

“Seven. He takes any chance he gets to use a forbidden word or say something dirty. The grosser the better.”

“Like the book titles?” These were her nephew’s favorites.

“Like
Under the Bandstands
by Seymour Butts?”

She groaned as the elevator doors opened. Sydney greeted a maintenance man by his first name as she stepped in beside Tom and pushed the button for the main floor. “What about Mister Completely?” Tom said. “He wrote—”

He stopped short when a loud squeaking noise came from above the elevator, and looked up at the lights over the door.

“Uh-oh,” he said, struggling to appear calmer than he felt as he started pushing all the buttons on the selection panel one at a time.

“It’s stuck.” It was only a seven-story building, but Sydney had visions of them plummeting for miles to a horrible and gruesome death at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Panic rose up within her like a monster from a slimy green lagoon. “It’s stuck. We can’t get out. There’s been another earthquake. The power’s failed. We’ll die in here before anyone finds us,” she said all in one breath, as she reached over and hit the red alarm by reflex.

Tom took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. He recognized the trapped and helpless fear in her, but knew better than to give it any latitude.

“Hear that,” he yelled at her over the alarm. “It wouldn’t work if there’d been a power failure. No earthquake either, or we’d have felt it before the elevator stopped. And we’re not going to die in here, because somebody’s bound to hear that noise.”

“Right.” She flashed him a smile for his brilliant logic and opened the little metal door on the panel that concealed the emergency telephone. She pulled the red knob to a stop position and into the silence spoke as if she hadn’t been a raving lunatic moments before. “I’ll just call maintenance and have someone come up and get us out.”

“No need to do that,” came a voice from the back of the elevator.

Both Tom and Sydney turned to look. The maintenance man stood with his hands on his belt full of tools, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“Can’t answer the phone right now. Things are a little up in the air,” he said, and then he guffawed at his own humor.

“Can you fix the elevator?” Sydney asked, deceptively unruffled.

“Not from in here, Ms. Wiesman. Got to get to the circuit box, check the cables, stuff like that. Want a drink?” He pulled a shiny metal flask from his rear pocket and offered it to her.

“Ah ... no, thank you. You’re ... um ... ,” she was afraid to say the words. “You’re not the only maintenance man on duty tonight, are you?”

He offered the flask to Tom as he shook his head in dismay. “Weekends and nights, there’s only one of us. Well, one of us and the girls who clean up.”

“Can they do any anything to help us?”

“They could dust and vacuum in here, I guess,” he said, dragging his index finger across the elevator wall before he took a swig from his flask, his eyes sparkling with good spirit.

Sydney took a menacing step toward him, fully prepared to do serious damage to the man’s head and neck, when Tom caught her by the arm. Again he took note of the anger and desperation in her eyes, but he didn’t address them. Instead, he looked back at the maintenance man and asked, “When’s your shift over?”

“Midnight, but ...”

“Midnight? But that’s four hours from now. We’ll suffocate,” Sydney said, fear creeping into her voice again. Small spaces never bothered her. It was the locked-in part that was undermining her sanity. Being unable to get out of any space, large or small, played games with her mind and encouraged her hysteria.

“Nah. There’s plenty of air in here,” the man said.

“Can you call outside the building on this phone?” Tom asked, still holding on to Sydney’s arm. “Or could we call one of the cleaning ladies and have her call out for help?”

“Nope. It’s a direct line to our office in the basement, and they don’t clean down there.”

“What would happen if we left the alarm on?”

“We’d probably go deaf,” the man said, as he lowered himself to the floor. “But it wouldn’t get us outta here any quicker.”

Sydney watched as he again removed the flask from his back pocket and began to loosen the top. Then she turned to look at Tom, who, to her complete exasperation, was loosening his tie and removing his jacket. He folded it neatly over the handrail on the wall and then joined the maintenance man on the floor.

“Do you know any good, fairly clean jokes?” Tom asked the man.

“This is insane!” she shouted, hands on her hips, her mind replaying the plummeting pictures. Didn’t they know that there was no way out? How could they act so calm? Didn’t they know the danger they were in? Hadn’t they ever seen movies where the heroine hung by a single thread of wire for an indeterminate amount of time before she ... plummeted. Addressing them both, she asked, “Aren’t you going to
do
something?”

Tom looked up at her and smiled. “The elevator’s stuck. What would you like us to do?”

“Get us out of here.” The elevator seemed suddenly smaller than it had been when she’d first walked into it.