Who's the Boss? - Erin McCarthy Page 0,1

serious?” Because again, Felicia was defective, but that made his brother normal? I wasn’t going to be a bitch on my own behalf, but if you mess with my friends, I will bring it. I opened my mouth to annihilate him, but got distracted when the elevator jerked to a sudden halt.

“Why are we stopping?” he asked, looking up.

The second-floor button was still lit up. “Maybe someone is going up from the second floor,” I said, because duh. That’s what elevators do. They stop at floors.

“But the doors aren’t opening.” He reached out and jammed his finger repeatedly into the “open door” button.

Fighting the urge to sigh, I just stood there and watched him pull back from the panel and run his hand through his hair.

“Nothing is happening.”

No, it wasn’t. I unfurled my scarf so it wasn’t covering my neck. It was December and I was bundled up from the commute from Brooklyn to SoHo. It was getting stuffy in the elevator. I had my purse over my shoulder and across my midsection so I didn’t have to carry it and I shifted so that I could unzip my winter coat.

Michael’s brother turned to me, panic clear on his face. “What the hell do we do?”

“It might start up again in a minute,” I said, not really that worried. I’d been on enough trains that had stopped and started again without any reason or explanation. I’d also been trapped in an elevator once about four years earlier and that had lasted three hours. Once we got past ten minutes, I would start to get concerned, but for now I wasn’t going to freak out. “Push the help button.”

That seemed an obvious course of action to me.

But he dismissed that idea. “No one is going to respond to that.”

Okay, Mr. Elevator Expert.

“I’ll push it, then.” I tried to shift around him, but he wasn’t moving. “Excuse me.” I was determined to keep my cool.

He wrinkled his nose and frowned down at me. “What? Why?”

“So I can push the button.”

The frown deepened. His mouth was sensual, with lips that probably could do amazing things to a woman’s inner thighs, after he stripped her naked.

“That’s pointless,” he said. “I’ll text Michael. He can call maintenance.”

I looked at him and the only stripping I wanted to do was to rip off my scarf fully and tie it over that irritating mouth.

“Fine. Good luck getting a text to send in an elevator in a building this old.” I had no idea if a text would go through or not, he just annoyed me.

It was then that I realized I hadn’t asked his name and he hadn’t offered it. He hadn’t asked for my name either and I didn’t care. I pressed the “help” button.

“Michael’s not responding.”

“He is in the middle of his engagement party,” I pointed out. “He’s probably, you know, busy.”

He just turned and gave me a long stare, eyebrows raised. “Wow. That was totally unnecessary.”

Oh, no, he did not. I narrowed my eyes. “What was unnecessary?”

“Sarcasm.”

“That was not sarcasm. That was stating the obvious.”

“Whatever.” He went back to his phone, typing again.

Now I was actually amused. That was his best response? I felt triumphant. The victor. “Um, isn’t ‘whatever-ing’ me sarcasm? I thought sarcasm was unnecessary.”

Actually, I thought “whatever” fell more under the category of bratty, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out. I already felt like I’d bested him and that was enough for me.

Without responding, he ripped his coat off. “Damn, it’s hot in here.” He dropped the coat on the floor and tore at the neck of his dress shirt. “Why the hell isn’t anything happening?”

For a split second I felt sorry for him. He was clearly claustrophobic and I knew that wasn’t something you could actually control. Sympathy had me asking, “Do you want me to try calling one of my other friends at the party?”

“What I want is for you to stop talking.”

My sympathy evaporated. Thoughts of strangling him with my scarf returned.

“You’re a jerk,” I said, because hello. If you’re trapped in an elevator with someone, it doesn’t exactly make sense to be rude to them. Though technically I had just broken my own rule, but he had broken it first. So, there.

Now we were both acting like children. Fabulous.

He frowned at me. “What did I do to deserve that? I know being trapped is stressful but you don’t have to start calling me names.”

“You told me to stop talking!”

“Calm down.” He held his hand up like