and a wave of pure, red anger.
“Holden Whittaker,” I said, my voice choked. “Get the hell away from me.”
Three
Mina
He stared at me. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since Wisconsin, but no one who had ever seen Holden Whittaker could mistake him. Dark hair, high cheekbones, slashes of dark brows, and those eyes—blue eyes. Vivid. Cerulean, even, if you like poetic words. The dark blue uniform made them even bluer, unfairly gorgeous on a man. I knew that the rims of the irises were dark, because once upon a time I’d seen those eyes up close. He was older than when I’d last seen him, more muscled, and he’d grown a trim dark beard on his jawline, but it was him. The man of my nightmares for the past ten years.
He looked incredible. And in that split second I realized I was sitting on the floor, my pencil skirt askew, my hair mussed, toner ink smeared on my blouse. My belly was pooched out in this position and I had a Snickers wrapper on the floor next to me, like evidence of my shame. There goes the fat girl, eating candy again. Pathetic.
And that, right there—that humiliating voice in my head—was the reason I hated Holden Whittaker.
I pushed to my feet. He held out a hand to help me up, but I ignored it. “Mina?” he said, his voice deep and shocked. A man’s voice, sexy and smooth. It made my stomach turn. “Mina Maple, is that you?”
“Leave me alone,” I snapped at him, standing and straightening my skirt. I picked up my bag and kicked the Snickers wrapper away with my nice strappy shoe, a shoe I’d thought was so pretty when I bought it on payday a week ago. “Don’t talk to me.”
“I didn’t know you were in New York,” he said.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not in Wisconsin. But apparently I didn’t go far enough to get away from you.”
He stepped toward me. “Let me help you.”
I jerked away from him. “Absolutely fucking not. What part of fuck off don’t you understand?”
Another male voice called down from the darkness at the top of the ladder. “Is, um, is everything okay down there?”
“Fine, thank you,” I shouted up, my voice sharp. I looked at Holden, trying not to look too closely at those gorgeous blue eyes. “I’m going to climb this ladder, and if you touch me, I’m going to scream. Is that clear?”
Now he looked alarmed, and sort of stricken. “Mina, let me explain.”
“Is that clear?”
His eyes met mine, and I’m not sure what he saw. Maybe he saw a woman who was barely keeping her shit together, because that’s what I was. Maybe he felt sorry for me. If he did, he could go to hell. Or he could go just long enough for me to get back to the privacy of my apartment so I could cry.
“It’s clear,” he said.
I turned, hefted my bag onto my shoulder, and climbed the ladder. On top of the humiliation of having Holden Whittaker see my disheveled clothes and definite belly, I now had the added humiliation of knowing he could see my wide, curved ass as I climbed. I’d learned to like my ass, but right now I hated it. Right now it felt huge and hideous, an embarrassment, and the reason it felt that way was Holden Whittaker.
I swallowed hard. At the top of the ladder were two other EMT’s, sitting on the roof of the stuck elevator. One of them held out his hand and I took it as I climbed the last few steps. Above us, at shoulder level, were the opened doors of the elevator shaft, leading out into the hallway. There were a couple of neighbors out there, hanging around to catch the excitement in case I died. For a second I paused in the dark, unwilling to face anyone.
“Are you okay?” one of the EMT’s asked. He was Asian, a few years older than me. He looked concerned. He’d likely heard me tell his colleague to fuck off.
I glanced at the other EMT, who was a black man with short dreads. There was a sound in the elevator below—Holden was starting to climb the ladder.
Oh, hell no.
I turned, found the opened panel door on the roof of the elevator, and slammed it shut, trapping Holden inside.
The two EMT’s exchanged a wide-eyed What the fuck was that? look. “Um, you okay?” the Asian one asked.
There was a knock on the panel below