Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(23)

His brows rose. Damn, he even looked sexy when he was surprised. “A sabbatical? It couldn’t have lasted long. You said you started at the research center around the same time you divorced.”

“Not from work. From…relationships.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Relationships?”

“Yep. I realized I needed some time to think about what I want. I fell into the relationship with Gary, but I think what I was honestly looking for was stress relief.”

“You married a man for stress relief?”

Put like that it sounded dumb, but it was the conclusion she’d come to. “We also had a lot in common. It kind of made sense. We spent a lot of time together. We seemed to like each other. It saved us some money to live together. I should have left it there, but he asked and it seemed rude to tell him no. I don’t know. I was chasing something.”

“Chasing?”

“Something my mom wanted for me. Before she died, in one of her lucid moments, she said the only thing she wanted was for me to be happy. I thought part of that was getting married. You go to school, have a career, get married, have two point five kids and live the American dream. I didn’t consider the fact that not only was my American dream maybe different than other’s, but that it would lead me to Canada.”

“You needed two years and no boyfriends to figure that out?”

She shrugged. The walls were starting to close in again. “I’m slow on the uptake, but I know what I want now. I have a plan. I’m going to start dating. Or hire a male escort who also dog walks and picks up my dry cleaning. It’s one of the two.”

When she turned again, he was on his feet. For a big man, he moved quickly and quietly. She’d thought she could feel every movement of this damn elevator that really was held six and a half floors above the ground by a bunch of wires that were probably antiques, too.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay, Rebecca.” He was close to her, staring down at her with soulful eyes.

“Becca,” she corrected, not thinking about the elevator now. She was too busy staring at his perfectly straight jawline. There was a hint of scruff coming in and she wondered how often he had to shave. Did he get all smooth every morning and by evening, his raw masculinity was reasserting itself? “My friends call me Becca.”

“Becca,” he replied, his voice low. “Concentrate on me, on our conversation. You’ve done incredibly well. You’ve been able to hold it off, but this has gone on far longer than you ever should have been expected to handle it. This elevator is tight. I feel it, too, but we can hold off the anxiety together.”

She doubted the man in front of her was anxious. He looked solid, like the kind of man who took whatever came his way and simply dealt with it. He wouldn’t have needed two freaking years to figure out what he wanted. He would have signed his divorce papers and moved on, not hiding in his work.

It struck her forcibly that she might never have met a man like Owen Shaw. Her childhood had been fairly sheltered. She’d constantly been surrounded by intellectuals, men and women who were far more concerned with their work than anything else.

The ground beneath her shifted and the elevator dropped what felt like ten feet, but she knew in her head it was mere inches. Her heart rate tripled, and she grabbed on to the closest thing she could—him.

His arms went around her, holding her up, and she heard it. He was so tall that her head naturally rested on his chest, and she could hear his heart beating in rapid time.

He was nervous.

The phone rang and Owen cursed, reaching out to grab it. The shaft was so small, he didn’t have to let her go to grasp the handle.

“What the bloody hell is happening, Colin?”

She could hear his voice over the line. “Sorry. So sorry. We had to lower the car the tiniest bit. I should have warned you. It’s not going to fall. Just needed to reposition to get to the problem. Not long now. Another half an hour or so and I’ll have you right out of there.”

“If you do that again, do you know what I’m going to do to you, Colin?” Owen asked.

There was a pause over the line and she could practically hear Colin’s gulp. “Write my father a tersely worded letter of complaint?”

“No, I’m going to pull your heart out through your throat and then I’ll shove it back up your arse.”

Colin’s breath hitched. “You sound very much like Liam Neeson in that movie.”

“Liam Neeson is Irish. I’m a Scot. I assure you what I’ll do to you will make you run into Liam Neeson’s arms and beg him to save you.” He reached back and hung up the phone with a resounding clang.

His arm went back around her. “It’s going to be all right. They’ll move faster now. So you’ve taken a sabbatical from men.”

She breathed him in, loving how he smelled. Were men supposed to smell this good?

She could feel herself relax as he held her. She’d known him for three hours. She shouldn’t let him hold her like this.

And why the fuck not? Because it wasn’t smart? Because he might think she wanted something she shouldn’t?

She was human. Why shouldn’t she want him? Because society told her that good girls didn’t make out with guys they’d recently met in an elevator?

Society sucked, and she wasn’t a good girl. When her husband had tried to put his name on her work, she’d told him to fuck off and write his own paper. When he’d cheated on her, she’d walked away.