She glanced at the fire exit door, wondering how bad, exactly, walking down fifty flights of stairs would be. Bad, she decided. Three-inch heels did not lend themselves to such activity and besides, she had to catch that flight. Better to slay her demons and get on with it. Except, she reasoned, taking a step back as the thick steel doors slammed shut on the dozen people inside, having a whole contingent bear witness to her incapacitating fear of elevators wasn’t going to happen.
Telling herself she was a rational, levelheaded woman with what many would call a heck of a lot of responsibility on her shoulders every day, she looked desperately around the lobby at the crowd that was left in search of a diversion. She could do this. She wasn’t a total head case.
She took in the drop-dead perfect figure of the woman to her right, covered in a body-hugging dress that screamed haute couture. Stunning. Were these women everywhere? And weren’t those designer heels? So not fair. The only pair of designer shoes she owned were a ruby-red marked-down find she’d fallen in love with, then spent a quarter of a month’s salary on. Which had seen her eating cereal for dinner for weeks.
She kept her gaze moving. Over a man who looked as if he indulged in one too many pastries at tea every day to the distinctly not middle-aged specimen leaning against the wall beside him typing on his smartphone. Her jaw dropped. How could she have missed him? He was distraction with a capital D. And even that didn’t begin to describe the six-foot-something-inches of pure testosterone in the designer suit. He was distraction in all caps. And then some...
Wow. She took in every magnificent inch of him. She’d never seen a guy wear a suit that well. Not even the full-of-themselves peacocks who liked to show off in the financial district bars of Manhattan. Because the way the tailored dark gray creation molded this man’s tall, lean frame to perfection? Should be illegal. Particularly the way it hugged his muscular, to-die-for thighs like a glove.
Damn but he was hot. Like “her body temperature ratcheted up about ten degrees” hot. She dragged her gaze northward to check out his swarthy, sexy Mediterranean profile. And froze. Somewhere along the way he’d looked up from his phone...at her. Lord. That dimple, indentation, or whatever you called it in the middle of his chin—it was just so...yum.
She held her breath as he embarked on a perusal that bore little resemblance to her guilty ogling. No—this was a fully adult, ultra-confident assessment of her assets by a man who’d surely had his pick of those he’d bestowed it upon in the past. She twitched, pushing her feet into the floor, wanting to squirm like a six-year-old. But her training as a reporter had taught her that was the last thing she should do when cornered. By the time his gaze moved back to her face, unleashing a full blast of heady dark blue on her, she was sure her cheeks weren’t the only thing that were beet-red.
A long moment passed—which surely had to be the most excruciating of her life. Then he broke the contact with a deliberate downward tilt of his chin, his attention moving back to his phone.
Dismissed.
Her cheeks flamed hotter. Honestly, Izzie, what were you expecting? That he would ogle you back? This has been happening your entire life. With men who weren’t that far out of your league.
A Latin tune filled the air. Grew louder. Adonis lifted his head; frowned. Her phone. Dammit. She fumbled in her bag and pulled it out.
“So...?” Her boss barked. “What happened?”
“He was already gone, James, sorry. Traffic was bad.”
Her boss let out a short, emphatic expletive. “I’d heard he was uncatchable but I thought that was only for the female population.”
Izzie had no idea what Leandros Constantinou looked like—or anything about him for that matter. She’d never heard of the gaming company he ran, nor its wildly popular racing title, Behemoth, before this morning when she’d gotten James’s text on the way home from her girls’ trip to Tuscany and he’d ordered her to make this pit stop. His text had said Constantinou’s former head of software development, Frank Messer, who’d been pushed out of the company years ago, had walked into NYC-TV today claiming he was the brains behind Behemoth. Determined to get his due, he’d launched a court case against the company. And offered an exclusive interview to her boss to tell his side of the story.
She pursed her lips. “I asked the receptionist which office he was headed for, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“My source says it’s New York.” Her boss sighed. “No worries, Iz, we’ll get him here. He can’t avoid us forever.”
We? She frowned. “Are you going to let me work on this?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “So I wasn’t going to tell you until you got back, given that you get yourself all worked up about stuff like this, but since the timing’s changed I better let you know now. Catherine Willouby is retiring. The network execs have been impressed with your work of late and they want you to try out to replace her.”
Her breath caught in her lungs, her stomach doing a loop-to-loop. She took an unsteady step backward. Catherine Willouby, NYC-TV’s much-loved matriarch and weekend anchor, was retiring? And they wanted her, a lowly community reporter with a handful of years of experience to audition to replace her?
“But I’m two decades younger than her,” she sputtered. “Don’t they want someone with more experience?” And wasn’t she an idiot for even mentioning that fact?
“We’re getting killed with the younger demographic,” James said flatly. “They think you can bring in some of that age group, plus you already have a great relationship with the community.”
Her head spun. She wiped a clammy palm against her skirt. She should be over the moon that they thought that highly of her. But her stomach was too busy tying itself up in knots. “So what does this have to do with the Constantinou story?”
“The execs think your weak spot is a lack of hard news experience...something your competition has tons of. So I’m going to hand you this story and you’re going to knock it out of the park.”
Oh. She swallowed hard. Pressed her phone tighter against her ear and rocked back on her heels. The Constantinou story was going to make headlines across the country. Was she ready for this?
“You still there?” James demanded.
“Yes,” she responded, her voice coming out a high-pitched squeak. She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she repeated firmly.
“Stop freaking out,” he admonished. “It’s an interview—that’s all. You might not get any further than that.”
An interview in the biggest media market in the world, likely in front of a panel of stiff-suited network execs who would analyze her down to her panty hose brand...
The knot in her stomach grew bigger. “When?”
“Ten a.m. tomorrow, here at the station.”
Tomorrow? She shot a glance at an arriving elevator. “James, I—”
“I gotta go, Iz. I’ve emailed you some prep questions. Rehearse them inside out and you’ll be fine. Ten a.m. Don’t be late.”
The line went dead. She stood there dumbfounded. What had just happened?
The tall, dark-haired hunk picked up his bag and moved toward the empty elevator. A quick scan of the lobby told her they were the only two left. She tossed her phone in her purse and made herself follow. Except five feet from the doors, her feet glued to the spot and refused to move. She stood there staring at the empty metal cube, her pulse rate skyrocketing. The hunk pushed his hand courteously against the door as it started to close, impatience playing around the edges of his mouth. “You coming?”