Momentary Marriage (2 page)

She and her sister didn’t live together, but they saw each other every day. How could she have been so dense? So unaware of how her own sister felt about a man they both knew so well?

Now that she’d been slapped in the face with the truth, she wondered at how blind and selfish she’d been. She did call Doug when she was between men. She let him help her out and took him for granted. He was her friend. She had other friends, of course. Being in the advertising business required the ability to meet and greet, but Doug had always been reliable and concerned. She loved him like a brother.

Unlike Amy, Kelsey knew better than to believe in till-death-do-we-part love. It was kind of like the lottery. There were people who lucked out that way, but very few.

She’d seen too much falling in and out of love to let her heart be knocked around that way. The way she saw it, love was a rush of excitement, a period of discovery, sex and then, after a while, over-familiarity and boredom. People drifted apart.

On the other hand, Doug might not be Amy’s lottery love, but how could Kelsey deny her a chance at finding some happiness?

All these years of “friendship” and coming to love Doug like a brother, all along she'd been using him to fill up the empty gaps in her life without thought of how her sister felt about him.

It just wasn’t acceptable, Kelsey realized, sitting back in her chair. Somehow, she had to make Doug see that she would never care about him as a lover. And she had to do it before Amy’s heart broke. Certainly before her sister moved an ocean away.

*
**

Kelsey Layton slid a sideways glance to where Jared Barrett stood next to her, filling the elevator with his presence and the subtle seduction of his after shave. He smelled good, the kind of warm, male essence that made her want to lean into a man and inhale.

She didn't in this instance, of course, for various reasons, the foremost being her ambivalence about any personal contact between her and the guy standing next to her. Jared was one of the advertising agency’s biggest clients and, she suspected, the man who inspired the cliché about playing with fire.

Ignoring the man’s sexy aftershave, Kelsey stared up at the floor numbers, abstractly noting the elevator's usual slow progress.

“That was a great lunch,” she offered casually.

“Yes, it was,” Jared agreed, his gaze enigmatic on her face, a hint of mockery in his voice, as if he knew she was trying to make casual conversation.

He stood so close in the small elevator now that his suit coat sleeve brushed against her arm. Kelsey suspected he was well aware of the tension between them. She saw it in his dark eyes often when he looked at her, desire mixed with a whisper of a dare.

Still ignoring the
thrum
zinging through her body, Kelsey glanced over at the elevator's only other occupant, her longtime friend, Doug Morton.

Doug stood by the button panel, his curly light brown hair looking as if it had been recently trimmed into rigorous submission. Truthfully, everything about Doug was as earnest and sincere as his polite, business-like haircut.

She felt the affectionate smile fade from her lips, remembering Amy’s revelation earlier in the day. Her own obliviousness still stunned her. Amy was in love with Doug and somehow she hadn’t seen it.

All morning, Kelsey had found her mind returning to the problem of how to keep her sister from making a transatlantic move. The situation with Doug shouldn’t be hard to rearrange. She’d never even hinted that she would be interested in a warmer relationship with him. But after Amy had opened her eyes this morning, Kelsey had to admit she’d been leaning on Doug, relying on him for companionship and support, for years.

Remembering the pain in her sister’s eyes, Kelsey felt like kicking herself.

Standing next to the elevator’s control panel now, Doug pressed the button for her floor again, a frown furrowing his brow. “This thing is even slower today than usual.”

“Only one of the negatives in having offices in a building built in the thirties,” Kelsey noted.

Just then the elevator lurched to a stop, the light on the floor indicator hovering ominously between eleven and twelve.

Jared laughed, glancing down at her. “I hope you didn’t have any meetings scheduled immediately after lunch. Looks like we’re stuck.”

Kelsey opened her mouth to answer—

And felt the elevator floor fall away from under her feet, sending her hurtling through air. In a sickening rush of seconds, it came to a sudden, jolting stop, as did she, sprawled on the floor of the elevator.

Panic reigned briefly before Kelsey recognized that the elevator car had stabilized and wasn't dropping to the basement. Death was not imminent, it seemed.

Then she realized she was on the floor of the elevator car, wrapped in Jared Barrett’s surprisingly powerful arms, her face buried in his jacket. He must have caught her in the middle of their dizzying fall and now she was held tight against his chest.

Prompted by a reckless impulse, Kelsey inhaled.

A wave of pure craving flooded her. With her cheek pressed against his shirt, she felt the strong thudding of his heart, the heat of his muscular body against hers. It almost made her rethink her decision to steer clear of the man.

Locked in his embrace as they lie sprawled on the floor, she slowly tilted her head back to look into his face. Jared’s gaze fastened on her, dark eyes hot and hungry. For the long stretch of a second, his mouth hovered above hers. Kelsey felt her breath catch in her throat, her every heart beat silently telegraphing
YES!
to the question that charged the air.

She thought she felt his hand at her back, urging her closer.

“Goddammit! Damned crazy elevator nearly killed us!”

The sound of Doug’s swearing brought reality splashing back. Kelsey reluctantly looked away from Jared to where Doug knelt. Turned away from them, still clinging to the elevator hand rail, he jabbed angrily at the emergency button.

“Kelsey!” Doug said, turning toward her with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, the hesitation in her voice as much from her close encounter with Jared as from the elevator’s malfunction.

She let herself glance at him, still kneeling on the floor beside her.

Jared stood. He extended a hand to help her up, his expression matter of fact again, although she could feel the energy bouncing off him.

“
Are
you okay?”

“I think so.” Kelsey let him pull her up, aware of the strength of his hand around hers.

“Damned stupid death trap,” Doug ranted beneath his breath as he stood up, still punching at the elevator buttons. “End up in the basement…kill someone someday.”

Before Kelsey could do more than tug her short skirt down and smooth a hand over her dark chin-length hair, the elevator started moving again. Whisking up two more levels, the capricious contraption stopped on her floor and popped the doors open as if it had been behaving itself all along.

Kelsey felt herself being propelled from the elevator into the agency’s foyer. Her knees wobbled beneath her as Jared’s hand remained firm at her back.

“Are you okay, Kels?” Doug asked, following solicitously, concern on his face.

With the floor solid beneath her feet, she said, “Yes. There doesn't seem to be any harm done.”

“You could have broken a bone, hit your head and gotten a concussion, the way that thing dropped,” Doug sputtered.

“Why don't you find the maintenance people and get them working on the problem,” Jared suggested, nodding toward the other elevator. “I'll meet you in the ground floor lobby in a minute.”

Doug hurried to the other elevator.

“Of course.” Doug glanced doubtfully between Kelsey and his boss. “I'll drop by your office later for a visit, Kelsey.”

“Good. See you then,” she murmured, still suffering reaction from her near meltdown in Jared's arms. It was something of a shock to realize how susceptible she was to the guy’s undeniable physical attributes.

Looking up, Kelsey found Jared watching her, hands slung into his pants pockets, a smile playing on his lips, the ever-present challenge in his eyes.

“Thanks for breaking my fall,” she said calmly despite her quaking nerves. Sometimes she got the feeling that Jared enjoyed rocking people off their balance and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing the sensual riot his embrace caused in her.

“My pleasure,” he assured her, his straight face belied by the smile in his eyes. “We’ll have to do it again sometime soon.”

On her way back to her small office, Kelsey reminded herself of why she shouldn’t get involved with Jared Barrett

He was a client. Although, heaven knew that didn’t create an insurmountable barrier. In the carnivorous business of advertising, what the client wanted, the client got.

No, the biggest reason to turn away from the invitation she saw in his eyes was the man himself. Kelsey played the dating game by certain rules and Jared struck her as being a man who made his own.

She might enjoy being clasped to his manly chest, breathing in his intoxicating scent, but she couldn’t see the wisdom in risking her peace of mind by getting close to the man.

CHAPTER TWO

A light tapping on her office door the next morning made Kelsey look up.

Doug stood in the open doorway, as neat as ever in his conservative suit, a smile on his boyish face. “Busy?”

“Always. Come in.” She’d spent the last twenty-four hours thinking about Amy and Doug and her own blindness to their feelings.

Doug glanced back down the hall. “Jared’s checking with J.T. about the dates for the new campaign. He’ll be right here. We thought maybe you’d have time to go over the proofs for the magazine layouts.”

“Certainly,” Kelsey smiled awkwardly, suddenly self-conscious about every gesture. How did a woman convey to a man that he was an important friend, but not feed his hopes of something more? “Just move the stuff out of those chairs while I dig out the proofs.”

She rummaged through the piles on her desks, reflecting that she’d had plenty of experience in getting rid of men she wasn’t interested in. That was fairly simple. But telling a friend and possible future brother-in-low to get lost just wasn’t an option. Doug wasn’t the usual mindless predatory jerk she generally ran into. She didn’t want to hurt him. She just wanted him to see the light.

“I-I tried to call you last night,” Doug said. “Did you go out?”

As if her ears had suddenly been opened to a whole new range of sound, Kelsey heard the studied casualness in his tone, the delicate question. It was as if Amy’s words had opened her senses to reality. She felt like crying. How had she been so blind?

“Yes,” she said with a bright smile. “There was an opening at a new gallery.”

“Who was your lucky swain this time?” Doug asked, the pleasantness in his voice not reflected in his eyes.

“James Buchanan,” Kelsey said. “He called out of the blue yesterday.”

Doug frowned. “I thought you said he was a jerk and you didn’t want to see him again.”

Kelsey shrugged, wishing she’d remembered that when James called. As it was, she’d been so distracted by the Amy and Doug problem that she’d agreed to go out with the guy even though they hadn’t spoken for several months. For good reason. His arrogance bored the heck out of her.

“The gallery sounded interesting,” she extemporized.

“More photogravure?” he asked, mentioning an old photographic technique that was enjoying a resurgence.

“No, some artist who got a decent review in the Times.”

“Really? We’ll have to go look at his work together sometime,” he said, hope and excitement shining softly in his blue eyes.

“It wasn’t that good,” Kelsey said hastily.

Just as Doug opened his mouth—to question her further, she knew—Jared appeared in the doorway.

“Good morning. How’s my elevator buddy?” Jared’s dark eyes gleamed with amusement and a lingering warmth.

Kelsey stood up as he came in, ignoring the tingle of excitement that his presence always brought. “No lasting damage.”

If she didn’t count the hot, sexual dreams that had disturbed her sleep last night. Who’d have thought elevators would rank so high on her list of erotic fantasies?

Those few moments locked in his arms had left an impact she was trying to ignore. Having him this close in her tiny office wasn’t helping, either. His delicious, male smell, the warmth from his body seemed to pervade the room. She’d thought pheromones were supposed to be subliminal, but at this moment, her every nerve ending was on alert. There was nothing unconscious about her attraction to Jared.

His smile held the faintest impression of a dare, as if he knew she was trying to resist her attraction to him.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” Jared said, his gaze lingering on her face for a moment before he glanced at Doug. “Have you looked at the proofs?”

The next fifteen minutes were filled with talk of work, much to Kelsey’s relief. Between guilt over Doug and hot flashes from Jared, she was glad to focus on anything impersonal at this point.