Max saw Blythe waiting at the elevator
He slowed, giving himself the pleasure of simply looking at her in the little black dress. No more than a slip, really, and it hugged every curve.
If he closed his eyes, he could remember exactly how the curves had felt in his hands.
He quickened his step, moving silently, and sneaked up behind her. Youre not escaping from me, he whispered into her ear.
Blythe jumped and shivered in his arms. Go back to the party, she said, sounding panicked. What if my roommate catches you?
Max started to tell her exactly how little he cared if Candy caught them, but realized he had a much better use for their few stolen minutes. Gently he turned her toward him and bent his head way, way down to kiss her. She moaned and wrapped her arms around his neck.
The elevator came and he backed her into it. His fingertips were at the hem of her skirt before the doors closed.
Dear Reader,
The words When the Lights Go Out once conjured up images of romance, mystery and excitement in my mind. During last Augusts East Coast blackout, those words took on a whole new meaning. In Manhattan where I live, no lights also meant no stoplights at the intersections, no subways, no trains to the suburbs, packed buses, closed groceries and restaurants and no elevators in a city of skyscrapers. Worst of all, there were people in those subways and on those elevators when they ground to a halt.
New York rallied, as it always does. There were unheard-of demonstrations of good manners at those unlighted intersections, and city dwellers invited stranded suburbanites to sleep over. When I discovered my neighbors stuck in the elevator, Id love to report that I was as levelheaded and resourceful as Blythe Padgett. Alas, my rescue efforts involved a lot of running up and down the stairs while trying to get 911 on the phone, and in between, shouting hysterical words of encouragement down the elevator shaft.
I wonder how many people ended up in the wrong bed like Blythe and found their lives changed forever. Thats something well never know, because theyre not telling. Forgive me, Blythe and Max, for revealing your deep dark secret.
Barbara Daly
bdalybooks@aol.com
Books by Barbara Daly
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
859A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS
887TOO HOT TO HANDLE
953MISTLETOE OVER MANHATTAN
When the Lights Go Out
Barbara Daly
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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To all those friends with whom I shared the August 2003 blackoutto the doormen who stayed on, to my husband, George, and our stranded houseguest Eitan for cheerfully eating tuna salad sandwiches for dinner in the dining capital of the United States.
And especially to my neighbors the Pingitores, who retained their elegance and dignity throughout their long ordeal in the elevator, and to those tireless NYPD officers who rescued them.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
1
WHATCHA GOTTA DO IS gut up and frigging go for it.
Frigging? Blythe Padgett looked up at her best friend, her roommate, her co-worker, her guardian devil. Very good, Candy. Last month it was effing. Youve toned it down another notch.
Barts on my case. Candy Jacobsen was a tall, beautiful blonde with a mouth as filthy as the pan the mechanic drained your old oil into. Her passion for expletives was only one of the reasons her news stories invariably needed a rewrite, a task Blythe was performing at this very moment, providing Candy the time and space to interfere in her life.
Not that Candy needed much time to interfere in Blythes life. Not at any time in the seven years theyd been friends had she ever been too busy to do that.
She didnt need much space, either. The New York Telegraph offices occupied three floors of a large, undistinguished building in Times Square. City Desk editor Bart Klemp and his crew of reporters and staff, including Blythe and Candy, occupied the fifth floor, which was basically one enormous high-ceilinged room with scuffed hardwood floors and grandly proportioned, infrequently cleaned windows.
At one time, the office had contained nothing more than rows of desks. The sounds of clacking typewriters and jangling phones must have bounced off the walls and ceiling to create a din loud enough to rattle those big windows. Then someone had come up with the bright idea of separate cubicles. These were nothing more than six-feet-high, square doorless partitions made of a porous synthetic material, but they at least gave the illusion of privacy and cut down on the noise level. When someone else came up with the even brighter idea of computers, and phones were engineered to announce incoming calls by flashing or buzzing softly, the result was the busy hum that prevailed outside the cubicle where Blythe was currently trying to fix Candys story and Candy was trying to fix Blythes life.
Obviously undistracted from her cause, Candy slid off the edge of Blythes desk to pace the tiny cubicle a few steps this way and that on her stiletto heels. If you dont start strutting your stuff, youre never going to find another she came to a halt, then said boyfriend.
Blythe knew the term Candy had wanted to use, but couldnt quite bring herself to say frig-buddy.
Because, Candy said, pointing a long, frosted-pearl fingernail at Blythe, until you find another guy, youre not going to get over Thor. You cant spend your life thinking no man will ever want you just because
His name wasnt Thor, Blythe mumbled. It was Sven.
Thor, Sven, who cares? Male meat. Problem was that he was so full of steroids he couldnt
Candy! Blythe vengefully deleted cataclysmic and typed in major. It reduced the verve of Candys story nicely. Candy could use a bit of verve reduction.
So what you have to do, Candy said, is sleep with somebody. Anybody. Break through the frigging barrier. Then youll be okay. Are you about finished with that?
Candy and Blythe had both landed jobs with the New York Telegraph right out of college. A mere three years later, Candy was a hotshot crime reporter with high hopes of getting a job with the venerable Times. Blythe was still a proofreader. Bart Klemp, the city desk editor, had declared that Blythe Padgetts a darned good writer, but she wouldnt know news if she woke up in bed with it.
Everybody seemed determined for her to wake up in bed withsomething.
Rewrites were currently the biggest thing going on in her life. This one was Candys report of a shocking drug bust on a sedate street of town houses in Greenwich Village. As fed up as Blythe felt with the entire world, it was going to read like a story from the Obituaries editor in the cubicle next door when Blythe was finished with it.
And Ive got just the guy for you.
Shed tuned Candy out for a moment, but this statement made her tune swiftly back in. You what? Who?
He grew up next door to me, Candy said, so we know hes not a strangler or an axe murderer.
Oh! Wonderful! Those are my top qualifications. Have I ever met him? One of Candys many kindnesses was to take the orphaned Blythe home for holidays. Candys family had become her family. In spite of enjoying every privilege money could buy, the Jacobsens were as broken as any family could be and fell just short of being certifiably insane, but any kind of family was better than none. Oh, no. His parents moved ages ago, Candy said, but I kept in touch with him. Hes living in Boston now. I dont knowhe was always sort of special to me, I guess, like the big brother I never had. Hes attractive. And sensitivefor a guy, anyway. I mean, hes a shrink and a shrink has to be sensitive. He was educated to be sensitive. He gets paid big bucks to be sensitive. I know I can trust him to be nice to you. You could have a few dates and let nature take its course.
Whats his
But I have a feeling nature will take its course the second you lay eyes on each other, and he sees what a sexy little hotpot you are.
Candy was pacing in circles now, and gave Blythes curly red hair an affectionate ruffle on her way around the desk, but Blythe still felt irritated. A hotpot was a menu item in a Mongolian restaurant. How could a hotpot be sexy? Candy was really very careless in her use of language. Candy, come on! Blythe said, deleting a string of flamboyant adjectives from the news story. I dont know anything about this old friend of yours. I might not like him at all.
You dont have to like him. You just have to have sex with him. Candy fanned herself with a galley proof from the stack on Blythes desk. Midafternoon, mid-August, New Yorkthese three factors were more than the air-conditioning in the prewar building that housed the Telegraph offices could handle.
No way Id go to bed with a total stranger, Blythe said firmly. Certainly not with a man I didnt like.
But Candys face had taken on a dangerously dreamy expression. Thats how I lost my virginity, she said. I kept saving it and saving it, because my mother said I should save myself for the right man.
It sounded comfortably motherly, but Candys mother still seemed to be looking for the right manand having gone through three husbands in the search, the evidence pointed strongly toward the likelihood that she hadnt been saving herself.
But there never was the right man, Candy went on like a voice-over to Blythes thoughts, and I saw myself getting older and older without finding him. One day I said, Youve got to start somewhere. So I went straight for the quarterback, not a total stranger, but lets just say wed never talked. Im not sure he knew how to.
Wellesley, where the two of them had gone to college, Blythe on a National Merit scholarship, was still a womens college and didnt have a football team. How old were you? Blythe asked, changing biggest haul of the decade to confiscation of a large amount of product.
Fifteen.
Fifteen! No wonder you panicked! Blythe removed one last random comma from Candys story and sent the file to the printer. I bet youre sorry now that you settled for the high school quarterback.
Sorry? Honey, it made me what I am today, as sexually healthy as the horse that man was hung like. Whoo. I still get wet just thinking about him. She licked her lips.
Blythe tried not to pinch her lips together. Well, thanks for telling me about your friend. What did you say his name
I told him about you, too.
Candy, you cant do that!
I can and did. Candy looked too smug.
What exactly did you do? Thinking of the myriad possibilities, the limitless nature of Candys imagination, made Blythe intensely nervous.
Told him you and he should get together. And guess what? Hes coming to New York for a conference.
When?
Today.
How nice. Im sure the conference will keep him very busy. But maybe sometime in the distant future
Tonight, Candy said.
What?
Tonight. You have a date with him tonight. Seven oclock. Im going to tell my date to meet me here, give you two some frigging
Blythe levitated out of her chair and ripped the last page out of the printer so fast the ink trailed down into the margin. Thats it, she said. Now youve gone too far.
Thanks, Candy said, grabbing the pages out of Blythes hands. Face it, Blythe, you needed a push.
A push, maybe! Not my sad story laid before a total stranger! Not a date with a man who assumes Im desperate to jump in the sack with him! She held out her hands in supplication. We should meet for lunch first, no, coffee first, then lunch. No, talk on the phone first, then coffee, then lunch. We should have e-mailed before he even called me on the phone.
Blythe, Blythe Candy shook her head. Youre too frigging conservative.
I must have been born that way. It sure wasnt parental influence, Blythe said stubbornly, plunking herself back down in her chair. Her parents had died in an automobile accident before theyd had a chance to influence her one way or the other. Although losing them had had a profound influence on what she wanted out of her own life.
I know, I know, Candy said, heaving a dramatic sigh of resignation. Okay, well do it your way. Ill call him and tell him to ask you out for coffee tomorrow instead. Hope I can reach him. She glanced at her watch, and her inch-long nails glittered as she moved them around in the fluorescent light of the newsroom. God amighty. I gotta get outta here and cover a takedown in the Bronx.