Angelica hated three things: elevators, Christmas, and
her ex–husband. Just her luck, she mused, to be spending Christmas Eve stuck
between floors in an elevator.
At
least it was on a cruise ship, and not with her ex.
In
fact, the man slouched against the mirrored wall was his direct opposite.
Young, younger than her, with that palpable aura of fuck–you that was both an
attitude and a proposition. His shoulders were broad, twice as broad as the
hips. A strand of hair, just above the dark brows, shimmered glittery
purple.
Great.
Christmas Eve, a broken elevator playing an instrumental medley from the
eighties, plus a punk with purple hair. A punk whose hard jaw made her yearn to
run her tongue along its line…. Halt! Where did that come from?
The
punk unpeeled himself from the wall and pushed the alarm button. Nothing
happened. He held his cell phone above his head. Angelica stood on tiptoe to
look. No signal bars.
“Hi.”
His grin flashed a row of teeth, pointy and white--a wolf’s mouth. A vertical
groove bisected his lower lip di Caprio style. “I guess it’s too much to expect
even a miracle like the iPhone to work in the middle of the ocean.”
“Sea,”
Angelica corrected mechanically. “We’re in the Caribbean.”
She
knew she was being anal. But it was Christmas Eve and she was spending it in a
broken elevator. It had mirrors and a plush seat, and its glass door overlooked
the sea, but it couldn’t compare to the Captain’s Dinner she was late for.
