The wedding planner didn’t come for them.
So they waited. Max had so many opportunities to say something, yet he hadn’t done it yet. It seemed far easier to focus on the problem at hand than discuss his feelings for her. Maybe he held back because he didn’t want to witness the aftermath. The words she’d say to turn him down. The hurt look on her face when she told him they were meant to be friends.
He was better off keeping his confessions to himself.
“Our outlook doesn’t seem too good.” He strolled over to the door and beat on it again.
“Oh, stop it,” she said. “We’ll get out of this just fine if we wait.”
The cellar was silent, except for the hum from the humidifier through the vent.
“Come over here and keep me company instead of brooding.” She patted the floor beside her.
“What do we talk about?” he asked.
“There’s plenty.” She did a little wiggle movement and tried to close the gap in her dress again. He stole a glance at the exposed golden skin on her waist.
“What’s up with the dress?”
“Don’t get me started.” Her cheeks reddened. “It fit a month ago. Back fat strikes out of nowhere, I tell ya.”
“It still . . . looks good on you.” Her dress could’ve been on backward and she’d rock it like nobody’s business.
“There’s no need to be nice about it.” She cleared her throat. “How about you tell me how things are going with that chemistry instructor you were dating? At our last lunch you said she might work out.”
“Not so well. A few weeks ago, she got a job out of state and moved on.”
“I’m sorry. She sounded nice.”
He crossed the room and tapped against the bottles in their slots. Unease touched his stomach. He didn’t like talking about other women with her. Time to change the subject. “I remember seeing something in the other room. I’m going to see what it was.”
He headed into the secondary cellar room and she trailed behind him. After he switched on the light, he noticed an indentation in the wall. A tiny half-inch gap, rectangular in shape, gutted out from the wall.
“Is that a food elevator?” she asked.
“I think so.” He took a look around the room. “Looks like they do private wine tasting down here.” He searched for a door handle but didn’t see one. Instead, he found a panel behind a metal cover. With a quick press of the red button, the elevator door unlocked and he opened it.
“How nifty.” She looked inside and then backed out so he could take a peek.
The elevator had to be no more than three feet by three feet. He twisted himself to angle his head inside. There wasn’t a top to the box, only a dark shaft extending upwards. The faint hum of the kitchen above drifted toward them: dishwashers and stove ventilation systems.
“Hello!” His voice echoed up the shaft. She joined him and they tried a few times to get someone’s attention.
“It’s too loud up there for them to hear us.” He backed out. “Maybe we can still call for help.” He searched the counter until he found a scrap of paper. Using a pen, he scribbled, Trapped in the cellar, please send help for Max and Renata. He put the note in the elevator and sent the rescue request upward. “Let’s hope for the best.”
The elevator reached the top, but on the control panel, the light to indicate someone opened the door on the other side never lit up.
Twenty minutes later, the light still hadn’t come on.
That idea had failed. Renata had a better chance of success crawling up the shaft in high heels.
“Do you think someone will check it?” she asked.
“According to the instructions on this panel, the other light should be blinking.”
She sighed. “Which means no one is there to see that we sent something up the elevator.”
“Pretty much.” Frustration made it hard for him to think straight. He took a seat on the floor and rested his head in his hands.
“We can’t just give up.” She hesitated, but then took a spot next to him, curling her legs under her. The wood floors weren’t that warm either.
“I think there’s a towel on the counter.” He picked up the burgundy towel, marked with a capital “B” in white and handed it to her. “Use it to sit on.”
“Thanks.” She held tight to the side of her dress as she sat.
He took a seat next to her, making sure some space separated them. Time stretched on for a bit with nothing to do but sit. The need to say what was on his mind continued to nag at him. Once in a while he glanced up to check the elevator, but no one had opened the top door.
“We’re in a room full of liquor and we can’t even enjoy it,” she murmured.
He chuckled. “I got my wallet. You thirsty?”
“Not yet. But I might want to get slammed if we don’t get out of here in time.” She yawned.
His watch read eleven thirty. They had an hour and a half until the wedding photos began. And no prospect of getting out before then. He lost himself to his thoughts, when he noticed Renata’s head droop forward. He tilted his head to the side to see her plop farther forward. Wearing a small smile, she laid her head back against the wall—not the most comfortable option—and she closed her eyes again.
Amused, he watched her drift to sleep. She was gorgeous when she dozed off. In college, he couldn’t count how many times during group study at the library that she’d fallen asleep on the table. Max did a study—nonscientific—determining Renata could fall asleep in under twenty seconds. She averaged ten during finals.
A few strands of her hair had fallen over her face like before, but he resisted the urge to brush them back again. Might as well let her sleep. She didn’t wake up, though, as her head drifted away from him. Towards the hard edge of the counter.
His hand snaked out and, ever so gently, caught the side of her head before she got a free concussion. She didn’t stir and allowed Max to guide her to rest on his shoulder.
She sighed and Max’s resolve melted away as his arm held her in place. Friends can do this for each other, he reminded himself. But a friend wouldn’t enjoy the smell of her sweet shampoo or feel the need to brush her hair out of her face. A friend didn’t imagine her walking hand in hand with him. He placed his free hand in his lap for good measure.
Seconds turned into minutes. At least a half hour passed. Renata slowly woke up. “Mmmmm . . .” She sat up and rubbed the side of her neck. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Not long.” The deep timbre to his voice reflected the desire pooling within him so he coughed a bit and shifted away from her. His shoulder had gone numb, but he didn’t mind. He rolled his limbs to get the feeling back.
“I shouldn’t have stayed up so late.” She glanced at him. “Sorry about that.”
He couldn’t resist teasing her. “You need to work on that drooling problem, too.”
She slapped his arm. “I do not!”
“You wanna wipe off the wet spot on my shirt?”
She leaned in close to him again and his breath caught. “I don’t see one.” She giggled. Only to stop abruptly when their gazes locked. Her eyes were gorgeous—a catlike hazel with bits of light gray along the edges.
Slowly, she backed away from him. “I don’t drool.”
“So you say,” he whispered back.
With nothing left to say on the matter, they grew quiet again. He played with his cuff links self-consciously. “Why do cellars have to be so cold?” She adjusted his jacket on her shoulders.
“This place isn’t too bad. Now, the time we volunteered for the Kappa Tau Tau Polar Bear Plunge is another story.”
“I can’t believe we jumped into a pool with over fifty bags of ice . . .” She groaned, leaning in again to give him a sour face. He liked having her all to himself. “That’s a memory I’d like to suppress. A third of that house was full of horny college boys. Most of them weren’t afraid to show it.”
“Did they ever try anything?” He tried not to sound serious, but most likely failed.
“Not while you were around.”
“Did anything happen when I wasn’t around?” His voice was quiet.
She smiled. “Just once, but it was a long time ago.” He watched her take in two deep breaths. “One of the guys touched my arm, but I backed away. When that frat boy’s come-on line of, ‘Don’t be that way, baby,’ didn’t work on me, he tried to put his arm around me.”
Anger flashed inside Max. If he would’ve been there, he’d have put that asshole in his place. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She shrugged. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“We should look the guy up to see if he’s still in Colorado. We could invite him to a playground and I could beat him up,” he said.
“No need,” she said. “The last thing we need is your mug shot shown on the news.”
He snorted. “The perfect Cops episode.”
“You got my text message, right?”
He nodded since every word had been seared into his memory. He smiled at her, but disappointment flicked at him again. He crossed his arms and tried to keep his cool.
Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “All my experience finally paid off. I can’t wait to go condo hunting in Salt Lake City.”
“Sounds like fun.” He tried to sound enthusiastic and failed. “But will you have time with your schedule to go up there? You have little time to have fun as it is.”
“I’ll make the time somehow. If I can find a way to travel across the country and date I can do this.”
He snorted. “On most days all we do is text each other. How do you expect to date?”
“I don’t really. It’s never been an ideal situation for me to have a relationship. A man would tie me down and make me feel guilty for traveling all the time.”
Renata always had excuses. “What if you found a guy who didn’t mind? Who’d always be there even if you were gone?”
She made a sour face. “In what alternate universe can I find him? Nobody likes long-distance relationships.”
“Says who? You’re pretty certain about things.”
She shivered. The need to wrap his arm around her again hit him. He feigned stretching out his legs to add distance between them. Getting close to her right now would just make it harder on him. “Nothing in this world is certain—especially when it comes to dating. Right now I just want a challenge and I believe I’ll find that in Salt Lake City.”
Another question lingered in his mind. He might as well let it all out. “Do you remember the bet we made with each other in college?”