Clutching her abdomen, the sounds of her harsh breathing filling the silence around her, a woman knelt, bent over, on the thickly carpeted floor. His six-foot-two security guard, Kane, hulked over her, his leathery face wreathed in concern. The overhead ceiling lights picked out the hints of burnished copper in her hair.
Nikos stepped closer, curiosity overpowering everything else. “Kane?”
“Sorry, Mr. Demakis,” Kane replied, patting the woman’s slender back with his huge palm. A strange familiarity with a woman he’d just met. “Lexi took one look at the elevator and refused to use it.”
Lexi Nelson.
Nikos stared at the woman’s bowed head. She was still doubled over, slender shoulders falling and rising. “She did what?”
Kane didn’t raise his head. “She said no one was forcing her into the elevator. That’s why she had me call you back asking you to meet her at the cafe.”
Nikos tilted his head and studied the state-of-the-art elevator system on his right side. One sentence from her file popped into his head.
Trapped in an elevator once for seventeen hours.
Of course she could have turned around and left. His irritation only grew, a perverse reaction because her leaving wouldn’t serve his purpose at all. “She walked up nineteen floors?”
Kane nodded, and Nikos noticed that even his breathing was a little irregular. “And you walked up the stairs with her?”
“Yep. I told her she was going to collapse halfway through. I mean, look at her.” His gaze swept over her, a curious warmth in it. “And she challenged me.” He shoved her playfully with a shoulder, and Nikos watched, strangely fascinated. The woman unfolded from her bent-over stance and nudged Kane back with a surprising display of strength for someone so...tiny.
“I almost beat you, too, didn’t I?” she said, still sounding breathless.
Kane laughed and tugged her up, again his touch overtly familiar for a woman he met a mere twenty minutes ago. As she straightened her clothes, Nikos understood the reason for Kane’s surprise at her challenge.
With her head hardly reaching his shoulder, Lexi Nelson was small. Maybe five feet one or two at best, and most of that was legs. The strip of exposed flesh between her pleated short skirt and knee-high leather boots was...distracting, to say the least.
Her shoulders were slim to the point of delicate, her small breasts only visible because of her exertion. Wide-set eyes in her perfectly oval face, a dazzling light blue, were the only feature worth a second look. A mouth too wide for her small face, tilted up at the corners, still smiling at Kane.
Honey-gold hair cut short to her nape, in addition to her slim body, made her look like a teenage boy rather than an adult woman. Except for the fragility of her face.
The image of an Amazonian woman on her crinkled T-shirt—long-legged, big-breasted, clad in a leather outfit with a gun in her hand—invited a second look, and not only because of the exquisite detail of it but also because the woman in the sketch was a direct contrast to the woman wearing it.
“Please escort Ms. Nelson into my office, Kane,” Nikos said. Her blue gaze landed on him and widened. “You are causing too much distraction here.” Her smile slipped, a tiny frown tying her brows. “Wait in my office and I will see you in half an hour.”