"That’s one thing everyone agrees on. Even those who call you Derek the Devil admit you put the client first," Lori said.
Derek smiled and dropped his hands from her arms. "So you admit you’ve heard the names I’ve been called."
"I never said I haven’t heard things." She turned around to keep from looking at his lips and imagining what they would feel like if he kissed her. She’d also heard women’s reactions to him as a man. She wasn’t the only one who wanted to run her fingers through that thick mass of blond hair.
"But my loyal Lori never gossips about me, does she?" he asked.
"No," she answered. She doesn’t gossip, but she dreams, and daydreams, and fantasizes. "Have you always worked at Consolidated Electronics?"
"No, I’ve worked for several other companies." He told her about his previous jobs, starting out after college as a sales trainee at a restaurant supply company. He had worked his way up the ladder at two other businesses before coming to Consolidated Electronics as a salesman four years ago. He’d been named sales manager only a year later.
"You’ve done a lot since you’ve been sales manager. You have the respect of the clients and the staff," Lori told him. "I’m proud to work for you."
"Thank you, Lori. I’m proud of what I’ve done," Derek said. "But I haven’t succeeded as much as you have because I didn’t have as many obstacles to overcome to get where I am. I’m so proud of you for getting your GED and learning a skill after what you went through."
She’d spent so many years feeling ashamed of her lack of education she didn’t know how to respond to praise for what she’d done. She would never have told Derek any of this if she hadn’t been trying to keep from thinking about being alone with him, trapped in the elevator.
Now that she let herself think about it again, she started to panic. "What time is it now?" she asked.
Derek looked at his watch. "It’s nine-fifteen. The cleaning crew should be here by now."
Lori found it hard to breathe again. She didn’t know whether it was Derek’s closeness or her rising panic. "They should have done something by now. What if they don’t realize we’re here?"
Derek placed his hands on her shoulders and eased her down to the floor again. He sat with his back against the adjacent wall. "I’m sure someone will discover the elevator’s stuck when they’re ready to go to another floor."
"But what if they don’t?" She couldn’t control her rising voice.
"Is this my always-efficient Lori-who-never-panics?"
She breathed deeply. "I’m not going to panic. I just want someone to find us and get us out of here."
"What about your fiancé?" Derek asked. "Won’t he figure out something’s wrong when you don’t get home soon?"
Her mouth opened in shock. "What fiancé?"
"How many fiancés do you have?" Derek asked with a frown.
"None. Whatever gave you the idea I had a fiancé?" Why were they having this ridiculous conversation when they should be trying to get out of a stuck elevator?
Derek arched his right eyebrow. "He told me when he came to pick you up for lunch the first day you started at the company."
Lori frowned in confusion as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. She thought back to her first day on the job. Her neighbor had asked her out several times. The only invitation she’d ever accepted was the one lunch date, and she’d come to regret that.
"Rob’s my next door neighbor. He took me to lunch to celebrate my new job. But I’ve never even dated him, much less been engaged to him."
Derek stood and stared down at her. "If you’re not engaged to him, why did he tell me you were?"
"I have no idea. He’d asked me out several times, but I’d never gone. Maybe . . . well, he apparently had ideas that had no basis in reality." Could he have fantasized about her the way she fantasized about Derek? "I didn’t know he told you we were engaged. But I guarantee you it’s not true."
"I even asked him why you weren’t wearing a ring."
"What did he say?"
Derek rolled his shoulders as if to release tension. "He said he was having his late mother’s ring redesigned for you and would give it to you at Christmas."
"Good grief. That’s really carrying the lie to the limit." Lori felt at a disadvantage sitting on the floor with Derek standing over her. "I wonder what his very much alive mother would think of being called his ‘late mother.’"