His Reluctant Bride

CHAPTER ONE ~The Wrong Floor

~CHAPTER ONE ~

The Wrong Floor

Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again.

Mia had a rule about elevators.

Don't make eye contact. Don't talk to strangers. Press your floor, stare at your phone, and survive the thirty seconds with your dignity intact.

She had followed this rule every day for the eight months she'd worked at Hartwell Publishing. The sixteenth floor of a Midtown building. The job she'd wanted since she was twelve ~ since the nights she'd read novels under her covers with a flashlight until her eyes burned.

Today, she broke the rule.

Not on purpose. The fault belonged entirely to the drink she was carrying ~a large latte, filled dangerously close to the rim, balanced in one hand while her tote and laptop occupied the other. When the elevator lurched between floors ~ one of those old-building shudders that meant someone should really look at the cables ~ she grabbed the first solid thing she could reach.

Which happened to be someone's arm.

"I'm so sorry~" She looked up.

And forgot what she was sorry about.

The man was tall, dark-haired, in a black suit with a crease along the left sleeve that said his morning had already been difficult. He had the kind of jaw that looked like it had been clenched for several hours. His eyes, when they cut down to her hand on his arm, were the darkest brown she had ever seen ~and completely unamused.

He looked at her hand. Then at the cup. Then back at her.

She let go. "The elevator moved. I was~" She held it up as evidence. "Saving this."

"More important than an apology?"

His voice was low, unhurried. The kind that didn't need volume to carry.

Mia knew she should say sorry. She was sorry ~ it had been an accident and she'd grabbed a stranger's arm and that was objectively rude. She knew all of this.

"It's my first one today," she said. "So yes. Slightly."

The man stared at her.

Something shifted ~ almost imperceptibly ~ at the corner of his mouth. Whether it was the beginning of a smile or the very controlled restraint of one, she genuinely could not tell.

The elevator dinged.

The doors opened.

Mia stepped out — still watching him, which was her second mistake of the morning ~ and the doors slid shut behind her, and she turned around, and understood immediately that this was not the sixteenth floor.

The hallway was wrong. Quieter. Darker carpet, warmer light. A reception desk at the far end, staffed by a woman who was already watching her with carefully neutral eyes.

"Can I help you?"

"What floor is this?"

"Eighteen."

"I need sixteen."

"Floors above fifteen require a keycard." The woman's gaze moved to Mia's visitor badge ~ grabbed by accident from the lobby desk, she understood now, thinking it was her own. "How did you~"

"It lurched. I grabbed someone's arm. I stepped out without looking." A pause. "That is the entire story."

The receptionist reached for her phone.

The voice came from behind her.

Mia turned. The man from the elevator was standing in a doorway at the end of the corridor. The receptionist's hand stilled on the phone. Not because he told her to stop, but because he'd appeared.

"She's with me," he said.

"I'm not with you," Mia said. "I don't know you."

"No." He held the door open wider. A pause ~ and then, quieter, like the word required effort: "Please."

Mia looked at the receptionist, who was studying her keyboard with great dedication. She looked at the elevator. Keycard required. She looked at the man ~ the crease on his sleeve, the patience in his expression that was visibly costing him something.

She was not the kind of person who walked into rooms she hadn't agreed to enter.

She walked through the door.

(It was a very small room. That was what she told herself.)

v v— ✦ —v v

Continue reading in Chapter Two.