Page 2 of Accidental Vegas Vows

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I couldn’t get out of my head.

I made a break for it the moment the meeting ended, choosing to pour myself back into work instead of hanging around, mingling, and chatting idly with everyone else. At least if I could work on my project and perfect it, I could leave Blackwood knowing I’d given it every Goddamn shot I had in me.

Staring at my feet to keep myself from making eye contact with anyone who might want to talk to me, I slipped inside the elevator, my shoes crossing over the metal threshold just as the doors slid shut behind me.

Across from me, a larger pair of shoes lingered, polished to a shine, fine leather and tapered slacks?—

Oh, fuck.

I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye as I checked which floor we were on, jamming my finger into the button of the next closest one up, but the light flickered, flashed, and I pressed it again. It didn’t even light up at all.

“You’re one of the interns, right?”

The elevator came to a screeching halt and so did I.

Frozen, unmoving, with my finger jammed into the button for floor eight, all I could do was try to breathe. Why aren’t we moving? Why aren’t the doors opening?

“What the…?”

Turning my head to glance over my shoulder, I stared directly at the center of Damien Blackwood’s chest.

I wasn’t brave enough to look any further north—or south, really—but even that was a mistake.

The way his suit clung to him… tailored perfectly to fit the obvious muscles in his arms, his shirt puckering just slightly over what I could only assume were the ripples of abdominal strength in his core.

And his cologne.

It permeated the space the longer we lingered, with hints of rum, almonds, and vanilla invading my nostrils and making my head spin.

Fuck, it smelled heavenly.

The lights flickered above my head, and I made another mistake and looked up at them, my gaze dragging right across his chiseled, hair-speckled jaw and the high ridges of his cheekbones.

Every beat of my heart seemed to amplify behind my eardrums as the lights went out.

“Power must be out,” Damien mumbled, and a second later, two white emergency lights lit the small metal cube.

“Ironic,” I gulped. His piercing blue stare burned into me as I finally dropped my gaze to his, every part of myself heating. “Cause of the… y’know, the solar panels.”

Ignoring me completely, his hand slid down his jacket, tendons flexing and two platinum rings catching the light just as his fingers dipped into the pocket. One singular brow rose when I caught his gaze again, and just as quickly as it had appeared, it slipped from his features as he typed furiously at his phone.

The walls were too Goddamn close.

Every surface reflected the two of us standing as far apart as we possibly could in the cramped space. Endless realities, endless mirrors, and no matter what, in every single one, he hadn’t picked me today.

My throat went dry.

“They’re getting the power back on,” Damien said, his voice filling and replacing every cubic inch of air. It was rougher than before, a little hoarse, a little angry. “It’ll be a few minutes.”

I nodded and leaned back against the cool glass of the mirrored wall, letting my head fall against it. “Okay.”

The quiet descended, nothing but our heavy breathing and the occasional clunk from outside of the elevator.

I tried not to look at him, but the only direction that didn’t reflect him a million times was down, and even then I could still see his pristinely polished shoes. I was almost positive his reflection beamed from those, too.

But the silence, the stress, the anger — it was bearing down like gravity, pushing into my shoulders, my head, my bones. I hadn’t been picked. Someone, likely him, had read through my proposal and didn’t think it was worthy of being spoken aloud or presented to the board. I clutched the binder closer to my chest, trying to take a deep breath in, but all I got was that damn cologne and the faint scent of what I could only imagine was shoe polish?—

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