He walked toward the opening but called over his shoulder to one of the production assistants. “Treena.”
The redhead fluttered to the front of the crew. “Right here.”
“I need a flight to Vegas. I want the first one you can get as soon as this is a wrap.”
“Done.”
At the window, now in a harness, Wes slapped Troy’s shoulder. “Good call, bro.”
Might be a good call, but it was based on a realization he should have made while Giselle had still been here. One he should have made seven years ago.
Troy climbed to the metal ledge of the skyscraper’s open wall a mile above Los Angeles, ready to jump out, hoping this revelation wasn’t too little, too late.
“Giselle Diamond,” she told the man at the front desk in a breathless rush. “Jax Chamberlin called—”
“Right,” the older man said, nodding. “Troy’s girl. Dave will escort you up.”
“Thank you.”
At the elevator of the deserted lobby, another man in a navy blue security guard’s uniform stood waiting for her, doors already open.
She stopped short and smiled up at the man. He was a little older than her, with a serious expression and close-cropped brown hair. “Oh, um…” She stared inside the elevator car. Wrung her hands. Licked her lips. “Can we take the stairs?”
“Mr. Jacobs is working on the sixty-second floor, ma’am.”
“Sixty-second?” Okay, that would take a while, but… “I know this is going to sound crazy, but, could we still take the stairs?”
His are-you-serious? look quickly transitioned into the why-me eye roll. “Yes, ma’am, the sixty-second floor. We could take the stairs—all twelve hundred and fifty-six of them—but, depending on your athletic stamina, that could take anywhere from twenty minutes to…an hour or more.”
That’s what she thought. Not an option. She forced a tight smile for the security guard and held up a finger. “Just one second.”
Lowering her gaze to the floor, she took a slow deep breath in through her nose, blew it out slowly through her mouth, and repeated that three times. She shook out her arms and stretched her fingers. Then cracked her neck both directions. Pushed her shoulders back. And stepped in.
Only to discover the ride to the floor where Troy was performing his stunt took several minutes.
Minutes that felt like hours.
A cold sweat prickled over her face and neck. She wiped her face with both hands while watching the numbers light up and go dark. She grew more light-headed with each floor they passed. By the thirties, she was leaning against the wall, gripping the handrail.
“Out of sixty-three floors, he’s on the sixty-second. Go figure, huh?”
“The top two are the only unfinished floors in the building,” he said. “Claustrophobic?”
“Yep.” She let the P pop from her lips, and massaged each finger in turn, microfocusing on the air moving in and out of her lungs, not on the crawl of her skin or the tightening of her throat or the roll of her stomach. “That obvious?”
“My wife’s claustrophobic. Guess that makes it easier to spot.”
Giselle was nauseous by the time they’d gotten through the forties. Ready to pass out by the time they’d cleared the fifties. Still standing by sheer will by the time the elevator finally came to a stop.
And as the doors slid open, a whole new kind of fear tangled with her existing anxiety. The fear of Troy’s rejection. The fear of the bottom falling completely out of her life.
She kept a hand on some vertical surface as she stepped out of the elevator. The space was vast and open and cold. It felt like heaven to Giselle. Like falling in a cold pond on a hot summer day. Her head cleared. Her lungs filled. Her skin cooled. Her mind opened.
The space was indeed unfinished, and a familiar camera crew setup cluttered the commercial hull on the opposite side of the building, where—holy hell—a huge glass panel, a wall, really, had been removed, leaving nothing but about two feet of steel from the floor to the cavernous opening, where cold air blew through the floor’s shell.
“Oh my God.”
“Hey.” A really great-looking blond approached with a casual smile, hand outstretched. “I’m Wes.”