Barbara Daly - When The Lights Go Out...

He slowed, giving himself the pleasure of simply looking at her in the little black dress. No more than a slip, really, and it hugged every curve.

If he closed his eyes, he could remember exactly how the curves had felt in his hands.

He quickened his step, moving silently, and sneaked up behind her. “You’re not escaping from me,” he whispered into her ear.

Blythe jumped and shivered in his arms. “Go back to the party,” she said, sounding panicked. “What if my roommate catches you?”

Max started to tell her exactly how little he cared if Candy caught them, but realized he had a much better use for their few stolen minutes. Gently he turned her toward him and bent his head way, way down to kiss her. She moaned and wrapped her arms around his neck.

The elevator came and he backed her into it. His fingertips were at the hem of her skirt before the doors closed….

Dear Reader,

The words When the Lights Go Out once conjured up images of romance, mystery and excitement in my mind. During last August’s East Coast blackout, those words took on a whole new meaning. In Manhattan where I live, no lights also meant no stoplights at the intersections, no subways, no trains to the suburbs, packed buses, closed groceries and restaurants and no elevators in a city of skyscrapers. Worst of all, there were people in those subways and on those elevators when they ground to a halt.

New York rallied, as it always does. There were unheard-of demonstrations of good manners at those unlighted intersections, and city dwellers invited stranded suburbanites to sleep over. When I discovered my neighbors stuck in the elevator, I’d love to report that I was as levelheaded and resourceful as Blythe Padgett. Alas, my rescue efforts involved a lot of running up and down the stairs while trying to get 911 on the phone, and in between, shouting hysterical words of encouragement down the elevator shaft.

I wonder how many people ended up in the wrong bed like Blythe and found their lives changed forever. That’s something we’ll never know, because they’re not telling. Forgive me, Blythe and Max, for revealing your deep dark secret….

Barbara Daly

bdalybooks@aol.com

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

859—A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS

887—TOO HOT TO HANDLE

953—MISTLETOE OVER MANHATTAN

When the Lights Go Out…

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To all those friends with whom I shared the August 2003 blackout—to the doormen who stayed on, to my husband, George, and our stranded houseguest Eitan for cheerfully eating tuna salad sandwiches for dinner in the dining capital of the United States.

And especially to my neighbors the Pingitores, who retained their elegance and dignity throughout their long ordeal in the elevator, and to those tireless NYPD officers who rescued them.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

“WHATCHA GOTTA DO IS gut up and frigging go for it.”

“Frigging?” Blythe Padgett looked up at her best friend, her roommate, her co-worker, her guardian devil. “Very good, Candy. Last month it was effing. You’ve toned it down another notch.”

“Bart’s on my case.” Candy Jacobsen was a tall, beautiful blonde with a mouth as filthy as the pan the mechanic drained your old oil into. Her passion for expletives was only one of the reasons her news stories invariably needed a rewrite, a task Blythe was performing at this very moment, providing Candy the time and space to interfere in her life.

Not that Candy needed much time to interfere in Blythe’s life. Not at any time in the seven years they’d been friends had she ever been too busy to do that.

She didn’t need much space, either. The New York Telegraph offices occupied three floors of a large, undistinguished building in Times Square. City Desk editor Bart Klemp and his crew of reporters and staff, including Blythe and Candy, occupied the fifth floor, which was basically one enormous high-ceilinged room with scuffed hardwood floors and grandly proportioned, infrequently cleaned windows.

At one time, the office had contained nothing more than rows of desks. The sounds of clacking typewriters and jangling phones must have bounced off the walls and ceiling to create a din loud enough to rattle those big windows. Then someone had come up with the bright idea of separate cubicles. These were nothing more than six-feet-high, square doorless partitions made of a porous synthetic material, but they at least gave the illusion of privacy and cut down on the noise level. When someone else came up with the even brighter idea of computers, and phones were engineered to announce incoming calls by flashing or buzzing softly, the result was the busy hum that prevailed outside the cubicle where Blythe was currently trying to fix Candy’s story and Candy was trying to fix Blythe’s life.

Obviously undistracted from her cause, Candy slid off the edge of Blythe’s desk to pace the tiny cubicle a few steps this way and that on her stiletto heels. “If you don’t start strutting your stuff, you’re never going to find another—” she came to a halt, then said “—boyfriend.”

Blythe knew the term Candy had wanted to use, but couldn’t quite bring herself to say “frig-buddy.”

“Because,” Candy said, pointing a long, frosted-pearl fingernail at Blythe, “until you find another guy, you’re not going to get over Thor. You can’t spend your life thinking no man will ever want you just because—”

“His name wasn’t Thor,” Blythe mumbled. “It was Sven.”

“Thor, Sven, who cares? Male meat. Problem was that he was so full of steroids he couldn’t—”

“Candy!” Blythe vengefully deleted cataclysmic and typed in major. It reduced the verve of Candy’s story nicely. Candy could use a bit of verve reduction.

“So what you have to do,” Candy said, “is sleep with somebody. Anybody. Break through the frigging barrier. Then you’ll be okay. Are you about finished with that?”

Candy and Blythe had both landed jobs with the New York Telegraph right out of college. A mere three years later, Candy was a hotshot crime reporter with high hopes of getting a job with the venerable Times. Blythe was still a proofreader. Bart Klemp, the city desk editor, had declared that “Blythe Padgett’s a darned good writer, but she wouldn’t know news if she woke up in bed with it.”

Everybody seemed determined for her to wake up in bed with…something.

Rewrites were currently the biggest thing going on in her life. This one was Candy’s report of a shocking drug bust on a sedate street of town houses in Greenwich Village. As fed up as Blythe felt with the entire world, it was going to read like a story from the Obituaries editor in the cubicle next door when Blythe was finished with it.

“And I’ve got just the guy for you.”