Muriel Jensen - New Year's Wedding

He was vaguely aware of her pulling against him as he shouted to the lone man inside to hold the elevator. But he thought she was just having trouble keeping up in her boots.

“Grady...” she said.

“Come on!” he encouraged, walking quickly. “If we get there first, I can tell the waiter that Ben intends to pay. He has a tab here.” He warmed to that thought above all else. “He’ll hate that. Ha!”

The man held the door from closing as Grady hurried into the car, drawing Cassie in beside him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she struggled to catch her breath. The door closed and the car began to rise.

He patted Cassie’s back as she gulped in air. He was happy with the day, glad to have the opportunity to help her relax before her family got there. He was anxious to see his friends, anticipating all of them around the table, talking and laughing while sharing the bistro’s outrageously delicious food.

So, he was completely unprepared for what happened next. Cassie caught his hand in a biting grip, her fingernails drawing blood as she let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting scream.

She began to shake him and point to the door. “No! No! No!”

“Cassie—”

“No!”

All right. No. No, what? He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she wanted out of the elevator. The man who’d held the door for them did so again, his eyes a little wider this time as they reached the third floor and the doors parted.

Cassie gasped and ran out into a hallway that spilled right into the restaurant, only a few feet from the hostess’s stand. She stopped and noisily drew in air, her arms wrapped around herself, her cheeks crimson.

She looked mortified and somehow isolated. Her hands shook. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then added grimly, “Remember that issue left over from my childhood I mentioned that I still deal with?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s claustrophobia.”

“Yeah,” he said. An inch of skin was scraped off his left hand. “I guessed that.”

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