Elizabeth Brooke McGuire impatiently tapped her Gucci clad toes against the dark pavement. Twenty minutes had passed, dinner was about to be served and where was she? She was waiting outside, a shawl wrapped around her thin golden shoulders, the hem of her black cocktail dress flipped in the wind, as it caught her golden locks and flipped them over her face.
With a frustrated groan, she whipped the locks away from her eyes and stared at the blackened streets. A sigh escaped her lips as she saw the doorman watching her.
"Madam, do you need a phone? Or would you like to call a cab?"
Elizabeth's, or Lizzie's (as she was better known), finger gently scratched her perfectly arched eyebrow. Her tongue ran over the inside of her cheek as she blew air past her exasperated red lips. She said nothing as she managed to slide her arm from the warmth of the shawl to pull her cell phone from the purse dangling from her fingers. "I've got one," she curtly told the doorman.
She pressed the familiar number and listened as it rang, and rang, and rang as it had done all night. She snapped the phone shut and retrieved her keys from her purse. She dangled them from her fingers at the doorman who had watched her the whole time she'd been out here waiting for him. "Do you think you could get my car?" The edge in her voice wasn't completely from her irritation at him, but she did nothing to correct the sharpness.
The door man studied her for a moment, realized he would be starting a losing battle and took the keys from her.
Lizzie watched as he stepped into the rain and disappeared into the garage.
The sleek silver car slid to a stop in front of her. Without a word the doorman held open the door and shut it firmly behind her without waiting for a tip. Lizzie shrugged, if he didn't want a tip she wasn't going to force it onto him.
She pulled the car onto the streets. A voice in her head was telling her to go home and just wait until he called her, but another louder voice was demanding that she drive to his house and find out what the hell had kept him. The louder voice won out and she jerked the car suddenly at a light and turned onto another street. She heard the squeal of tires and a horn blast across the night. A glance in the mirror confirmed that an accident hadn't happened, and her mind was on other matters.
She drove up the apartment building, her eyes scaling the walls until the fourteenth floor, his window.
She expected the lights to be off. What could have possibly kept him from meeting her? She expected her cell phone to ring any minute and to hear his voice apologizing profusely for standing her up.
But her expectations were shattered as she looked up at the corner apartment, his apartment. The lights were on, he was up there moving around.
The same soft reassuring voice told her to go home and try calling again.
The louder voice said to hell with that idea.
Once again the louder voice won out as she swung her legs out of the car, jerked the keys from the ignition, and stared towards the elevator.
"He'd better have a brilliant explanation for this," she muttered, turning to face the sliver doors of the elevator as they slid shut.
