Smart and Sexy

by Jill Shalvis

  she could wear steel-toed work boots and he’d get hot, because the truth was, it was Bailey herself that did him in. She could just stand there and breathe and he’d react, but his point was that he wished she’d been wearing running shoes.

  Hell, he wished she wasn’t here at all, but instead safe on the Learjet heading to Aspen. That was what he wanted—her far away from all this shit.

  They got through the kitchen just as someone tried to get in the double doors. From the other side, a radio squawked. Then a voice softly said, “Get your ass up here, we’ve got ’em.”

  Not yet, you don’t, Noah thought grimly, relieved about one thing. If the two men from downstairs were being called up, that meant there was no one watching the perimeters of the building.

  That would work in their favor.

  “Den,” Bailey whispered, sounding as if she was hyperventilating.

  In the den he spotted the reflection from double French doors that probably cost more than he’d made last year. He headed for them, hoping like hell there was some sort of fire escape plan.

  From behind them, the kitchen doors splintered open, and Bailey gasped.

  Don’t fall apart on me now, he thought, and pulled her along. She pushed ahead of him and shoved open the French doors. There were a few inches of snow on the covered deck, only what had been able to blow in sideways, but the sharp slap of icy air sucked the air from his lungs.

  “Hurry,” she said.

  That was his line, but he moved out after her and carefully shut the doors behind them, pushing her out of the line of sight from inside.

  There wasn’t much to see in the pitch-black night. No moon, no stars…just a storm moving in.

  Yeah, that was just icing on his big fat cake tonight. But there was, hallelujah, a fire escape, which consisted of a narrow ladder from each deck to the one below. “Down we go,” he told her.

  She stared at him blankly.

  “Down the fire escape.”

  “Down the fire escape.” She looked over and gulped. “As in down the fire escape?”

  He pulled her toward it. “There’s no way around this one, Princess.” He manhandled her to the edge and physically lifted her leg over.

  As she caught a glimpse of the ground far, far below, she froze. “Ohmigod.”

  “Don’t look down.”

  “My boots—they’re high-heeled. Noah, I’m going to slip and fall.”

  Holy hell. The fuck-me boots. Were they going to catch absolutely no breaks tonight? “Yeah, okay. Move over.”

  “I can’t—”

  Not waiting for her, he swung his own leg over, which left him pretty much straddling the princess ninety feet above the ground. Still not enough to make him forget that she had a soft, sweet body that fit perfectly to his. Ignoring that, he slid down that soft, sweet body, his cheek rubbing up against all sorts of interesting parts that flipped his senses into overdrive, until his feet were several rungs below hers on the ladder.

  This left his face right about tight, amazing ass level. Okay, he hadn’t thought this through. His jaw brushed one denim-clad cheek, and for just a second, he closed his eyes.

  He wanted to nibble. They were ninety feet above the fucking ground and he wanted to eat her right up. Yeah, Shayne and Brody had definitely been correct—going six months without having sex with anyone other than his own fist had been a colossally bad idea.

  He needed to get laid in the worst possible way.

  “I’m scared,” she gasped, and executed a careful turn so that she faced him.

  Perfect. Now her crotch was right in his face. Not exactly a problem, except he was having a little trouble concentrating.

  “You can’t fall now,” he said, feeling like a perv, telling himself to keep breathing, not to go nuts now. “I’m just below you. I’ll catch you.” He helped her turn back around, which of course involved lots of touching. Now his face was once again two inches from her ass, and his mouth was watering. “Start going down with me.”

  Or on me…

  Still breathing as if maybe she’d already climbed this building, she nodded. “Just go down with you,” she repeated.

  Christ, the words sure did conjure up an image. He shifted down a few rungs so that, thankfully, his mouth came level with the backs of her knees. Nothing sexy about the backs of anyone’s knees.

  Nope, not a damn thing.

  But then she did as he’d asked, she followed, so that she shifted right back into the circle of his arms, and once again he was staring at her most perfectly delectable ass. Closing his eyes would be a bad thing, he reminded himself, and stoically, he kept his gaze on her as they crawled down.

  The things he had to do.

  “Are we almost there?” she asked breathlessly.

  He looked. Not even halfway. “Nearly,” he lied. “Keep moving.”

  “I wish he wasn’t dead so I could kill him.”

  “Who? Alan?”

  “And my father.”

  This was a new one, but now wasn’t exactly the time to point out she’d been less than forthcoming with certain vital information.

  From in his back pocket, his cell phone vibrated. He had no doubt it was someone at Sky High Air with more demands that he come home now. And it made perfect sense, except for one thing. For the first time in far too long, he felt…alive.

  That was when the bullet pinged right past his ear.

  Chapter 9

  Shit, someone was really shooting at them. Noah hated that; he hated that it was starting to snow like a mother. He hated that he couldn’t enjoy his view of Mrs. Sinclair’s world-class ass, and he hated today.

  He really, really hated today.

  “Was that—”

  “Yeah,” he said, his heart racing, his breath coming hard and fast. That had been close, waaaay too close for comfort.

  Another shot ricocheted past his nose, and Bailey screamed loud enough to blister his ears. Hell. Wrapping an arm around her hips, he yanked, sliding her down into the protection of his body. Ignoring the fact that she fit against him as if she’d been made for the spot, he took a look over his shoulder. Eight feet to the balcony of the fifth floor. Or was it the fourth?

  Wincing, because this was going to hurt like hell, he held onto his bundle of woman and leapt toward the balcony.

  Bailey screamed again, but Noah was too busy hitting the deck, then having the air sucker punched out of his lungs when she landed square on top of him, to tell her to shut up again.

  Honest to God, she was the noisiest woman he’d ever been shot at with.

  Oh, wait. She was the only woman he’d ever been shot at with. One more whizzing bullet and his heart nearly lurched to a complete stop, starting up again on a staccato beat when Bailey covered her own mouth with her hand to keep in the next scream.

  “Good girl,” he wanted to say. But with a groan, he rolled over in the snow, finding one hand full of soft breast. Christ. Yanking his hand back, he went up to his knees, keeping her tucked in front of him as he quickly crawled toward the balcony door, not an easy feat with the few inches of slippery snow. Pulling her up, he sandwiched her against the wall. “Wait here,” he said in her ear. “Don’t move, don’t breathe, and for God’s sake, don’t scream.”

  “But—”

  He put a hand over her mouth. “Princess, goddamnit, for once, just do it, no discussion.”

  Only when she gave him a jerky nod did he run back to the fire escape ladder, where he slid down one more floor. Once there, he braced himself and kicked in the sliding glass door.

  Glass shattered, and he toed out the rest, making sure to walk through and traipse as much snow inside as possible. With his penlight, he rushed through the opulent, ridiculously large, empty condo and opened the front door into the dark hallway. There. Follow that lead, assholes. Then he whipped back through the condo, back through the broken glass door, where he shimmied up the fire escape to the deck where he’d left Bailey, thinking, Please still be there, please
don’t have done something stupid.

  She was a mere shadow squishing herself back against the wall as close as she could get in the falling snow, practically hugging the plaster, hair wild around her face, which was as pale as the wall behind her.

  When he loomed close, her eyes went wide, her hands flat on the wall on either side of her as she gasped, looking as though she expected him to rape and pillage.

  It brought home the very sobering realization that he really had no idea what she’d been through, but whatever it’d been, it had been bad.

  And he’d been flinging her around, pushing, shoving, pushing some more…. Feeling like the biggest jerk on the planet, he lifted his hands. “Just me,” he said very softly.

  Some of the terror left her eyes but not all, and she straightened. “I know that.”

  He moved in close, stealing a precious few seconds to look her over, assuring himself she really was all right.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, shaking like a leaf as she got a good hold of his shirt.

  That she could even ask told him a lot about her. “That was my question to you,” he said, still holding onto her, needing to hold on to her.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I set up a detour.” Hopefully. “It’ll give us a few extra minutes. Come on.”

  She tripped on her heels, then caught herself, doing her best to keep up, and he slipped an arm around her, trying to help.

  The door to this level was locked, too, no surprise. But there’d be no glass breaking, not this time. The last thing he wanted to do was attract more gunshots. He fiddled with the lock on the slider. Yeah, he could pick this one. He’d seen several bobby pins in Bailey’s hair, and turning to her, he slipped his fingers through the silky strands. Silky, frozen strands.

  “What are you—”

  Jackpot. He yanked out a pin and dropped to his knees. “Remember the no-talking part?”

  She held her silence for all of three seconds. “I don’t think those locks are going to be pickable—” She broke off when he shot her a dry look, and she tightened her mouth as if to say, Done talking.

  Yeah, right.

  Turning his attention back to the lock, he put his tongue between his teeth and concentrated.

  “Noah,” she whispered.

  Ignoring her, he set his ear against the wood to listen for the lock tumbling into place—

  “Noah.”

  Jesus. Tipping his head back, he went to give her a long, frustrated, shut-the-hell-up look, but she seemed so small and wet and miserable, not to mention off-the-charts freaked out, he just sighed. “Almost got it.”

  “Yes, but those are state-of-the-art locks—”

  It clicked open.

  “Oh,” she murmured in surprise, a sound that turned into a gasp as he yanked her inside with him, carefully shutting and relocking the door behind them.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  “But I thought you sidetracked them.”

  “They won’t stay that way if we don’t get out of sight and out of hearing range.” The condo was pitch-black, but he didn’t turn on his penlight, not yet. Not when the bad guys had guns and were on a scavenger hunt.

  Not when he didn’t know what the fuck was going on. From the scent, he could tell the place had been dry walled, probably textured, but not painted.

  Just like the condo above.

  It meant no furniture. He knew they had to be in a living room, so he strode forward, one hand out in front of him, the other gripping Bailey, which proved unnecessary because she hadn’t let go of him since he’d found her against the wall.

  She hadn’t spoken again, which he appreciated, but she was breathing like a misused race horse, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she hyperventilated herself right into a faint. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll take them a few minutes to figure out which floor we’re on.”

  “A few minutes,” she repeated like a parrot.

  He found a wall, an open doorway, and thought they probably stood in the hallway, near the front door. At least he no longer felt uncomfortably exposed, or braced for a bullet in his back.

  But something about that whole situation bothered him. The goons had missed. Several times.

  What kind of paid goons missed?

  Answer—they didn’t.

  Which meant one thing. The shots hadn’t been meant to kill, but to terrify.

  Given the way his pretty little hijacker was gasping for air, he had to concede they’d done their duty. He was more than unnerved himself.

  And for more than one reason.

  She was holding on to plenty of secrets, which in no way explained why, instead of wanting to wring her pretty little neck, he had the urge to wrap his hands around her hot little bod and not just squeeze.

  But stroke.

  Lick.

  Nibble.

  Yeah, he’d lost it completely.

  He figured they were far enough away from the windows now and pulled out his penlight. They stood in a foyer bigger than his entire house, complete with vaulted ceilings and a hoity-toityness that was provided thanks to too much money. Not the kind of place where he wanted to come ski, thank you very much.

  Next to him, his hyperventilating hijacker shivered violently, reminding him that while she might be a pain in his ass, a gorgeous pain, she was also wet, frozen, and in danger from shock. He wanted to get her back to the Jeep, pronto, and then the hell out of here, but there was one little problem.

  She hadn’t gotten what she’d come for.

  “Okay, Princess, truth time.”

  She didn’t respond. Either she didn’t want to, or she couldn’t because her teeth were threatening to rattle right out of her head. Not good. He moved in, putting his hands on her arms. Christ, she was drenched, her sweater almost frozen into ice. He rubbed up and down trying to keep her warm.

  “They—they’re g—going to f-f-find us—”

  “Not if I can help it.” Cupping her icy face, he tipped it up so he could see into her eyes. “They could have killed us, but they didn’t,” he said. “Why not?”

  She looked away.

  “Want me to guess?”

  More nothing.

  “They’re not going to kill us until you give them what they want.”

  Something on the floor simply fascinated her.

  Perfect.

  He stared at her, waiting, but she’d gone mute. Frustrated, he grabbed her hand and opened the front door.

  “W-where are we g-going?”

  Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. Or at least relatively so. He had no idea where until they got out onto the floor and saw a set of double glass doors lined in enough fancy, expensive brass to fund a third world country for a year. “What’s that?”

  “A d-day spa. Each r-r-resort has one.”

  “With its own separate entry for employees?”

  “P—probably.”