by Jill Shalvis
“She needs another flight.”
“To Cabo, apparently, at the crack of dawn.”
“That’s right,” Noah said.
“I’ll take her.”
“I’m doing it.”
Shayne looked at him for a long moment. “What exactly happened in Mammoth? Why didn’t you ski?”
“She needed some help, Shayne.”
“And you gave it.”
“Yes.”
“You sleep with her?”
“What does that matter?”
“Because you haven’t slept with anyone since Sheila.”
“You told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, remember?”
Shayne sighed. “Okay, I know what this is. Yeah, I told you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. But I did not mean fall for the first woman who hijacked you, Noah.”
“I’m not falling…” He had to clamp his jaw shut because suddenly he couldn’t finish the sentence. Christ. He was falling.
Hard.
Shayne was staring at him, horrified. “Have you lost it completely?”
Yeah, completely.
The door opened. Brody came in, brow creased, a frown marring his mouth. “You’ve lost your mind,” he said to Noah as he shut the door.
Which immediately opened again, hitting Brody in the ass, sending him forward a good foot. “Hey,” he complained as Maddie let herself in, stalking right past Brody and up to Noah.
With Maddie, one could never be sure. She could be planning on walloping him or kissing him, so he braced himself, but she pulled him close in a fierce hug and squeezed tight.
Not the typical concierge, she sported purple hair today, tipped in black, spiky around her face in some artfully messed up style that had probably taken hours, wearing some silvery outfit on her grade A hard body guaranteed to make a man’s eyes bug right out of his head. The woman seriously looked like a real-life kick-ass action heroine, only where she kicked ass was in her job.
He allowed her to continue to squeeze the life right out of him because, as he discovered with surprise, she was trembling. “Hey. Hey, I’m okay.” He held her tight, and over her head met Brody’s gaze, which was nothing short of glowering.
Huh. Brody and Maddie had been like oil and water from day one, but this was new. Noah hugged her closer, and Brody’s frown deepened. Noah grinned. Brody took a step toward him, but then Maddie cupped Noah’s face. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” And she smacked him upside the back of the head. “Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”
“That’s the general consensus,” he said, and rubbed his head. “And ouch.”
Now Brody was the one to grin.
“Don’t even try to tell me it knocked some sense into you,” Maddie said. “I know it damn well didn’t. What the hell were you thinking? Oh, never mind.” She hugged him again. “Just never mind. You’re back. You’re okay.”
“Jeez, don’t smother him,” Brody muttered.
Maddie shot him a glare that matched his own. “It’s called sensitivity, Brody. I know you’re missing that gene, so—”
“Point,” Shayne said dryly. “Let’s stick to the point.”
They all looked at Noah, who lifted his hands. “The point is, she’s got some trouble.”
“Dude, they’re all trouble.” For this, Shayne got his own cuff to the back of the head, courtesy of Maddie. “Well, they are,” he muttered.
“The real point,” she said, and once again everyone eyed Noah. “You just started flying again. Yesterday,” she clarified, as if he’d forgotten. “After six months of a leave of absence from flying after the accident—”
Brody sucked in a breath.
Shayne did the same.
Because no one, absolutely no one, liked to talk about the accident.
At least no one but Bailey…
“And then you go off for a break, but instead hook up with trouble. Honey,” she said gently, as if she were sixty-five and using a walker, instead of twenty-six and extremely hot. “What I’m trying to say is that on top of everything, Bailey is a walking/talking time bomb. These guys came looking for her, and—”
Noah’s heart stopped. “What guys? When?” Jesus, were they still here? With Bailey out there, unprotected? Fear blocking his throat, he strode to the door, but Brody stepped in front of it.
“They’re gone,” he said. “She’s safe here. You know that. The question is, safe from what?”
Noah tried to push past him, but again Brody blocked him. “They said she owed them big-time, that she was a thief. They said the fact that she was on the run proved them right.”
“Bullshit,” Noah said.
“Which is why we didn’t tell them where she was.”
Noah looked at each of them in turn, and in spite of being cornered, felt a swell of emotion. Yeah, these guys were pains in the ass, but they were his pains in the ass. “Look, she’s in trouble, not trouble herself, and I’m helping her. Any of you would do the exact same thing. Now, I’ve got to go. Move,” he said to Brody.
Instead, Brody shoved him.
Noah shoved back.
“What, are you guys like eight?” Maddie demanded, but Shayne gently set her aside and stepped between Noah and Brody. He looked into Brody’s eyes. “Back off.” Then he turned to Noah. “The guys are gone. We had them followed. They went to the main terminal. United. They checked on flights to…”
“Cabo,” Noah guessed.
“Bingo. So you going to tell us what we can do to help?”
He looked over Shayne’s shoulder to where Brody stood tall and fierce. Brody rolled his eyes, then nodded. Maddie scooted closer, patting his shoulder. She nodded, too.
Noah sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, which granted, isn’t all that much. Alan Sinclair died in debt to some investors, who didn’t take too well to the fact that all their money is gone and none of the resorts are finished.”
“How much?” Maddie asked, skirting around the desk to flip open Shayne’s laptop. Perching a hip on the desk, she leaned over, her fingers fast at work.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did the money go?”
“Don’t know that either. Bailey suspects Alan has hidden a stash somewhere in one of his suites. We’re down to one last suite to check.”
“In Cabo,” Shayne said with disgust.
“I’ll take her,” Brody said.
“Good luck with that,” Shayne muttered.
“I’m taking her,” Noah said.
“See?” Shayne said to Brody. “He’s hook, line, and sinker gone.”
Brody made a sound that left no mistake to what he thought of that, and Maddie rolled her eyes. “Have you not a single romantic bone in your body?” she demanded.
Brody opened his mouth, then carefully shut it again, eyes shuttered.
Disgusted, Maddie turned her back on him and looked at Noah. “After Baja, then what?”
“Not sure,” Noah admitted. “If we don’t find the money—”
“We,” Brody muttered. “He’s saying ‘we.’”
“If we don’t find the money,” Noah continued, “she’s more unsafe than ever.”
“Then we find the money,” Shayne said.
Brody sighed. “Now Shayne’s saying we. Christ, this is going to get ugly.”
Shayne grinned. “Just like old times, getting ourselves out of every scrape we ever found ourselves in.”
“And there were many,” Brody reminded him. “Always ugly, remember?”
“We never lost,” Shayne said.
Maddie shook her head. “This is about Bailey, remember? Not about the thrill of the fight.”
“Right.” Shayne met Brody’s and Noah’s eyes over Maddie’s head. “For Bailey.”
Bailey stuck her head in the door of the office. “What’s for me?”
She’d clearly dived into her duffle bag of magic tricks because she’d freshened up, including
changing.
Now she wore one of those filmy, multi-layered skirts that alternately clung and flew about her legs and hips, with a pale sweater in some sort of stretchy material that under very different circumstances would have made Noah’s mouth run dry. It was a scooped neck, and had a row of teeny tiny buttons down the center, with both the first few and the last few unbuttoned. She could have been going into the classroom for a day of teaching, or to a tea party. Either way, she looked every inch the wealthy, elegant, sophisticated wife of a real estate mogul that she’d once been.
Suddenly everyone who had been all up in Noah’s business scattered in a wave of busywork—Maddie saying something about the phones, Shayne mentioning he had a plane to look at, Brody not explaining himself at all—and in less than two seconds, Noah and Bailey were completely alone.
“You told them everything,” Bailey said flatly.
“Hard to do that, when I don’t know everything.” His gaze was helplessly drawn to the tiny, delicate chain of gold around her neck, which dipped into her scooped neckline and vanished from view in such a way that left him dying to reach into that sweater himself and go fishing.
“Noah…”
He waited, but she sighed and said nothing, and he felt as if someone had just run over his heart. “Forget it. Let’s go.”
“Now?” Her sandals had heels, and were the same pale, pale peach of her sweater. “Okay, good.”
Her toenails were peach too, and on her big right toe was painted a tiny little daisy. Never in his life would he have imagined a thing so flipping sexy, but he couldn’t stop looking at it.
“Where to?” she asked.
He knew she meant which way to the plane. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said, shocking the hell out of him.
Noah opened his mouth to tell her he was taking her home to his house where they were going to spend the entire night trusting the hell out of each other—naked, hot, and sweaty—but Shayne came down the hallway at a speed faster than his usual laid-back tortoise slow.
“Problem,” he said.
Noah looked into Shayne’s eyes and knew. The men were back.
Shayne whipped open the supply closet.
Noah pushed Bailey inside. “Hang tight,” he told her.
Shayne shut the door on her.
“What—” she asked from the inside, and Noah whipped the door back open, meaning to say something cool but calming. Only instead he kissed her hard and quick. “I’ll be back, don’t make a sound.”
He just hoped that for once, she listened.
Chapter 18
Bailey stood there in the pitch-dark closet and tried not to hyperventilate. She’d seen Shayne’s face, she’d heard “problem,” and she knew.
Stephen and his men had found her. God, oh, God, if anyone got hurt because of her…Just thinking it, her legs went weak, and she sank to the floor, hugging her knees close to her chest.
When Alan had died and she’d found out her life had never been what she’d thought, she’d been hurt and angry but determined to change things.
Then she’d had her little run-in with Alan’s thugs, and she’d expected to die. She’d expected to die many times since.
But in a last ditch effort, she’d used Noah to take her to Mammoth on the off chance she could find the money, and once again, everything had changed.
It was almost as if she’d been living in black and white, and he’d colored her world. And a secret, deep dark hope burgeoned inside her—that she’d find the money, she’d pay off Stephen and his men, and she’d go back to her life, to teaching. She loved the world her kids lived in, the sweet innocence, their precious minds that were like little sponges.
In fact, she’d always dreamed of having her own, but that dream had recently been set aside for the more pressing one—living to see her twenty-ninth birthday.
But now she had a new secret dream—Noah.
Where was he? Worry and fear knotted within her. She stood and slipped her hands into the deep pockets of her skirt and felt the comforting weight of her cell phone.
She debated for a moment, then pulled it out and turned it on. She needed to hear from Kenny, and indeed she had a waiting text message. WHERE R U?
SAFE, she typed and sent.
To her utter shock, she got an immediate response: DID U FIND IT?
Before she could respond, the closet door handle turned. Before she could even squeak, it opened. A tall, dark shadow slipped inside, pressing her back, shutting the door, which meant she was alone with—
“It’s me,” came Noah’s unbearably familiar voice.
Relief spilled out of her along with her breath when his arms encircled her.
“What happened?” she demanded, but his answer was to cover her mouth with his. She had no idea how he did it, but with his mouth open on hers, his hands all over her, it was hard to think past the sensual, earthy haze he created.
And that wasn’t the only thing hard. With a startled little hum, she pressed even closer to his amazing body, afraid she wouldn’t ever be able to get close enough.
And that thought was just deep enough, real enough, to nearly shatter her. Then he turned her, pressing her back against a wall—a shelving unit, she decided, because things fell from it to the floor. “Noah—”
He ran a hand down her spine and then back up again, beneath her sweater, his warm palm on her bare skin. “Noah—”
Before she could get out anything else, his mouth covered hers again, and since hers was open, his tongue slid right in and danced to hers in a slow, sinuous, sensual movement that made her knees wobble.
There were other reactions as well, and when his hand came around, up her torso to cup a breast, his thumb gliding over her hard nipple, he discovered that very thing, and a low, hungry sound escaped him. It tightened her body even more. Then he shifted angles to get even closer, deeper, which drove her wild because his kiss was hot, melting, and only a taste of what she really wanted, which was him deep inside her, sliding in and out like his tongue. This need for him shocked her because she’d never felt it before, all consuming and as necessary as air.
But Noah…Noah made her that way, and she climbed all over him trying to get closer, inside of him.
The pitch black only added to the sense of intimacy. She felt the heat of him burning into her, igniting every single erogenous zone she had, which was a hell of a lot more than she’d known about, all of it turning her on in spite of herself, when she really had no business getting turned on.
The men were here.
She had to talk to him, had to know what was happening, but he cupped her face, tilting it up, pressing her into the wall, pinning her between the plaster and his even harder body. “Noah—”
“I know. Christ, you make me hot.” He slid a thigh between hers, ripping a dark, needy sound from her throat. Her head thunked hard back against the wall.
His hands slid up, into her hair, massaging where she’d hit while his mouth made its way down her throat.