Smart and Sexy

by Jill Shalvis

  reconcile the fact that he’d—” She stopped. “You understand?”

  “Do you think I’m completely cold and unfeeling?”

  “No,” she said softly. “I don’t think you’re cold and unfeeling at all.”

  He held her gaze for a long beat, then let out a breath. “So he called?”

  “He texted. He’d done so before. Yesterday, too, when I was in the closet at Sky High. But this time he came right out and asked me where I was.” She took in his knowing expression and closed her eyes.

  “Ah, hell, Bailey.” His sigh warmed her temple. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t want to see it…”

  Again she was jostled from behind, and she bumped closer into Noah. Chest to chest now. His hand settled on her waist, and for a moment, she let herself pretend that they were a couple.

  He brought a hand up to her hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be right.”

  She set her forehead to his chest and absorbed the betrayal and pain. “I don’t know how or why, but if he’s working with the investors to recover their money, then…” To even say the words felt wrong. “Then he’s been using our text messages to keep track of where I am. It would explain how they always seem to be right there with me, you know?”

  He tipped her face up, staring down at her for a long beat. “No matter what happens, I’m there. On your side. Can you believe that?”

  She wanted to. “I’m not very good at believing. But…”

  “But…?”

  “But I’d like to try, with you.”

  He let out a long breath, then pressed a kiss to her jaw. A conciliatory kiss, a sweet connection that had her sighing as she leaned into him. She had no idea what she’d ever done to deserve him here at her side helping her, but she was ever so grateful that he was as stubborn as she. “I’ve always held back, you know. I think a part of me knew I couldn’t reveal everything, couldn’t fully trust.”

  He ran his hand up and then down her back, comforting. “A sucky way to live.”

  “It nearly killed me,” she confessed. “In more ways than one.” She managed to look at him, into those melting eyes and admit the truth. “I don’t want to live that way anymore. I want to learn to believe. To trust.”

  “Then don’t pull another vanishing act on me. Let’s see this thing through to the end. Together.”

  Her breath caught. “Another weak point of mine.”

  “What, seeing things through to the end?”

  “No, the together thing.”

  “Me too,” he said. “But maybe it’s time for us both to try. To take a risk.”

  “Next!” one of the airline representatives called from the counter.

  For a moment, Noah didn’t move, just looked at her, gaze heated. Then he shifted around and moved to the counter.

  “A ticket for your next flight to Cabo,” he said.

  Bailey rifled through her purse and pulled out the last of her cash and slapped it on the counter.

  Noah pushed it away.

  Bailey pushed it back.

  The airline representative divided a bemused gaze between the two of them. “I can split the cost, fifty-fifty.”

  “No.” Noah pushed his card toward the representative while palming Bailey’s cash, which he handed directly to her. “How about the next time we fly commercial, you buy,” he suggested.

  “But you never fly commercial.”

  He smiled. “I know. Come on, let’s do this.” He looked up their gate number, then at the long, long walk they had to make, and sighed. “What do you think the chances are that they’ll serve something more than peanuts on board?”

  “Slim to none?” she responded and tipped back her head to look into his face.

  And caught him.

  He’d been talking to her with a light teasing tone, keeping his touch casual, but though his head was bent close to hers, nothing about the tense, still way he stood was light or teasing as his eyes carefully and thoroughly and continually scanned the area around them.

  “Expecting trouble so soon?” she asked softly.

  His gaze dipped momentarily to hers. “With you? Always.”

  “Noah.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Did you tell Kenny where you were off to before you sentenced your phone to cell hell?”

  “No, but it won’t matter. We’re going to the last place the money could be. They’ve been following me; they’ll have figured it out by now. They’ll be watching for me.” The spot between her shoulder blades began to tingle, and she turned around, looking.

  No one was paying her any mind at all, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. “You think they’re here, too.”

  Noah didn’t say anything to that as they made their way through the line to get past security. Ahead of them, security agents opened up two more lanes, calling out warnings for everyone to remove their shoes, jewelry, and keys. The crowd collectively obeyed with the usual grumbling.

  Noah toed off his athletic shoes, stuck them in a bucket, and then handed her an empty bucket to use.

  Bailey bent to unstrap and untie her sandals. One of these days she was going to get over her shoe fetish and just buy regular, easy-to-put-on and easy-to-pull-off shoes.

  Okay, probably she wasn’t. She carefully set her Nine West sandals in the bucket and watched them move on the conveyor belt until they vanished from sight.

  “They’re going to be okay,” Noah said dryly.

  She nodded, hoping her underwire bra didn’t set off the alarm as it had the last time she’d flown commercial.

  “Sir.” Another uniformed security officer waved Noah to come on through.

  Just as he stepped under the metal detector, and just as Bailey was dumping her purse into her gray bucket, she heard the voice calling through the crowd.

  “Bailey!”

  And everything within her went still.

  Kenny.

  Clutching her purse, she whipped around.

  Her brother was weaving his way through the crowd, his gaze on her, his face creased into tense lines. “Wait!”

  “Bailey,” Noah said urgently from the other side of security. He made a move to come back through, but the security officer stepped in front of Noah. “I’m sorry, sir, but—”

  “Bailey!” Kenny yelled again. He was wearing a white button down and trousers, not looking anything like a wanderlust carpenter.

  She had no idea how he’d pinpointed her exact location, but the thought terrified her. If he’d found her, then the others could, too. She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, and before that it had been months, so she wasn’t prepared for the changes he’d undergone.

  He’d always been an athlete, albeit a bit of a pampered one. But the muscles he’d refined in basketball, track, and baseball had faded. On top of that, he’d lost weight. His face seemed too thin, almost to the point of gaunt.

  Worse, his eyes were hollow, and haunted.

  And leveled right on her.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the people in his way, pushing past them one at a time, his expression growing more and more desperate. “Excuse me—”

  “Hey!” A huge guy who looked as if maybe he was a linebacker for a living, shook his head. “Dude, wait in line like the rest of us.”

  “I just need to talk to—”

  “A hell to the no,” the linebacker dude said firmly, slapping a hand to Kenny’s chest. “Get in line.”

  “Get through security,” Noah said tightly, looking as if he might leap back over the security table, the officer be damned.

  “Bailey! Bailey, it’s not what you think!” Kenny shouted, now being held back by a security guard who’d stepped in front of him. “Don’t go!”

  She stared at him, throat tight, eyes burning. “I have to. You know I have to.”

  “It’s not there. Please. Trust me. You don’t understand—”

  Another security guard joined the first, and now she could no longer see Kenny at all.

/>   He wanted her to wait. Possibly so that he could get more men in place.

  More men to take her down.

  Kill her.

  Oh, God, Kenny.

  And turning her back, she walked beneath the metal detectors toward a waiting and clearly relieved Noah.

  Chapter 21

  They boarded their plane without any trouble, though in Bailey’s case, she half expected to be held back for being over the weight limit, since she felt so heavy and stressed she could hardly move.

  She was bringing Noah back to the place of his personal hell for her own gains.

  How could she do that?

  Leaning in, he put his mouth to her ear. “You’re thinking so loud over there that I can’t hear the flight attendant’s emergency spiel.”

  She managed a smile for him, one that turned more real when he returned it.

  “Why don’t you try to sleep?” he murmured. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”

  True enough. She hadn’t managed to sleep more than a few minutes last night. Although, to be fair, that couldn’t be blamed squarely on this. Nope, she’d burned the midnight oil in Noah’s arms, letting him de-stress her.

  Many times.

  Yeah, as a stress reliever, Noah Fisher was pretty amazing.

  Thinking it, she glanced at him, sitting next to her, his eyes watchful as they rose to altitude and the seat belt signs went off, his body prepared for whatever came his way.

  He caught her staring at him and gave her a what’s-up look. Everything about him was focused on her, and in his eyes was the capacity to handle whatever she dished out. Whatever life dished out. Just looking at him made her feel incredibly alive, and shockingly…happy.

  When she didn’t say anything, he cocked a brow. He was so inherently male, so unintentionally sexy, she could have laughed, could have thrown her arms around him, could have opened her mouth and told him she was falling, and falling hard, and any of those reactions, or all of them, were real. Utterly and one-hundred-percent real, as nothing else was in her life at the moment.

  Oh, boy. The surprising depth of her feelings for this man after what—two days?—completely and totally unnerved her.

  How am I going to let him go?

  It was going to hurt, more than anything else. Suddenly she needed a moment for her own private little pity party, and she scrambled to unbuckle her seat belt.

  “Bailey?”

  “Bathroom,” she choked out. “I need the bathroom.” She stumbled over his long, folded legs to get out of the row.

  In the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was in the midst of the biggest nightmare of her life. So what did it say about her that she could fall for him?

  Had fallen for him?

  The knock at the door nearly startled her right out of her own skin. “Bailey,” came Noah’s low voice. “Open up.”

  Before she could tell him to go away, another voice, a female one, came through the door. “Sir, there’s another bathroom—”

  “Yes, thank you, but I’m with her. Bailey, let me in.” This he said directly to the door, not quite as politely.

  He was losing his patience.

  “Sir,” came the flight attendant’s voice, also losing patience. “I’m afraid that’s against policy. You can’t both go in there.”

  Bailey stared at the door, stifling the shocking urge to giggle.

  Giggle, in the middle of her personal hell.

  But evidently, Noah was not going to give up, because he tried a different tactic. “I know it’s against policy, ma’am, but my wife’s had an incredibly rough day.”

  Wait a minute. Wife? Had he just said…wife? Bailey turned from the mirror and gaped at the locked door.

  “She just lost her father,” Noah was saying. “And her brother, and—”

  “Oh, dear,” whispered the attendant. “The poor thing!”

  “She’s upset—”

  “Of course.” This from the attendant, in a low, commiserating voice. “Does she need anything? A drink, anything?”

  “Frankly?” Noah said. “Me. She needs me. In there.”

  The attendant apparently agreed because after a short silence, Noah’s voice was back, a low whisper this time, and much closer to the door, almost as if he were kissing it. “Bailey? Let me in before she changes her mind.”

  Bailey once again glanced at herself. Her eyes were just a bit wild, as if she was a woman on the run for her life, as if she had a man whose mere voice made her just a little weak, trying to coax her into letting him in—“Noah—”

  “Do it.”

  She’d no more than pulled back the occupied lever than he’d slipped inside and locked the door again.

  She braced herself, but he smiled. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi back.” And then she couldn’t help it; she let out a helpless laugh that sounded so close to a sob she had to clap her hand over her mouth again.

  With a finger, he stroked a strand of hair off her face, while never taking his eyes off hers. “How’s it going?”

  “Terrific.”

  “Uh huh. You going to ever talk to me?”

  His hair was falling into his eyes. His shoulders were so broad they blocked out the harsh light. All she could see was his face, a face she’d come to rely on, need, want…

  “Bailey?”

  Love. She loved him so much.

  “Is this about Kenny?”

  No, but as that was also on her mind, it was a fine diversion. “He said it’s not what I think. I don’t know what he meant by that.”

  He grimaced. “He’ll say whatever he needs to—”

  Bailey didn’t say anything to that. She realized he didn’t want to add to her misery by agreeing that Kenny had to be guilty as hell.

  “He said it’s not there,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “How would he know that unless he’d been in contact with the men who’ve been following me?”

  “It’s possible he went himself,” Noah said. “Maybe he already got the money, and then outran the others.”

  “And kept it?” She paled at that thought even as her heart started a slow, heavy beat. “If they catch him…” Oh, God. Didn’t bear thinking about. Kenny. God, Kenny, what have you done?

  Noah squeezed her hand. “Then there’s the other possibility…”

  “Which is?”

  “That he doesn’t know where the money is, that he hasn’t found it yet.”