Strong and Sexy

by Jill Shalvis

  into bed. Just as soon as she consumed a thousand calories or so.

  Chapter 6

  When Shayne got back to Sky High, the last of their guests were just leaving and Maddie was pouring the happy, and quite drunk, bride-to-be into a cab. Sandra caught sight of Shayne, dragged him close and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Thanks.” She was a little goofy and a whole lot drunk. “Best party ever.” She would have given him another kiss, right on the mouth this time, if Maddie hadn’t rescued him and shut the cab door on Sandra.

  When the cab had driven off, Maddie turned to Shayne with her hands on her hips. “What is it with you and women? It’s like you’re irresistible or something.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  She laughed.

  “Hey,” he said, following her back inside to help clean up. Walking around the lobby with a trash bag, he took a good, long look around, shocked at what he saw. Looked like the disasters at one of the frat parties he and Noah and Brody had had in college. “For a bunch of rich people, they sure were slobs.”

  “Hello, Mr. Kettle.” This from Brody, who was sprawled on one of the couches, tie loosened, working his BlackBerry.

  “Just because I grew up around these people doesn’t mean I’m one of them.”

  Brody snorted.

  Shayne looked at Maddie, also walking around with a trash bag, then back to Brody. “Who’s the one not getting their hands dirty?”

  Brody didn’t bother to answer.

  Shayne threw him an empty bag. “Feel free.”

  “Yeah, I don’t do trash.”

  Maddie righted a tipped-over potted plant, the trash bag at her hip definitely clashing with her teeny, tiny, heart-stoppingly clingy silver cocktail dress. “Tell him you want a raise, Shayne. Let’s watch his blood pressure rise.”

  Brody narrowed his eyes at her. “What does that mean?”

  “That you’re looking quite comfy on that leather couch. If Shayne is Mr. Kettle, I think you’re Mr. Pot.” She moved to a wall to straighten two crooked pictures. “And a cheap one at that.”

  “All I said was that we pay you a helluva lot of money. I didn’t say you weren’t worth it.”

  “That’s because you can’t say that. Not when you know I am worth it, every single penny. Why are you still here anyway? I thought you had a date. You get stood up?”

  “No.” But Brody scowled. “Maybe.”

  “What a shock, what with all those pretty words and heart-stopping smiles.”

  Brody looked at her, the air crackling between them. The silence grew, until Shayne opened his mouth to suggest they just knock it out like a pair of horny teenagers to see if that helped, but Maddie asked him a question.

  “How did your rescue mission go?”

  “What rescue mission?” Noah asked, coming out of his office, holding Bailey’s hand. His shirt was wrinkled and half untucked, and Bailey’s hair had a definite I’ve-just-been-thoroughly-screwed-on-a-desk look.

  Brody took one look at him and shook his head in disgust. “Aren’t you two tired of jumping each other’s bones yet?”

  Bailey blushed and tried to fix her hair.

  Noah flat-out grinned. “Hell, no. What rescue mission?”

  “Nothing,” Shayne said.

  Noah looked back and forth between them. “Okay, what did we miss?”

  “Only the entire party.” Brody tucked his BlackBerry away. “Maybe I ought to get a wife too, so I can miss all the social shit.”

  “You couldn’t get a wife if you tried,” Maddie told him. “Too curmudgeonly.”

  “Seriously. I sign your paychecks.”

  “And I earn every penny.”

  “You could dress the part.”

  She looked down at her sexy dress. “What’s wrong with this?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Shayne told her.

  Brody glared at him. “I’m just saying you could dress like an assistant once in awhile, that’s all.”

  “Tonight was social, you moron.”

  Noah laughed and pulled Bailey to the door. “You kids play nice.”

  “Curmudgeonly?” Brody said to Maddie after they’d left. “Moron?”

  But Maddie followed after Noah and Bailey, grabbing her purse and coat as she went.

  “Hey,” Brody called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “Out. Because I? Didn’t get stood up.”

  “I didn’t get stood up either.” Brody frowned. “And I’d make a great husband! If I wanted to wear a ball and chain!”

  From over her shoulder, Maddie waved a hand, sashaying across the lobby in that silver clingy dress that seemed to be defying gravity to stay up—

  “She’s our concierge,” Brody hissed to Shayne. “Stop looking at her ass.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything you weren’t doing.”

  “I was not staring at her ass.”

  “Please. You’ve made a career out of staring at her ass.”

  Maddie turned back. “Maybe the both of you could stop staring at my ass. Hot as it is . . .”

  Brody grimaced and shoved Shayne. Shayne decided to let that go, because while he’d been just having fun, Brody was not. The guy was sporting a crush on Maddie, one of gigantic proportions.

  And one of these days, the guy might even face it. Maybe he and Maddie would figure out a way to go at each other, and it just might be the real thing.

  Then Noah would have Bailey, and Brody would have Maddie, and Shayne?

  Odd man out.

  A little twinge hit him at that, which was stupid. He had everything, anything he could possibly want right at his fingertips, and yet . . .

  And yet he felt a restlessness he couldn’t deny.

  Odd, since he’d never given much thought to the far-off future, or even tomorrow, and yet he felt like he was missing out on something.

  But hell if he knew exactly what.

  Maddie turned back. “Oh, hey, playboy?”

  Brody lifted his head.

  “Not you. Shayne.”

  Brody looked affronted.

  “Gotta live it to earn it,” Maddie told him.

  “I could live it.” He sank further into the couch when both Shayne and Maddie laughed. “Well, I could.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said and rolled her eyes. “Shayne, I forgot to tell you, when Michelle was looking for you, she asked me to have you stop by her place tonight.”

  Which was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do.

  She read his face. “I figured you wouldn’t want to, what with your whole date-a-woman-once thing.”

  “I’ve dated women more than once.”

  “Really? Name one.”

  “Michelle. I dated her twice.”

  “Because you didn’t sleep with her until the second date. Face it, Shayne, you’re allergic to relationships.”

  “Hey, after Michelle, I went out with Marie, Suzie, and Kathleen, remember?”

  “And your point?”

  “I asked each of them out on a second date, and . . .” He grimaced. “And each turned me down.”

  “Wow. Three whole rejections.” Maddie shook her head. “After the hundreds you’ve rejected.”

  His cell phone rang. Pulling it out, he stared down at the name on the ID.

  “Dani Peterson,” Brody read over Shayne’s shoulder.

  Maddie. “She’s hooked.”

  “Damn,” Brody said. “How do you do that so fast?”

  “Guess she didn’t get the memo about the no-second-date thing,” Maddie offered.

  “Maybe she has another closet she needs you to check out,” Brody added.

  Maddie laughed, and Brody smiled at her, and for a moment she seemed to soften.

  Shayne shook his head, and turning his back on his so-called friends, answered. “Hello?”

  “Shayne?”

  She was in panic mode again, he could tell. “You okay?”

  Dani opened her mouth to respond to Shayne, but nothing came out. She was s
cared. Terrified, actually. She’d taken her bath and gone to bed, but had awoken suddenly, heart pounding.

  And though she hadn’t heard a sound, hadn’t seen a thing in her darkened bedroom, she’d felt it.

  A presence.

  She hadn’t been alone in her apartment.

  She’d grabbed the baseball bat she kept in the corner and had gone still, listening. A soft rustling had come from her bathroom. Heart kicking hard, beating at a rate that had to be near heart-attack inducing, she’d left her bedroom, pausing in the hallway but no longer hearing a thing, not even a whisper of sound.

  It was as if someone had been holding his breath, waiting.

  Well, that person wasn’t the only one. Dani had grabbed her cordless phone and the business card by it and had run out her front door, going straight to Alan’s, torn between pounding and a light tap because she couldn’t decide which was more important—that Alan hurry, or that she not let the stranger in her apartment know where she was.

  But Alan’s place was dark, and silent, and he didn’t answer. She was hunkering in the shadows between his door and hers so she didn’t run out of range on her phone, planning on dialing the police.

  Who would have actually been helpful. She hadn’t meant to call Shayne, but she’d looked at his card and read his name in embossed print.

  Shayne Mahoney

  President of Operations

  Calling his cell while his title played in her head, along with the implications.

  He’d told her that he was a pilot. So why had she turned to him? Bad fingers. Bad decision, calling the man who’d let her think he was nothing but a pilot for hire, when in fact he ran Sky High Air.

  The only reason for that—he’d been slumming. With her.

  And still, she’d called him. Clearly her brain had gone AWOL on her.

  “Dani?”

  Hunkered there in the dark shadows in the upstairs walkway of her building, she considered hanging up on the man she’d kissed in a closet.

  And against her front door . . .

  “Talk to me, Dani.”

  Just his voice did something, brought her a sense of calm when she didn’t think she could ever find her calm again. “I didn’t mean to call you. Just a reflex, I think. So if you could forget this whole thing—”

  “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  She squished herself farther into the shadows, but no one came out of her place. Had she imagined the whole thing?

  “Dani.”

  She glanced at Alan’s apartment again. Now would have been a really nice time for him to poke his head out.

  No such luck.

  She wasn’t far from work, about a mile. Sometimes she walked there, but doing so now in a T-shirt and men’s boxers didn’t appeal.

  “Dani, damn it. Talk to me.”

  “I fell asleep,” she whispered. “And when I woke up, I think there was someone in my apartment.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Between my place and Alan’s.”

  “Alan . . .” He tried to place the name. “Stalker Alan?”

  “He’s not a stalker,” she whispered and rubbed the baseball bat for courage. “Listen, I’ll call the police from here, okay? I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have called you. Please, forget I called.”

  “Dani—”

  “Thanks.” She winced. Thanks? “Bye, Shayne.” She hit the off button and resisted smacking her own forehead with the phone.

  Shayne gritted his teeth at the unmistakable click. “Hello? Dani? Don’t you hang up on me—” She’d hung up on him. “Damn it!” He pulled his cell phone from his ear to look at the readout. “She hung up on me.”

  Still sprawled on the couch, Brody shrugged. “Saved you some time.”

  “This is serious. At least I think it’s serious.” Shayne brought up the last number received on his phone, then called it.

  “Interesting,” Brody noted to Maddie. “He’s calling her back. I think that constitutes date number two.” He looked at Shayne. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get your, what is it now, fourth rejection in a row?”

  “Brody?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up.” Pick up, he silently urged Dani, while letting Brody’s teasing roll off his back. So he hadn’t been the most reliable of men where women were concerned. He’d never been a good bet. He didn’t stick. Ask his family. Ask any of the women he’d dated.

  But this felt different. This wasn’t about sticking. Or at least that’s what he told himself as he waited. This was simply about helping someone who needed it.

  Dani’s phone rang and she nearly lost a year of her life. Still against the wall between her apartment and Alan’s, she looked at the caller ID screen, felt her stomach quiver, and answered. “Shayne.”

  “You call the cops yet?” he demanded.

  “I—” Oh, God, was that a scraping sound behind her? Flattening herself to the wall, she squinted into the darkness and saw nothing. Breathe. Just breathe. She’d just half convinced herself she’d made this whole thing up, but she hadn’t manufactured that noise. “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  “So fine your voice is shaking with terror. So fine you accidentally called me instead of the police.”

  “I would have called them now,” she pointed out. “But you keep chatting.”

  “You’re giving me gray hair as we speak. Gray hair, Dani.”