Jill Shalvis - Smart And Sexy

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.

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.