Jill Shalvis - Smart And Sexy

The idiosyncrasies of the rich and famous didn’t bother him any, as long as they paid for it, but just the words “Mrs. Sinclair” made the butterflies in his stomach tap-dance.

Mr. Sinclair had been a forty-year-old trust-fund baby who’d built huge resort complexes in every party town along the West Coast while showing off his much younger trophy wife, Bailey Sinclair, an ex-model, a woman who screamed sophistication and elegance.

Not to mention her muy caliente factor.

But her husband had bitten the big one three months ago in a mysterious hunting accident, and they hadn’t seen much of the missus since then. She was probably off spending her husband’s billions of dollars, and…and hell.

Bailey Sinclair was intelligent, and sexy, stubborn as hell-three of Noah’s favorite qualities in a woman. She had strawberry blond, wild flyaway hair that framed her face in a way that seemed as if maybe she’d just gotten out of bed and wasn’t averse to going back. Her baby blues were deep enough to drown a man, and her mouth…

Christ, he’d had entire day-long fantasies about her mouth. Truth was, she was his living secret crush.

It was pathetic, really. Getting weak-kneed over another man’s wife.

Even if that man was dead.

But he was a little busy today, so it was probably time to get over Bailey Sinclair.

Cold turkey, pal.

“She’s already on board and locked up in her stateroom,” Shayne said. “And if the rumors are true-”

“Rumors?”

“That she’s selling everything off…then she’s probably going for one last hurrah. Said she was taking a sleeping pill and just to wake her after arrival.”

Noah could picture the sleek honey of a plane on the tarmac. It didn’t take much for his imagination to go farther and see the gorgeous, lush stateroom on board, the huge king-sized bed covered in the best of the best silk, and Bailey sprawled on it, her hair streaming across a pillow, her long, willowy body barely wrapped in satin and lace-

Scratch that.

No satin, no lace.

Nothing but Bailey. Yeah, that might help him get over himself real quick.

If he lived through this, that was.

“Be careful,” Shayne said.

“I will be, Mom. Thanks.”

“Mom?”

“Better than old lady,” Noah said, checking the horizon, ignoring his “passenger” while Shayne huffed out a low laugh.

“Smart-ass,” he muttered, and clicked off.

Yeah, that was him: Noah Fisher, smart-ass. Among other things. And actually, he’d heard them all: selfish bastard, good-for-nothing lout, cocky SOB…

That most of them were completely one-hundred-percent true didn’t keep him up at night. Nope, he saved that for the nightmares, of which he now had a new one.

He glanced at his altimeter and airspeed indicator. Everything looked okay. Everything was okay, because he’d checked and double-checked over the static-system vents and Pitot tube for foreign bodies, like the bird that had fucked him just before his crash. All was clear right now. Good to know. He would not be crashing tonight.

“Thanks,” said the woman at his back, “for not giving me away.”

He did some more ignoring, and the silence filled the cockpit. Reaching out beside him, he lifted the brown bag from which came the most heavenly scent on earth-his burrito. Bless you, Maddie, he said silently to Sky High’s concierge. She always stocked him with his favorite fast food. “Hungry?” he asked his hijacker. He hadn’t had a real mother, but he still knew how to mock politeness.

“Just fly.”

“Suit yourself.” He opened the bag and stuffed a bite into his mouth. His taste buds exploded with pleasure, and to be as annoying as possible, he moaned with it. “You have no idea what you’re missing.”

“Looks like I’m missing a boatload of calories.” She sounded tense enough to shatter. “Can’t you fly faster?”

Yes. “No.”

“How much longer?”

“As long as it takes.” Taking another bite-if he was going to die, it wouldn’t be hungry-he checked the instruments, the horizon.

Still no weather between here and there, and he supposed he should be thankful for small favors. “So…what’s your story?”

She didn’t respond. Shocker.

“You rob a bank?” he tried.

Nothing but the disquieting sensation of the gun against his skin.

“Kill someone?”

The silence seemed to thicken, and his gut clenched. Great, she’d killed someone. “Oh, I know,” he said conversationally. “Your rich husband has a ski bunny at your Mammoth cabin, and you’re going after them.”

She choked out a laugh utterly without mirth. “Can you fly without talking?”

He opened his mouth to give a smart-ass reply to that, but the gun at his back pressed into him and shut him up. Yeah, okay, maybe he could fly without talking.

For now.

Not wanting him to smell the fear and panic swirling around her like a cloak of fog, Bailey Sinclair focused in on the one consolation she had-

He actually believed she held a gun on him.

Good God, she was hijacking the tall, dark, and attitude-ridden Noah Fisher with her fatty Bic pen, and if the enigmatic, rough-edged pilot even caught a sniff of her false bravado, it’d be over. He would wrestle her to the seat or toss her out the window, as she deserved.

At least it’d be over.

No. No destructive thoughts. She had to see this through, had to, or she was going to end up in the same situation as her rat fink bastard husband.

Which was six feet under.

For the umpteenth time, she wished Alan weren’t already dead, so she could kill him herself.

But someone had beaten her to that game, hadn’t they. And now her own life hung in the balance.

Hope you’re rotting in hell, Alan.

God. With her free hand, she hugged herself. She’d had bad days before, she reminded herself. Unfortunately, this one was shaping up to be the king of all bad days.

Bad weeks.

Bad months…

Actually, she could write the entire year off to a string of rotten luck piled on top of rotten decisions piled on top of the fact that Fate seemed to have it in for her.

She needed a break, just one.

And then suddenly the plane dipped again, and she nearly lost her sweaty grip on her Bic pen. “What are you doing?” she cried, flying backward and hitting the seat behind her.

Noah didn’t answer, which pretty much did her in. Nerves already scraped raw, she desperately needed some answers, and he was going to give them to her, damn it.

Scrambling back up, she tightened her hold on the pen and jammed it hard into the muscle of his shoulder. “Answer me!”

Rolling his shoulder, he pushed back at her.

Damn it, didn’t he realize? She had a gun.

Okay, she didn’t, really, but he thought she did! Why wasn’t he cowering? Begging for mercy?

She wanted to do both. She wanted to drop to the floor and roll into a ball and do something distinctly juvenile, like burst into tears.

Instead she locked her knees and thrust up her chin, reminding herself she was in charge at the moment. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“Weather pockets.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’ve hit a few weather pockets,” he said very slowly, as if speaking to an idiot.

“Is that bad?”

“Depends on how good a flyer you are.”

“How good a flyer are you?” she asked a little weakly.

He let out a low, mirthless laugh. “Little late to be asking that.”

She was just behind him, and off to the side enough to catch him in profile. And he had quite the profile. His dark hair hadn’t seen a comb today, maybe not yesterday either, and yet the untamed waves would most definitely call to a woman’s fingers. She knew this because they called to hers.

His striking face gave nothing away as he spoke: no alarm, no worry, no inflection at all. He was good at that, at being calm.

She knew this because he’d flown her places before, many times; he just didn’t know it. She’d always admired his calm strength, his smooth, easy demeanor, and that low, husky voice with the whisper of England in it.

He handled the controls like the pro he was. The material of his shirt strained over shoulders wide enough to block her view of the horizon, and she knew without looking that his chest was broad, his stomach enticingly flat, because one time last summer she’d seen him on the tarmac stripping out of a dirty shirt, shrugging into a new one. His arms had been corded with long, steely muscles, his fingers also long and undoubtedly callused and work-roughened from all the mechanic work he often did on his plane for the joy of it.

“Thunderstorm, gathering early,” he said, working the controls as the plane dipped once more, pitching as violently as her stomach.

“Ohmigod,” she whispered, gripping the back of his seat.

Another dip.

She gritted her teeth and did her best not to reveal her fear. “Can’t you avoid this?”

“Sure.”

His voice came perfectly calm, perfectly collected, with just that curious and intoxicating hint of British in it. “I’ll just call mother nature and tell her to knock it off.”

In another place and time, she’d be fascinated by the sheer strength and control he was exhibiting under what had to be enormous pressure.

But right now it was all she could do not to throw herself down and give up, give in.

Let them have her.

No. No, she wasn’t dead yet, damn it. She opened her mouth, but when the plane shuddered, so did she.

Oh, God.

“Are we going to crash?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, and if she’d thought her stomach had pitched before, it was nothing to the sommersault it did now in the face of his silence. “Hello?”

When he didn’t answer, she sucked in a breath and nudged him with her “gun.”