“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. A 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.