Then his cell phone rang, shattering the silence, and she jerked as if she’d been shot, scooting back from him, all the way back.
Feeling inexplicably like a perv, he pulled out his cell. “Fisher.”
“Something interesting,” Brody said. “My Aspen-bound passenger vanished.”
Noah cut his eyes to Bailey. “Is that right?”
“Yep. She just up and left, though it would have been nice to be notified.”
Noah didn’t take his eyes off Bailey. Jesus, had they really just kissed, or was he losing his mind? “Maybe she had other plans.”
Bailey met his gaze straight on, her cheeks pinkening. Please, she mouthed, bringing her fingers up to her lips.
Her still-wet lips.
Yeah, they’d kissed. And he knew what she really meant; it wasn’t please kiss me again but please don’t tell.
“How was your flight?” Brody asked him.
“Besides the landing gear sticking?”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, it was interesting.”
“Anything else interesting?”
“Plenty.”
Brody, one of the smartest guys Noah had ever met, went silent a moment. “Interesting, as in get-struck-by-lightning-and-crash-into-the-side-of-a-mountain interesting, or…interesting, as in an unexpected-passenger interesting?”
Noah slid his sunglasses over his eyes. “You’re quick.”
“Holy shit,” he said again. “Really?”
Noah didn’t say anything.
Bailey just kept looking at him with her heart in her eyes.
Damn, she had a lot of heart.
“What’s up with that?” Brody asked.
“Got me.”
“You okay?”
Noah hadn’t taken his eyes off Bailey. Nor she him. She was taut as a drum and looking more than a little frazzled around the edges. He suspected if he so much as said, “boo,” she’d fall apart. “Always.”
Brody let out a low laugh. “Right. Well, I’ll just put the million-dollar plane away and bill her for the services. For both planes. You know, sometimes, the erratic behavior of the rich and famous really works for me.”
“Yeah.” Noah shut his phone.
Bailey didn’t move.
He gave it a long beat, then straightened to his feet. “I have to tie-down.” He paused, brow arched. “You going to try to stop me with your pen?”
She had the good grace to blush as she rose, too. “No.”
He watched as she pulled a small backpack from beneath the seat in the back. “Are you going to be here when I get back?”
Suddenly, she was very busy playing with the zipper on her backpack.
Jaw tight, he pulled her around to face him. Beneath his fingers, she felt thin. Fragile. What is she going off to face all on herown? “Let me rephrase. Be here when I get back.” He took his hands off her while he still could, gave her one last long look, then exited the plane.
Cold air smacked him in the face. He was in the center of the sharp, craggy Sierras, and at just over six thousand feet altitude, it showed. Piles of fluffy snow lay along the outer edges of the runway, lining the tarmac. The mountains surrounded him in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of jaw-dropping gorgeousness, every one of them white.
Just what he’d come for. Snow, skiing, snow bunnies, beer, sleep. Not a crazy heiress with haunted eyes and a tendency to hold people up with pens.
He handled the tie-down and spoke to a lineman about getting the landing gear fixed, all while keeping an eye on the plane. She was going to bolt, he just knew it.
And sure enough, not sixty seconds later, she came out of the plane as if she owned it. Not as the bag lady she’d been hiding as, but as the gorgeous, swank Bailey Sinclair. The loose sweats were gone. Her head was back, chin high, eyes flashing as though she was queen bee as she carried her bag. She wore designer jeans that fit her like an old friend, fancy boots up to her knees, and a snug, shimmery siren red sweater, all of which screamed class and sophistication. Her hair had been tamed in a sleek ponytail, and she’d put on some gloss that made her mouth look…
He had to tear his gaze off the mouth. It didn’t matter what her lips looked like, or even what they said. He wasn’t buying any story she was selling.
But she wasn’t leaving. Not without some answers.
Maddie had called ahead and ordered fuel and overnight hangar storage for the Piper. She’d also gotten him a Jeep. She had the unique ability to locate anything, obtain it, and have it delivered in a blink, and in the year since they’d started Sky High Air, she’d made herself invaluable to both him and the guys, and also their customers. Now all he needed to do was get into the Jeep and drive off. It was what Bailey wanted him to do.
Too bad he’d never been so good at doing what other people wanted. He strode back toward the Piper and met her just as her expensive boots hit the tarmac.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, staring at his throat, carefully not meeting his eyes.
How, he wondered, had he ever not known that soft, sweet yet somehow outrageously sexy voice? Her long side bangs blew into her face, and she shoved them free with fingers that had gone white with cold. “I’ll never forget it.”
They had a past, a professional one, and in that past he’d never called her anything but Mrs. Sinclair.
But now they had a decidedly unprofessional past as well, and he couldn’t bring himself to call her Mrs. Sinclair ever again. “Bailey, wait.”
“No, I’ve got to-”
He put his hand on her arm, and she looked at him then, from eyes so filled with worry and fear and terror that he put his other hand on her as well.
He couldn’t say why, but he was not letting her go.
“You turned me in, right?” she whispered. “The police-”
He slowly shook his head.
She just stared at him from wide eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?”
A shudder wracked her frame, and he didn’t blame her. It was butt-ass cold. “Why didn’t you turn me in?” she asked.
Hell if he knew. Maybe he was just thrown by the circumstances, the coincidences…maybe it was that in spite of himself, he really was just curious. What threw a poor little rich girl over the edge?
Okay, no. That wasn’t it. He was curious, yes, but he was also…
Concerned.
Sincerely, extremely concerned about her. For some inexplicable reason, he wanted to get to the bottom of this freaked-out, sexy as hell, hurting woman and her problems.
“You could have overpowered me on that plane,” she said as a particularly icy wind blew between them. “I know you could have. If not when you were flying, then when I was.” She hugged herself. “Or on the radio. Or on the cell phone. Or a million other times. You could have easily given me away, but you didn’t.”
He had to shove his hands in his pockets rather than stroke her bangs out of her face-what the hell was that?
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “So why didn’t you?”
“I have no idea.” But he did.
She was freezing, and so was he, which was stupid. He grabbed his duffle bag, then hers, and led them both off the tarmac, toward the rented and waiting Jeep, where she dug her heels into the crunchy snow and balked.
“I don’t need a ride,” she said.
“No? So your plan was to get here, to the airport, then freeze to death? That’s why you hijacked me?”
She looked away.
“Truth, Bailey. You owe me that.”
“Okay, truth. The truth is you have to get far, far away from me. I mean it. I’m like a bad luck charm. Trust me. Being with me, here, is going to get you hurt.” She swallowed. “Or worse.”
He stared at her as that soaked in. She was trying to protect him? “I’m a big boy,” he assured her. “Just tell me. What are you doing here?”