“I already said. I’m here to pick something up.”
“Fine.” Any second her teeth were going to rattle out of her pretty head. “Get in the Jeep, I’ll drive you to get this ‘something.’”
She pulled out her cell and read a text message.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer, but thumbed some sort of quick response.
“Bailey-” Knowing she wouldn’t tell him a damn thing, he snatched the phone.
She’d typed: YES, I’M IN ASPEN. HAVE 2 TRY 2 FIND IT.
“Hey!” She grabbed the phone back, hit send, then glared at him.
“Who are you texting with?”
“Kenny.”
Her brother. Okay, but if the guy cared so much, where the hell was he?
Bailey glanced back at the terminal.
“What, you going to go hijack a taxi now?” he asked.
“This isn’t funny.”
“You’re right there. Nothing about this is even remotely funny. You could have gotten into anyone’s plane. Hell, I always assumed you were richer than God himself, so-”
She interrupted him with a harsh laugh as he unlocked the Jeep. He held open the door, the interior light casting her face in bold relief. “You could have gone to any airport,” he said again. “Into any plane, but you got into mine. So now get into my Jeep.”
She stared at him for a long beat, then surprised him by slipping inside. She started to look up at him, but her gaze snagged on a neighboring parked car, a nondescript SUV, and she frowned.
“What?”
“There’s someone in that car watching us,” she whispered.
The SUV started up, but the lights didn’t go on.
Very interesting, he thought. “Why would anyone be watching us?”
“Just get in,” she said urgently, sinking low, reaching back for the hood of her soft, angora hoodie sweater, putting it on over her hair, and slipping on a pair of wide sunglasses despite the fact that the dusk made them unnecessary. “Please, Noah! Just get in and get us out of here as fast as you can.”
Something had changed in her body language, and since he’d had his gaze pretty much glued to her body nonstop, he couldn’t miss it. Everything had gone rigid, her shoulders, her face, and her hands were white-knuckled on the dash. Most telling, the utter, sheer terror was back. So much so that he took a good long second look at the SUV.
With the sun sinking below the horizon, long shadows cast across the parking lot. He couldn’t see through the windshield to the driver, or if there was a passenger.
But his gut told him there was at least one passenger, and his gut was rarely wrong.
And she was still trying to protect him. Hell if that didn’t sting. He walked around to the driver’s seat, casually but quickly, then started the engine. “Where to?” he asked when he got them on the move.
“Uh…” She was looking in the rearview mirror as he pulled out of the parking lot.
The SUV followed.
Oh, yeah, things just kept getting better and better. “Friends of yours?”
“No.”
“So you have no idea who they are?”
She didn’t look at him. “No.”
Shit. Another omission, he was certain. He turned down a side street.
So did the SUV.
Could be a coincidence. A strange one, but still… He made another unscheduled turn.
So did the SUV.
“If you don’t know them, why are they following us?” he asked, dividing his attention between the road, the rearview mirror, and Bailey’s very tense face.
She still had white knuckles on his dashboard, neck craned as she watched behind them with a growing expression of dread and renewed fear. “Don’t know.”
Gritting his teeth, he made a quick turn.
And still the SUV kept up with them.
“I don’t suppose calling the police is an option.”
She didn’t say a word to that.
He glanced at her as he pulled out his cell. “Speak up or forever hold your peace.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Even if I leave out the hijacking part?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you might as well just kill me yourself.”
He shot her a look, but she wasn’t kidding.
“Noah, did Sky High Air figure out I wasn’t on that flight to Aspen?”
Noah divided his attention between the rearview mirror and the road, while trying to think with his mind racing at eighty-five miles an hour.
“Noah?”
He glanced at her, knowing the truth was in his eyes, and not sure that he cared.
She just stared at him, horror dawning. “Oh, boy. Well, that’s it then. Now I’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“Gotten you good as dead, too.”
Chapter 6
Maddie Stone closed down her computer and walked through Sky High Air’s building, turning off lights and making sure everything was shut down for the night to her specs. She had high specs-for herself and everyone else-higher than was asked of her as a concierge and personal assistant to three adventurous, gorgeous rebels.
But she loved it here, loved it more than any job she’d ever held, and she’d held a lot of them, carrying far more experience than any twenty-six-year-old should.
Everyone deserved a second chance, she reminded herself, and that Sky High had given her hers…well, she’d never forget it.
At first she’d found it odd that out of everything she’d done, both legal and not, both good for her and most absolutely not, stuff she was proud of and stuff she’d rather forget, she’d ended up on a private airstrip watching over three of the wildest, most outrageously sexy men on the planet.
But then again, that actually fit.
The four of them fit, a surprising wonder she marveled at every day.
Noah, Shayne, and Brody, three childhood buds in crime, had quite the history together. According to legend-or so Shayne had told her after a few beers one night-they’d met on one fateful day in middle school detention; Shayne having been nailed stealing a chemistry test cheat sheet, Brody for getting caught naked with a girl four years his senior in the supply closet, and Noah, fresh from England, having gotten himself in a fight. The three of them, unlikely friends from entirely different walks of life, had bonded that day over a shared love.
Airplanes.
Maddie had never actually given airplanes much thought, seeing as all her life she’d never been able to afford hopes and dreams. But that had changed.
Thank God that had changed.
Still, she held no illusions. She knew she was different, knew, too, that with her funky, out-there clothes and tendency to change her hair to colors not quite on the chart of acceptability, she didn’t look the part of the concierge. But since the day she’d walked in here and proven herself competent, not a single one of them had ever judged her.
She could love them for that alone.
And she did. She loved the carefree playboy Shayne, the intellectual adventurer Noah Fisher.
Which left Brody.
Did she love the edgy, dangerous, bad boy Brody?
Hard to say, as every time she was anywhere near him she lost control of her thought processes and her body went all tingly and weird.
Pathetic, secretly lusting after one of her bosses. Pathetic, and not going to happen.
Ever.
A thought that Brody seemed to share as well, since he did his best to avoid her. Assuring herself that didn’t hurt, that it didn’t matter, Maddie lifted her chin and reminded herself that for the most part, men sucked anyway.
Well, except for Shayne and Noah. The two of them had never been anything but kind and wonderful to her, which was why her heart ached for Noah these days. When she’d first begun working here, he’d been quick to smile, fast-witted, and always the center of the fun. A wanderlust at heart, he’d traveled the globe many times over, and was perpetually adventure ready. His zest was intoxicating, and he’d given her a renewed lust for life by just being himself.
She wanted to see him smile again, wanted him to find joy in life and flying and Sky High Air again. Somehow, she had to help him, would help him.