pressed her face to the window and looked back at the island. “For now,” she said quietly.
He wanted to hug her. Kiss her. Never let her go. He reached for her hand and squeezed. “You okay?”
She looked at him. “Could be better.” She dragged her teeth over her lower lip and gave him an openly coy, sexy look.
He laughed in disbelief. “I can’t-I’m flying, Bailey.”
“No.” She blushed. “Not that! I was thinking it’s a good time for the later thing.”
“Good God, woman, you are seriously tenacious.” But he sighed. “Fine. The crash.” It felt odd to say the word he thought so much about but never said. “I was flying a friend to her condo. There was a storm. I wanted to turn around-” He shook his head. Damn.
Her eyes remained solemn. “You realize this is not a normal bad date story. This is a life-affirming story.”
“Life affirming? She died, Bailey. How is that life affirming?”
“You didn’t,” she said simply.
And wasn’t that just the crux of everything that had been torturing him for six months.
Sheila had died.
And he hadn’t. He, the son-of-a-bitch who’d spent his life cheating death one way or another, hadn’t died.
And a small part of him had thought he deserved to.
Now she reached for him, touching his shoulder, his jaw. “You’re here. Alive. Do you have any idea how glad I am?”
Because that reached out and grabbed him by the throat, he didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
He slid his sunglasses over his eyes and told himself it was because the ocean sprawled beneath them, a brilliant blue far too bright, and not because he needed to hide a moment. “Where to next?”
“Baja.”
His stomach sank. “What?” She was kidding; she had to be kidding.
“The last resort. It’s in Cabo.”
Shit. Of course. Why would it be anywhere else than the place of his nightmares? He carefully schooled his reaction, which was a hell of a lot harder than he thought. “They’re going to be waiting.”
She looked at him a long moment, and he knew he must have given something of his nightmare away. “I know.”
He fought the useless battle against those soft, drown-in-me baby blues. “It’s just money, right?”
“A lot of money.”
“Whatever. Let it go, let them find it.”
“I don’t think they can find it without me.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked as he realized he still, goddamnit, still didn’t know the whole story. If that didn’t just make his day complete. “Fine. Then it’s off to Cabo.”
“Noah, I can’t ask you to-”
“Then don’t ask.” Turning his attention forward, he concentrated on flying and not, absolutely not, begging her to once and for all trust him.
Chapter 17
They landed at Sky High Air at dusk. Noah tied down the plane himself and looked up at the steel-and-glass building that was his real home.
He wasn’t at all surprised to find Shayne waiting for him. “Don’t start,” he said when Bailey had vanished inside the terminal, heading toward the ladies room.
Shayne shoved all ten fingers through his hair, holding it off his face while he stared at Noah. “Don’t start? You’re supposed to be throwing yourself off cliffs with skis on your feet. You’re supposed to be fucking a ski bunny. Two, if you’re lucky. Not flying all over the damn planet.”
“Things changed.” Noah turned to Tommy, their lineman, and gestured to the Piper. “Pull her in for the night, fuel her, have maintenance do a run through. I had the landing gear replaced last night. Check that, too. She’s going back out at the crack of dawn to Cabo.”
“Cabo?” Shayne asked in shock.
“Yeah.” No way was he taking Bailey there tonight. He wanted the night, damn it, wanted it with her in his bed.
He had no idea what she would think about that, but he figured he had a fifty-fifty shot. With Shayne on his tail, he went inside the hangar. Bailey was still in the bathroom. He would have stood there and waited for her but Shayne manhandled him into his office, then glared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for Bailey.”
“Why? You flew her where she needed to go, right? Flight done. We’ll bill it out.”
“She needs another flight.”
“To Cabo, apparently, at the crack of dawn.”
“That’s right,” Noah said.
“I’ll take her.”
“I’m doing it.”
Shayne looked at him for a long moment. “What exactly happened in Mammoth? Why didn’t you ski?”
“She needed some help, Shayne.”
“And you gave it.”
“Yes.”
“You sleep with her?”
“What does that matter?”
“Because you haven’t slept with anyone since Sheila.”
“You told me to stop feeling sorry for myself, remember?”
Shayne sighed. “Okay, I know what this is. Yeah, I told you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. But I did not mean fall for the first woman who hijacked you, Noah.”
“I’m not falling…” He had to clamp his jaw shut because suddenly he couldn’t finish the sentence. Christ. He was falling.
Hard.
Shayne was staring at him, horrified. “Have you lost it completely?”
Yeah, completely.
The door opened. Brody came in, brow creased, a frown marring his mouth. “You’ve lost your mind,” he said to Noah as he shut the door.
Which immediately opened again, hitting Brody in the ass, sending him forward a good foot. “Hey,” he complained as Maddie let herself in, stalking right past Brody and up to Noah.
With Maddie, one could never be sure. She could be planning on walloping him or kissing him, so he braced himself, but she pulled him close in a fierce hug and squeezed tight.
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?”
