it out of the States, where it wouldn’t be safe.”
They left the bungalow and stood on the beach. Bailey sighed and rubbed her temples. “Another dead end.” Which was going to lead to a very dead her. “Let’s get out of here, away from one of my most unfortunate mistakes.”
He touched her cheek. “Yeah, I’m with you on the leaving part. But about the mistake.” He waited until she looked at him. “Sometimes they just have to be made. It’s a part of the experience; it makes life real.”
Tipping her head up, she looked directly into his warm eyes, and her heart squeezed. “I’ve never thought about it like that.”
“Maybe you should.”
“But I was-”
“What, young? In love? You were entitled, Bailey. We’re all entitled to our mistakes.”
“Really?” Going up on tiptoe, she cupped his face, bringing it down close enough to gently kiss him on the lips. “Even you, Noah?”
His eyes shimmered as he stared at her, silent again.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Even you.”
His voice was low, and just a little bit husky. “You undo me, you know that?”
She let out a low laugh. “Is that a good thing?”
Instead of answering, he turned his gaze to the building behind them, and frowned.
“What?”
“Go back to the car,” he said, and turned her in the right direction.
“What? Why-”
“Go.” He added a small but inexorable push this time.
She didn’t stop to question him, but before she’d taken a step, her gaze locked on the parking lot where they’d parked, and the two men there, one at either corner, watching her, watching them.
Stephen’s men.
“Damn,” Noah said very softly, and pulled her back to his side. “Okay, you’re with me.”
Good.
“Stick close.”
Uh huh. “Like glue,” she promised.
They ran toward the large building. She really had to stop wearing her cute little shoes. Her feet were killing her. All this running for her life was exhausting business.
Noah pulled her into the alley between Alan’s resort and the hotel next to it. Now they had some cover, that being lots of overgrown bushes, some blown and scattered trash, and two stray, mangy-looking dogs who lifted their heads but didn’t even bother to growl.
Noah held Bailey behind him and peeked around the corner, looking back to the lot while Bailey took the time to huff like a woman who hadn’t put nearly enough time into her cardio workouts. She’d change that.
Assuming she lived, that is.
A sobering thought, so instead she concentrated on Noah’s body, and what it could tell her.
And what it told her, with his broad but stiff shoulders, and tense, tight profile, was that once again, they were in deep trouble.
He didn’t say a word as he pulled her through to the front of the resort. As before, at Mammoth and also Catalina, the glass doors were now broken. So they had the two goons in the parking lot, and who knew how many more within somewhere.
Waiting.
Noah swore again, quite colorfully, and in Spanish to boot, which was pretty impressive. They went back through the alley to the neighboring hotel this time. The parking lot here had plenty going on: cars, buses, taxis, people walking, talking, staggering with drinks in their hands.
Using the chaos, Noah and Bailey headed through the lot toward the beach, where every inch of sand was covered with cabanas, chairs, lounges, towels, carts with people selling sandals, hats, towels…
Noah kept them moving.
“As far from the guns as possible.”
Her heels sank uncomfortably in the sand, and she struggled to both keep up and keep her mouth shut as the complaints racked up in her head. Hot. Toes cramped. Thirsty.
Terrified.
They moved past the hotel and came upon yet another, this one smaller, more accessible, and even more crowded.
They let the people sort of swallow them up. Finally Noah came to a stop in the middle of an outdoor cantina. The barstools were all filled, as were the spaces in between. Everywhere were bodies in bikinis and swim trunks, shirt and shoes optional.
Noah nodded to the bartender, and two beers appeared, the chilled bottles already weeping condensation. Bailey grabbed hers and brought it up to her lips, grateful for the cold liquid soothing its way down her parched throat. Far before she’d sated her thirst, Noah tugged her away, and damn it, they were on the move again.
“I just wanted to-” She sent a longing look back at the bottle she hadn’t managed to grab fast enough, but Noah didn’t wait, and then she saw why.
One of the baddies had come to the edge of the beach, between the sand and the parking lot, and was surveying the crowd intently, his hand in his pocket.
Looking for them.
Oh, God. She kicked it back into a high gear, and they ran through another cantina, and then a mini swap-meet of some kind, slipping between two aisles filled with wooden donkey statues, leather purses, woven ponchos, and sombreros. Noah stopped so abruptly, Bailey plowed right into the back of him.
Reaching behind him to steady her, he spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to the tiny, old woman sitting on a stool watching them. The next thing Bailey knew, she was standing in a dressing room-nothing more than a bright red shower curtain wrapped around a stand-with Noah crowding his way in, arms full.
“Strip,” he commanded.
“Uh-”
He dropped his booty at his feet and began to strip her himself. “Lift up,” he said, and yanked her sweater up to her forehead before he let go, leaving her arms caught straight up.
“You get that,” he told her. Then without so much as glancing at her breasts, he bent his head and unzipped her skirt.
She fought with her sweater, but he hadn’t undone that zipper. Worse, her hair had caught in the metal catch, threatening to rip out a good chunk by the roots. “Hey.”
“Hang on.” His long hair brushed her belly, and unbelievably given the circumstances, it quivered.
Then he shoved down her skirt.
Her panties accidentally went with it, and she was left standing there with her hands over her head, the zipper caught on her ponytail, wearing only her bra because her panties and skirt had twisted around her thighs, leaving her hanging out in the wind.
Literally.
Oblivious, Noah was fighting with her strappy sandals. “Lift up,” he instructed, trying to get her skirt off without removing the heels.
She could have told him it wasn’t going to happen, but it was hard to talk with her panties down and no foreplay involved. She struggled to free her hands and hair of her sweater, to no avail. “Noah-”
Sitting back on his heels, he glanced up, his hair brushing at her upper thighs as he did, and for the first time since he’d shoved her in there, he went absolutely still. In the charged silence, he took in the sights right at his eye level.
Her sights.
His eyes darkened, and he dragged his teeth over his lower lip. “Good Christ,” he whispered.
All around them, on just the other side of the curtain, in fact, were people everywhere; talking, bartering, going on with their day-and yet just in here, alone, together, she felt as if-there was no one else on earth except Noah. An incredibly sexy Noah, whose mouth quirked.
