and waved it in front of the peephole. “I know you want this. I’m not just leaving it out here, so you’re going to have to open up.”
Utter silence.
Well, hell. He wasn’t a bad guy or a bad boss. Sure, he had his faults, but nothing that warranted leaving him standing on the steps while she did God knew what in there. “Goddamnit, Maddie.”
After an interminably long moment, someone fumbled with the door, and he felt his gut clench. The last time he’d seen her had been in the hospital after her surgery, when the doctor had told them all that she might never regain full use of her left shoulder and arm. She’d been stoic, gamefully nodding her understanding, but Brody had had to leave the room and pound the shit out of something. He’d settled for flying hard and fast, where only he and the sky knew how he’d grieved for her.
She pulled the door open and stood there in her doorway while his heart rolled over in his chest and exposed its soft underbelly. Her hair was blonde today, with electric blue tips flowing past her shoulders and brushing the tops of her breasts, which were covered in a skintight, long-sleeved top of some kind that nipped in and pushed up and out, making his eyes instantly cross with lust. But the top was nothing compared to the jeans that had to have been spray painted on. Oddly enough, she wasn’t wearing her usual myriad of earrings, or an ounce of makeup for that matter, and he immediately looked into her baby blues to see misery, pain, and anguish.
And every self-righteous bone in his body melted away, leaving him weak as a goddamn kitten. “Maddie.”
She blinked once, slow as an owl. Only Maddie had never been anything close to slow. As he’d noted on more than one occasion, she was the smartest, fastest, sharpest, most amazing woman he’d ever met, but his gaze had snagged on hers and held. He couldn’t look away to save his life. He’d never seen her without full makeup. Without it, she might have been sixteen, but it was the way she was looking at him, right through him, as if she’d never seen him before that drew him up short.
Before he could say a word, she snatched the paycheck out of his fingers.
Then she slammed the door in his face.
And then it was his turn to blink. What in the hell had just happened? And why had she acted like she’d never seen him before? Whipping out his cell phone, he punched in Noah’s number.
“Yo,” his partner answered softly, as if he was in the middle of something. And he probably was. In the middle of doing his new wife Bailey because the two of them had become like a pair of rabbits. Normally, Brody would have at least had Shayne to commiserate the loss of bachelorhood with, but unbelievably, Shayne had also done the unthinkable and gotten himself involved, too, and now he had a fiancee.
Brody was the lone single man holdout. “There’s something wrong with Maddie,” he said.
That got Noah’s attention. “What do you mean? Her shoulder or-”
“She slammed the door in my face.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously.”
“Nothing!”
A pause. Then Noah said, “You had to have done something.”
“Fuck you.”
“Sorry, you’re not my type.”
Brody pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you going to help me out here?”
“Yeah. Knock on the door. When she opens it, you smile, then cute talk her into smiling, too, so you can then haul her sweet ass back here.”
Brody shook his head. “Let me repeat. She slammed her door in my face.”
“Did you smile?”
“I was getting to that.”
“Did you bring her flowers?”
“Come on, flowers?”
“Yes, flowers!”
“No way. She wouldn’t have fallen for that.”
“Hook, line, and sinker, she would have,” Noah promised with utter conviction. “Women love that shit.”
“I had something better.”
“What’s that?”
“I told her I had her magazines and paycheck.”
Noah sighed.
“What?”
“And here I thought you knew women.”
“She loves her paychecks.”
“Go get the freakin’ flowers and try again.”
“I’m in the mountains. There’s no florist.”
“Pick some wildflowers.”
He could. Except in his gut, Brody knew that Maddie hadn’t turned him away because he’d showed up without flowers. The truth had been there to see in her eyes, an emptiness he’d never seen in her before.
And a fear.
He hung up on Noah and turned back to the door. Even knowing his chances of her answering were slim to none, he knocked again because if he didn’t go back to Sky High Air with some answers, Noah would continue to peck at him like a hen.
He figured his knocking had to be annoying. Hell, it was annoying him. Two months ago, Maddie would have whipped the door open and given him a piece of her mind. Two months ago, she’d have stood in front of him in that tough girl stance of hers, the air shimmering with a sexual tension that had nearly exploded the two of them into flames every time they were in the same room.
What had happened?
“Maddie?” he said to the door.
Nothing.
Not promising.
He added a word he probably didn’t use nearly often enough. “Please?”
To his utter shock, it worked. She opened the door, looking even more pale than before, if that was possible.
Without thinking, he reached for her, only she did the oddest thing.
She jumped back, away from him, as if afraid.
What the hell?
Everything within him went still because Maddie, his in-charge-of-the-entire-world Maddie, would never jump at his touch. She’d give him hell if she wanted, yeah, but she’d never jump.
And just like that, a real fear hit him, a deep gut-wrenching fear. “Maddie, are you alone here?”
“I can’t deal with you right now.”
“Are you alone?”
“Y-yes.”
But her words were hitched with emotion. And so were her next ones.
“I just can’t, okay? I can’t do this. Not on top of everything else.”
Yeah, a gut-wrenching, devastating emotion that hurt him just to hear her, but that wasn’t the worse of it.
Because before he could stop her, or even wedge a foot in the door, she’d once again slammed it in his face.
Chapter 3
Leena ran back up the stairs and skidded to a shaky stop in the doorway of the master bedroom where Maddie
