still sat at the window.
“I think he’s going,” Leena whispered.
“No.” Maddie watched Brody move down the walk, his broad-as-a-mountain-range shoulders deceptively loose, his gait easy. No matter what it looked like, she knew he wasn’t going anywhere. She’d heard his voice at the door, low and tense, and knew that Leena had inadvertently awoken the curiosity within the beast.
Damn it.
It’d been a grave tactical error on Maddie’s part to let Leena go to the door to get rid of him simply because she hadn’t wanted to face him.
Because Leena hadn’t quite pulled it off.
To be fair, no one could have. She and Brody might bicker like a pair of Siamese twins, but the bottom line was that they shared an unnamable, unbreakable, and certainly unfathomable bond that even she didn’t get.
He could have no idea of the truth or even halfway guessed it. After all, the truth was so insane no one would believe it. But he knew something was wrong, and that was enough for him.
Unfortunately for her, an inquisitive and nosy Brody could be more tenacious than a bulldog.
She’d seen it happen.
Exhausted, she set her forehead to the window casing and just breathed. She didn’t know if she could handle all this-her sister needing help “disappearing” and all the memories that went with that, memories she’d shoved back but now threatened to roll through her like a tidal wave, and her uncle either already looking for the both of their heads on a platter, literally, or getting ready to.
And now Brody here, nose twitching.
All too much, just too damn much.
But then the sound of an engine starting up drifted through her window. The badass Camaro roaring to life like a well-tuned lion.
Whoa. Leena had done it?
Surprised to the core, she stared at the car as it pulled away from the cabin.
He was actually leaving. The only man she could have, should have asked for help, had actually done what she’d asked-for once-and walked away.
Which was for the best.
Really.
Really, truly.
Yeah. Now all she had to do was believe it.
“You can’t go all the way there and then leave without talking to her,” Shayne said in Brody’s ear via cell phone.
Yeah, Brody already knew that, thanks, but he hated to be told what to do. Hated to be in this situation in the first place. His fingers tightened on the wheel as he slowed down. Really hated this. Not a new feeling for him as he tended to look at the negative side of things. It served him well as a pilot because it meant he was always prepared for the worst.
In life, however, it hadn’t been quite as helpful.
“Dani will kill me,” Shayne told him. “You have to go back in.”
“You afraid of your fiancee now?”
“I promised her, all right? And Noah promised Bailey. Which means you need to get to the bottom of this. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“To have my dick in a sling? No, you’re right. I don’t, something I’m grateful for.” Now that Shayne and Noah were both head over heels in love, they thought everyone should be.
But Brody did not agree.
So did not agree.
Now head over heels in lust? That he could get behind. He was halfway there with Maddie, in fact, and had been ever since she’d shoved him against a wall in the lobby at work and kissed him-a slow, wet, deep kiss like maybe her next breath depended on them to keep kissing for a good long time.
He’d been game for that. So game just remembering flooded his circuits with all that pleasure and need again.
“It’ll happen to you,” Shayne said confidently. “Some day you’ll want to get married.”
“Okay, I’m hanging up on you now.”
“Go back in there, and get some answers from her.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You have to.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll…take you down.”
Brody snorted. Out of the three of them, Shayne was the pacifist, always had been. “Seriously? You?”
“Okay, fine. I’ll have Noah do it.”
Shayne couldn’t kick Brody’s ass on his best day, but Noah? Noah could give Brody a run for his money if he put his mind to it. As best friends, the three of them had brawled just as many times as not, and it was always good for a tension reliever. And he was pretty filled with tension at the moment. But then he thought of the look on Maddie’s face and knew he wasn’t going anywhere to fight or otherwise. Not because he was afraid of Noah. Hell, he wasn’t afraid of Noah. He wasn’t afraid of much.
But he was afraid for Maddie.
So he tucked his cell phone between his ear and his shoulder and parked in the damn bush where the car wouldn’t be seen by anyone happening by, not that that seemed likely. Maddie had chosen a place waaaay out of the way, and come to think of it, he’d like to know why. “I’m not leaving. I’m going undercover.”
“Undercover.”
“I’m going to break in.”
There was a silent beat. “Okay, hold up. You’ve gone to the bad place. Come back here. I’ll go and-”
“I’m already here.”
“In body, yes. In mind, I’m not so sure.”
“I haven’t lost it.”
“Clearly you have.”
“Look, you made me do this, and I’m going to see this through.”
To prove it, he got out of the Camaro, and walked through the woods to the back of Maddie’s place, and eyed the back deck and, bingo, the sliding glass door. Probably, it was locked. Not a problem for a former juvenile delinquent with talented fingers. “I’m going in.”
“Brody, you’re crazy. What if she calls the cops? I’m not going to bail you out again.”
“Once. You bailed me out of jail once.”
“You still owe me five hundred bucks for that, by the way.”
“Jesus. We were eighteen years old and in Mexico, and it was your fault I got caught with that open alcohol in the backseat since you were the one drinking it.”
“Just saying.”
“We’re miles from the nearest cop.” Brody was well aware of his past sins, many public knowledge, some not so much. After all, he’d been born in a gutter, had lived in one, and would no doubt still be there, or in jail or worse, if at age twelve he hadn’t tried to pickpocket an off-duty cop who’d decided to feed and house him instead of jailing him.
Later had come Shayne and Brody, and though they’d been codelinquents together for a while, meeting weekly, sometimes daily in school detention, neither of his two new partners in crime had really ever toed the line of the law like he had.
Somehow, their friendship had kept him mostly free of temptation and on the straight and narrow.
Except for the occasional fuckup.
Now that he had the dubious advantage of maturity, he rarely felt the need to create mayhem by doing anything illegal. But he felt it now.
He eyed the deck. Yeah, undoubtedly, he had a big fuckup coming his way. But come hell or high water, he was getting inside to talk to Maddie face to face, without a closed door between them.
