Authors: Jill Shalvis
N
oah entered the spare bathroom and cranked on the shower. Dawn had sneaked up on him, and with it came a whole host of things he’d rather not think about with his heart still beating like a drum and sweat cooling his body, which even now was half ready to go again.
In fact, with just one encouraging word from Bailey, he’d—
Hell. He’d have done whatever she wanted, and more.
Sap. Sucker.
Idiot.
But she hadn’t given him any encouraging words at all. She’d sat up, and he’d known without even looking at her that she was thinking so hard her head hurt, because the tension radiating off her had filled the room.
He’d never met a woman who could think so damn hard.
He stepped into the shower and scalded himself, and when he was done, he went downstairs to the kitchen and straight for the chocolate glazed donuts.
On his first bite, his cell phone began vibrating. He heard the master bedroom shower go on, and he thought of Bailey, naked beneath the streaming water, and his entire body tensed because apparently, his dick hadn’t gotten the memo that Bailey was bad for him.
Extremely bad.
He opened his cell. “What?”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Shayne.
Noah rubbed his temples. “How do you know I’m not?”
“Because you wouldn’t have answered. You having wild monkey sex with a snow bunny yet?”
He glanced upward at the ceiling and once again pictured Bailey. Wild monkey sex? How about the best sex of his life? “Uh…”
“You did not catch a bunny that fast.”
Noah had to let out a short laugh. “You would have.”
“Yes, but I haven’t gone six months without so much as looking at a woman either.”
Noah didn’t know what to say to that.
“Listen, Noah.” Shayne paused. “I know.”
“Yeah? You know what?”
“That you have Bailey Sinclair with you.”
“Jesus, Brody is such a woman. Tell him that for me, would you?”
Shayne didn’t bite. “You still have her, right?”
The shower turned off. She was probably reaching for a towel to rub all over her body, a body that he could be rubbing all over himself right this minute if he hadn’t been such an idiot.
“She’s trouble, Noah. As in she’s in it up to her eyeballs. And if she’s hanging with the same crowd her husband was, she’s no good for you.”
“Yeah, listen, I’ve got to go.”
“She stowed away on you for crissakes.”
“She had…reasons.” What the hell was he doing, defending her? But he couldn’t seem to get around the fact that she hadn’t been in cahoots with those men; she’d been on the run from them. He believed in her. He just didn’t know why.
“I don’t know what kind of sob story she gave you,” Shayne said. “But we should be calling the authorities. We should—”
“I can handle this.”
Shayne was quiet a moment. “I fueled up the Moody. I’m coming up there.”
“I can handle this.”
Bailey walked into the kitchen then, looking like a million bucks, though how she’d done it in so short of a time was a marvel. She’d obviously gone through her duffle bag and created another heart-stopping look for today: a pair of black jeans and a soft, white fuzzy sweater, this one with a zipper running down her torso, everything hugging her curves well enough to make his mouth go a little dry. Her hair was relatively tamed, which meant it flew around her face in alluring waves. She’d put some glossy stuff on her lips that made them difficult to tear his eyes from, but he managed, and then found his gaze snagged on hers, which was filled with all the little mysteries that made up Bailey Sinclair.
And suddenly he didn’t care about any of that. He wanted her. He’d just had her, and he wanted her again.
“Gotta go,” he said to Shayne.
“Noah—
Goddamnit
.”
Noah shut the phone, watching Bailey as she managed to not meet his eyes. “Your next move.”
“Excuse me?”
“What is it?”
She looked away, and that was the topper on the Not Trusting Cake, so he bent down into her face and showed her his. “Look, Alan was an asshole. Your father?
Asshole
. I wish they were both still alive so I could pay each a visit and tell them personally. But—” But she wasn’t listening, so he put his hands on her arms. Not a good idea because then he automatically pulled her in, tucking her up against him. “But not all men are assholes.”
Wide-eyed, on her tiptoes because he was holding her there, she blinked once, slow as an owl. “I know that.”
“Do you? Do you really? Because it sure as hell feels like you’ve lumped me into that whole men-are-all-untrustworthy-dickwads, and while I’ve definitely got my faults, I’m not going to play with your head, leave you stranded, or put your life on the line for my own stupid mistakes.”
Given that he was saying he wasn’t an asshole with his mouth and yet manhandling her all the same with his body, she did the last thing he expected. She put her hands on his shoulders. Slid them up to cup his face. “I know,” she said softly.
Undone, he let her feet hit the floor but didn’t take his hands off her. Setting his forehead to hers, he found himself taking in a gulp of air, of her. “Then let me help you.”
She stared at him for a long, long moment, during which time he held his breath.
“I’m going to charter another flight,” she said.
“On your own.”
Surprising him again, she didn’t break eye contact. “It’s for the best.”
Hell no, it wasn’t. On her own, she’d run into those guys again, and he doubted a warning would be all she suffered this time. “You can’t walk back to the airport.”
“I’ll call a cab,” she said quietly, looking unsure of her welcome.
His fault. “Sure, you could do that. And risk being found through that trail.”
She looked dejected, and scared again, and damn if his heart didn’t squeeze. “Just tell me where you’re headed, damn it.”
Her eyes went stubborn. “I can take it from the airport.”
“Like you took it the other night at your place when they came to warn you?”
She paled, and he felt like the biggest jerk on the planet. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do this one step at a time. You need a ride to the airport. Let me take you that far at least.”
They got into the car in the garage, with Bailey picking at the bagel Noah had insisted she eat. He knew when he pulled into Sky High, she’d probably run out of the Jeep before they could even say good-bye, and it was making him very uptight. Hating that, he leaned in and looked into her eyes. “When we get there,” he said. “I’ll”
“No.”
“No?”
“I am going to make this easy,” she said, shaking her head. “You need to let me.”
Her hair was in his face, again, and he tried not to notice that he loved the way it felt clinging to his day-old beard. “Easy went out the window yesterday. Tell me where you’re running off to, Bailey.”
She looked out the Jeep window, even though her view consisted of bare garage walls.
Turning her to him, he gave her a little shake. “After all we went through yesterday, and then last night, you still can’t tell me? Are you kidding me?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and her voice wobbled when she spoke. “I’m trying to protect you, Noah.”
No one had ever said such a ridiculous or touching thing to him before, and right then and there he fell a little bit in love.
But just a little bit.
Certainly it was reversible, or at least survivable.
Or so he told himself.
“That’s stupid,” he said. Granted, it was an unfortunate word choice, but he couldn’t help it; he was getting mad.
Her eyes flashed, too, and she shoved free of him. “If something happens to you, I couldn’t bear it, okay?” she cried. “And if that’s stupid, then I’m sorry, but—”
“It won’t. Nothing will happen to me.”
“You can’t make that promise.”
He realized she’d been through too much for her to trust that far. She simply couldn’t do it, he hadn’t earned it yet. “You’ll see,” he said very quietly.
“Noah…” She looked baffled. “Why would you do this for me?”
Why? Because he couldn’t not. Because she was something to him. Everything. To show her, he pulled her over the console and into his lap. She opened her mouth, probably to come up with more reasons not to trust him, so he put his mouth over hers.
She went still with shock, but he didn’t care. He just wrapped her in his arms and nibbled at her, first one corner of her mouth, then the other, until with a soft whimper, she let him in. With another soft sound, her hands glided up his chest and snaked around his neck.
Pulled him close.
“Bailey,” he murmured, groaning when she bought into the kiss, lining up their lips, hers parted, warm and welcoming. He’d have staggered if he hadn’t been sitting down. “This,” he told her roughly, kissing her jaw, her neck. “Because of this.”
She sank her fingers in his hair—he loved it when she did that—and pulled back a fraction, to see his face. “Because of…sex? With me?”
It’d been more than sex, far more, and he looked at her until she closed her eyes. “Okay, yes,” she whispered. “Because of this.”
“And more, damn it.”
To prove it, he kissed her again, slid his tongue against hers and tasted her, filled himself up with her, which he, realized, was all he wanted. Needed.
It shouldn’t bother him that after all this time, all his life really, he’d kept his heart intact, and that she’d not only cracked it open, but had also taken it in the palm of her hand.
But it did bother him, big-time.
“Noah,” she whispered in a voice designed to make him instantly hard, except that he already was.
He had his tongue in her mouth, a hand tangled in her hair, his other gliding down her back, then lower, until he cupped the sweetest ass he’d ever had the pleasure of squeezing. “Tell me where you’re going.”
Panting a little, she wriggled around to fully straddle him, which good Christ, had the hottest part of her gliding over the neediest part of him.
“Catalina,” she whispered, and pressed her face into his neck. “There’s another nearly finished resort on the island, and I…”
“Need to find ‘something.’” Yeah. He knew that part. “I’m flying you.”
“You don’t have to—”
He shut her up with his mouth, until they had to break apart for air.
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said.
Do something stupid?
The only stupid thing he was in danger of doing was drowning in her eyes.
Oh, and falling for her.
Details.
“See,” she whispered, cupping his face. “If something happens to you, I won’t be able to live with it.”
Because things happened to the people in her life.
He knew that now and understood her fear. “Nothing stupid,” he promised, mentally crossing his fingers. Because he’d already done something stupid. And was in the middle of something else even more colossally stupid. That being sliding his hands beneath her sweater and up her back, then down, and into the back of her jeans as far as he could get, which admittedly wasn’t far enough.
She wriggled a little bit more, giving him better access so that his fingers encountered something silky, something that, oh God, felt like an itty, bitty, tiny thong.
God bless the thong.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he whispered roughly. “To either of us. Except…”
“Except?” She sounded as if she’d been running uphill for miles.
“Except this—” And he slipped a finger over the silk barely covering her.
“Ohmigod.” Her hands fisted in his hair, her arms tightened around his head, placing his mouth at, ah yes, right at her breast. With his nose, he nudged the neckline of her sweater aside and gently closed his teeth over her silk-clad nipple at the same time.
Because of the grip she had on his head, he couldn’t see anything but her beautiful nipple, and he flicked at it with his tongue as he fumbled with his left hand for the seat lever. When he hit it, his seatback flew backward, and so did he, flat to his back.
She fell over him.
Perfect.
Nudging her up his body, he unzipped her sweater, opening it so that he was able to glide his mouth past her breasts, her ribs, to her belly, and then he pulled on her jeans, working them down to her thighs so he could kiss even lower…kiss every inch of skin that passed him…and then lower, oh yeah,
lower
. Scraping her panties aside, he stroked her with his tongue.
“Noah—”
Reluctantly he lifted his head, but he could still taste her, which worked for him. His gaze ran up her glorious body to her face. Her eyes were still the bluest on the entire planet, glazed with desire.
For him.
That shot a surge of pure lust straight through him. Her hair was adorably rioted as usual, all around her face, and she licked her lips in a nervous gesture. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. But I don’t think…”
“Perfect,” he said, holding her above him with his hands on her hips. “Go with that.” When he used his tongue again, she gasped. When he sucked, she cried out and arched right into his mouth.
Nice. He was going to make her forget, for just a few minutes if nothing else, the horror she’d been through, what she was still going to have to go through.
“We’ve got to go,” she managed, her hips rocking restlessly.
“Not go. Come.” He unbuttoned his Levi’s, and with her help managed to liberate the essentials. She bashed her knee on the console, and he hit his elbow on the window, but finally, oh, God, finally, he pushed up into her and proceeded to make them both forget everything but this.
B
ailey had never been a particularly good flyer. Being in the air always made her nervous, but when she’d been with Alan in the back of a private jet, she’d been able to draw the shades and somehow pretend she wasn’t really thirty thousand feet above sea level.
There were no shades in the copilot’s seat.
Noah glanced at her. His eyes were covered in his aviator sunglasses, but the amusement was clear in the quirk of his mouth. “A lot more relaxing when you’re not hijacking someone, huh?”
Regret slashed through her. “Noah, I—”
“Hey.” Reaching over, he put a hand on her thigh. “That was a joke. Not funny, huh?”
“It’s just that I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. Let’s just get this done.”
She’d let him talk her into flying with him, and was torn between terror and relief that he’d be at her side in Catalina.
He got on the radio and called ahead to the airport there, asking if any other private aircraft had flown onto the island that morning.
They hadn’t.
He also checked in with the two local island charter services. They’d had two flights since dawn, one filled with a group of businessmen for a conference, the other with tourists. There were no cars on the island for visitors, only rental golf carts, and no one could say if anyone had gone exploring near Alan’s resort in one. But no one remembered four goons in black.
He called air traffic control next, because even though he was flying them directly to the private strip at the resort, he wanted to check on cloud coverage, or any other inclement weather.
Everything was clear.
Noah looked at her. “After this is over, you’ll be able to go on with your life.”
She’d been scared so long that being safe seemed completely out of the realm of believability, so much that she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Going on with her life…What would that entail? Teaching? Yes.
Noah?
Terrifying how much she’d like that. But would he? How could he after what she’d put him through? And yet the way he looked at her said otherwise. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.
But surely he couldn’t look at her like he did and intend to walk away….
Reaching for her hand, he pressed his lips against her palm, giving her stomach a little flutter.
And south of her stomach? More interesting reactions.
It still shocked her how with just a touch from him, she let go of all inhibitions. Last night had been so far out of her league that little tremors of sexual zings still coursed through her.
And then this morning in the Jeep…well. Just thinking about that had her squirming some more. No doubt, he could just look at her, and her body reacted. Proving it, he glanced over at her, and as if he could read her thoughts, cocked a brow, his eyes heating just a little.
Her nipples went hard.
Damn, she was easy. Ridiculous. She tried to distract herself with concentrating on what would happen to her if she didn’t lay her hands on the money, and that was indeed sobering enough to work. “I’m not sure this will ever end.”
“It will,” he said with such confidence, she wanted to believe. Oh, how she wanted to believe. “Shayne’s brother is a cop,” he said. “He could—”
“No.” She’d been warned what would happen if she did that, and she believed them. Shuddering, she hugged herself. “That won’t help me.”
“You’re not alone in this anymore, Bailey.” He tugged her hand until she looked at him. “I won’t leave you alone.”
Oh, God, he was something. Strong, sure. Amazing. What she’d ever done to deserve his belief in her, she’d never know. “Let’s just do this and see what happens.”
“And if it’s not there?”
“I have one other shot.” The Baja resort.
“What will you do with yourself?”
She realized he meant afterward, when this whole thing was over. It hadn’t been a dream she’d allowed to form. “I…I don’t know.”
His eyes narrowed as he turned his head from his controls. A frown tightened his mouth. “Damn it. You still don’t actually believe this is going to be over.”
She looked away, but he tugged her hand again until she craned her neck, looked him in the eyes—those amazing eyes—and sighed. “No,” she admitted.
Mouth grim, he checked his instruments, the horizon. “Don’t you give up on me now.”
Beneath them, the Pacific Ocean shimmered a brilliant blue. “I’m trying not to.”
“Trust me, we can do this.’
“You know I’m not so good with the trust thing. I…I need time.”
“How much time?”
“More than a day.”
“You’ve known me for more than a day. You knew me enough to make sure it was me on that plane yesterday, and no one else.” He looked at her, his eyes steady and sure. “Why was that, Bailey, if you didn’t trust me?”
The question caught her breath. Or maybe the man did that. But in any case, it became difficult to draw air into her lungs.
Because it was true. She
was
beginning to trust him. “It was almost easier before,” she said, watching the island in front of them get bigger and bigger as they got closer, lifting out of the water, its mountains reaching high up into the sky. “When it was just me in danger.”
“Bailey—”
“No. I hate knowing I’m putting your life on the line as well.”
“I’m a big boy, and can take care of myself.”
Yes, he’d proven that, hadn’t he? But it didn’t ease the worry, not one little bit. She watched him go through the landing procedure. Ahead, the island was lush, gorgeous, and she wished they were coming here for any other reason. “This resort is bigger than the Mammoth one.”
“Which means…?”
“It won’t be as easy as last night.”
A harsh laugh left him at that. “And last night was easy?”
Right. The truth was, it was only a matter of time before the goons caught up with her, and she wanted to have their money when they did. Looking into the warmest eyes she’d ever seen, she realized how very badly she wanted to live.
“Get ready,” he said. “We’re going in.”
Catalina Island was 42,000 acres of mostly craggy cliffs. Landing was always a bitch, made tougher by the winds and unsettled air currents.
But he’d experienced worse. A lot worse. Noah shut down the engine and looked at Bailey.
She was a little green, so he helped her out of the plane, where they stood on a large plateau and took in the view.
To their right, about three hundred feet straight down, lay the Pacific Ocean. On their left rose a set of jagged peaks, reaching for the sky in a huge half circle, protecting a valley, and a jaw-droppingly gorgeous if not slightly ostentatious resort.
He eyed the buildings from where they stood, noting that the place looked completely deserted, but then again, so had the Mammoth resort yesterday.
Next to him, the wind ruffled Bailey’s hair, plastering her sweater to her curves as she studied the resort, which was two buildings connected by a skyway between them, all overlooking the cliff and the jaw-dropping view with a steep road up to it. The road itself was gated, and appeared to be paved, or at least graveled, but there wasn’t a vehicle in sight.
Going to be quite a climb, he thought, and wondered if that part had occurred to Bailey yet. He eyed her high-heeled boots. “Ready?”
“There used to be a cart to take us up…”
Noah took in the small, one-story hangar at the side of the tarmac. No lights or movement there either. No bad guys with guns, though honestly, given the way things had been going, that meant jack shit.
They could be anywhere, waiting.
He liked the locked gate, though, a lot. Anyone following them would have to break through it. Good odds, but he kept watchful just the same because he knew it wouldn’t take much for anyone to discover where Alan’s resorts were, nor would it take much more to put someone in place at each, where they could sit back and wait for Bailey to come get what they wanted. “The hangar first.”
“Why?”
The door was locked, but as he led her around the perimeter, he found a gold mine. “Because of this.”
Bailey stared at the golf cart, which looked as though it had seen better days in the previous century. “This is the one.”
He helped her into it and proceeded to hotwire the thing to life, while Bailey just looked at him. “Who are you anyway, Superman?”
He’d been on his own a long time, and had learned a whole host of useful skills with which to survive. Once upon a time, some of those skills might have occasionally been illegal, but hey, he’d been young, scared, and starving.
He’d evolved since then, mostly, but this called for old drastic measures. “Superman would fly us up to the hotel.”
He stomped on the gas and they hit the gate which broke open.
“Hey, that works,” he said with a grin, and pushed the accelerator to the floor, which didn’t accomplish all that much as he drove them up the hill.
And actually,
drove
was a bit adventurous for what they really did, which was putt-putt up the mountain on the single lane rocky road at the same pace they could have jogged it. Noah would have liked more horsepower and speed.
Hell, he’d have liked to still be in bed.
In Bailey
, for that matter. “You okay?” he asked her over the sound of the rackety engine and the wind in their faces.
She nodded, but didn’t speak. He supposed that was as much nerves for what lay ahead as the fact that her teeth were rattling in her head as he bounced them along.
She was holding her hair back from her face with one hand and straightening her sunglasses with the other because they kept sliding down her face. She looked like the sexiest, cutest thing he’d ever seen, and right then and there his heart squeezed hard enough to hurt like hell. “So we’ll just go in, get out,” he told her. “We’ll be back on the plane in—
holy shit
!” He ducked as a bird, a
huge
bird, dive-bombed them.
She laughed.
Laughed
. The sound was so musical, so damned beautiful, he turned his head and just stared at her, and in doing so nearly crashed them into a rock.
“What?” she asked, self-consciously running a hand over her wild hair.
“I’ve never seen you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Laugh.” Smiling, he reached for her hand, and squeezed. “I love it. Do it again.”
With indeed another laugh, this one startled, she shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“Of that, there’s never been any doubt.” He found himself grinning like a fool for no reason other than that he was with her, on Catalina Island, with the glorious afternoon sun beating down on him.
But the road was tricky, and required both hands, so he had to let go of her, something he really didn’t want to do. Halfway up the mountain, he felt her looking at him, and he glanced over.
“Why six months?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Why six months since you’ve been intimate with a woman?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m just wondering.”
She’d found some gloss in her purse and put it on her lips so that they looked shiny and wet.
Good enough to eat.
She
was good enough to eat, and he knew exactly how she tasted.
The thought would have been enough to stir his body, but she was more stubborn than a mule and wasn’t going to be side-tracked.
“Noah?”
His smile faded because he didn’t want to talk about the crash. He never talked about it; there was no need. It’d happened, it’d been a tragedy, one he couldn’t avoid, and it was over.
Over.
But she was still looking at him, head cocked in that endearing way she had, with her long bangs falling over one eye.
Sighing, he turned his concentration back to the road in front of him, taking the last hairpin turn into the resort a little sharper than he should have, causing dust to rise up and choke him as effectively as his regrets of the past did. “I haven’t had time to date.”
“Now who’s the liar?” she asked softly.
Damn if that didn’t cut deep. He hated liars, and yeah, he’d just become one. But she was looking at him, waiting, and she wasn’t going to let him get away until he said something. Anything.
So he shocked himself by putting it out there between them, in real words. “My last date went…bad.”
“And you haven’t dated since?”
“Really, really bad, Bailey.”
Not giving her a chance to ask anything more, he took the last turn and parked beneath the shadow of the first building. Getting out of the golf cart, he peeked through the double glass doors to see inside.
The place definitely wasn’t as far along as the Mammoth resort. It was dry-walled, and probably had electricity, but that was about it. “There was lots left to do here,” he said when he heard Bailey come up next to him. The doors were locked, not surprisingly. And sturdy.
“Yeah. So exactly how bad was that date?” she asked single-mindedly.
“What? Jesus, Bailey.” He let out an annoyed sound but she didn’t budge, just stood there looking at him. “Now’s not a good time,” he pointed out.
She lifted a shoulder. “Seems like a great time to me.”
He stared at her, and she smiled sweetly.
Waiting.
Fine. “I killed her.”
“I…I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you should,” he said grimly, but before they could continue this ever so lovely conversation, he heard a very unwelcome sound.
The
putt-putt-putt
of another cart somewhere close by.