Smart and Sexy (8 page)

Or
on
me…

Still breathing as if maybe she’d already climbed this building, she nodded. “Just go down with you,” she repeated.

Christ, the words sure did conjure up an image. He shifted down a few rungs so that, thankfully, his mouth came level with the backs of her knees. Nothing sexy about the backs of anyone’s knees.

Nope, not a damn thing.

But then she did as he’d asked, she followed, so that she shifted right back into the circle of his arms, and once again he was staring at her most perfectly delectable ass. Closing his eyes would be a bad thing, he reminded himself, and stoically, he kept his gaze on her as they crawled down.

The things he had to do.

“Are we almost there?” she asked breathlessly.

He looked. Not even halfway. “Nearly,” he lied. “Keep moving.”

“I wish he wasn’t dead so I could kill him.”

“Who? Alan?”

“And my father.”

This was a new one, but now wasn’t exactly the time to point out she’d been less than forthcoming with certain vital information.

From in his back pocket, his cell phone vibrated. He had no doubt it was someone at Sky High Air with more demands that he come home now. And it made perfect sense, except for one thing. For the first time in far too long, he felt…alive.

That was when the bullet pinged right past his ear.

S
hit, someone was really shooting at them. Noah hated that; he hated that it was starting to snow like a mother. He hated that he couldn’t enjoy his view of Mrs. Sinclair’s world-class ass, and he hated today.

He really, really hated today.

“Was that—”

“Yeah,” he said, his heart racing, his breath coming hard and fast. That had been close, waaaay too close for comfort.

Another shot ricocheted past his nose, and Bailey screamed loud enough to blister his ears. Hell. Wrapping an arm around her hips, he yanked, sliding her down into the protection of his body. Ignoring the fact that she fit against him as if she’d been made for the spot, he took a look over his shoulder. Eight feet to the balcony of the fifth floor. Or was it the fourth?

Wincing, because this was going to hurt like hell, he held onto his bundle of woman and leapt toward the balcony.

Bailey screamed again, but Noah was too busy hitting the deck, then having the air sucker punched out of his lungs when she landed square on top of him, to tell her to shut up again.

Honest to God, she was the noisiest woman he’d ever been shot at with.

Oh, wait. She was the
only
woman he’d ever been shot at with. One more whizzing bullet and his heart nearly lurched to a complete stop, starting up again on a staccato beat when Bailey covered her own mouth with her hand to keep in the next scream.

“Good girl,” he wanted to say. But with a groan, he rolled over in the snow, finding one hand full of soft breast. Christ. Yanking his hand back, he went up to his knees, keeping her tucked in front of him as he quickly crawled toward the balcony door, not an easy feat with the few inches of slippery snow. Pulling her up, he sandwiched her against the wall. “Wait here,” he said in her ear. “Don’t move, don’t breathe, and for God’s sake, don’t scream.”

“But—”

He put a hand over her mouth. “Princess, goddamnit, for once, just do it, no discussion.”

Only when she gave him a jerky nod did he run back to the fire escape ladder, where he slid down one more floor. Once there, he braced himself and kicked in the sliding glass door.

Glass shattered, and he toed out the rest, making sure to walk through and traipse as much snow inside as possible. With his penlight, he rushed through the opulent, ridiculously large, empty condo and opened the front door into the dark hallway.
There. Follow that lead, assholes.
Then he whipped back through the condo, back through the broken glass door, where he shimmied up the fire escape to the deck where he’d left Bailey, thinking,
Please still be there, please don’t have done something stupid.

She was a mere shadow squishing herself back against the wall as close as she could get in the falling snow, practically hugging the plaster, hair wild around her face, which was as pale as the wall behind her.

When he loomed close, her eyes went wide, her hands flat on the wall on either side of her as she gasped, looking as though she expected him to rape and pillage.

It brought home the very sobering realization that he really had no idea what she’d been through, but whatever it’d been, it had been bad.

And he’d been flinging her around, pushing, shoving, pushing some more…. Feeling like the biggest jerk on the planet, he lifted his hands. “Just me,” he said very softly.

Some of the terror left her eyes but not all, and she straightened. “I know that.”

He moved in close, stealing a precious few seconds to look her over, assuring himself she really was all right.

“Are you okay?” she asked, shaking like a leaf as she got a good hold of his shirt.

That she could even ask told him a lot about her. “That was my question to you,” he said, still holding onto her, needing to hold on to her.

“I’m fine.”

“I set up a detour.” Hopefully. “It’ll give us a few extra minutes. Come on.”

She tripped on her heels, then caught herself, doing her best to keep up, and he slipped an arm around her, trying to help.

The door to this level was locked, too, no surprise. But there’d be no glass breaking, not this time. The last thing he wanted to do was attract more gunshots. He fiddled with the lock on the slider. Yeah, he could pick this one. He’d seen several bobby pins in Bailey’s hair, and turning to her, he slipped his fingers through the silky strands. Silky,
frozen
strands.

“What are you—”

Jackpot. He yanked out a pin and dropped to his knees. “Remember the no-talking part?”

She held her silence for all of three seconds. “I don’t think those locks are going to be pickable—” She broke off when he shot her a dry look, and she tightened her mouth as if to say,
Done talking
.

Yeah, right.

Turning his attention back to the lock, he put his tongue between his teeth and concentrated.

“Noah,” she whispered.

Ignoring her, he set his ear against the wood to listen for the lock tumbling into place—

“Noah.”

Jesus. Tipping his head back, he went to give her a long, frustrated, shut-the-hell-up look, but she seemed so small and wet and miserable, not to mention off-the-charts freaked out, he just sighed. “Almost got it.”

“Yes, but those are state-of-the-art locks—”

It clicked open.

“Oh,” she murmured in surprise, a sound that turned into a gasp as he yanked her inside with him, carefully shutting and relocking the door behind them.

“Hurry,” he said.

“But I thought you sidetracked them.”

“They won’t stay that way if we don’t get out of sight and out of hearing range.” The condo was pitch-black, but he didn’t turn on his penlight, not yet. Not when the bad guys had guns and were on a scavenger hunt.

Not when he didn’t know what the fuck was going on. From the scent, he could tell the place had been dry walled, probably textured, but not painted.

Just like the condo above.

It meant no furniture. He knew they had to be in a living room, so he strode forward, one hand out in front of him, the other gripping Bailey, which proved unnecessary because she hadn’t let go of him since he’d found her against the wall.

She hadn’t spoken again, which he appreciated, but she was breathing like a misused race horse, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she hyperventilated herself right into a faint. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll take them a few minutes to figure out which floor we’re on.”

“A few minutes,” she repeated like a parrot.

He found a wall, an open doorway, and thought they probably stood in the hallway, near the front door. At least he no longer felt uncomfortably exposed, or braced for a bullet in his back.

But something about that whole situation bothered him. The goons had missed. Several times.

What kind of paid goons missed?

Answer—they didn’t.

Which meant one thing. The shots hadn’t been meant to kill, but to terrify.

Given the way his pretty little hijacker was gasping for air, he had to concede they’d done their duty. He was more than unnerved himself.

And for more than one reason.

She was holding on to plenty of secrets, which in no way explained why, instead of wanting to wring her pretty little neck, he had the urge to wrap his hands around her hot little bod and not just squeeze.

But stroke.

Lick.

Nibble.

Yeah, he’d lost it completely.

He figured they were far enough away from the windows now and pulled out his penlight. They stood in a foyer bigger than his entire house, complete with vaulted ceilings and a hoity-toityness that was provided thanks to too much money. Not the kind of place where he wanted to come ski, thank you very much.

Next to him, his hyperventilating hijacker shivered violently, reminding him that while she might be a pain in his ass, a gorgeous pain, she was also wet, frozen, and in danger from shock. He wanted to get her back to the Jeep, pronto, and then the hell out of here, but there was one little problem.

She hadn’t gotten what she’d come for.

“Okay, Princess, truth time.”

She didn’t respond. Either she didn’t want to, or she couldn’t because her teeth were threatening to rattle right out of her head. Not good. He moved in, putting his hands on her arms. Christ, she was drenched, her sweater almost frozen into ice. He rubbed up and down trying to keep her warm.

“They—they’re g—going to f-f-find us—”

“Not if I can help it.” Cupping her icy face, he tipped it up so he could see into her eyes. “They could have killed us, but they didn’t,” he said. “Why not?”

She looked away.

“Want me to guess?”

More nothing.

“They’re not going to kill us until you give them what they want.”

Something on the floor simply fascinated her.

Perfect.

He stared at her, waiting, but she’d gone mute. Frustrated, he grabbed her hand and opened the front door.

“W-where are we g-going?”

Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. Or at least relatively so. He had no idea where until they got out onto the floor and saw a set of double glass doors lined in enough fancy, expensive brass to fund a third world country for a year. “What’s that?”

“A d-day spa. Each r-r-resort has one.”

“With its own separate entry for employees?”

“P—probably.”

It took only a second to get them inside the nearly completed spa, and another to find what he’d been looking for. The employee entrance, which thank you God, led directly to its own set of stairs. With his penlight, he lit the way and pulled her along with him. He made her run the entire four flights without stopping, and when they’d exited out into the night, they were on the far side of the parking lot, squinting into the snowflakes falling big as dinner plates. “Get ready.”

“For what?”

“To run.” Flattening them both back against the building, he searched the area and saw no one. Not that he could see far with the white, fluffy snow. He looked up. There were lights flickering in the…he counted…fifth and ninth floors.

That was the good news. They hadn’t figured out that they’d been on the fourth floor yet, much less that they’d left the building entirely. One thing in their favor tonight.

The bad news? They still had to get out of the lot without being detected.
“Now.”

He pulled her with him as he ran toward the Jeep through the snow, holding her against his side with one arm, the other digging into his pocket for the key. He took her to the driver’s side, unlocked the door, shoved her in, and then followed, nearly sitting on her when she didn’t scoot in fast enough.

As it was, her scent got caught up in his nose again, and her hair, her wild, glorious hair tangled in his watch, where he spent a few precious seconds bent over the thing trying to get her free, their faces close enough to share air.

She was panting to draw it into her lungs and shaking hard enough to break bones. Her lip gloss had long been chewed off, and the rest of her makeup was gone. She had a smudge of it beneath her eyes, making her look even more fragile, more vulnerable.

Christ, she was a mess. A heart-stopping, beautiful mess. And he wanted her, wanted so badly
he
was shaking. Starting the engine, he shoved the Jeep into gear and took them the hell out of the parking lot.

“I n-need to get to—”

“We’re not going anywhere tonight. I’m way too tired to fly.”

“But I—”

“Later.” He drove them down the windy, icy roads at speeds not exactly legal, especially in the snow, but he wanted to get as far ahead of the goons as possible. His eyes were gritty, grainy from exhaustion and adrenaline. Yeah, flying out of here tonight would be suicidal.

So he took them to their only other option—the house Maddie had reserved for him. It was secluded, and better yet, empty.

And no one would think to look for Bailey Sinclair there.

He hoped.

“W-where are we going?”

“Where I meant to go all along.”

“Wh-what if they find us—”

“Not tonight, they won’t.” It took only ten minutes to get there, during which time he aimed all the heater vents on Bailey and hoped she didn’t freeze before he could get her warm. When he pulled up—bless Maddie—the driveway had been cleared, and the house porch lights blazed through the falling snow in welcome. The house was a two-story cabin-style, with snow a foot thick on the roof.

He pulled into the attached garage. “Now,” he said, turning in the driver’s seat to face his soggy, wet, cold passenger. “We need to talk. And when I say we, I really mean you.”

Bailey’s pulse was thundering, her body shuddering from cold and who knew what else.

And Noah wanted to talk.

“I think I deserve to know what’s going on,” he said into her silence.

He did, she knew it. “It…it begins with Alan.”

In reality, it began far before that, with her father, but she didn’t want to sound so pathetic as to have been screwed over by the only two men in her life.

“Alan’s dead,” Noah said bluntly. “He died months ago. An accidental shooting during hunting season.”

“Actually, that’s not quite true.” She knew she had to tell him something. He did deserve to know. “He died months ago, yes,” she agreed. “During a hunting trip. But not from an
accidental
gunshot.” With a shaky hand, she pushed her wet hair from her face.

Noah caught her hand in his. “What did he die of?”

“He was shot, but it had nothing to do with an accident.”

Noah was quiet a moment. Considering. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not, and was surprised by how much she wanted him to. “Interesting how that missed the news.”

“I know.” She chewed on her lower lip, pulling it between her teeth, wetting it with a nervous tongue. “But it’s true.”

Noah’s gaze was locked on her mouth. “More,” he said, and when she shivered, he ran a warm hand up her arm. Never mind that she knew he was doing it to give her some badly needed body heat, it felt like more. “Alan had a little gambling problem,” she admitted.

His gaze held hers for an interminably long moment, and once again time seemed to do a little song and dance and then stop completely.