Strong and Sexy.2 (20 page)

That had a silly grin splitting her face. He hadn’t dumped her. They were still on for their Just Sex. Her body let out a sort of shiver.

“Anything odd going on?” he asked.

Other than her heart had tightened at just the sound of him? And her nipples too? Oh, yes, her nipples were very happy to hear from him. “Nope.”

“No more dead bodies?”

“Nope.”

“No more break-ins?”

“Nope.”

“How about hang-ups?”

She winced. “Well...”

“Tell me.”

“A few hang-ups,” she admitted. “I figured they were just a wrong number.”

He didn’t say anything, but she could practically hear him thinking. “I’m okay, Shayne.”

“Actually, you’re amazing, but that’s another story altogether. Look, just be careful, watch that sweet ass of yours. I’m fond of it.”

God, look at her. Grinning. Just sex, she reminded herself. But she couldn’t stop grinning. This was so bad. “I can do that. Have a good flight back.”

“Will do.”

“Good.” She paused, then let it out. “Because I’m really quite fond of your backside too.” Shocked at herself, she closed her cell—then laughed.

Her cell immediately vibrated with an incoming text message that had three words: “Tonight? Hot fudge.”

Oh, God. This was ridiculous, this flow of euphoria that sex caused. Too bad it couldn’t be bottled.

Dani’s day was crazy. It didn’t take her long to discover that scheduling and managing the other keepers, each with their own thoughts and agendas and temperaments, was a hell of a lot more challenging than she’d ever imagined. By that afternoon she’d listened to three grievances, broken up two fights—not between any animals but between two other keepers—and had redone the month’s employee schedule four times.

Oh, and everyone hated her.

It wasn’t until most of her staff had left for the day that she managed even a single moment to herself. It was six o’clock, time for food, her stomach proclaimed, but she couldn’t leave, not yet. So she stood in front of the vending machine trying to decide between a relatively harmless bag of pretzels or the bag of cholesterol-crippling Twix bites. She slapped her pockets for change, but came up empty.

Damn, she needed her energy for the hot fudge. Just thinking it had her insides going all tight and tingly, and anticipation rushed through her. What could he do with warm fudge that they hadn’t done with the ice cream? She couldn’t even imagine the possibilities, and that made the rush of lust even worse.

Definitely she should have the pretzels and save the calories for later. “Bob,” she said when one of the night keepers rushed by her, “do you have change?”

Bob was fresh out of college on the East Coast. He was six feet five, weighed maybe one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, and dressed like he was still in middle school. This meant his jeans sagged to nearly his knees and his sweatshirt was at least a triple-extra-large on his extremely not triple-extra-large frame. A good wind could, and had, blown him over. Hell, just yesterday, one of the baby rhinos had knocked him on his ass when the thing had sneezed.

He didn’t even glance at her.

“Bob?” She touched his arm, which jerked into the air as he fell backward to his butt. Looking up at her in surprise, he pulled out the earplugs to the iPod she hadn’t seen.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Jesus.”

“Do you have any change?”

He arched a brow. “You look desperate.”

“I am.”

Reena came down the hall and handed her two quarters. “How can you be desperate? You’ve got a hot guy giving you orgasms at night, and the dream job of a lifetime.”

She said the first part of the sentence evenly enough, but the last part didn’t come out quite as much so, and guilt plagued Dani. “Reena—”

“Plus, there’s the raise that goes with that dream job,” Reena continued. “Which means that at least one of us won’t be counting pennies at the end of every single month, or begging fellow keepers for change in front of the vending machine.”

Recognizing trouble, Bob put his earplugs back in and hightailed it out of the hallway.

“The raise is minuscule,” Dani told Reena quietly. “You know that.”

Reena sighed. “I know. I do. I’m just a jealous bitch. Ignore me.”

Dani slipped an arm around her, but instead of the hug that only two days ago would have been real and natural, Reena shifted so that there was some space between them. “It won’t be long for you,” Dani said quietly. “You’ll get a promotion too.”

Reena snorted. “Are you planning on leaving any time soon?”

“No.”

“Then it will be a long time.” Reena punched the vending machine and a bag of peanut M&Ms fell out. Snatching them, she walked away.

Dani bought the pretzels, then munched on them as she headed back to her office.

Candy, the floor’s assistant, stopped her in the hallway. “I’m leaving, we’re all leaving. Don’t forget your meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“I don’t know. Someone from Global Supplies showed up with vitamin samples. They need your order.”

“I didn’t ask for any samples from Global. I don’t use them anymore, I use ZooIts.”

Candy lifted her shoulder. “Just relaying the message here. Oh, and you’re the last one up here, so this is me, reminding you to lock up behind you.”

“No problem.” Dani moved back to her office, trying to formulate a gentle letdown for the Global rep. In front of her desk was a large case on wheels, signifying that the rep was here, somewhere, but Dani couldn’t see anyone. “Hello?”

No answer. Maybe he’d stepped out to the restroom. Pulling off her sweater, she opened the closet door to hang it, and felt her entire world skid to a stop.

A body lay on the floor of her closet. An unmoving body.

“Ohmigod.” She dropped to her knees. Was it a man? A woman? She couldn’t tell because the closet wasn’t lit and her own body blocked the light. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

The body didn’t move.

“Oh, God, oh God.” She had to do something. She’d taken a medical class in college, she had the basics. Panicking was not on the list of things to do in an emergency, though she was doing a great job at that. Swallowing hard, she reached out to see if she could get a pulse, because that’s what they did on TV.

The skin was cold.

Icy cold.

Jerking to her feet, she stumbled back, but then tripped over something she hadn’t seen before, something that felt like... like a leg and foot. She had just enough time to feel her panic surge—she wasn’t alone—but before she could process the thought, there was a burst of stars in her head and then blackness.

Dani opened her eyes. She was flat on her back in her office, legs draped over a stack of reference books she’d been meaning to pick up and reshelve. With a gasp, she sat up. There was no one in the office with her, or at least no one she could see.

But there was a sharp, grinding pain in her head, and she lifted her hands to hold it onto her shoulders as nausea rolled through her belly. Getting up? Such a bad plan. In fact, if she so much as breathed too quickly, she was going to lose all the pretzels she’d just inhaled.

Not good. Then she realized one of her hands was sticky.

With her own blood.

And that’s when she remembered the rest—dead body.

She managed to crawl to her closet, and—

“Not again,” she whispered, staring at the empty space.

No body.

Because even being on her hands and knees made her dizzy, she sank back to the floor and stared up at the ceiling.

She really was going crazy.

Maddie set the phone down and glanced out the windows at the tarmac, where Shayne stood talking to their mechanic, and felt a familiar surge of affection and worry.

Familiar, because worrying about these guys, it was what she did. And in the past, she’d had good reason. Just last year, on a routine trip to Mexico, Noah had run into weather troubles and had crash-landed on a mountainside where one of their clients had died in his arms.

It’d changed him, that crash, and Maddie had worried herself sick about him. All of them had, for months and months, until he’d finally agreed to get back on the horse and start flying again.

Then, on his first flight out, he’d been hijacked by another of their clients, the desperate, terrified, cornered Bailey Sinclair.

Noah had reacted in a very different manner than they’d all expected—he’d fallen in love with Bailey. And somehow, he’d come back to them, the Noah they all loved. He’d found his way back to the living, and Shayne and Brody and Maddie herself had all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Life had gone on.

But now Shayne seemed... different. In crisis somehow, and she didn’t know what was going on, or how to help, how to make things better.

“What is it?”

In surprise, she looked up to find Brody watching her with those sharp eyes that missed nothing, including the fact that she’d changed her hair color again, dark brown now, or that she’d bought a new skirt.

An even shorter one.

It looked good on her legs. Okay, it looked great on her legs and she knew it, and for reasons not quite clear to her, or maybe for reasons perfectly clear, she’d wanted him to notice, and she wanted him to suffer.

He’d just come in from Cabo, where he must have spent some time outdoors either waiting on his client or working on the plane, because he had a tan going.

It worked for him.

Damn gorgeous grumpy man. Too gorgeous. Standing this close to him was making her... itchy. Making her want to shove him against the wall and press her body to his and kiss that grumpiness right out of him.

She could do it too.

But she wouldn’t, of course she wouldn’t. He didn’t deserve her damn kiss. And she needed space. But in order to move out from behind the counter, she had to practically brush against him. She held her breath so she couldn’t smell him—self-defense, because he always, always, smelled amazing—and then without a word headed toward the tarmac. She needed to tell Shayne about the phone call she’d just received. She needed to do her job, not be daydreaming about things that could never be—

“What’s the matter?”

Damn it. “Stop following me.”

“Then stop and talk to me. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing.” He nodded, though he clearly didn’t believe her. “I saw you the other night. On your date.”

So he had seen her. Fine. She’d seen him too.

“Did it work out for you?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, did... did the rest of your night go well?”

“Are you asking if I slept with him, Brody?”

“That would be none of my business.”

“That’s right. It wouldn’t.” Once again she looked at Shayne, who was still on the tarmac.

Brody followed her line of vision.

“If you want him for yourself, all you have to do is say so.”

Whipping her head toward his, she stared at him. “What?”

“You find him attractive.”

“You mean because he has a penis?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then you’d better say something.”

“You had an expression on your face—”

“Annoyance?”

“No. Frustration. Worry.” His jaw tightened. “And something else.”

“Spit it out.”

“Arousal.”

She stared at him in shock. That was for you, you idiot.

But Brody wasn’t done pissing her off. “He’s single right now, and—”

With a low growl in her throat, she reached up, grabbed his shirt, and shoved him back against the wall, then did as she’d been fantasizing about, pressed her body along the length of his and kissed him, hard.

There was a beat of utter stillness from him and then his hands came up to her face.

The almost reluctant touch fueled her frustration, her anger, her sheer lust. She hadn’t planned on going anywhere with this but his mouth was warm and firm, and somehow also soft, and she licked his bottom lip until with a low, rough sound, he opened and thrust his tongue to hers.

And just like that, she went from seducer to seducee.

Holy shit, the man could kiss. His fingers slid into her hair, his thumbs sweeping her cheekbones in a soft caress that was in complete opposition to the feel of his long, hard body pressed so intimately to hers.

Then he changed the angle of the kiss, at once deepening it and gentling the connection so that she went from fury to straight-up desperate for him so fast her head spun.

And then they ran out of air. Somehow she found the strength to lift her head. To let go of his shirt. Stumbling back a step, she blinked the haze of desire from her vision and forced a glare. “Does that feel like I want Shayne, you arrogant, insufferable ass?”