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.
L
eena ran back up the stairs and skidded to a shaky stop in the doorway of the master bedroom where Maddie 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 fiancée 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.
With a stealth that came from a whole lot of years getting himself in and out of situations he shouldn’t have been in in the first place, he got to the deck.
Tested the door.
The sliding glass door was, indeed, locked.
Not a problem. Old habits died hard, and sticky fingers never forgot how to be sticky.
M
addie leaned out her bedroom window so far that Leena let out a terrified squeak and raced forward, grabbing her legs. “Don’t jump! Ohmigod, don’t jump!”
“I’m not!” Maddie pushed Leena’s hands away. “Are you kidding? I’m not crazy.”
“Okay.” Her sister gulped in air with a hand to her chest. “Okay, that’s good. You scared me.”
“I just wanted to see if he was really gone.”
“Is he?”
“Yes,” Maddie lied. She’d lied more today than she thought she’d ever have to lie again. She sure hoped Karma wasn’t paying attention because she could be a vindictive bitch.
Leena took a peek out the window as well, still breathing unevenly. “Sorry. I might have overreacted.”
Maddie shot her a look. “Really?”
“I’m nervous, okay? The Plan and all.”
Yes, The Plan.
They’d first hatched it when they were young, getting serious on their sixteenth birthday—run away and start a new life.
Only on the fateful day of execution, Leena hadn’t gone with Maddie.
Nope, it’d taken her ten years to decide to catch up, ten years during which Maddie had made a new life for herself. Now here Leena was, petrified, finally ready for The Plan, and Maddie was going to have to do it, have to start all over because she’d promised.
“It’s just that he’s so…” Still staring at Brody, Leena shrugged helplessly.
Big? Bad? Gorgeous? Pick one.