Strong and Sexy.2 (15 page)

Have a good day? What was he, a fucking Girl Scout? Jesus. To make sure he didn’t repeat that shockingly needy mistake, he deleted her number from the memory in his cell.

Better.

By the time he got into Sky High Air, things were hustling and bustling. Maddie met him with a stack of phone messages, files, reports, and a blessed mug of caffeine. “Hey.” She studied his face. “You look like crap.”

“Gee, thanks. Any of these messages from Dani?”

“The damsel in distress? Nope, you’re in luck, boss. No calls from her.”

He lifted his head from the messages and looked into her eyes, and her smile faded. “Oh,” she said, clearly taken aback. “You... wanted to hear from her.”

Instead of answering, he turned away.

“Wow, that’s new,” she murmured.

He looked back. “What?”

“You, looking for the whole morning-after thing.” She grinned, the smart-ass. “And it’s so cute. What happened, she pull a Shayne and sneak out on you?”

“You do realize I sign your paycheck.”

“I’m not afraid of you. You want me to get her on the line?”

“No.”

“You want me to reschedule your flight so you can pull the whole stay-in-your-office-and-pout thing, like Brody does?”

“No. Brody’s a woman.” He headed toward his office.

“Shayne?”

With a sigh, he stopped. “What?”

“You’re pretty cute when you’re being the woman too.”

Dani got out of the cab and looked up at her second-floor apartment. At her front window. Was she scared to go in? Hell, yes. But she could do this. All she needed were panties. So she took the stairs.

She could have stuck around Shayne’s longer, maybe found those panties, but she hadn’t wanted him to look into her eyes and discover the truth.

One night hadn’t been enough for her.

She had quite a few conflicting feelings about that. On the one hand, she felt like a woman who’d just had the best sex of her life, and she had.

No fumbling, no clumsy, klutzy, nervous movements for Shayne. Nope, the man had the moves. Great moves.

But on the other hand, she also felt exactly as she’d known she would.

Like they weren’t finished.

Like maybe they couldn’t ever get finished.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it. Shrugging it off, she opened her apartment door. “Hello?” she called, staying in the doorway.

No one answered. Of course no one answered. She lived alone.

“Dani?”

Nearly exiting her own skin, Dani jumped and found Alan standing in his doorway, watching her.

“You okay?” he asked, a worried frown on his face.

She opened her mouth to answer. Of course she was okay, she always showed up at eight in the morning wearing no panties, looking like she’d just had wild sex all night.

But he was looking at her so sweetly, so I-really-want-to-date-you sweetly, that she just shut her mouth and nodded weakly.

His gaze locked in on her neck. “You sure?”

She nodded again, but he kept staring at her neck. “What?”

“Is that a... hickey?”

She slapped a hand to her neck. “What? No. Of course not.”

“Someone bit you.”

Yes. Yes, Shayne had bitten her, lightly, with such heat and suction and perfect use of his tongue that her eyes had rolled back in her head with pleasure. She remembered sliding her fingers into his hair and holding his head to her, encouraging him to keep on kissing her like that.

Perfect. “Maybe it’s a bug bite.”

He sucked his lips inward but didn’t voice the doubt that was all over his face. “Are you just getting home?”

“Yes.” Which looked bad. She’d turned him down for a date, saying she was too busy with her job, and that she was going through a tough time right now, and that a man would complicate things.

But not a single one of those reasons made sense of the fact that yes, she was just getting home, she’d been with a man. She wondered if telling him it’d been a complicated man would help.

Probably not.

Nor would the fact that she’d witnessed an invisible murder, been shot at by an invisible shooter.

Oh, and then there’d been all that wild sex on the floor of Shayne’s living room.

And in his shower...

And in his bed...

“Work’s been a little crazy,” she said weakly. She glanced inside her apartment. No sign of trouble. But still, she couldn’t bring herself to step over the threshold. “Alan?”

“Yeah?”

She looked at him. “Would you like to come in for coffee?”

“Is that just because you want to have coffee, or because you’re nervous about going in alone after the possible break-in?”

Damn it. He was adorably fumbling, yes. But not slow. Not by a long shot. “How do you know about the possible break-in?”

“I heard the police talking.”

Okaaaay. So he’d been eavesdropping last night. That was probably just normal curiosity, right? Because Alan wasn’t some kind of crazy stalker. But just in case, she shut her door and began walking back down the hallway toward the stairs.

Still extremely commando...

“Dani?”

“Going back to work,” she called over her shoulder. Please don’t follow me with a gun.

At the zoo, Dani let herself into her car and grabbed her cell phone, just as Reena drove up.

“Heard you had quite the night.”

“You heard?”

Reena nodded. “You okay?”

Dani sighed and filled her in.

Reena listened in awed silence to the events of the night before, interrupting a few times to either ask a question or to make Dani repeat a detail.

“Tell me about the sex,” she instructed.

Dani blinked. “I saw a murder, had someone break into my apartment, was shot at, and you want to talk about the sex? Are you kidding me?”

“Priorities,” Reena said, utterly unapologetic. “Because you’re okay.”

“Yes.”

“You’re absolutely sure, right?”

Actually, shockingly, after last night, she was more than okay. In fact, she was having some trouble controlling the urge to just grin for no reason. That’s what a few man-made orgasms did for her, apparently. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Then yes, I want to talk about the sex.”

“Reena.”

“Come on. Was he good?”

She failed at holding back the stupid grin. Most definitely good. Off-the-charts good. So good her body was revved up and aching for more just thinking about it. “Yes.”

“Nice way to celebrate your promotion.”

Some of Dani’s smile faded at that. “Reena, about that—”

“Look, I’m fine. I’ll get the next one, or someone’s going to have to die, but I’m fine. No biggie.”

“Uh.”

“Kidding,” Reena said. “Jeez, I’m kidding. Look, are you coming or what?”

“I’ll meet you in there.”

“Suit yourself.”

Dani looked at her cell phone, saw the missed call from Shayne, felt her heart squeeze, and put the phone in her pocket. She had work to get to.

Inside the zoo, Dani found no boogeymen, no dead bodies, nothing out of place. Just the elephants in their habitat, waiting patiently for her to observe them with their new addition—Bebo—the four-month-old baby fresh from the nursery.

So that’s what she did, she settled in to watch and record. As the hours passed, she decided that yesterday and all that had happened had been some really strange episode of The Twilight Zone. An episode she didn’t want to repeat. So when her cell rang again later, and then again, she ignored it, her gaze glued to the elephants, especially Bebo nuzzling her two-ton mama Ellie for milk.

So sweet, so simple. In the past, Ellie had pushed away the babies but today, when it was her baby, she nuzzled back in a show of unconditional love.

Dani watched, enraptured, awed. Touched.

All her life she’d been pushing people away instead of nuzzling, wanting, needing, to be independent. But now as she sat there, gaze glued to the beauty of mama and baby bonding, she couldn’t justify her actions. She’d hidden behind her independent excuse so long it no longer even made any sense.

But if a stubborn mammal like Ellie had changed, didn’t that mean she could as well?

Shayne flew his client to Santa Barbara, and while that client—a television producer—attempted to talk a reclusive actor into signing on a new sitcom, Shayne had a few hours to spare. Normally he’d have not wasted a single moment of that time, getting out on the waves ASAP, surfing as long as he could.

But instead he stood on the tarmac, the ocean pounding the shore in perfect five-footers, the wind rippling his hair, and tried calling Dani.

Again.

When he got no answer, he called Patrick, who also had absolutely no answer. “You’re a cop,” Shayne told him. “A detective. A big, badass detective. You’re supposed to know all.”

“Look, some things can’t be explained. Stop worrying about this, Shayne.”

“Stop worrying about this? The woman I was with last night was shot at!”

“Maybe you should give up the whole party-life thing, and this shit wouldn’t happen.”

Shayne grated his teeth. “I don’t do the whole party-life thing anymore.” Ah, hell. Who was he kidding? Patrick wasn’t going to believe him. “If anything comes up, call me.”

“I said I would.”

Shayne resisted the urge to pick a fight—see that, Mom, progress—and did end up surfing, hoping it’d clear his head, but his mind remained a hundred miles away, back in Los Angeles with Dani, wondering what the hell she was doing and if she was safe.

After he flew the producer back to Burbank, Shayne stood in Sky High’s lobby, getting a soda from the vending machine and once again calling Dani.

Still no answer.

He walked to the front counter, listening to Dani’s voice mail message for the tenth time as he flipped through the messages Maddie had left for him. “Damn it.”

“Flight go okay?” This from Noah, who waltzed in the front door with an easy grin on his face. The grin of a man who’d gotten lucky very recently.

Shayne had been wearing a grin like that earlier. Much earlier.

But the smile had faded in the light of day. He’d always wondered how in the hell Noah could settle down with one woman. In fact, just the thought of it boggled. But now he could admit there might be something to the notion. “You’re still smiling.”

“Am I?”

“I’d think you’d be tired of having sex with the same woman.”

Noah laughed and patted Shayne’s shoulder with mock sympathy. “Dude.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously?” Noah laughed again. “Sleeping with the same woman is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. No more wondering if she likes me, if she’s going to go out with me, if she’s going out with someone else. No more waking alone on a Sunday and having no one around, just to hang with.”

“You had me.”

“Okay, no one to cuddle with.”

“You want to cuddle? I can cuddle.”

“Have you seen Bailey, by any chance?”

Yes, yes, Shayne had. She was a leggy, gorgeous blonde. A former model, in fact. Extremely cuddle-able.

“Trust me, it’s all good,” Noah assured him.

“There’s got to be a way to get all the good stuff without the ball and chain.”

“You mean the ring.”

“I mean the ring,” Shayne confirmed.

“It’s hard to explain, but the ring is like the icing on the cake.” Noah grinned. “It’s the best part.”

This was news to Shayne, who’d spent years cultivating his carefree playboy reputation. Dani had known this about him. She’d known there wouldn’t be icing on the cake. It’s why she’d held back, why she didn’t want to date him, and he respected that. He did. But suddenly he wanted icing on his damn cake, too.

Brody came down the hall, commandeered Shayne’s soda, and drank deeply.

“Hey.”

He slapped the now-empty soda can back to the counter. “What are you girls gossiping about?”

Shayne searched his pockets for more change, but came up empty. “Damn it, Brod.”

Noah put a hand on Shayne’s shoulder. “We’re discussing why the laid-back surfer dude is as uptight as a guy who hasn’t gotten off in a year.”

“He got laid last night.” Brody eyeballed Shayne. “So that means... huh.”

“What huh?” Noah asked curiously, eyeing Shayne like a bug on a slide.

“He must have gotten dumped. Again. Jesus, you’re on a roll, huh?”

“I did not get dumped again,” Shayne said, shoving free of Noah and glaring at Brody. “Go buy me a fucking soda.”

“Yeah, he got dumped again,” Noah said, nodding. “Was it the crazy chick?”

“She’s not crazy.”

“Yeah, it was the crazy chick,” Brody decided, watching Shayne carefully. “Go figure.”