again. “That pale yellow bra? It highlights your nipples. Makes my mouth water.”
“Stop it.”
“Me?” the doctor asked.
“No. No, sorry,” she muttered.
“I wanted to take them off,” Shayne whispered.
This caused another rush of heat to her body, and she began to sweat.
The doctor noticed and frowned. “Nurse.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Check her temp,” he instructed. “Her color is way off.”
Oh, God. “No. No, I’m fine,” Dani hurried to say. “Really. Fine.”
The nurse looked at the doctor and shrugged.
Dani carefully didn’t look at Shayne again, though she heard his soft laugh, and recognized the way it made her belly quiver.
“I’ll be happy to check your temp,” Shayne whispered.
Did he enjoy torturing her? Of course he did. By the time the doctor was finished, her head ached fiercely, but so did the rest of her body.
Unbelievable. “Can I go home now?” she asked.
The doctor pursed his lips. “About your blood pressure and stress levels—”
“I’ll work on that.”
“Is it your job?”
She cut a look at Shayne. “Some.”
“Maybe a short leave of absence to relax?” The doctor scribbled on a pad. “I can write something up for your employer—”
“No, don’t. I really can’t take a leave right now. I’ll . . . try hard to relax.”
“I’ll make sure she does.”
Both the doctor and Dani looked at Shayne. He smiled sweetly, even innocently, but Dani could guess how he intended to see her relax, and most likely it would involve him removing her pale yellow bra.
And matching panties.
That wasn’t the question.
What was the question was whether or not she could weather another round of “just sex” without getting herself more hurt than she was at the moment.
Chapter 19
Dani stared out the passenger window, nicely dopey from the meds they’d given her at the hospital. “Hey,” she said to Shayne.
“Hey yourself.”
“We’re here.”
“That we are.” He came around to help her out of the car, then slipped an arm around her when she weaved.
She wasn’t hurting. The drugs had taken care of that. But she was floating nicely. Her brain couldn’t seem to touch down on anything for long. Which was a shame, because she had a feeling there were things to touch down on.
“Come on. I’ll tuck you in.”
“And then leave?”
“No. We’re having a sleepover.”
“Oh, fun. With popcorn?”
Was that his jaw, all bunchy and tight? “Whatever you want,” he promised.
“Really? ’Cuz I want hot fudge.” She grinned.
He did not. He scooped her up in his arms, like she was a rag doll.
“I can walk.”
“I know.”
She set her head on his very broad, very nice shoulder, then pressed her face to his neck, loving the way he smelled, which was like heaven. “This really is way better than walking.”
“We need a list,” he said, carrying her up the stairs.
“Okay. The hot fudge. Then whipped cream, because I’ve heard—”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a groan. “I meant of people who don’t like you, Dani.”
“People don’t like me?”
He got to her front door and propped her against it so he could slide his hands down her body, and she smiled dreamily. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes to the touching.”
“I’m looking for your keys.”
“Oh.”
He found them in her pocket and got them both inside, where he deposited her on her couch. “Stay right there.”
Since she was dizzy and groggy, that worked for her. Plus, a secret part of her liked the bossiness. She could see him in her kitchen—with the place the size of a postage stamp, she couldn’t help but see him in her kitchen—making her . . . aw. He was making her tea.
When he came back to the couch, he handed her the hot mug and waved a pad of paper she’d had by her phone, sinking to the coffee table in front of her. “Go,” he said, pencil poised like a cute little secretary.
Only he wasn’t little, and no one in their right mind would call him cute. Dangerous, yes. Edgy, yes. Sexy, double yes.
But cute? “Maybe like a cheetah. You know, cute from a distance . . .”
He blinked. “What?”
“You’re cute.”
He blinked again. “List all the people who would benefit from making you appear crazy.”
“Cute and bossy.” But she sighed and tried to put all the dangerous, edgy, sexy cuteness out of her head. Not an easy feat. “Well, my family has been calling me crazy for a few years now.”
“Because you walked away from an inheritance.”
“Edward wasn’t my dad. It didn’t feel right. Plus Tony and Eliza like all their billions of pennies.”
“Tony and Eliza,” he said, putting them on the list. “Who else?” He nudged her steaming mug up to her lips until she drank.
Earl Grey. Her favorite. She sipped, watching him over the cloud of steam that rose from her cup.
Or maybe that was the fog of nice drugs in her system. “You really are cute.”
“We’ll discuss my cuteness in detail after this.”
She smiled dreamily. “What else can we do in detail after this? And does it involve the hot fudge?”
His eyes landed on hers, scorching. “No. It involves some of that relaxing the doctor insisted on. That I insist on.”
“Oh.” Huh. Yeah, he was pretty damn hot, all bossy and insistent.
“What about the woman from your work? The one you got the promotion over?” he asked.
“Reena?”
“Reena. She wouldn’t . . .”
He didn’t erase the name, just looked at her with surprising patience. Patience, plus that scorchness factor, and then the whole cute thing, really made him quite . . . “Irresistible.” She smiled. “You’re irresistible.”
“You’re high as a kite.”
She grinned.
He sighed. “Who else?”
“No one.”
“I’m sure there’s someone.”
“You’re sure I’ve annoyed more people?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes, and then gasped and reached for her head. “Oh, bad. Very, very bad.”
Tossing the pad aside, he dropped to his knees at her side. “You okay?”
“Not so much, no.”
“I—” He broke off at the scraping sound. “What’s that?”
It’d come from the other side of the front door. Striding over there, he whipped it open but no one was there. Just a package sitting innocuously all by itself.
“What is it?” she asked no one, because Shayne burst out of the front door and vanished from her line of sight.
“Hey!” he yelled, and then he was back in the doorway, holding someone by the scruff of the neck.
Alan, who shoved free and glared at him. “What the hell is your problem?”
Shayne bent to pick up the package and lifted a foil edge as if he expected a bomb. “Brownies?”
“Of course they’re brownies, what did you think they were?” Alan straightened his shirt. “And what are you, an ape?”
“I’m so sorry,” Dani said to Alan. “Ignore him, he’s—”
“Crazy?”
“Concerned about her safety,” Shayne corrected. “Since someone’s been stalking her. You a stalker, Alan?”
“What? Of course not.” Circling Shayne, giving him a wide birth that would have been comical on any other day, Alan came in. When he caught sight of the blood still matted in Dani’s hair, of the white bandage around her head, he stopped short. “My God.”
> “A little accident at work,” Dani assured him. “Only five stitches.”
“Stitches?” Going white as a sheet, Alan grabbed out for support, but nothing was there.
Then he flashed the whites of his eyes.
“He’s going down,” Dani told Shayne, who swore and lunged for him, unceremoniously hauling him back to the front door.
“Shayne, wait.”
“Buh-bye,” Shayne said to Alan.
To Alan’s credit, he dug in his heels and tried to see past Shayne. “Dani—”
But Shayne shut the door on him.
“Ohmigod.” Dani pointed to the door. “Open it up. Now.”
Unapologetic, he moved toward her instead. “He’s so going on the list.”
“He doesn’t belong on the list.”
“Oh, he belongs on the list.”
“Shayne, seriously. Did you see the way he nearly fainted at the sight of the blood on my head?”
Shayne’s gaze lifted from the pad where he was furiously scribbling Alan’s name. “So?”
“So you know if he’s queasy at the sight of blood, then he’s not hauling around a dead body to torture me with.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were half delirious with pain.”
“I am.” She softened her voice, trying to distract him. “Delirious. Helpless. What are you going to do about it?”
“Don’t even try to distract me with that tone.”
“Which tone?”
“The sexy one that makes it so I can’t think.” Shayne stared down at the list while she stared at him.
He thought she had a sexy tone? One that made it so he couldn’t think? Wow. She didn’t think anyone had ever said such a thing to her before, and it cut right through the painkillers and activated her good spots.
Clueless, he was still studying his list. “I think we’ll start with your siblings.”
“Start with?”
“In the morning, we’re going to pay them a little visit.”
“They’re in Tahoe.”
“So?”
“So, it’s like a nine-hour drive.”
“But only a forty-five minute flight.” He smiled grimly. “Luckily you know a pilot.”
Her fear of flying reared its ugly head. “Is he the same guy who just threw my friend out on his ass, because I’m not sure I want to fly with that guy.”
“How about the guy who has four broken fingers from you squeezing him while you got stitches? The guy who’s good in an emergency, on the ground or in the air. You want to fly with that guy?”
“No. I don’t want to fly at all.”
“It’s the best way.”
“Says you.”
He shook his head. “Dani. More people die in car accidents—hell, more people die getting struck by lightning—than in plane accidents.”
“Has anyone at Sky High ever been in an accident?”
He hesitated, and she gasped. “You?”
“Noah. He crashed in Mexico last summer, but—”
“Ohmigod. What happened?”
He closed his eyes, then opened them on her. “He was hit by lightning, but—”
“Ohmigod. No. No, we are so not flying in any little tin buckets.”
“Tin buckets? Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“It was a one-in-a-million thing, Dani.”
She sighed, and carefully, very, very carefully, laid her head against the couch cushion. Just as carefully closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, her world was spinning as Shayne again lifted her in his arms.
“Whoa. Stop the ride, I want to get off.”
But he just carried her down the hall to her bedroom.
“You don’t have to do the he-man thing,” she protested, but clutched at him, mostly because she loved having his arms around her.
“Maybe I like to do the he-man thing.” He set her down on the mattress, gently, carefully, and then moved to the foot of the bed to pull off her shoes.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting you to bed.” He came to her side and saw the cursed buttons again. “Why do your clothes have so many buttons?”
“I like buttons.” She yawned, hugely. “Shayne?”
“Yeah?”
“My eyes are closing.”
“Let them.”
So she did. “Mmmm,” she sighed at the feel of his warm fingers brushing her skin as he spent the time to work the buttons now. Beneath she still wore that yellow bra, which he left on to work the zipper of her pants. When he tugged them down, he paused.
“You’ve already seen the panties,” she murmured, eyes closed in exhaustion tinged with bliss.
“I know.” He ran a finger over the strap on her hip. His breathing had changed, and now hers did as well.
And suddenly, she wasn’t so tired. She opened her eyes to find him watching her in the dim light of the lamp by her bed. When he saw her eyes open, he stroked a strand of hair from her jaw. “Lift up,” he said, and pulled the blanket from beneath her. But before