This made Brody even more tense, as did the fact that she was back to being a platinum blonde and wearing the sprayed-on jeans.
What the hell? She looked like the kick-ass Maddie he knew, but she did not sound like her, not with the uncertain tone and stance that suggested she could be bullied and intimidated.
The Maddie he knew would never give anything away, certainly not a single vulnerability, and she sure as hell never let anyone bully or intimidate her.
Never.
He was missing something, and the niggling of it rumbled through him.
“I know you won’t tell a soul,” said the man through the speaker. “Just as I know you’ll get back here. You have a job.”
“I’m . . . no longer interested.”
“Get reinterested. Fast.”
“But—”
“Okay, let me make things clearer. Get back here, or I’ll send someone for you. And you won’t like that, believe me. You know you won’t.”
At Sky High, Maddie would have cut the guy off at the knees, if not the balls, and Brody waited for her to do just that. Instead, she shuddered in fear. “No, please. Don’t.”
Okay, fuck this, he thought and strode across the room toward her.
She whirled and at the sight of him, let out a terrified little squeak that stopped him short.
“Brody?” she whispered, hand fluttering up to her throat like a damsel in distress, which confused him all the more.
“Who’s Brody?” the man on the phone demanded.
Brody slowed his steps, not liking the way she was retreating from him, backing up against the counter. He’d figured she’d slug him or do anything in her usual take-no-prisoners way. Instead she was cowering to the tile, eyes huge on his. “Brody’s my . . .”
“What?” the cell phone commanded. “He’s your what?”
“I forgot to tell you. I’m . . . married.”
Dead silence all around.
Well, except for Brody’s heart, which skidded to a stunned stop, then began a heavy, hard beat that threatened to give him heart failure.
Married?
“Yeah,” Maddie said, eyes still locked on Brody. “And he makes enough money for the both of us, so I don’t ever have to work for you again, Rick. And if you’re smart, you’ll just let me go.”
Brody was still on the married portion of that sentence. What the hell was she talking about? She dated occasionally, he knew. He hated it. But he’d always taken some comfort in the fact that when she did date, she rarely repeated a guy.
But married? That required a lot of repeating, and he would have definitely noticed that.
“You’re married,” the man on the phone said in clear disbelief.
“Yes.” Maddie’s eyes were still locked on Brody. “And Brody doesn’t like the islands, so we can’t come back. Sorry.”
Jesus. Why would she say she was married to him?
“You’re the one who’s going to be sorry if you don’t get back here to Stone Cay,” the man said, and the following click, along with the aggression and fury in the sound, echoed through the kitchen, distinctive and succinct.
Brody stared at the woman who his eyes were telling him was Maddie while his brain screamed otherwise, but then she did something even more extremely un-Maddielike.
She put the cell phone in her pocket and burst into tears.
Absolutely struck stupid by all of it, he moved as if underwater, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms.
“Maddie’s going to kill me,” she cried against his chest.
He went still as stone as her tears soaked into his shirt, then stared down at her. Maddie was going to kill Maddie?
What the hell?
But she just leaned on him and sobbed. Only Maddie had never leaned on him, not once. As far as he knew, she’d never leaned on another soul. What she also did was stand her ground, always.
Then something even more shocking happened, if that was possible. Another woman stepped into the room, the mirror image of the Maddie in his arms.
She wasn’t sobbing, nothing close, and he divided a glance between them, suddenly feeling better, a whole lot better, in fact, because he wasn’t crazy, he was simply stupid.
The other Maddie, the real Maddie, walked right up to him, and not quite certain what she intended, he drew in a breath because she had a reputation for leading with her right hook, or a hard smack upside the head.
But she ignored her “husband” entirely and simply pulled her twin out of his arms and hugged her close.
“Identical,” he murmured and shook his head. Damn, he’d been schooled, hard.
Looking over her sister’s head, Maddie met Brody’s gaze. She was au naturel in a way he’d never seen her before, her auburn hair down and loose, no makeup, somehow more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. She was also completely together, extremely so, and he wondered how the hell he’d ever mistaken her sister for her.
“Thanks for getting the physical therapist,” she said dryly.
“There is no physical therapist. You were trying to get rid of me.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Admit it.”
“Leena,” she murmured, still looking at Brody. “Wait for me upstairs?”
With a nod, Leena pulled free and left the room.
Maddie kept looking at Brody.
He looked back. Her eyes were cool, her head high. Her hair fell in an intriguing curtain of glossy, perfect silk behind her shoulders, except for one strand that brushed her creamy skin at her collarbone, and as mesmerizing as that was, it had nothing on where the ends landed—at her breasts, covered only in that sports bra. When she tossed the strands back, he saw that her nipples had hardened.
He took a careful breath. And then another. Because he had no business noticing her breasts with her nipples poking at the material, or otherwise, and to remind him of that, he looked at her bullet and surgery scar, the one that ripped at his heart. Yeah, that was a good way to put things in perspective.
“Brody.”
He lifted his gaze.
“Okay, there’s no PT waiting for a ride. But there is a package at the post office. I—we need that package. Clearly, I’m not going to get rid of you, so—”
“Damn right.”
“So maybe you could go get the package for us.”
“Sure. If you come with me.”
She sighed. “Brody—”
“You come with me. That’s the deal.”
She frowned. “I’d have thought at the word husband, you’d be running for the hills.”
That was just true enough that he really couldn’t take offense. “How about we put aside all my many faults and concentrate on you for a minute?”
“Are you sure?” she said. “Because there are so many faults to pick from that we could discuss.”
He dragged a hand over his face in frustration and decided she was still trying to distract him. Only she didn’t get it. It wasn’t going to work. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure being the husband concerns me.”
She simply turned away from him, ignoring him completely but giving him a nice view of her nearly bare back. Her spine was ramrod straight, her shoulders proud.
Yeah, there was the Maddie he knew, the take-charge, capable woman. At Sky High, she’d intimidated the hell out of him with all her elegance, sophistication, all that easy class that screamed Don’t Touch.
Nothing much had changed.
But he still wasn’t leaving.
Chapter 6
Could this day have gotten any worse? Maddie wondered as Brody followed her through the house. She passed through the laundry room, where Leena had some of her bras hanging up to dry. She ducked beneath them, but even when he ducked, Brody managed to hit a hanger. A black, lacy panty fell to the floor.
He bent and picked it up, the thing looking incredibly small and feminine in his hands.
br /> With a sound that she meant to be annoyance but might have been something else entirely, she snatched it from him, stretching to hang it back up. As she moved, she felt him at her back. She always felt him, but more today than she ever had before.
She’d missed him.
Hell of an admission.
He was eyeing the rest of the drying lingerie, not saying a word but clearly thinking plenty. “My sister’s,” she said and walked on.
He followed. Of course, he followed.
She couldn’t shake him, and she sure as hell hadn’t managed to distract him either. She was definitely losing her touch. Stopping in the front hall, she looked pointedly at the door. He set a big, warm hand on the small of her back until she turned and looked at him.
She got that she’d inadvertently triggered all of his alpha male, drag-his-knuckles-on-the-ground tendencies. It was all over his face, in the hard angles of his jaw, in the set lines of his mouth, in the way his eyes were so intense and stormy and utterly focused on her.
He knew her far better than she’d imagined. Though how that was possible, what with him always doing his damnedest to keep his distance from her at work . . .
But she’d obsess about that later.
Much later.
She had bigger issues at the moment. Life-and-death issues. Leena’s. Hers.
And now his.
Because yes, she’d heard Rick’s message loud and clear. Her Uncle Rick expected Leena back on Stone Cay, and if she didn’t go, there’d be trouble.
There’d be problems.
There’d be blood. “Brody.”
“Maddie,” he said with shocking calm. A furious calm, if she wasn’t mistaken, but still.
“I’m on leave of absence,” she reminded him, not telling him that it looked like it might be permanent. Hell, she could hardly think it, much less say it out loud. “As in, I’m not currently working for you. So what’s happening in my life is none of your business.”
“That might have been true a few minutes ago. But now we’re related.”
“Stop it.”
“No, you stop it.” Yes, definitely fury. “What the hell is this all about, Maddie? Who was that asshole on the phone?”
She wasn’t moved by much, but him standing there in that tall, muscled package, wrapped by all that raw and dangerous male beauty made her swallow hard. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Try him? That had been her greatest fantasy up until Leena had shown up and Maddie’s entire world of glass had shattered. Before that, she’d wanted to try him every which way possible, but that was going to be just a fantasy now, a remote one. She reached for the front door, but before she could open it, he placed his hand on the wood, effortlessly holding it closed above her head.
Facing the door, she eyeballed his arm, taut with strength. The fingers of his hand were spread wide. He had long fingers, scarred from all the planes he’d rebuilt. They were capable fingers, always warm, and the clincher . . . they knew how to touch. He’d held her face that time she’d kissed him, and if she closed her eyes, she could still feel them on her jaw. She’d spent a lifetime schooling herself against feeling too much, against giving away too much of herself, especially to men. But the men she’d been with didn’t make her nerves sing and her pulse jump by just looking at them.
Brody did.
“Maddie.”
“It was nice of you to visit. But as you can see, now’s not a good time.”
He lifted his hand and traced a finger over the exit wound on the back of her shoulder. “Are you feeling okay?”
She loved his touch. Way too much. “Yes.” Unfortunately, the man was a virtual mule when he wanted to be, unmovable, staunch in his opinions. On her best day, she might have gone toe-to-toe with him, no problem, using that voice of honey she’d perfected, her smile of ice, and the argumentative skills she’d honed well over the years. She was every bit as stubborn as he, and she would have won—she’d have seen to it.
But this wasn’t her best day, not by far. In fact, it was quickly gearing up to be one of her top three worst ever. “Don’t make me kick your ass out of here.”
“I think I can take you.”
With a sigh, she dropped her forehead to the door and just breathed. Not easy with well over six feet of solid, warm muscle encroaching into the personal space behind her.
And he was encroaching.
Not that her body minded. Nope, it had apparently disengaged from her brain and was making a break for freedom.
But then he did something that made it all the more difficult. He stepped even closer so that she actually felt his thighs brush the backs of hers. His chest did the same to her back, and then, oh God, and then she felt his breath on her temple.
She had to close her eyes. Don’t turn around because then you’ll be in his arms, and you just might be stupid enough to kiss him again, get lost in him . . .
He slipped an arm around her waist, hard and corded with strength. Adrenaline and something else, something much more dangerous to her well-being, washed through her veins, followed by a high tide of stark desperation.
If she pushed back against that body, she could rub all her good spots to his. No.
Yes.
Her mind continued to war with her hormones, but then he leaned in, just a little, and put his mouth to her ear. “Tell me one thing, at least.”
She swallowed hard because he even smelled good. Sort of woodsy and so very, very male. She could feel her heart racing, which was at complete odds with his, beating slow and sure and smooth. Damn it. She was supposed to be slow and sure and smooth! “What?”
“Where’s Stone Cay?”
Oh, God.
“I can look it up, but I’m going to guess . . . The Keys?”
“Bahamas. It’s a small private island in the Bahamas.”
“Okay.” He sounded relieved to be getting somewhere, but that relief would be short-lived because he wasn’t going to get any further.
Nope.
“Do you think I can’t see your fear?” he murmured, his mouth still so close to her ear that his lips brushed against her lobe when he spoke. “That I don’t know how unlike you this is?”
His lips brushed her skin again, and her entire body began to hum. “That was Leena’s fear,” she managed. God. He was too close. And he was too raw, too masculine, and far too big for the small hallway.
“But it’s you now. Right here, right now with me. Afraid.” As he spoke, his mouth moved against her, his warmth seeping into her chilled bones, and with all that hard strength up against her it was too much, making her squirm to free herself.
He merely pressed up against her, fully now, so that he couldn’t take a breath without her knowing it, and vice versa.
“Talk to me, Maddie.”
Impossible. With all that testosterone wrapped in sinew