Strong And Sexy

Chapter 27

Dani kneeled on the floor of the maintenance closet and checked Maddie’s wound.

“Shayne,” Maddie whispered.

“He’ll be right back.”

“Oh, God, he went after her? Stupid man. Why are all men so stupid?” She struggled to get up. “So stupid.”

“Maddie, stay down. Please, stay down. You’re bleeding.”

“Shayne-”

“He said she wouldn’t hurt him.”

Maddie, eyes closed, shook her head. “She’s got a past date of Shayne’s dead in her suitcase.” Her eyes, feverish and glossed over, met Dani’s. “She’s taken a right turn out of Saneville, Dani.”

Dani stared at her. “So she’s going to hurt him.”

“Oh yeah. She’s going to hurt him. And Brody too.” Wincing in pain, she clamped a hand over her shoulder and gritted her teeth. “God.”

The sound of another gunshot split the air. Steel on steel.

“She’s going to hit her own damn precious plane,” Maddie gasped. “The idiot.”

“One of those planes is hers?”

“The Beechcraft is in the northeast corner. She treats that thing like her baby.”

Dani leapt to her feet. “I have a plan.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“A knife?”

“No.”

“Honey, then you don’t have a plan.”

“Something needs to happen to her plane to distract her.”

Maddie nodded. “I knew I liked you.”

“Good, huh?”

“Brilliant. Shit.” Maddie tried to reach up into her own skirt but gasped in pain and fell back, face pasty white. “I have a knife. Take the knife.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Dani reached up Maddie’s skirt, found her garter and a-“You really have a knife up your skirt.”

“If Michelle gets a hold of Shayne, she might-she could make him fly her to Mexico. Where she could get away.”

Dani looked down at the knife in her hands. “So I need to stop her.”

“And do not, and I repeat, do not get yourself hurt. Shayne will kill me if you do, and-” She broke off to grimace in pain.

“Maddie-”

“And…” She let out a breath. “I really like my job.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Dani slipped the knife into her pocket, then peeked under Shayne’s shirt at Maddie’s wound.

“I’m not dead yet.”

“Go.”

Right. Go. Dani cracked the door and peeked out.

Utter silence.

But then, from the far side of the hangar, came a scraping noise, and another. Good. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they were doing it far away. Heart in her throat, she slipped out of the closet and backed up against the wall, next to a stack of boxes, where she hoped like hell she was completely out of sight.

She could see the tail of Michelle’s plane now, and when she moved around the boxes and hid behind a set of portable stairs, she could also see the landing gear. The tires of the landing gear.

Slipping her hand into her pocket, she fingered the knife. If she popped the tires, the plane wouldn’t be able to take off. Felt like a good plan. She ran across the floor toward the phone-

“Ah, there you are.”

Uh-oh. Dani slowly tipped her head up. High in the rafters above her knelt Michelle, still looking as if she should be on the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, not holding a gun.

But she was.

Aimed at Dani. But then the gun shifted, and re-aimed-at a spot in the rafters across the way, at the figure of a man steadily making his way toward her.

At Shayne, who wore only his jeans, no shirt, no shoes.

No weapon.

“No,” Dani gasped. “Don’t shoot him. Please don’t shoot him.”

“Oh, I’m not going to shoot him. He’s going to fly me out of here.” Michelle sent a smile toward Shayne. “Soon as I set up the tragic scene here, of course. Shayne? Be a good boy now, and go get my baby ready to fly.” Holding the gun on a very still Shayne, she turned her attention back to Dani. “Look at that. He doesn’t want to leave you.”

“Michelle,” Shayne said very quietly.

“Do you love him?” Michelle asked Dani. “Do you love my pilot?”

Shayne pulled himself a little closer to Michelle, who suddenly whipped her head in his direction. “Don’t.”

He went still, but not Dani, who took the last step to Michelle’s “baby” and slipped her hand into her pocket for the knife.

“Goddamnit, answer me!” Michelle screamed, suddenly not looking so much Victoria’s Secret as ready for a straitjacket.

Dani stared up at Shayne. She couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she could sense his disbelief that she’d left the safety of the closet, his frustration at being held at gunpoint, helpless, his anger that there was nothing he could do to protect her.

“Do you love him?” Michelle yelled to Dani.

Anguish too. There was just enough anguish in his eyes that Dani nearly staggered back. “I do,” she whispered. She cleared her throat, her gaze never leaving Shayne’s. “I love him.” Her eyes burned, her throat tightened at the look of shock and awe on his face. “I love him very much.”

“Well.” Michelle stared down at Dani, who’d have sworn the crazy model’s eyes actually filled with tears. “Then you’re definitely going to have to be taken care of.” Her voice was thick and hoarse. “Aren’t you?”

“No-” Shayne started forward, but Michelle’s head whipped toward him, gun at his chest.

“Do not defend her. Ever. We’re going down. We’re going down and I’m going to do what I have to, and so are you. You’re going to fly me out of here.”

In the split second that Michelle’s attention was on Shayne, Dani scooted behind the landing gear tires, which she sincerely hoped would absorb any flying bullets. God, she really hoped that as she stabbed the first tire.

“You cannot make me fly you anywhere,” Shayne was saying.

Dani could hear his voice clearly far above her as she crawled on her hands and knees toward the next tire.

“Yes, Shayne, I can,” Michelle assured her. “And you know why? Because I have the gun.” But then her scream of fury bounced off the walls as she discovered Dani gone.

The gun went off then, and Dani, crawling the last few feet between the tires, actually closed her eyes. Such a girl thing to do, but blindly she stabbed out with the knife and blessedly connected with the next tire at the same time that she heard another furious scream.

“Not my baby, don’t you touch my baby!”

Then something slammed into Dani’s arm, spinning her around. Dropping the knife, she hit the cold floor. On her back now, she had this great view of the ceiling, though a funny haze that was slowly taking over her vision. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t really feel.

But she could see. And what she saw stopped her heart-Shayne, diving at Michelle. Both of them flying through the air toward the ground, hitting the wing of the plane, bouncing off it, and vanishing from her line of vision.

Oh, God.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and flashes hit her eyelids, like flipping through a yearbook of her memories. Walking into her mother’s party and running, quite literally, into Shayne. Kissing him in the closet. A flashing dimple when he grinned at her. Every time he’d ever been there for her…“Shayne.” She sat up, gasping at the pain in her arm, and found herself next to the landing gear.

All flat now.

Everything sort of spun a bit and she put her hands on the ground to try to anchor herself just as an eye-popping white light blinded her, along with the loudest clanging she’d ever heard.

Oh, God. The light. She was going into the light-

“She’s here!”

And then she was hauled up against a chest. A bare, bruised chest.

Shayne’s. Dani blinked at him. “Are you dead too?”

“No.” He rocked her in his arms. “And neither are you.”

She blinked, and things came into focus. The huge hangar door, open now, letting in the sun.

The light.

Police were everywhere, and Maddie was on a stretcher with two paramedics and Brody leaning over her. “She’s-”

“Alive too. God, Dani. When she shot you-”

“I wasn’t shot. I think I’d know if I was shot.” But it was in his eyes, so she looked down at her arm. Oops. Her sleeve was wet, dripping down her fingers onto the floor.

Blood.

There was a paramedic at her side too, and he tore her sleeve off, revealing a deep, nasty-looking bloody gash-

A bullet wound. “Uh-oh.”

“Dani?”

Yeah. That was her name. But it was the most annoying thing. Her ears were ringing, her vision going gray…

When her eyeballs rolled up in her head, Shayne knew she was checking out.

“Got her,” the paramedic said, and caught her. They wheeled her past the police, who were dealing with a screaming Michelle, who was yelling about her “precious baby.” Shayne, more viciously pissed and worried than he’d ever been in his life, wished someone would shut her the hell up. One of the officers was handling her suitcase, which Shayne now knew held Kathleen’s body.

The dead body that had haunted Dani…

Brody was watching Maddie get loaded into an ambulance, and he glanced over at Shayne, pale and terse.

“Is she-”

“Still breathing. Dani?”

“The bullet grazed her arm.”

Brody nodded, tough and stoic as ever, but there was a look in his eyes that said he was an inch from losing it.

If something had happened to Maddie-

Shayne would have to deal with that, with all of it; the guilt, the torment, the anguish.

Later.

For now, there was the living to take care of.

“I want to see her,” Dani insisted to the nurse. She sat on the cot in her ER cubicle, all stitched and bandaged, and nicely loaded on pain meds for the second time in as many days. “I need to see Maddie.”

“She’s resting.”

Okay, resting was good. Alive was good. “And she’s going to make it.”

“She’s out of surgery. She’s going to make it.”

Thank God. The only thing that could have been better than that news was having it delivered by Shayne. He’d been with her while she’d been treated, once again holding her hand, stroking the hair off her face, smiling into her eyes, but she knew his smiles now, and the one he’d given her had devastation all over it.

He blamed himself for everything.

And sure enough, afterward he’d been taken from her to be x-rayed, then treated for his own various scrapes and bruises including a broken ankle, and he hadn’t returned.

Noah had popped in to check on her, saying he’d drive her home when she was ready, just to come get him out of Maddie’s room.

But she didn’t want Noah, she wanted Shayne, damn it. “I’m okay to get up,” she insisted to her nurse, who sighed, shook her head, and stepped aside.

Dani tested her wobbly legs and locked her knees. No more passing out. She had to be strong to shake some sense into Shayne. Or shake the guilt out of him. Either way.

She found Maddie’s room two doors down from hers. Noah was sitting in a chair while Brody paced.

“She’s asleep,” he told her.

“Surgery went okay?”

The men looked at each other and her stomach sank. “What?”

“The bullet shattered her collarbone and destroyed some muscle. They don’t know how much mobility she’ll recover.”

“Oh, God,” Dani whispered.

“Come on,” Noah said gently, taking her arm. “You need to go rest.”

She let him lead her into the hallway. “I want to talk to Shayne.”

Noah sighed. “Dani-”

“You can either take me to him, or I’ll find him on my own.”

“He’s not good, Dani. He’s blaming himself.”

“I can help him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I love him.”

Noah just looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “That’s probably the one thing you could have said to convince me. Come on.” He turned her toward the outside doors, but just before they went out, he stopped her. “He’s not going to want to listen.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to try to push you away.”

“Don’t worry, I’m tougher than I look.”

Some of the worry left his gaze. “I believe you are.” He took her outside, where a dark shadow stood propping up the outside wall, arms and legs casually crossed, though there was nothing casual about the tension and violence simmering just beneath his surface. “Jesus, Noah.”

Shayne.

“She wanted to see you.”

“She should be in bed.” Noah grabbed the single crutch leaning next to him and limped forward, coming into clear view when he passed beneath the light. His face was pale, taut with tension, his eyes shadowed as he took her arm.

Noah leaned in and gave Dani a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving them alone.

“You don’t belong out here.” Shayne pulled her back inside the ER. But just before her cubicle, she put her foot down. “Wait.”

“Dani-”

Brody caught sight of them and frowned. “Christ, Shayne. Make her sit down.”

“I’m trying!”

Dani put her good hand on Shayne’s arm, which leapt beneath her fingers. The man was wound up tight. “I don’t need to sit down.”

“Dani.”

“I need you. You, Shayne.”

He closed his eyes, lifted his hands. “I can’t. I can’t do this.” He pivoted away. “I’ll get Noah.”

She stared at his back, aching for him. “Shayne.”

He stilled, but didn’t turn back to her.

“You didn’t say you loved me back.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets.

“I’d say I was sorry for blurting it out to you, but I’m not. The thing is, I’ve never said it to anyone. I’ve always kept my heart sort of locked up tight, you know?”

A low sound escaped him, and he bowed his head. “I know.”

“But then I told myself it was time to change, and then I met you, and I’d promised myself to do things different. Hence that whole closet kiss thing. I let my heart have its own way, and at first it freaked me out because of what could happen to it, but then, somehow, I put myself on the line anyway, I really let myself live, and although I pretended that it was just sex, it was more. So much more, Shayne. It was amazing, and you should know, I have no regrets.”

“Dani-”

“None. And Shayne? You shouldn’t either.”

At that, he turned to face her. “Kathleen is dead because of me. Maddie almost died-”

“But she didn’t.”

“And you-”

“Standing right here looking at you.” She smiled.

But he shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“No, it’s not. You need time to think, to grieve, to get past all of it, and you should take that time. But when you’re done, I’m still going to be here, looking at you.”

He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I nearly got you killed.”

“Nearly doesn’t really count.” She touched a cut on his cheekbone. Then leaned in and kissed it. “I might have said it because she asked, but I meant it. I love you.”

A rough sound escaped him and he slipped his arms around her, carefully pulling her in for a hug before looking into her eyes. “I love you back. Damn it. I love you so much it’s killing me.”

She felt her eyes fill. “I know.”

“You know?”

“It was in your eyes when you looked at me from the rafters.”

“No, that was sheer terror.”

“And also when Michelle pointed the gun at me.”

“Again, sheer terror.”

“Love.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He touched his forehead to hers. “That too.”

“And when you sat at my side in the ER, holding my hand when I got stitches again.”

“That was pain. You squeezed my fingers really hard.”

“Love,” she insisted.

With a sigh, he pressed his mouth to her jaw, then her lips. “Love.”

She nodded, then wobbled. Relieved when he slipped his arms around her even though he was none too steady either, she smiled up at him shakily as they propped each other up. “Aren’t we a pair.”

“Yeah. We are. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Dani.”

Her heart caught at that. “I am?”

“Oh, yeah. You are.” He flashed a hint of his dimple. “Maybe you can retract that whole just-sex thing now. Maybe you’ll even undump me.”

Dani caught a glimpse of movement to her right. Noah and Brody were in Maddie’s doorway, unabashedly listening. From behind them, in her bed, Maddie waved weakly.

Dani looked at Shayne. “Maybe we could take this someplace more…”

“Private?” Shayne nodded, and opened the first door they came to.

A closet.

He looked inside at the supply shelves and laughed. “You have got to be kidding.”

Dani pulled him in. “It’s perfect. Don’t you see? We’ve ended up where it all began.”

Looking as if he’d just won the lotto, Shayne nodded and pulled her into his arms, right where she belonged.