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  need to put his hands in his pockets to keep them off her.

  Yeah. She really got to him. It was the equal mix of quick wit and trouble in her eyes. It was the sharp humor she revealed in her smile, which was so damn contagious he often found himself smiling back, with or without being in on the joke. It was how she cared so deeply about the people around her, people like Noah and Shayne, and also him.

  Especially when it was him.

  Once he’d fallen off a ladder and landed on his ass, and she’d been the first one to get to him. She’d thrown herself at him, fear in her voice, and for that moment before she’d figured out he wasn’t hurt, before she’d smacked him and yelled at him never to scare her like that again, he’d really enjoyed the feel of her curves hugging up all over him. Another time, he’d heard her on the phone telling a client about his piloting skills, bragging about how he was the best of the best, and he’d actually felt his chest puff up.

  Yeah, he really liked it when she revealed how much she cared.

  But this wasn’t about him or how she seriously screwed with his head on a daily basis. This was about work. About Sky High Air.

  He handled the majority of the flights himself. Noah specialized in personalized adventures, finding and fine-tuning them for their clients. Shayne, the people person of the group, brought in their rich clients. Together, they made the whole package, whether that meant flying a turbo prop or a jet on a moment’s notice, taking a charter flight to Santa Barbara or a business group to Alaska, it got handled efficiently, discreetly, and luxuriously.

  And it was all managed by Maddie, the best concierge on the planet. Sky High couldn’t have achieved half their success without her, and none of them ever doubted it for a minute. Glorious, hotheaded, temperamental, beautiful Maddie Stone.

  They needed her back.

  Like yesterday.

  No one could replace her, and he’d learned that the hard way. He was here to deliver that exact message. He planned to beg her, if necessary, and then get the hell back to where he belonged.

  In the air.

  He wanted her to show up for work, nose thrust higher than any of his planes, telling him to go to hell in that soft, come-fuck-me voice while stopping his world with one look from those sharp, light blue eyes. And when she smiled? Jesus. He had a rep for being damned near indomitable, and yet her smile absolutely broke him every single time.

  Untouchable . . .

  It shocked him, really. The effect she had on him. She was tough and resilient and by turns, hard as nails or soft as butter melting on hot bread, and she never, ever compromised.

  And yet there was no doubt in his mind that when she looked at him, she held back. She held back a lot, never quite letting him see the real her, except for that one time when for just a moment, he’d caught a glimpse of her entire heart and soul.

  It’d shaken him. It’d opened his eyes to her. It’d told him his gut was right—that beneath that tough-ass exterior beat the heart of a woman he could fall for. Terrifying, really. So he did his best to keep a certain distance, or at least, that had been his plan.

  Until she’d gotten shot while working in his lobby, on his goddamn watch, and then vanished from the face of the earth for six hellishly long weeks during which he’d just about lost his mind until she’d called.

  She didn’t answer the door. Of course she didn’t answer her door because that would have been easy. Stepping back, he glanced back up at the window above, but if he’d seen a flash of her a moment ago, she was gone now.

  Avoidance. He recognized the technique, just not the need for it. Maybe she’d expected them to ignore her disappearance, or if not, then she’d have thought either Shayne or Noah would have come, both of whom had a much softer, easier relationship with her.

  Well, too bad, they’d sent him. The hard-ass.

  He knocked again and waited with barely concealed impatience. He needed to get back to LA. He had flights scheduled, and the Piper needed a full work over . . .

  That’s when he heard it, a soft whisper.

  A rustling.

  Someone stood just behind the front door, possibly looking through the peephole decorated with a horseshoe. Someone, no doubt, just waiting for him to leave. “Maddie?”

  A hushed silence greeted him. A very fully loaded hushed silence.

  “Maddie, come on. Open up.”

  More of that loaded nothing, and he tried a different technique. “I have a stack of mail that came for you at Sky High. All your magazines . . .” He figured that would get her. She loved her magazines: US Weekly, People, anything pop culture, she inhaled.

  But she didn’t open the door.

  Okay, next tactic. “You should know, Shayne crashed your scheduling program all to hell. We’ve got planes coming and going, and maybe some are even getting off the tarmac without getting billed.”

  More of the nothing, but a new, even tighter tension filled it. Nothing Maddie hated more than money being wasted. In that way, they were kindred souls.

  In all other ways, they were classic opposites—oil and water, day and night—and like the Sesame Street song went, they were two things that did not go together. “Come on, Mad. Shayne and Noah are worried sick about you. Open up for me, show me you’re good to go, that you can slay me with just one of your classic glacial stares, and I’ll leave you the hell alone, I swear.”

  When she didn’t, he had to admit to the smallest flash of relief that she was at least okay enough to be pissy, that she obviously didn’t need anything from him. He could walk away. But doing so would make him a coward.

  He’d been a lot of things in his life, but never that.

  Except, apparently, where Maddie Stone was concerned.

  Hell. “Maddie?” He had one last ace in the hole. “I also brought your paycheck . . .” He pulled it out of his pocket and waved it in front of the peephole. “I know you want this. I’m not just leaving it out here, so you’re going to have to open up.”

  Utter silence.

  Well, hell. He wasn’t a bad guy or a bad boss. Sure, he had his faults, but nothing that warranted leaving him standing on the steps while she did God knew what in there. “Goddamnit, Maddie.”

  After an interminably long moment, someone fumbled with the door, and he felt his gut clench. The last time he’d seen her had been in the hospital after her surgery, when the doctor had told them all that she might never regain full use of her left shoulder and arm. She’d been stoic, gamely nodding her understanding, but Brody had had to leave the room and pound the shit out of something. He’d settled for flying hard and fast, where only he and the sky knew how he’d grieved for her.

  She pulled the door open and stood there in her doorway while his heart rolled over in his chest and exposed its soft underbelly. Her hair was blonde today, with electric-blue tips flowing past her shoulders and brushing the tops of her breasts, which were covered in a skintight, long-sleeved top of some kind that nipped in and pushed up and out, making his eyes instantly cross with lust. But the top was nothing compared to the jeans that had to have been spray-painted on. Oddly enough, she wasn’t wearing her usual myriad of earrings, or an ounce of makeup for that matter, and he immediately looked into her baby blues to see misery, pain, and anguish.

  And every self-righteous bone in his body melted away, leaving him weak as a goddamn kitten. “Maddie.”

  She blinked once, slow as an owl. Only Maddie had never been anything close to slow. As he’d noted on more than one occasion, she was the smartest, fastest, sharpest, most amazing woman he’d ever met, but his gaze had snagged on hers and held. He couldn’t look away to save his life. He’d never seen her without full makeup. Without it, she might have been sixteen, but it was the way she was looking at him, right through him, as if she’d never seen him before that drew him up short.

  Before he could say a word, she snatched the paycheck out of his fingers.

  Then she slammed the door in his face.

  And then it w