Or at least a big oaf.

He had no idea why, but around her, he felt clumsy and off kilter. Oh, wait. He knew exactly why. She was smart and amazing and hot and funny and hot, and so far out of his league he couldn’t even see the league.

He knocked again, glancing at Maddie’s Jeep in the driveway and the car next to it, wondering if she was alone, wondering why she was here, in the mountains, miles from the nearest high-end clothing store. Maddie was a sophisticated, elegant, big city lover who considered anything less than a four-star hotel roughing it.

She wasn’t exactly roughing it, not in this big, beautiful rustic cabin, built with a rather staggering view of majestic mountains and valleys as far as the eye could see. The front yard was a homage to The Ponderosa era, with a wagon wheel on either side of the walkway and railroad ties lining the path, all of it rather beautiful really, in a very Wild West sort of way.

But this was definitely a distant world for Maddie. So what the hell was she doing out here, far from the work she loved, apparently unconcerned about earning money?

The thought was alien to him.

Give him the stability of work, and the money earned for that work, and he was good. Not worrying about the roof over his head or his next meal was pretty much all he required from life.

And flying.

Flying was a close second to eating. Flying made him whole, flying made him happy. Flying was everything.

Maddie was an enigma because she didn’t seem to need any one thing, or anyone, for that matter. Maybe that’s what made her so good at her job. She was a freak of nature who could work a keyboard, a cell phone, and a scheduling board and run Sky High Air at the same time, all without seeming to care what anyone thought.

She was his employee. His responsibility, and she drove him batshit crazy. He’d told himself it was her persona. She looked like a punk rocker superhero. Her hair could be spiky platinum one day, straight jet black with magenta streaks the next. She had several visible body piercings, and wondering about the ones not visible had kept him up on more than one long night. She wore leather and silk with equal élan, and her exotic footwear alone had given him more fantasies than he cared to admit.

He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman. Hell, more than he’d ever wanted a plane, and that was saying something.

She walked as if she’d been born the Queen of the Free World, which only further confused him because usually, he was drawn to sweet and easy. And, okay, maybe just a little bit naughty.

There was nothing sweet or easy about Maddie, and he doubted that she was only a little bit naughty. Everything about her, from her baby blues to the tip of her manicured toes, everything screamed look-but-don’t-touch, and in her presence, he was always swamped with conflicting emotions-the urge to rumple her up and the 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, gamefully 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 was his turn to blink. What in the hell had just happened? And why had she acted like she’d never seen him before? Whipping out his cell phone, he punched in Noah’s number.

“Yo,” his partner answered softly, as if he was in the middle of something. And he probably was. In the middle of doing his new wife Bailey because the two of them had become like a pair of rabbits. Normally, Brody would have at least had Shayne to commiserate the loss of bachelorhood with, but unbelievably, Shayne had also done the unthinkable and gotten himself involved, too, and now he had a fiancée.

Brody was the lone single man holdout. “There’s something wrong with Maddie,” he said.

That got Noah’s attention. “What do you mean? Her shoulder or-”

“She slammed the door in my face.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Seriously.”

“Nothing!”

A pause. Then Noah said, “You had to have done something.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sorry, you’re not my type.”

Brody pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you going to help me out here?”

“Yeah. Knock on the door. When she opens it, you smile, then cute talk her into smiling, too, so you can then haul her sweet ass back here.”

Brody shook his head. “Let me repeat. She slammed her door in my face.”

“Did you smile?”

“I was getting to that.”

“Did you bring her flowers?”

“Come on, flowers?”

“Yes, flowers!”

“No way. She wouldn’t have fallen for that.”

“Hook, line, and sinker, she would have,” Noah promised with utter conviction. “Women love that shit.”

“I had something better.”

“What’s that?”

“I told her I had her magazines and paycheck.”

Noah sighed.