Strong and Sexy (Sky High Air #2)(48)

God. She needed therapy. “I’m here, don’t—”

Click.

“—hang up.” Damn it! She sagged to the floor, her forehead to the carpet that definitely needed vacuuming. When the phone rang again, she nearly parted ways with her heart. “Hello!”

But in her ear came another click.

Huh. That wasn’t Shayne. He would definitely not hang up. No one she knew would hang up on her, unless— Oh, boy.

Unless this wasn’t just a random annoying hang-up. Maybe it’d been from her special psychotic stalker. A little creeped out, she rushed her morning routine and left for work as soon as she got dressed, needing to get out of her apartment before her fear gripped her.

The zoo’s employee parking lot wasn’t nearly as empty as it had been the night before, but she still didn’t dawdle. Halfway across, her cell phone rang, making her jump. Shayne’s name on the ID caused some other reactions entirely. Be cool. “Hi,” she said as casually as she could with all her parts clamoring for his attention.

“Hi yourself. I just landed in sunny Las Vegas.”

“Oh.” He’d had a flight. Of course he’d had a flight. “So…you’re calling because…”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“I’m calling just because, Dani.”

That had a silly grin splitting her face. He hadn’t dumped her. They were still on for their Just Sex. Her body let out a sort of shiver.

“Anything odd going on?” he asked.

Other than her heart had tightened at just the sound of him? And her nipples too? Oh, yes, her nipples were very happy to hear from him. “Nope.”

“No more dead bodies?”

“Nope.”

“No more break-ins?”

“Nope.”

“How about hang-ups?”

She winced. “Well…”

“Tell me.”

“A few hang-ups,” she admitted. “I figured they were just a wrong number.”

He didn’t say anything, but she could practically hear him thinking. “I’m okay, Shayne.”

“Actually, you’re amazing, but that’s another story altogether. Look, just be careful, watch that sweet ass of yours. I’m fond of it.”

God, look at her. Grinning. Just sex, she reminded herself. But she couldn’t stop grinning. This was so bad. “I can do that. Have a good flight back.”

“Will do.”

“Good.” She paused, then let it out. “Because I’m really quite fond of your backside too.” Shocked at herself, she closed her cell—then laughed.

Her cell immediately vibrated with an incoming text message that had three words: “Tonight? Hot fudge.”

Oh, God. This was ridiculous, this flow of euphoria that sex caused. Too bad it couldn’t be bottled.



Dani’s day was crazy. It didn’t take her long to discover that scheduling and managing the other keepers, each with their own thoughts and agendas and temperaments, was a hell of a lot more challenging than she’d ever imagined. By that afternoon she’d listened to three grievances, broken up two fights—not between any animals but between two other keepers—and had redone the month’s employee schedule four times.

Oh, and everyone hated her.

It wasn’t until most of her staff had left for the day that she managed even a single moment to herself. It was six o’clock, time for food, her stomach proclaimed, but she couldn’t leave, not yet. So she stood in front of the vending machine trying to decide between a relatively harmless bag of pretzels or the bag of cholesterol-crippling Twix bites. She slapped her pockets for change, but came up empty.

Damn, she needed her energy for the hot fudge. Just thinking it had her insides going all tight and tingly, and anticipation rushed through her. What could he do with warm fudge that they hadn’t done with the ice cream? She couldn’t even imagine the possibilities, and that made the rush of lust even worse.

Definitely she should have the pretzels and save the calories for later. “Bob,” she said when one of the night keepers rushed by her, “do you have change?”

Bob was fresh out of college on the East Coast. He was six feet five, weighed maybe one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, and dressed like he was still in middle school. This meant his jeans sagged to nearly his knees and his sweatshirt was at least a triple-extra-large on his extremely not triple-extra-large frame. A good wind could, and had, blown him over. Hell, just yesterday, one of the baby rhinos had knocked him on his ass when the thing had sneezed.

He didn’t even glance at her.

“Bob?” She touched his arm, which jerked into the air as he fell backward to his butt. Looking up at her in surprise, he pulled out the earplugs to the iPod she hadn’t seen.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Jesus.”

“Do you have any change?”

He arched a brow. “You look desperate.”

“I am.”

Reena came down the hall and handed her two quarters. “How can you be desperate? You’ve got a hot guy giving you orgasms at night, and the dream job of a lifetime.”

She said the first part of the sentence evenly enough, but the last part didn’t come out quite as much so, and guilt plagued Dani. “Reena—”