Kitabı oku: «The P.I. Who Loved Her», sayfa 3

He reached around her and touched the satiny material of the wedding dress, purposely skimming his arm against hers. “And why are you trying so hard to wash that stain out?”

She turned in his arms, staring up at him as if she just now realized how close he was. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest and this time he sighed—or choked, more accurately. A reaction she didn’t miss if the teasing smile on her lips was anything to go by.

“What’s the matter, Mitch? Are you thinking that this time I didn’t just run out on my groom? That maybe this time I did away with him?”

He narrowed his eyes. Despite the way she trembled, she was acting too casual, too self-composed. “Well, that would certainly answer a lot of questions.” He caught a lock of her blond hair and twirled the silky strands around his finger. “The first being why you came back to Manchester.”

A SHIVER swept down Liz’s neck despite the late June sunshine that drenched the kitchen through the window above the sink. The combination of hot sunshine on her back and one hundred percent Mitch McCoy at her front was a lethal one. She pressed her rear against the sharp edge of the counter.

“I already told you why I came back.”

“No, Liz,” Mitch shook his head. “You didn’t tell me why. You said what it would take for you to leave. More specifically, that things had to settle down in Boston before you could move on.” His gaze shifted to her mouth and she had to fight not to lick her suddenly dry lips. “What I want to know is what things need to settle down and why.”

Liz felt incredibly, wickedly, exposed standing like that in front of him. Hardly a thing in her old bedroom upstairs fit. And despite her affected nonchalance when he’d commented on her apparel, the first thing she’d wanted to do when she’d spotted him in the doorway was cover herself from his searing gaze. The problem was the only other things that fit were her wedding dress and—thankfully—her old waitressing uniform.

She rode out a shiver that began at the tips of her toes and flitted all the way up to her scalp. Who would have thought that after seven years Mitch would still make her want to strip naked and run through the cornfields with him?

“Don’t worry, Mitch. I’m no longer the damsel in distress you once had to rescue at every turn. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself now.”

His green eyes darkened. “This isn’t a matter of stealing a candy bar from Obernauer’s, Liz. Or your filling Peabody’s firing-range cans with cement. Answer my question.”

Her smile was decidedly playful. “Is that why you came all the way out here? Because you think I’m in some sort of trouble?”

His expression grew teasing as his gaze raked her humming body. “I’m just trying to protect the residents of Manchester, Liz.”

“From little ol’ me?”

“Yes, from you. From you and whoever is following on your heels.”

Following on my heels. So he hadn’t forgotten what she’d said on the dark road last night. Her smile widened.

“Don’t worry. I’d never put anybody in Manchester in danger.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? For once, why don’t you tell me exactly what’s going on?”

She wriggled to free herself without touching him. An impossible task with him so near. She shifted to her right and he compensated for the move, leaning in closer. Her highly sensitive nipples brushed against the hard width of his chest a second time and she gasped, arousal heating her insides and a thrill of awareness tingling across every inch of her skin, exposed or otherwise. His hands caressed her arms and she shivered.

“I…I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she whispered, overly interested in the nearness of his mouth.

“Do what?”

“Kiss me.”

A maddening grin played on his all-too-tempting lips. “Then stop me.”

He made the inches separating them disappear, pressing the solid muscles of his thighs against her legs, the scrape of rough denim against her tender skin excitingly erotic. His mouth stopped a hairbreadth away from hers, his minty breath fanning her heated cheeks, his eyes inviting her to finish what he had begun. She swallowed hard, incapable of stopping him…incapable of stopping herself. She groaned.

Oh, how she’d missed the feel of him against her.

Thrusting her fingers into his thick brown hair, she drew him the rest of the way, crushing his lips against hers, challenging him to a duel of tongues, an exchange of pleasure she’d never felt as powerfully with anyone else. He responded with consummate flair, pulling her bottom lip into his mouth and gently biting down on it, then claiming her in a way she remembered all too well. Liz’s entire body caught fire. She restlessly, instinctively sought closer contact. A low whimper caught in her throat as the ridge of his arousal pressed provocatively against the cradle of her thighs.

Her hands were suddenly all over him. In his hair, tugging his T-shirt from his jeans, sculpting his firm backside. She couldn’t seem to touch him nearly enough. From rough denim to velvety hot skin to the thick strands of his hair, her hands sought something she couldn’t hope to define…not until his fingers found the skin over her rib cage.

She caught her breath, her mouth stilling beneath his, her eyes locking with his half-lidded ones. Touch me, she silently pleaded. Her nipples strained painfully against the thin cotton of her shirt. Her chest rose and fell as she regained her breath and dragged in precious air. Irrationally, she thought she’d die if he didn’t touch her.

His fingers slid up, gently cupping the underside of her breasts. Heat, sure and swift, swept over her in dizzying waves. Liz nearly collapsed to the floor in a puddle of shimmering need. One callused thumb moved over her right nipple. She moaned.

“Ohh,” she whispered, tugging her mouth from his, trying to catch her breath, calm the thick pulsing of her heart.

Mitch suddenly jerked back, taking his warmth with him. Liz propped her hands against her knees, filled with the sudden urge to laugh.

The picture really was quite ludicrous. Yesterday she had been about to marry another man. Now she was practically devouring Mitch.

This didn’t make any sense at all.

“Why don’t we continue this conversation another time?” she asked, dragging the back of her knuckles across her swollen lips. “I have a lot of things I need to do today, and your kissing me isn’t going to help get them done.”

His grin was decidedly devilish, despite the questioning glint in his eyes. “I didn’t kiss you, Liz. You kissed me. Remember?”

Oh, yeah, she remembered all right. And if he didn’t leave now, she was going to pin him to the table.

“Answer my question and I’ll be happy to let you get on with your list of chores.”

Liz straightened. “Well, then, I think you oughta just strip and let’s get on with it.”

He stumbled backward as if she had physically pushed him. The edge of the table stopped his progress. “What?”

“That’s the real reason you came here, isn’t it, Mitch?” There was something wonderfully delicious about the expression on his face. “You came to get what you couldn’t have seven years ago.”

3

YOU CAME to get what you couldn’t have seven years ago.

Mitch clenched his coffee cup, mulling over what Liz had said the day before. He shifted uncomfortably on the diner stool. He cursed, remembering how he’d beat a hasty retreat out of her house like a panicked roadrunner.

It was past noon on Monday. The diner was packed. His coffee was getting cold. And he should be on the road to D.C., where he’d planned to catch up on some office work and check in with a couple of clients…as well as do some more checking on the ghost of weddings past and present. Instead, he was in the diner, gaping at the broken pieces of his sorry life, and staring at the bomb in a waitress uniform that had broken it.

Leaving Liz’s house yesterday after relearning the taste of her mouth, feeling her hot, slick flesh against his, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. How much he’d have liked to have slid his fingers up under the frayed hem of her jean shorts and explored the hot, pliant flesh there. How much he had yearned to claim—as she had so slyly suggested—what had been denied him so many years ago.

But the instant she’d offered up what had once been forbidden fruit, he’d hightailed it out of there.

He’d spent the bulk of this morning alternately taking cold showers—it was a hot day, damn it—and checking with the Virginia and Massachusetts state law officials. Several calls yielded no outstanding warrants. There was absolutely nothing on her listed at the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, including info on whether or not the Lexus was stolen. Not stopping there, he contacted the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles; the plates on the Lexus were hers, as was the Lexus itself, though he found it interesting that the Boston address in the DMV’s files was no longer valid.

What bothered him was that he couldn’t verify one way or another whether or not she had skipped town before or after her wedding ceremony. An irritating clerk he had talked to at the licensing bureau refused to tell him anything that wasn’t already a part of public record and said she wasn’t his gofer. If he wanted the information, he’d have to go fish it out himself…when it was publicly posted in a week or two.

At least his next call had gone better. He’d found Liz listed as owner of Braden Consulting in the State Board of Corporations’ books.

He stared at the address and phone number to that business now and sucked in a deep breath, puffing his cheeks out as he released it.

He stuffed the number back into his pocket, telling himself he should be more concerned with all the work that had gone undone around the McCoy place, and just when, exactly, he planned to head out for D.C. He’d wished Pops had been around, but the old man had been gone when he returned from Liz’s yesterday, and Mitch had the sneaking suspicion he hadn’t made it home again last night.

Mitch sipped his cold coffee, masking the uneasiness twisting inside him like a twenty-foot length of knotted razor wire.

Down the counter from him, he tuned in Moses Darton complaining about the puny size of his Heavenly Pineapple Ribs for the third time and asking Liz if she couldn’t scare up a bigger slab. She sighed in exasperation and slid the refused plate onto the counter to go back into the kitchen.

“Your halo’s slipping, angel,” he said to her in a voice almost too low to make out in the packed diner. Hell, figuratively speaking, her halo had fallen off a long time ago.

“After yesterday, I think you passed on the chance to call me angel, Mitch.” She tugged on the hem of her white skirt to hide the thighs he’d already taken an eyeful of.

“Hmm.” He tilted his head, taking in his fill. He openly followed the line down the front of her uniform, then stared at her legs. “Maybe.”

He watched that simmering, wicked smile light her eyes before she tugged up the edge of the Manchester Journal he held.

“Read your paper, McCoy. I wouldn’t want you to miss an important news flash.”

“Funny, I was just checking for any possible news on you.”

He peered over the paper to find her running that pink tongue of hers over her lips. His gut-deep reaction almost made him groan.

What was it about this one woman? Just when he thought he had finally shaken off the baggage he’d been hauling around since she’d left and was eager to re-start his life, she popped back in and piled the overpacked trunks back up on his shoulders again. Reminded him that he had never completely cleansed her from his system.

Perhaps it was time he did.

The thought snagged in his mind and held.

He grinned. He’d been uncomfortable ever since scurrying from her grandmother’s house yesterday. Now he knew why. He should have stayed. Should have peeled those skimpy shorts down her long, long legs and taken what she’d offered. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t be sitting there wondering what would have happened if he had. Maybe he wouldn’t be sitting there wanting her more with every breath he took.

He grimaced. And maybe he’d be even worse off.

During training at Quantico, he’d learned to look at problems from all angles, and that particular angle bothered him. Having sex with Liz Braden might very well be just what he needed to rid her from his life forever. It might also be the catalyst to finding himself in the same damn boat he’d been in seven years ago.

He lifted the paper this time, hiding himself from her curious gaze.

What other alternative did he have but to finish what had been started so long ago?

And just consider the fringe benefits….

He rustled his paper. “Angel? You mind giving me a warm-up over here?”

WARM-UP?

Liz glanced at Mitch McCoy. She didn’t miss the suggestion threaded through his innocuous words, or the all-too-familiar emotions that emerged whenever she looked his way.

Taking the coffeepot from the warmer, she poured some of the hot liquid into his almost-full cup. It was all too…weird being here again, in the same role she’d played so long ago, as soon as she was old enough to apply for the waitressing job. In a town the size of Manchester, where “downtown” consisted of little more than a city block, the only choice she’d had job-wise was at the diner, since the general store was well-manned by Charles Obernauer and his wife, Hannah.

Then there was Mitch….

It wasn’t what Mitch said that got to her. It was the way he said it. Whenever he talked to her, a wicked proposition hummed through his words, sending tiny little shivers scooting everywhere.

Mitch took a long sip, then grinned. “Oh, and I could do with a piece of Paradise Pie, too.”

“Oh, you could, could you?”

“Uh-huh.”

She removed the apple pie from the counter display and turned out a healthy piece, smothering it with vanilla ice cream and sticking a candy cherub on top. She pushed the plate in front of him as his gaze slid over her tight white uniform and lingered on the hem. Tiny tingles followed his path and Liz drew in an uneven breath.

“Am I getting under your skin, Liz?” he asked. “You used to like it when I teased you.”

Her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth as he took a hefty bite of pie, then quickly to his eyes again. She quietly cleared her throat, finding him far more appealing than was safe. A little closer and she’d give him a repeat performance of what had passed between them yesterday.

Yes, he was getting under her skin, by making her want to feel him all over it.

He lifted his eyes to hers, that damnable teasing glint giving him a wholly devilish appearance. “Are you going to answer me?”

“Answer you?” She cleared her throat, trying to recall the question. Oh, yes, her skin and his getting under it. “It’s been a long time since…then.” So long she had a hard time recognizing the woman who once thought she could make a man like Mitch happy.

Her gaze riveted to a dab of vanilla ice cream at the side of his mouth. She longed to be able to lean over and lap it off.

“And the next thing would be?” he prompted.

“Next thing?”

He nodded and swallowed another bite.

I want to know why you never came after me, her heart answered.

Her breath caught and she raised her gaze to his eyes. Flames seemed to backlight the green depths as he apparently tried to gauge what she was thinking.

“Don’t you dare look at me that way,” she said.

“Look at you what way?”

Her voice was little more than a throaty rasp. “You know what way. That look that, um, says you’d rather be watching me melt instead of the ice cream in front of you.”

The right side of his well-defined mouth budged up a fraction of an inch as he licked off the ice cream. “It is what I’d rather be doing, so why shouldn’t my expression say that?”

Liz smoothed the collar of her uniform. “Because I don’t want to be your ice cream, that’s why.” Liar. She eyed his left hand slowly inching across the counter. His fingertips lightly grazed her arm in a maddening path he followed back and forth.

“What…what are you doing?”

“I’m thinking.”

She moved his hand back across the counter and planted it in his half-eaten pie. “Since when does it take fingers to think?”

“Since your explanation of why you don’t like my attention has nothing to do with your lack of attraction to me.” He watched her while he cleaned the ice cream from his hand with a napkin, then he dipped his fingers in his water glass and shook them once in her direction.

She wiped the droplets of water from her cheek, surprised they hadn’t sizzled against the heat of her skin. “Lack of attraction? Are you trying to say what I think you are?”

“What?” He picked up his fork and stabbed another piece of pie. “That you’re wildly attracted to me and don’t know what to do about it?”

“Wildly attracted?”

“Uh-huh.” His eyes challenged her.

“I, um, at one time I might have been very attracted to you, Mitch McCoy—” her voice softened “—but now I wouldn’t even consider…”

“Sleeping with me?”

Her muscles liquefied, but somehow she managed to push out, “You already missed your opportunity there. From here on out, something like that will only happen in your dreams.”

He nodded. “Yep, there, too.” He finished the last of his pie and shook his head. “Only I know for sure I’m not dreaming now. Because if I were, you wouldn’t be on the other side of the counter, and you wouldn’t be wearing that uniform, no matter how cute you look in it.”

“Oh? And where, um, would I be?”

His pupils widened, threatening to take over the green of his eyes. “For starters, you’d be stretched across this counter with those long legs of yours…”

Liz quickly took a step back, her pulse leaping. “That’s enough. I think I get the picture.”

“But darlin’, you didn’t even let me get to the part about what I was doing.”

A bolt of awareness sliced through Liz’s abdomen. No, he hadn’t told her what he’d been doing in his dream, but she could very well imagine. And the images were more than distracting, they were downright provocative—especially when combined with the confusing heat that still lingered from the day before. She cleared her throat and turned away. She’d never look at the long, narrow slip of counter the same way again.

“Look,” Ezra called out from a corner booth. “Lizzie is quiet. Looks like Mitch has struck a chord.”

“I don’t have any chords to strike,” Liz lied. “I was just thinking that Mitch’s vivid imagination is exactly why everyone calls him a dreamer.” Still, she tried to ignore the sensation similar to a quivering harp string twanging straight through her.

“Hey, Mitch,” Ezra said, “are we all included in your little…dream?”

Liz stared at him as he slowly shook his head. “Nope. Sorry, Ez, it’s just me and Lizzie in this scenario. That’s what makes it a dream.”

His gaze said a whole hell of a lot more than his words. Was he threatening her? Was he saying in a cryptic way that the next time they were alone she might not get off so easy?

This flirtatious attitude was the last thing she’d expected from him. Where were the questions? Evidence of the huge ding to his pride? After all, seven years ago she had left him standing at the altar. She wiped the counter, then stuffed the rag back into her apron pocket. He showed neither. Instead, he slanted her a few unexpected zingers that short-circuited her own emotional wiring, leaving her inexplicably responsive to his teasing.

He finished his pie then picked up the paper folded at his elbow, his grin telling her he knew he’d hit his mark.

She looked around the diner and found nothing out of the ordinary. Which was laughable because anyone else might find everything out of the ordinary. From the padded pink vinyl booths, the corny cherubs on the tabletops that swayed back and forth when the customers moved, to the townsfolk who were as peculiar as the decor, Liz had forgotten how…eccentric the town was. How familiar and reassuringly unchanged. All too easily she recalled how Gran brought her here for lunch every Sunday after church service. How the McCoy bunch had teased her when she was fourteen and had finally grown breasts. How she had screwed up every order on her first day at work, and how everyone had covertly played musical plates when they thought she wasn’t looking and had generously tipped her anyway.

She turned the pages of her order pad and tallied up the total for table one.

She was just being sentimental. Yes, that’s what it was. That’s the reason she’d succumbed to the desire to kiss Mitch in Gran’s kitchen, why his nearness and flirting had such a hot effect on her now. Certainly nothing that would get in the way of her plans to move on with her life, go somewhere where she could set up her business all over again. Plans that had nothing to do with Mitch or Manchester or the nineteen hundred and ninety-nine residents that inhabited the north-central Virginia town, no matter how reassuringly familiar they all were. Plans she fully intended to see succeed before her thirtieth birthday less than two weeks from now.

Thirty years old. She nearly groaned and wondered if she should order her headstone now.

Mid-tally, Liz halted her pencil and flipped to another page in her order book. Tearing it off, she slid the white slip under the wall of the Manchester Journal.

Mitch dropped the newspaper a few inches, gazing at her with those teasing green eyes of his.

“Not in a hurry to get rid of me, are you, angel?”

“Now, Mitch, why would you say that?” She leaned her hips against the counter and offered up a smile. “How many times do I have to ask before you stop calling me angel?”

He shook his paper as if to straighten it, though his gaze remained riveted to her face. “Ask as often as you like. I’m not going to stop. Not as long as you’re in front of me wearing that white uniform.” The grin that threatened grew into blood-heating reality.

Every inch of her roused to glorious life. “Is that your way of saying you want me to leave?”

“That’s not my way of saying anything except what I said.” He rustled the paper again.

She twisted her lips and allowed her gaze to flick slowly over his face. This is his way of getting back at me, she realized. No angry demands to know why she’d left. No attempts to get her alone for a quiet talk. Not even any mention of the time they’d been together or the scorching kiss they’d shared yesterday. No, Mitch McCoy intended to make her time here as miserable as possible. And if he could speed up the process of her leaving, it was all for the better.

The maddening thing of it was that, despite everything, she wanted to have him hosed down and brought to her tent…pronto.

“Isn’t there someplace you should be getting back to? Doesn’t the world need saving or something?” she said, reaching for his paper again. He moved the Journal out of reach.

“I didn’t know you paid that close attention to my comings and goings.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “The diner’s pretty full. We could use the spot you’re taking for someone interested in eating.” She smiled. “Anyway, I’m more interested in your goings than your comings, Mitch.”

“Funny, I’d say you’re more interested in your goings than your comings.” He stretched lazily, offering every solid part of his T-shirt-covered abdomen for inspection. Liz covertly admired the enticing wall of muscle, then turned away, a slow burn beginning in the pit of her stomach. She was wrong. More had changed about him than his unpredictability. No longer was he the corded teenager, then young man for whom she had once hungered. A few pounds of added muscle made his physique more intriguing, more enticing, and much more irresistible than it had ever been.

She pushed open the kitchen door, aware of his keen attention.

“Hey, Bo, how are the burgers frying?” She flashed a smile at the harried cook and half-owner of the diner.

“They’re…frying,” he said gruffly.

“Mind if I use the phone for a minute?”

“Naw.” He waved toward the extension on the wall near the door. “Go on ahead.”

“Thanks.”

She plucked the receiver from the old rotary phone, dialed the area code for Boston, then the number to her office. She’d called her personal assistant, Sheila, from the general store yesterday. She only hoped she’d like the answers she was going to get today.

“Hello?”

Liz wound the tangled cord around her finger. “Not even Braden Consulting anymore, huh?”

Sheila sighed heavily into the receiver. “Nope. My boss told me the business is defunct as of yesterday.” Despite her words, Liz imaged the young woman smiling. She’d promised her a severance that would equal six months pay, enough for Sheila to follow her dream of opening her own dance school. “Hi, Liz. Funny you should call this second. I just hung up with your mother.”

“Sunny?” Liz repeated, surprised. Why would her mother be calling her?

“Yeah. She seemed rushed and didn’t talk long, but said she’s been trying to contact you since the day of the wedding that never was.”

She cringed at the description. “What did you tell her?”

Sheila hesitated. “In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what to tell her. So I told her nothing.”

That meant her assistant had stuck to the story she’d given her, which was to basically claim she hadn’t talked to her and didn’t know where she was. Liz bit her bottom lip. “Did she leave a number I can call?”

“No. She said she’s unreachable now, but that she’d try back.”

Good ol’ consistent Mom. She was likely in between moves and didn’t have a phone. The cell phone Liz had given her for Christmas had been lost, never to be found again. She suspected Sunny had tossed it out the same day she got it. Too restrictive, is how she’d viewed the modern piece of technology.

“So, what do you have for me?”

Sheila paused, then said, “You want the bad news, the bad news…or the bad news?”

“Why don’t we start with the bad news?”

She heard the closing of a filing cabinet and guessed Sheila was already closing up shop. “You were right. Beschloss froze all your accounts, business and personal. And he filed assault charges against you. The cops were by this morning.”

Liz rubbed her forehead. “And the bad news?”

“You broke his nose.” There was a short burst of laughter. “He’s got this…contraption on his face that makes him look like an alien from The Next Generation.”

Liz groaned.

“Serves him right, really. I always thought he was a reptile.”

“I only wish I had listened to you.”

Another whoosh of a cabinet drawer. “Hmm…I seem to recall you couldn’t hear me over the ticking of that biological clock of yours. Something about turning thirty—”

“Call me in six years and tell me how you feel then, smartie pants.” She really was going to miss Sheila. She’d been like a little sister to her for the year she was in Boston.

“Liz? You want me to call those cops back and report Beschloss? I could probably have access to your accounts by this time tomorrow. And it might get that charge of assault dropped.” She paused. “Either that, or you could come back and straighten everything out yourself.”

“Can’t do that,” Liz said quietly. That was Rule One in Liz’s Moving On Handbook. She never returned to a place she’d left behind. Well, except for Manchester, but that didn’t count because she had a house here. In fact, yesterday she’d made arrangements to have Sheila pack up her stuff and put it all into storage, including her personal belongings when Rich finally came to his senses. Then once she was settled, Sheila was to forward it all to her new address.

Besides, going back to Boston meant speaking to her ex-fiancé, something she really didn’t want to do right now—especially since it wouldn’t change anything, and it might very well find her spending a little time in a jail cell.

No, she would wait this one out.

She sucked in her bottom lip, then sighed. “No. He’s bound to cool down in a few days, which will take care of both problems.” As much as the prospect of having Richard arrested appealed to her, he’d suffered enough. It couldn’t have been easy for him to have to explain the situation to his snooty parents and the who’s who of Boston society.

She spotted Mitch watching her through the open window that looked out over the dining area and waggled her fingers at him. “You go ahead and take what’s in the petty cash drawer and we’ll work everything out later, when things are back to normal, okay? Look, I’ve got to get back to…I’ve got to go.”

“Wait. You didn’t let me get to the last piece of bad news,” Sheila reminded her.

Liz sighed. “You mean there’s more?”

“Yeah. This guy called up this morning asking all sorts of questions about you and the business. I told him, sorry, I couldn’t tell him anything because I didn’t know a Liz Braden, and that we were closed for business, but he kept on. In fact, he got pretty agitated with me after asking the same questions twice.”

Liz perked up. “Did he give you his name?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he did. Hold on a sec….”

Liz gazed back at the man sitting at the counter.

“Here it is. It’s Mitch. Mitch McCoy.”

She laughed so loud even Bo looked up from the grill. She cleared her throat and turned toward the wall. “I see.”

“I take it you know this guy?” Sheila asked.

“You, um, could say that.” She scratched at the body of the phone with her thumbnail. “Did he leave a number where he could be reached?”

“Yes, he did. Asked that I call him if I decided I wanted to spill.”

She smiled. Sounded just like Mitch.