Книга - The P.I. Who Loved Her

The P.I. Who Loved Her
Tori Carrington


Mitch McCoy–Private investigator. He specializes in locating people–but could never find the woman who'd loved him, then left him at the altar…Liz Braden–She's back in town, after jilting another groom. She's obviously not meant to be married…but she's sure tempted to "play house" with sexy Mitch.After one close call with matrimony, Mitch McCoy is a happily confirmed bachelor–until hi long-lost bride breezes back into town wearing another wedding dress and red shoes! Mitch might not be "in love" with Liz anymore, but he's never stopped wanting to "make love" to her. But will Liz finally give Mitch the wedding night they never had? Or will her latest groom track her down first?









“I think you’re wildly attracted to me and don’t know what to do about it?”


“Wildly attracted?” Liz raised one eyebrow. “At one time, I might have been very attracted to you, Mitch McCoy….” She paused and looked him in the eye. “But now I wouldn’t even consider…”

“Sleeping with me?”

“You already missed your opportunity there. From here on out, something like that will only happen in your dreams.”

Mitch nodded. “Yep, there too.” He shook his head. “Only, I know for sure I’m not dreaming now. Because if I were, the diner would be empty. And you wouldn’t be standing there wearing that uniform, no matter how cute you look in it.”

“Oh, and where would I be?” she countered.

He gave her a sexy grin. “For starters, you’d be stretched across this counter, with those long legs of yours…”

Liz 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….”




Dear Reader,

Ask and you shall receive. When we wrote License To Thrill, the first book in THE MAGNIFICENT MCCOY MEN miniseries, we were overwhelmed with requests for more stories about Marc and his sexy-as-sin brothers. So how could we resist?

In The P.I. Who Loved Her, restless Mitch McCoy comes face-to-face with his former fiancée, Liz Braden, on the side of a dark country road. Not only did Liz leave him at the altar seven years ago, but the wedding dress she’s wearing tells him she’s just left another poor fool in the same situation. Mitch’s dilemma: keeping his hands off the only woman he’s ever wanted—long enough to figure out what, or who, she’s running from.

We hope you enjoy watching Liz lead Mitch on a merry little dance that ends up where it should have seven years ago—in the bedroom! We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, or visit us at the web site we share with other Temptation authors at Temptationauthors.com. And be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next MAGNIFICENT MCCOY coming your way….

Here’s wishing you many happy endings,

Lori and Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington




The P.I. Who Loved Her

Tori Carrington







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


We lovingly dedicate this book to the memory of our fathers, Carl J. Schlachter and Vagelis Karayianni, two men who showed us what being a true hero is all about.

And to Kostoula Karayianni, a woman who would make any heroine envious.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue




1


“YOU KNOW, Mitch McCoy, you really need to get a life.”

Mitch downshifted as he neared the outskirts of Manchester County, Virginia, then tugged at his tie. Only the pickup’s headlights broke the inky darkness, his own voice broke the all-consuming silence. Still, he wouldn’t be surprised if Sheriff Mathison waited on the other side of the next cornfield, ready to nab him for speeding. Next to him, Goliath stared at the closed passenger window, a patch of coffee-colored fur disturbed by the air conditioner blower. The dog—a mammoth, butt-ugly husky and shepherd mix—whined and turned mournful eyes on him.

“I know what you mean, sport. I know what you mean.”

And he did know. In the past few months he’d come to know exactly what wanting an unnamed something meant. Waking up in the morning in a cold sweat, reaching for something—or someone—that wasn’t there. Speaking thoughts and ideas aloud only to discover there was no one around to hear. Living with an intangible hole in the vicinity of his chest—a hole that wasn’t going to be filled tonight by going home to an empty house.

The entire McCoy clan was still in Bedford, Maryland, celebrating his brother Marc’s marriage to Melanie Weber, even though the miserably happy couple had already left for their honeymoon cruise to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands. Marc had said something about it being romantic. Maybe it was Marc and Mel’s idea of romance. A ship would be the last place he’d find romantic. All that…water. Garish tropical-print shirts. Food-laden buffet tables. Sunshine. Sex—

Mitch’s foot slipped from the gas pedal. Where had that thought come from?

It wasn’t that he begrudged his brother his happiness. It was a miracle Marc and Mel had finally sorted everything out, despite the drastic way in which they had. It was just that, of the five McCoy siblings, clueless Marc seemed like the last person who would stand at an altar, much less be the first.

Well, he hadn’t exactly been the first. But he had been the first to actually make it to the nuptials part.

That was it—the reason he was so agitated. All this talk of weddings…of the L word…of making promises and sticking to them. It should have occurred to him when he’d had to squirm in that uncomfortable pew for an hour, forced to watch Marc and Melanie complete what he had never had. Forced to remember the day he’d been left at the altar as if it were yesterday.

But it hadn’t been yesterday. He tugged at his tie again. It was seven years ago last month Liz Braden had left the town, and him, behind.

At any rate, his…restlessness hadn’t developed overnight. No, it had been months—if not years—in the making. He’d grown listless in his role as P.I., just as years before he’d grown frustrated at the rigmarole as an FBI agent. While he still shared an office in D.C. with his two partners, Mike Schaffer and Renee Delancy, he’d passed most of his clients over to them, keeping only those to whom he felt personally obligated. Then he’d returned home to Manchester to pursue a dusty old dream—a dream he’d secretly harbored since his mother had told him about the Connor tradition of horse-breeding. He’d readily abandoned the fantasy at eighteen when he’d followed in the footsteps of every other McCoy male for the past four generations and entered the military, then later, law enforcement.

But rather than his frustration abating as a result of the recent changes in his life, it had quadrupled. The crappy thing was he knew exactly when that had happened: the night Marc had asked him about Liz Braden.

What was it his brother had asked? He couldn’t remember the exact words, but he all too clearly remembered their meaning: Had he ever regretted not going after Liz?

If only Marc knew that he had gone after her. In a sense, anyway.

Goliath whined again, louder this time. Mitch frowned at him in the darkness. “What is it, G? Do you have to water the weeds?”

The mutt lumbered to an alert position, a line of slobber dropping from the side of his meaty mouth to his elephantine front paws, indented on the edge of the seat.

Mitch glanced in the rearview mirror to find the road behind him empty. He downshifted again and flicked on his high beams, illuminating the dark stretch of Route 28 in front of him.

Aw, who was he kidding? He was the last person to be applying armchair psychology to his life. In all likelihood, his agitated state was due to something far simpler. Say, lack of sex? It had been a long time since he’d buried himself in some prime, sleek, female flesh. Too long. He told himself that right now any female would do. But he knew that wasn’t true. He simply figured that’s how most men who hadn’t had any in awhile feel.

Fifty feet ahead on the opposite side of the two-lane road, a stopped car with its yellow hazard lights flashing stood out against the otherwise black June night.

Still, someone with a great smile and a fine pair of thighs would be nice. He squinted at the woman standing next to the car. Anyone but—

Liz.

Mitch tightly hauled the steering wheel to the left to stop the truck from catapulting over the embankment and into the ditch. He cursed, his heart rate leaping. Marc and his damn questions. He’d never have thought of Liz if it wasn’t for his brother. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but he’d certainly never hallucinated seeing her before.

He was worse off than he thought.

A deep breath whistled from between his teeth as he stared at the brand-spanking-new Lexus gleaming in the twin beams of his headlights. In a town filled with pickups, a pricey automobile pulled off the side of the road at twelve-thirty in the morning was sure to raise some speculation. Goliath nudged his shoulder. Mitch ignored him as the bright beam of his headlights reflected off the woman kneeling next to the left rear tire.

His brakes quietly squealed as he stopped his truck even with the car. “Need some help, lady?”

The woman wrenched a crowbar up and down. Mitch’s gaze followed the way her sweetly shaped bottom within her white dress swayed with each movement. Hmmm….

“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’ve changed tires before. One more isn’t going to make much of a difference.”

Mitch glanced at the digital clock on his dash, then back to her tempting backside. To hell with wanting someone with a great smile. He’d settle for a grade-A bottom like this one had.

It’s a wedding dress.

He stared at the silky white material skimming the woman’s lavish curves and nearly choked. Okay, that was it. He’d had enough of weddings, and anything associated with them, to last a lifetime.

Goliath pawed his denim-clad legs. Mitch held the dog back from where he strained toward the open window.

“What’s up, G?” He hadn’t seen him this animated in years. The tinny sound of music reached his ears. It wafted from the open door of the Lexus. Country, he guessed, grimacing. He scanned the lighted interior, finding the car empty. No air freshener hanging from the mirror, no purse on the seat, no sign of a suitcase or overnight bag. He glanced over the roof toward the dark ditch he knew paralleled the road. He found no sign of a shadowy figure waiting to ambush him.

“You’re getting cynical in your old age,” he muttered, then said to her, “Suit yourself.”

He shifted the truck back into gear.

He’d moved thirty feet before he stepped on the brakes again. He tapped his side-view mirror until the woman in white was back in sight. Damn. He couldn’t just leave her there. Despite his natural caution and the fact that the county crime rate was basically nil, Pops had taught him and his brothers better than to leave anyone—much less a woman—stranded on the road in the middle of the night.

Sighing, Mitch hooked a U-turn, bringing his truck back behind the Lexus and its Massachusetts license plate. Nothing to indicate it was a rental. Then again, most states had done away with marking rentals. He ground to a stop directly behind the car. He rolled up the window enough to prevent Goliath from jumping out, then climbed from the truck cab.

“Indulge me,” he said, before she could protest. He hoisted the spare from the Lexus’s trunk, then nudged her out of the way. “Neither of us is going to rest until you’re safely back on the road.” He jacked the car up a little higher, his muscles bunching under his shirt at the familiar scent of wild cherries. The music battled with the cadence of crickets in a nearby cornfield.

“Mitch?” the woman said over the sound of a twangy guitar. “Mitch McCoy, is that you?”

He stood up so quickly, he nearly tripped over the spare lying on the road behind him.

Holy… It was Liz.



WELL I’LL BE….

Liz dragged her gaze over the long, delicious length of man standing before her, from his shiny boots, to his tight, new jeans, then up to where a tie hung haphazardly around the collar of his crisp white shirt. She didn’t know who was more shocked by the midnight encounter, her or Mitch. And she was definitely sure the fine specimen before her was Mitch. Years may have passed since she’d last seen him, but she’d recognize the tantalizing man anywhere. No one could fill out a pair of jeans quite the way Mitch could.

Liz ran the tip of her tongue along her suddenly dry lips.

Amazing.

She finally looked up to his face and gave a short, impulsive laugh. No, she’d have to say he was the more surprised of the two by far. He looked like someone had just whacked him in the head with a two-by-four. She smiled. Imagine that. She had rendered Mitch McCoy speechless.

“You changed your hair color,” he finally blurted, more than said.

She tucked a dark strand behind her ear, a small part of her flattered he’d noticed—which was majorly stupid. The last thing she should have been doing was blushing at a man’s attentions. Even if that man was Mitch McCoy. “Yeah. I, um, didn’t always have more fun as a blonde.” Of course, she wasn’t having that much fun as a brunette either, if her current predicament was any indication.

His gaze flicked rather than slid over her attire, lingering in certain places and causing a curious, sizzling warmth to meander through her bloodstream. Well, that certainly hadn’t changed, had it? It had taken Richard Beschloss five dates to get to first base with her. One look from Mitch and…

Well, she didn’t think it prudent to take that thought any further.

His gaze reached her breasts. The meandering heat quickened to a scamper and she found it suddenly impossible to breathe.

His gaze quickly lifted to her face. “Liz, is that blood on your dress? What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

If anything was capable of reminding her of the mess she was currently in, that was. She glanced down at the dark stain on the bright white of her dress. Trust Mitch to immediately identify it correctly. Back in Jersey she’d gotten away with telling a gas station attendant she’d spilled chocolate syrup on herself.

She looked back at Mitch, whose gaze was riveted to her breasts.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No…no, I’m fine,” she said, feeling the ridiculous urge to laugh again. Now her ex-groom, on the other hand…. “Don’t, um, worry, it’s not mine. I’m as fit as the day I last saw you.”

Mitch reached up and tugged almost violently on his tie, drawing her gaze to the base of his neck. All at once, her mind filled with the image of the two of them standing in the front room of Gran’s house, him in his new suit, her standing in her bare feet staring at him proudly. It had been his first official day as an agent of the FBI. “Why, Mitch McCoy, you clean up real nice.” She’d laid on her best southern drawl, forgetting how torn she was between wanting him to succeed in what he’d chosen to do, and needing him to be there for her.

How long had it taken her to break him of the habit of fussing with his tie? Two months? Three? How many times had she smoothed his collar, only to be sidetracked by the clean-smelling expanse of his skin there, just under his jaw?

She dragged her gaze up to his, watching her guardedly. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Somehow I knew you’d still be in Manchester,” she said, her voice a little too breathless, a little too revealing. She reached for the crowbar and continued jacking up the car. “Small-town boy Mitch McCoy, who’ll die in the same spot he was born.”

She slid a glance over her shoulder, relieved to find him grimacing at the jibe. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged.

Oh, yeah, she’d known odds were she’d run into Mitch when she came back to Manchester. And she’d even admit to feeling a tingle of excitement at the prospect of coming face-to-face with him. The only problem was, she hadn’t counted on running into him the instant she rolled over the county line. Hadn’t expected to be reminded of how much she had missed him.

That was just one of those things about life: when it rained, it bloody well stormed.

She cleared her throat. “How’s, um, your father?” she asked, acutely aware that he was watching her backside.

He jostled her out of the way then knelt in front of the tire. “Fine. He’s fine.”

“And your brothers?”

“They’re fine, too.” He sat back on his heels. “Look, Liz, I’m really not in the mood for a game of catch-up. It’s been a really long day. I’d like nothing more than to get you on your way, then go home and crawl into bed.” She watched him stiffen, then close his eyes and mutter a curse. He finished hoisting the car up and methodically removed the lug nuts from the flat. Her mind turned over all the possible reasons for his reaction, then she homed in on the most likely: the mention of bed and her in the same sentence.

The warmth that had spread through her veins earlier edged up a degree or two. She rode out a delicious shiver, and tried to remind herself of the long list of reasons she had not to play with the fire flickering in front of her in the shape of Mitch McCoy. First and foremost, the fact that she had been minutes away from marrying another man, oh, not twelve hours ago.

Still, not even that impetus was enough to stop her from wanting Mitch in much the same way she’d always wanted him, despite the number of years that separated then from now.

He glanced at her over a broad shoulder. “So what brings you back to Manchester, Liz? Last I heard, you were in Chicago.”

She smiled. He might not want to play catch-up when it came to himself, but it appeared she was a whole different matter. “So you kept tabs on me. I’m impressed.” She watched his frown deepen. “I do have to say I’m a little disappointed, though. I left Chicago a few years back.”

“Let me guess. You left for Massachusetts.”

“Um, actually no,” she said quietly. “There were a couple of cities in between.” She felt inexplicably uncomfortable. “But they don’t matter. Not now.”

The crowbar slipped from a lug nut and he nearly pierced the flat tire with the pointed end.

“What is it with the dress, Liz? Is your groom stashed in the trunk, or is this style one you’ve taken a liking to?”

She inwardly winced at the below-the-belt jab. “I don’t know, Mitch. Did you see anyone in the trunk when you got the tire out?”

“Damn. Stepped right into that one, didn’t I?” He continued working on the flat tire. “You never answered my question.”

She stared at him blankly.

“What are you doing back in Manchester?”

Now that was a question. What was she doing back in Manchester? It was something she’d been asking herself ever since she realized a few hours ago that was where she was heading.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was feeling a little nostalgic for the past, maybe?” She turned away from where he watched her a little too closely and drew in a deep breath of the damp, summer night air. “I’ll be on my way as soon as some things settle down in Boston.”

She hadn’t realized he’d moved until he stood right next to her. “These things that need to settle down—they don’t have anything to do with the blood on your dress, do they?”

She glanced at Mitch’s profile in the darkness. For just an instant, she remembered that her favorite pastime had once been staring at him. Tracing the outline of his nose with her finger…running her tongue along the fine ridge of his jaw….

She cleared her throat. “No. Well, not exactly anyway.” She wiped at a smudge on her long skirt then turned her best smile on him. “This stain really has you worked up, doesn’t it?”

He rubbed his long, slender fingers against his chin, making her fingers ache to do the same. “Yeah, well, you always did have this way of getting under my skin.”

“Yeah. Ditto,” she said, eyeing his mouth. His wide, generous mouth she had once kissed for hours at a stretch. Dipping her tongue in and out of its hot wetness. Sucking on his bottom lip then catching it between her teeth. “Guess some things never change, no matter how much you want them to.”

“Yeah.”

Her gaze slammed into his. What seemed like an eternity of unanswered questions and unacknowledged truths seemed to pass between them. Then Mitch drew away and moved stiffly back to the car, a line of quiet oaths filling his wake.

Liz straightened the strap of her dress and sighed. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she was doing back in Manchester. One minute she was punching Richard in the nose at the Beschloss estate, the next she was on her way to Virginia with no clothes, no resources, and every reason to think she wouldn’t have access to either for awhile. At least not until Rich regained his cool. Of course, if she’d known what was going to happen, she never would have sold her apartment and moved all her things to Rich’s place. Or rushed out with little more than her car keys and the clothes on her back, her plans not stretching beyond getting out of the house now. Good thing she always kept her driver’s license and a gas card in the car’s glove compartment or she’d never have made it out of Massachusetts. She’d also found a few dollars’ worth of change in the car, but that was it.

She had suspected there was something inherently wrong with getting engaged to a spoiled bank vice president whose family just happened to own the financial institution he worked at and where she had all her accounts. And here she thought her misgivings had to do with all that blue blood that ran through his veins.

Then there was Mitch….

She watched him lower the car and tighten the lug nuts. He got up and held out the crowbar and jack.

“Here. Since you didn’t want my help to begin with, I’m sure you won’t mind cleaning up.”

She accepted the items, then flicked a glance down the road. Mitch followed her line of vision.

“What’s the matter? You expecting company?”

She laughed her response, then abruptly stopped. Was it naive to think that Rich wouldn’t follow her?

The sound of a barking dog made her jump. Then she recognized the over-zealous, roaring bark of this particular dog. She stared at the truck behind the Lexus.

“That’s not…” She met Mitch’s exasperated gaze. “You still have Goliath?”

His silence was all the answer she needed. She thrust the jack and crowbar back at him, then lifted her skirts and hurried in the direction of the truck.

Mitch stood planted to the spot on the asphalt, clutching the tools. He felt as if someone had grabbed the edges of the invisible rug that constituted his life and given it a good yank, throwing everything into chaos. Funny, it was the same way he had always felt when around Liz Braden. Actually, it depended on the day. Years ago he’d described her as the sunlight that had chased the shadows from the dark side of his soul. Tonight, she was definitely a rug-yanker.

He watched her open the truck door as enthusiastically as if she wore jeans and a T-shirt rather than a wedding dress. The aging brown-white-and-black dappled dog leapt out. If he didn’t know better, he would think the mutt recognized the woman who had rescued him from life as a mangy farm dog. He lapped repeatedly at her face and ran around her with more energy than he’d shown for years. Remembering Goliath’s whining in the truck before he’d even spotted the disabled car, he idly wondered if the dog had known what was coming all along.

Or maybe he was as much of a sucker for a pretty face as he was.

Mitch leaned against the bed of the truck, watching the two get reacquainted, Liz murmuring endearments and roughhousing with a dog he would have thought she’d forgotten by now. Forgotten much as she had forgotten him.

“God, how old is he?” she asked.

“Twelve.” Mitch cast a glance down the dark road. What had she been looking for?

“Don’t worry,” she said, stepping beside him, a puppy-like Goliath at her heels. “I lost the car following me a couple hundred miles back.”

“Car?” Mitch jerked toward her. “What car?”

“I’m joking. Like I said, there’s nothing to worry about.” He noted the teasing look in her eyes. “What are you doing out this late, anyway?”

“I…it’s…” he started, then stopped, the irony of the situation just now hitting him. “I’m coming back from a wedding reception in Maryland.” He tugged again at his tie. “Marc got married.”

She nodded, the warm silence of the night pressing in around Mitch along with the pure scent of her. “And you?” she asked.

“Me what?”

She motioned toward his tie and dress attire. “Are you…married?”

He made a point of slowly gazing at her dress. The bloodstain was limited to the one area. No splatters, not a trace on the long, lacy skirt. “Yep. Five years. Three kids. Five cats. A goat. All complete with white picket fence.”

Her eyes narrowed. He grinned.

“I’m joking,” he said, echoing her words of moments before. Hey, two could play at this game, couldn’t they? “Nope, I’m not married. One try at the altar was enough for me.”

“Cute. Really cute, McCoy.” She laughed. “Funny, I just realized the same thing about myself this morning. About one try at the altar, that is.” Her hazel eyes twinkled in a way that made it impossible to look away.

In that moment, it was almost too easy to forget she had once run her hand lovingly down his chest only to rip his heart out. Her gaze said as much as it ever had…maybe even more. Her luscious mouth just as little.

Concentrate on the bloodstain, McCoy. The bloodstain.

“Well, I guess I’d better get back on the road,” she said. “There’s a lot I have to do before I call it a night.”

Mitch squashed the urge to grasp her wrist, to ask her exactly what she had to do, where she had been, why she had changed the color of her hair…anything to make her stay a little longer.

His reaction surprised even him.

But rather than giving in to it, he pulled in a deep breath, then let loose a sharp whistle. Goliath loped back from the long grass at the side of the road. The dog burrowed his nose into Liz’s wedding dress and whined, then bounded into the truck.

“You staying at your grandmother’s place?” he asked, thinking of the old Victorian that hunkered at the edge of town. Though Old Man Peabody looked after it, no one had lived there since Liz’s maternal grandmother had died, and Liz herself had left seven years ago for parts unknown.

“I was thinking about it.”

He hiked an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going in the wrong direction?”

She shivered visibly despite the warm air. “I…I thought I’d take a look around town and see what’s changed first. You know, this being my first time back in so long.”

He nodded as if the idea made perfect sense. It made none. What was she hoping to see at twelve-thirty in the morning? He looked back down the road. “Well, I probably won’t be crossing paths with you again before you leave. Have a nice visit, won’t you?”

Tucking her wayward white skirt around her legs, she climbed into the Lexus. He closed the door for her, but not before he caught a glimpse of her spike-heeled red shoes. He jammed his fingers through his hair.

“Goodbye, Mitch,” she said through the open window.

“Right, ’bye.”

He stepped back from the door to allow her to drive away. He should be getting into his truck, heading for the empty McCoy farmhouse a couple of miles away. But he stood stock-still, his gaze plastered to the rear end of the Lexus. He barely noticed the hazard lights were still flashing. His entire body pounded with lust. Lust remembered and re-ignited.

Liz was back.



LIZ MISSED the turnoff by half a car length, backed up, then pulled the Lexus onto the two ruts that served as her grandmother’s driveway. She coasted rather than pulled to a stop, then put the car in Park.

She lay back against the buttery leather headrest, surprised to find herself feeling more than a bit…well, flighty. The sensation had begun the instant she realized she couldn’t marry Richard and had climbed to dizzying proportions when she’d bumped into Mitch. If she were a believer in cosmic events, fate, she might even indulge in a little wagering that a higher being had masterminded the entire midnight meeting by guaranteeing that her tire would go flat at just the moment Mitch was passing by.

Except that she had noticed the tire was losing air somewhere back in Jersey. She had thought about changing it then, but once she’d realized where she was heading, she’d been in an all-fired hurry to get there. She’d stopped only for gas.

Still, the tire could have waited until she got to Gran’s…..

Blaming her errant thoughts on lack of sleep and the sharp change of direction her life had taken, she automatically reached for a purse that wasn’t there, then opened the car door. It wasn’t until she was halfway to the back of the house that she noticed the hazard lights were still blinking. She didn’t care. She was too busy reacquainting herself with the familiar structure in the dim beams of the headlights.

How many summers had she spent here when she was growing up? Ten? Twelve? Regardless of the number, it struck her that the old house was the singular constant in her life, a place that remained the same while the rest of her surroundings forever changed. This house and her grandmother had been an anchor in a world made topsy-turvy, first, by her mother’s perpetual migrating from city to city, apartment to apartment, then, by her own almost vagabond existence. When she was younger, Liz had always known she could handle anything as long as she could share those brief, sweet summer months with Gran. It was the place she had run to now.

Her steps slowed the nearer she drew to the back door. Unlike years before, though, Gran wouldn’t be there waiting for her, to hug her in that suffocating way that always made her smile, question her about her new haircut, or tell her those goofy stories to illuminate the reasons why she shouldn’t grow up too soon.

Boy, could she really use a wise-up talk from Gran now.

But she had lost Minerva Braden seven years ago…she had inherited all that had been hers…become engaged to Mitch, then…

“That was all a long, long time ago, Lizzie,” she said out loud, using the words she imagined her grandmother would have. “Before Mitch. Before that jerk Richard Beschloss. Before you found yourself on the road with no purse, no clothes, nowhere to go….”

Despite the dark, she knew exactly where to put her hand over the window molding to find the back-door key. She was glad Old Man Peabody hadn’t moved it during his weekly checks and maintenance of the place. She remembered asking Gran once why she bothered even locking the door if everyone knew where the key was anyway. Her grandmother had told her that if someone was that determined to get in, let them do it in a way that wouldn’t require repairs. Liz wrapped her fingers around the cool metal, then inserted the key in the lock, bombarded by memories of Gran’s practical wisdom.

Assaulted, as well, by sexy memories of Mitch McCoy.

Yes, she admitted, she’d frequently revisited memories of her first love during her time away. Memories that had seen her through some particularly lonely stretches. Memories that had grown tattered with time, but, in one midnight meeting, had grown vividly…real all over again.

Before she’d even completely closed the door, she kicked off her red shoes in the mudroom, then she started stripping out of the constraining wedding dress. She sucked in her breath and yanked down the zipper as she made her way into the kitchen and across the room to where she knew a kerosene lamp was stored in the pantry. She pulled the top of the dress down over her camisole, and freed her arms, feeling around on the second shelf as she shimmied out of the dress. Taking the lamp down, its weight and the sloshing of the kerosene making her sigh in relief, she picked up the dress and strode toward the counter where she found matches in a top drawer.

Within moments the room was aglow with warm light…enough light for her to examine just how bad the stain on the front of the wedding dress was. She bit her bottom lip. It was much worse than she thought. No wonder Mitch had asked so many questions. She couldn’t blame him for thinking she’d offed someone. It looked suspiciously as if she had.

Who’d have thought so much blood could gush out of a person’s nose?

Once on the road, she had stopped at the first gas station, then gone into the bathroom to pour some water over the dress. Given that the mirror had been little more than a scratchy piece of metal, she hadn’t been able to get a good look at the damage. What she could see now made her cringe to think what it would look like in daylight.

It was a shame really. She’d liked the dress. In fact, she’d liked the dress more than she’d liked the man she had almost married. But that revelation hadn’t come until just before the ceremony, when she realized she couldn’t marry a man she didn’t love.

I should have just run out on him like I ran out on Mitch.

She poked the tip of her finger into a loop in the intricate lace. The reason she had sought Richard out was she hadn’t wanted to do to another man what she had done to Mitch McCoy.

Foot by foot, she piled the dress up onto the counter, catching it twice when it would have slithered over the side, then picked up the lamp and went in search of something to wear.

Funny, the tricks the mind plays on a person. In her heart, Mitch was still that dreamy-eyed, strapping twenty-five-year-old. Who would have thought he would have…filled out so nicely? Her stocking feet padding against the dusty wood floor, she made her way up the stairs. His green eyes seemed somehow more intense with the slight crinkles at the corners. His hair was longer than the short cut he’d worn then, nearly brushing the tops of his shoulders in a wild way that made her remember back when they had played cowboys and Indians in Farmer Howard’s bean fields. Mitch had always played the Indian—a Mohawk more accurately, because he’d always been the exacting type—while she had taken great joy in wearing a gunbelt and squeezing off the caps trailing from the toy metal gun.

But that part hadn’t been the most fun. Oh, no, the best part was when they sat down to hammer out the details of their peace treaty, which ultimately led to playful romps on the sun-warmed ground.

She caught herself smiling…again. She hadn’t smiled this much—genuinely smiled—in what seemed like forever. She and Mitch had been a whole eight and eleven then. Not that it mattered. For some reason, they’d always fit well. Even Gran had mentioned it…years later, right after she had tanned Liz’s hide after a particularly explorative roll in Old Man Peabody’s cornfields with Mitch that left her with her shirt unbuttoned, her budding, sensitive chest exposed to the hot summer sun.

At the top of the stairs, Liz stopped and leaned against the railing. She didn’t think it odd that she was remembering all this now…and enjoying it. As far as her professional life was concerned—along with her personal life on top of that—she had just suffered one hell of a setback. If Richard froze her assets as he’d threatened, she was facing a major demotion. From top-paid business consultant to homeless person, overnight.

Talk about setbacks.

Still, she couldn’t seem to make herself care one way or another right now. Though she did need to figure out a way to get her hands on some cash at some point soon.

She stumbled toward her old bedroom—once her mother’s room, with little cabbage roses on the wallpaper and a canopy bed. She put the lamp on the side table and listlessly scavenged through the bureau drawers. She took her old pillow out, then opened the next one. The plastic covering the one item that lay at the bottom of the cavernous depths seemed to wink at her. She reached in and touched her old waitressing uniform. It seemed so very long ago when she’d worked at Bo and Ruth’s Paradise Diner.

Smiling wistfully, she stripped the cover sheet from the bare mattress. Sleep. That’s what she needed. She was too bushed to think about Rich and all the havoc he’d promised to wreak. Too exhausted to wonder about her meandering visits to the past, and her body-thrumming reaction to Mitch McCoy. Too tired to hunt for something else to wear, to take off her lingerie or to get linens from the hall closet. Tomorrow was soon enough to do all that and to try to make some kind of sense out of the mess that was her life.




2


MITCH HAD NO SOONER closed his eyes than they were wide open again. He rolled over…and nearly injured himself for life. Lying flat on his back, he groaned at his fully aroused state and tried to rid his mind of the images even now clinging to the edges of his consciousness. Provocative lips…tantalizing curves…the flick of a pink tongue. All belonging to one woman: Liz.

So much for getting any sleep.

He got up from the bed and yanked up his shade to find the sun peeking over the mist-shrouded horizon. He grimaced. Despite his exhausted state, he must have squeezed out a few hours of shut-eye, because it was morning already.

He headed for the bathroom, took a bracing, cold shower, dressed, then headed down to the kitchen. He stopped in the empty room. Where the hell was Pops?

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. A return to normalcy, maybe? A solid sign that his life hadn’t completely gone to hell in a handbasket overnight? Perhaps he wanted to tell his father Liz had returned and get some of that advice Pops had been real good at doling out lately? It occurred to him that he hadn’t heard Sean come in from Maryland last night.

He started the coffee, then headed toward the foot of the stairs. “Pops? Coffee’s on!”

He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t like his father not to be up yet. Sundays he usually beat the sun and had breakfast half fixed by the time Mitch even thought about crawling out of bed. It was the one morning they spent together by mutual, silent agreement, before Mitch headed out to tick off the next item on his list of things-to-be-done around the property and before Sean went off to…

He scratched his head, only then realizing he had no idea what his dad had been doing with his Sundays lately.

“Pops? You want eggs or pancakes for breakfast?”

“Eggs sound good.”

Mitch swung around to face his father coming in from outside. He shrugged out of his suit coat. His suit coat. It suddenly dawned on him that he hadn’t heard his dad come in last night because he never had come in.

“Hey, Mitch, I see you made it home all right.”

Mitch watched him pour a cup of coffee. “Yeah, good thing one of us did.”

Sean took a long sip, his face a little too…cheerful for Mitch’s liking. “Yeah” was all he said, then grinned.

Mitch grimaced.

Okay, chances were that his dad had had one too many at Marc and Mel’s wedding reception and had opted for a motel room rather than making the long ride home. Or…

He groaned. Or else Pops’s sex life was a whole helluva lot more active than his.

He rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t remember a time when he could link the words “Pops” and “sex” together. He wasn’t sure how he felt about his ability to do so now. From what he remembered, and what others had to say in the small, everybody-knows-everybody-else’s-business town, Pops had been blown away by his wife’s unexpected death. While it didn’t completely excuse some of the rougher periods Mitch and his brothers had gone through without a cohesive parental presence in their lives, it explained a lot. And, as Connor sometimes reminded them, Pops didn’t drink and chase women. He merely drank.

Now the opposite was true: Pops no longer drank, he, um, chased women. Or at least one, if Mitch’s suspicions were true.

Mitch tried to stretch the kinks from his neck. He really didn’t need this heaped on top of everything else that had happened since last night.

“On second thought, I’m going to skip breakfast this morning,” Sean said. “I think I’ll go catch a quick shower instead.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said absently. “Why don’t you do that.”

Sean started to step from the room, coffee cup in hand. He halted near the door and eyed Mitch closely. Too closely. “Everything all right? Pardon the expression, but you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Mitch turned toward the counter. “The ghost of summers past, maybe,” he said to himself. His intention that morning had been to unload everything and seek out some of Pops’s no-nonsense, use-the-good-sense-God-gave-you advice. Now, he was afraid Pops would be talking as much about his own personal life as advising him on his. He didn’t think he was up to peeking at that particular insight. “I’m fine.” He cleared his throat. “By the way, this…person you stayed with last night. Anybody I know?”

Silence greeted his question. He turned back to see Pops grinning. “Uh-huh.”

“Care to share who?”

“Uh-uh.”

Mitch stood in the middle of the kitchen, watching in amazement as his father left the room, whistling as he went.

Mitch left the coffee on, snatched up his truck keys, then headed for the door. He needed to get out of the house. All this…whistling was making him feel lousier.



AH, THIS WAS more like it. Good, familiar company, a hot cup of coffee, and peace in which to drink it.

One of the many advantages of having traded his P.I. cap in for his new one as a horse breeder was his ability to structure his day however he liked. During the week it was easier to drop in at Bo and Ruth’s Paradise Diner for breakfast and lunch before and between chores than to cook something up for himself. And on those occasions when he traveled into D.C. to work on the few cases he’d held on to or to check in with Mike and Renee, he did so in the afternoon. He glanced at the date on his watch, reminding himself that he’d planned to head into the city tomorrow.

He’d completely forgotten.

Stiffening, he told himself that he was not going to think of the person behind his recent distracted state.

Mitch leaned his elbows against the counter and took a deep breath of his first cup of Joe. Even on his good days he couldn’t come close to imitating Ruth’s unique blend. And today was definitely not one of his good days.

But it was getting better.

Farther down the counter he listened with half an ear as the ever-present Darton brothers argued about whose turn it was to buy breakfast, and behind him he heard Ezra, owner of the town’s only gas station, order his usual pizza, despite that it was nine o’clock in the morning. But it was Sharon, the waitress’s, tight little uniform that got his attention as she reached for a plate of bacon and eggs on the other side of the counter. What a great pair of legs.

She’s too young for you, his conscience taunted.

She’s legal, his libido argued back.

The cash register free of customers, Ruth stepped up to fill a glass of water for him. Mitch dragged his gaze from Sharon’s legs and smiled his greeting.

“Didn’t expect to see you in this morning,” Ruth said. “You and Sean normally eat breakfast at the house on Sundays, don’t you?”

Mitch’s grin waned. “Pops had, um, other things on his agenda today.”

“I see.”

He slowly sipped at his coffee. No doubt Ruth saw a whole lot more than the rest of them did. Born and raised in Manchester, she took great pride in letting everyone know she was never interested in living anywhere else. A good twenty years Mitch’s senior, she had an uncanny ability to figure out what was going on before anyone else did—including those involved in the goings-on.

“By the way, pass on to your brother that Bo and I had a grand ol’ time at the reception last night. It’s been so long since anyone from these parts has gotten married, I’d forgotten what a wedding looked like.”

Mitch put down his cup. “I’ll tell Marc when he and Mel get back. I get the impression calling home isn’t going to be at the top of their list right now.” He waved at Bo through the open kitchen window. Bo raised a meaty hand in response, looking more like a bouncer than a cook. “For a couple that likes to close down the joint, you guys left a little early, didn’t you?”

Ruth busied herself clearing the spot next to him. “Bo was a little tired, that’s all. Things were pretty hectic around here yesterday, and what with the drive into Maryland and all…well, I guess it all caught up with him last night.”

Mitch frowned as he watched Bo flip a few pancakes then drag the back of his hand across his forehead. Bo never got tired.

Ruth sighed. “Nice girl, that Mel. And pretty, too. Who’d have thought Marc would hook someone like her?”

Sharon angled her way back behind the counter to pick up an order. Mitch watched her absently. “Yeah, who’d have thought.”

“Enjoying the view?” Ruth asked as she dragged a rag across the counter in front of him.

Mitch grinned at her. “Yeah.”

Sharon shot him a coy little smile as she squeezed out from behind the counter to take Ezra his breakfast pizza. Ruth put her rag away and leaned closer to him.

He told himself he didn’t care what she was about to say. He lifted the cup to his lips. Nothing was going to stop him from enjoying his first cup of coffee.

Ruth said, “You’ll probably enjoy the view a whole lot more tomorrow morning when Liz comes back to work.”

Mitch spewed the coffee out all over the counter. What precious little peace he’d managed to find scattered to the four winds, and his frustration level surged past the danger point.

Ruth smiled, tossed him the rag to clean up the mess, then walked pleased as could be toward the kitchen.



ADMIT IT, McCoy, you’re thinking with the wrong body part.

Mitch pulled his pickup over a low rise and slowed to a stop on the weed-choked gravel road. He stared at the hulking Victorian some fifty yards away. Not just any hulking Victorian, but Liz’s hulking Victorian. Just knowing she was in it—alone—did interesting things to his body.

He dragged in a deep breath and let loose a line of unmatched curses. Who in the hell had decided to boot him out of his familiar life and into a twisted version of Oz?

Mitch scrubbed his hand over his face. In this particular instance, he could count the bricks that led to the unfamiliar territory in which he now wandered around stupidly. First, Liz had slunk back into town in that shiny new car. Next, Pops had rambled in, looking like he’d come fresh from licking some woman’s neck, his off-tune whistling chasing Mitch straight from the house, bursting with the urge to do some of his own neck-licking. Then Ruth had spilled the beans about Liz’s returning to work at the diner. Soon thereafter he found out word was already all around about her impulsive return. Everyone at the diner was abuzz with the news. Even Josiah—who did little more than rock in his chair on the general store porch—had said something about her still being the tallest drink of water this side of the Appalachians. This when the old guy had barely said anything to anyone for years.

That had been the last straw. Who else but Liz could invade every corner of his life in less than twelve hours without even trying? So he’d abandoned his plans to have breakfast then return to the house to start laying pipe from the house to the new barn, and headed out to the old Braden place.

Mitch took his foot off the brake and steered his truck over the remainder of the potholed, deeply rutted drive. Goliath barked beside him. He looked at the little traitor. How, after living in D.C. with him for several years, could the damn dog remember this ramshackle house and the fact that Liz lived here?

Correction. Had occasionally lived here. She might be visiting, but Mitch had no illusions that Liz was staying, despite her having taken on her old job. She was merely a visitor in a place she, herself, had once described as never really having been home.

He ground the truck to a halt next to a weeping willow and shut off the engine. While Old Man Peabody had managed to keep time from touching the house itself much, the surrounding greenery had been left to run wild. Trees that had been little more than saplings now towered over the truck. The lilac bush was so overgrown, it would take a chainsaw to cut it back. The grass was nearly up to the middle of his shins….

The sight of the grass sent him reeling back to a time when he was seventeen and had decided to make a good impression on Liz’s grandmother by offering to mow the yard. A grand gesture that had turned into a disaster when he found out exactly how much grass he would have to mow. Using Minerva Braden’s old push mower, it had taken him all afternoon.

Ah, but it had been worth it. He smiled. The sun had been setting, the lights inside the house just switching on, and he’d caught a glimpse of Liz—who would have been all of a tender fourteen then and well on her way to being built like Marilyn Monroe—through her bedroom window, exploring her blossoming curves in a full-length mirror. He’d watched her skim her hands lightly over her breasts, pinching her pink nipples. Then she slid her fingers down over her still-boyish hips, then back up over her inner thighs, pausing where her soft curls sprang against the white cotton of her panties….

Sweat caused by a whole different source had soaked him, his own shallow breathing sounded foreign to his ears…much as it sounded now.

Mitch closed his eyes to banish the vivid image and to ease his acute physical reaction to it. It was only natural that being near Liz again would open a door to the past. He only wished that door would reveal as much of the bad as the good.

He couldn’t help wondering if he’d be in the sorry state he was if he and Liz had ever…well, if they had ever had sex. If they hadn’t waited for the wedding night that had never come, and if he had had what he’d been only dreaming about.

He reached for the ignition, then dropped his hand again. For the fifth time that morning, he told himself he’d be better off to lie low and wait for her inevitable departure to happen. But he couldn’t. Not when he knew the only reason she’d have returned to Manchester would be because she had to be in some sort of trouble.

And not when his testosterone level had reached an all-time high, leaving him little more than a quivering sack of lust.

He climbed out of the truck and waited for the aging Goliath to leap down. His stout body appeared to shudder as his paws met the hard earth, then he lumbered in the direction of a stand of trees on the north side of the property. Shaking his head, Mitch shut the door and stepped around the side of the house, noting the weeds pushing through the thin gravel of the drive. Near the one-car garage some twenty feet behind the house, he spotted the Lexus. A large green tarp he suspected was a tent was draped over the roof and hood. Little was visible except for half the Massachusetts license plate.

Interesting….

He might have believed she’d covered the vehicle to protect it from the elements, if it weren’t for the bloodstained wedding dress she’d been wearing when she drove the car into town. And her elusive answers to his questions.

“Hello?” he called through the screen door. He made out the tinny sound of a radio and stared through the screen at wet wading boots in the mudroom…right next to the pair of strappy red shoes she’d been wearing last night.

He called out again—no response. He grasped the tarnished handle and tugged the door open, cringing at the bone-chilling screech of the rusty hinges.

“I’m in the kitchen!”

Mitch stepped ever the boots, knowing it had to be Liz who invited him in. Who else would welcome Lord only knew who into the house? He froze in the open doorway to the roomy, sun-filled kitchen.

“Oh, it’s you. Tell me why I’m not surprised,” she said casually. She stood in front of the sink, yards of white fabric pooled around her feet. She yanked on the material, stuffing a good portion of it under running water.

Mitch tried to come up with a finely honed comeback, but doubted the words would make it past his closed throat anyway. His gaze moved of its own leisurely accord. Up from her slender bare feet and purple-painted toe nails, over the shapely length of her long, tanned legs to where a pair of cutoff jeans barely covered her firmly rounded bottom. He shifted until his gaze rested on the jaggedly cut edge of the Georgetown University T-shirt, an indecent scrap of cotton that came dangerously close to hiking up over her breasts. Breasts he guessed were bare given the way they swayed as she shoved the white material into the sink.

Seven years ago the outfit had been tomboyish on her almost too-slender body. Now it was downright sinful given her fuller, lusher curves.

He pushed a swallow past his dry throat and stared at her golden hair.

“You’re blond,” he said, staring at the way the sunlight made the shoulder-length straight tresses glow. The impact of her looking so much like she had before was like a blow to the stomach.

“Life as a brunette wasn’t as lucky as I thought it would be,” she said, motioning toward an empty box of hair coloring on the cluttered counter. He caught her gaze. There must have been something on his face that gave him away because she bit her bottom lip and touched a hand to her head. “What’s the matter? Did I miss a spot or something?” When she plopped her hand back in the sink, water splashed onto the threadbare front of the T-shirt. Mitch caught sight of the tightening of her nipples beneath the soft cotton, then forcibly wrenched his gaze away.

“No, it’s fine. It’s great. Couldn’t you find anything else to wear?” He plucked a travel brochure from the table and held it strategically in front of himself where his jeans had grown snug. He hadn’t gotten a hard-on so easily since… He cursed. Since he’d last seen Liz in the same outfit.

He stared at the other items on the table. More brochures, maps and travel guides littered the top, some dog-eared, others apparently untouched. He frowned and slid a map of Dallas aside, finding another pamphlet on Miami underneath.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I didn’t exactly have a suitcase with me when I rolled into town.” Liz drew his attention back to her. She turned off the water and rubbed the shining wet material together.

Oh, no you don’t, he warned himself, as his gaze yearned to watch how her breasts responded to the vigorous movement of her arms.

“It was the only thing in the house I could find that still fit,” she said between determined attacks on the dress.

Fit. She was certainly stretching the definition of that word. Then again, his own jeans had fit just fine until he came into the house.

Agitated, he rustled the brochure he held and focused his gaze on her slender hands. It suddenly struck him what she was doing.

She’s washing the bloodstain from the wedding dress.

Or at least she was trying to. Judging from the puddles of water on the countertop and around her bare feet—were her toenails really painted fluorescent purple?—she had been trying for some time with little luck.

If anything could have cooled him down, her intentions did. He put the brochure back onto the table. “What are you doing, Liz?”

She shrugged off his question as she wiped her damp forehead on her shirtsleeve. “Thought I’d do a little laundry this morning.”

He was frustrated, not only by her evasion of his question, but by the way his libido was so acutely focused on her tight little behind and the delectable curves of her flesh. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets, wincing as the coarse denim pulled tighter across certain strategic areas.

“Uh-huh.”

She looked at him then, her hazel eyes filled with amusement while her hands kept up their rapid motion. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get rid of bloodstains, would you?”

Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose. “Try sponging on some peroxide.”

Her luscious mouth curved into a smile.

“I was raised with four brothers, remember?”

She turned back to the sink, giving him full rein to do what he would with the view. “How could I forget? Your brothers hardly left us alone for a minute.”

“That’s because they were all in lust with you.” And so was I.

Her throaty laugh made him want to groan. “I can’t imagine Jake being in lust with anyone.”

“Yeah, well, you never saw the shrine he built for you in his room.” Mitch quickly reached his patience level, which was odd, because he hadn’t known he had one. He stepped forward and grabbed her arms, forcing her to face him.

“Liz, what in the hell are you doing back here? And just what…what in the hell is going on?”

The surprised shadow on her face made him want to groan all over again. Now that she had returned to her natural hair color, the electric shade of her eyes was enhanced, making it nearly impossible to look anywhere else.

Nothing about this woman was constant, smooth. Not her personality, not her actions, and certainly not her physical traits. Her nose sloped, her chin was an angular work of art with a tiny little dimple in the middle. But it was her too-wide, lavish mouth that had always done him in.

“Mitch?” she practically purred, and, if anyone could purr, Liz certainly could.

“Hmmm?” he hummed distractedly, falling into the hazel depths of her eyes.

“I hope you realize you’re going to be the one to mop up the mess you’re making.”

Mess? He hadn’t made a mess yet, but give him a couple more seconds, and—

He blinked, watching as her hands dripped water on the floor.

“I just spent the morning mopping up the basement after a pipe burst. I don’t much want to clean up the kitchen floor, too.”

He released her so fast, she nearly toppled to the floor. He remembered the wet hip boots in the mudroom.

“I hope you turned off the electricity before you went trudging through that water,” he grumbled, trying to get a handle on himself. He was supposed to be trying to convince her to get into her car and head for the road, not entertaining thoughts of getting her between the sheets.

“What electricity? Old Man Peabody kept the water on, but it’s going to take some money to get the electricity switched back on.”

Mitch glanced at a one-eyed propane burner on top of the obsolete stove, and a lantern near a cot in the corner. “So that’s why you took your old job back at the diner.”

She tilted her head and slid her gaze over him suggestively. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here, or am I going to have to guess?” She tugged on the bottom of her T-shirt, pulling it tight against her breasts in a provocative way, though she was likely preventing the scrap of material from revealing more than was decent. “Or did you just come out to hassle me?”

“It depends on your definition of hassle,” he said, not trusting the spark of mischief that compelled him to grin. “If you categorize wanting to know what you’re doing as hassling you, then we have a problem.”

“The only problem I’m having now is getting the stain out of that dress.”

Mitch stared at the sopping wet material puddled on the chipped tile floor. “That’s just it. Why would you want to get the stain out?” He eyed her. “Unless, of course, you intend to use the dress again.”

He didn’t miss her amused expression. She turned from him and hoisted the dress up onto the counter.

He stepped closer until he was nearly flush with her backside. The subtle scent of wild cherries drifted over him, inciting another uncomfortable response in the lower half of his body.

“Tell me, Liz, why is it there’s a car parked out back that costs more than some houses and you can’t afford to have your electricity turned on?”

His breath stirred her honey-blond hair. He felt satisfied at her soft sigh.

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.





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