The P.I. Who Loved Her

“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….