The P.I. Who Loved Her

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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