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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.