The P.I. Who Loved Her Read online

  “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 c
olor 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.