The P.I. Who Loved Her

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.