The P.I. Who Loved Her

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.