The P.I. Who Loved Her. Tori Carrington

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.

      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.