The P.I. Who Loved Her. Tori Carrington

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.

      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”