Bait & Switch (19 page)

“No!” Her hands were on him again, darn it. Didn’t she realize he couldn’t think straight while she was touching him? The scent of a perfume that made him think of decadence enveloped him and her soft breasts pressed against his chest.

“I want to go with
you
, Mitch,” she said, those Coca-Cola eyes entreating him. “I’ll come out here tomorrow and use my spare key to unlock the car. It’ll be safe enough till then.”

“But. . .”

“Please, Mitch,” she said, and he could feel her soft breath on his mouth. Where he wanted her lips to be. Oh, brother. How was he supposed to resist this?

“Sure.” He stood perfectly motionless when she lifted her lips and pressed them to his. The kiss lasted only a moment, but it underscored what he already knew.

It would be a long drive home.

He helped Peyton into the Miata, a mean feat considering she was wearing three-inch heels and the car was slung low to the ground. Then he settled himself behind the driver’s seat, released two clips on the windshield header and lifted the top up and over their heads.

“Oh, good. You’re putting the top down,” Peyton said as he got out to finish the job. “How romantic.”

He nearly groaned. It obviously hadn’t occurred to her that he was putting down the top so the drive to Charleston over the tall spans of the Cooper River Bridge, which loomed two hundred fifty feet over the water, would be almost as effective as taking a cold shower.

“Let’s go to Sullivan’s Island,” Peyton announced when he got back into the car. “It’s such a pretty night I’d love to take a walk on the beach.”

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

“Please, Mitch,” she pleaded, leaning over the center armrest so that her attributes were on full display. She reached out to put her right hand on his left thigh. “Please.”

You can barely resist her in a car. Think how much worse it’ll be on a beach
, Mitch thought.
No. Say no.

“Okay,” he said and turned the key in the ignition.

The dark-green sedan loomed large in Mitch’s rear-view mirror on the drive to Sullivan’s Islands. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention.

His cop instincts could be working overtime, but he didn’t think so. He’d noticed the same car, or one very similar, on his way to the restaurant. He thought he’d seen it last night when he’d made a quick trip to the grocery store to stock Cary’s empty refrigerator.

“Something wrong, Mitch?” Peyton’s voice traveled on the wind whooshing through the car.

Oh, yeah. Not only had Mitch gotten himself into a heck of a predicament with his brother’s girl, he was pretty sure somebody was following them. But who?

Gaston Gibbs? He’d ordered Mitch to collect a debt from a poor sap who owed so much money Gibbs wanted him roughed up even if he coughed up the dough. Mitch had until tomorrow night to carry out the assignment. Had Gibbs put a tail on him to make sure he followed through?

“What could be wrong?” Mitch answered a second before he gave the steering wheel a sharp tug. Tires screeched on pavement as the car completed a ninety-degree left turn onto a side street.

“What are you doing? The beach isn’t this way!”

“It’s not?” Mitch said absently. In the rear-view mirror he watched the green sedan take the same turn he’d made into the residential neighborhood.

“No, it’s not,” Peyton said. As Mitch took a series of left and right turns in an effort to lose their tail, he heard her heavy sigh. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” He pulled the Miata back onto the main highway and sped toward Sullivan’s Island.

“Acting strange,” she answered.

He slanted her a smile, then monitored the rear-view mirror. It couldn’t be difficult for their tail to figure out they were heading to the islands. Even as he had the thought, he spotted the sedan pull onto the main drag and turn in the opposite direction.

The move didn’t fool him. The car had been following them. Of that, he was sure.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Peyton said after he slowed the car to a more leisurely pace. “The ability to act strange is not a positive trait.”

Thinking about his theory that Gaston Gibbs had put a tail on him would have to wait. With Peyton in the car, Mitch found he couldn’t focus on anything but her.

“Oh, it isn’t, is it? Then what do you call a woman in an expensive cocktail dress who deliberately lets sea water drench her?”

Silence greeted his question but it lasted only a few moments. “Unusual.”

“Peculiar,” he shot back.

“Unexpected.”

“Bizarre.”

“Extraordinary,” she countered.

They were still laughing at her quick answers when they reached the island and Peyton directed him to pull onto a side road. Abruptly, Mitch’s laughter stopped.

He’d strongly suspected he was making a mistake when he agreed to bring Peyton to the beach. Now he was sure of it.

The only South Carolina beaches he’d ever seen were in Myrtle Beach, and those were illuminated by the reflected light of a tourist-jammed city. Like the city, those beaches slept for only a few hours each day.

He parked the Miata alongside a row of sand dunes, conceding this was a very different kind of beach. If not for the glow of the half-moon, they wouldn’t even be able to see it.

“This is going to be fantastic.” Peyton got out of the car and onto her high heels with impressive grace. “I adore the beach at night.”

When she grabbed his hand a moment later, even that minimal contact was enough to send a warning screaming through him. But it was too late to heed it.

They took a path in the shadow of the sand dunes and stepped onto the main part of the beach. He stopped abruptly, scanning the expanse of sand and sea stretching in front of him.

“There’s no one here.” He heard the panic in his voice.

“Of course there isn’t,” Peyton said laughingly. “That’s why I like to come here.”

The truth hit him like a brick dropped from the top of a skyscraper. He was alone with his brother’s girl, and he was going to have to pay the consequences.

Peyton took off first one shoe, then the other, flinging them aside. She scampered across the beach, amazingly mobile in her tight dress, leaving Mitch to navigate the soft sand in his brother’s fancy loafers. When he felt sand pour into them, he conceded defeat and took off both his socks and shoes before rolling up the cuffs of Cary’s expensive slacks.

Ahead of him, Peyton had stopped scampering and was. . . He narrowed his eyes to get a better look in the semi-dark. Oh, Lord, she was hiking up the hem of her dress, hooking her thumbs in the top of one of her thigh-high stocking and rolling it sensuously down her leg.

By the time she finished removing the second stocking, he was having serious breathing trouble.

“Can you feel that sea breeze?” She rose both hands to the sky and did a slow pirouette. The moon bathed her in light, making her glow like an ethereal being.

She gave a low, enchanting laugh and turned toward Mitch.

“Race you to the ocean,” she said and took off for the gently breaking waves.

Earlier he’d theorized that her dress would split at the seams if she took so much as a long step, but the dress was made of sterner stuff than he’d suspected. Peyton was a graceful runner. Her long legs dug into the sand, kicking up granules behind her in an arc-shaped spray.

Mitch shouldn’t race her. He shouldn’t have let her talk him into coming to the beach. And he very definitely shouldn’t be alone with her.

He should hang back and convince himself he didn’t find a woman in a tight dress racing toward the ocean incredibly intoxicating. He should pretend her joy of life and disregard for her expensive clothes wasn’t refreshing. He should ignore the thumping of his heart and quickening of his body.

“Hurry up, slowpoke,” she called over her shoulder, barely breaking stride as the wind carried her laughter.

The laughter seemed to seep inside Mitch until he could no more deny her than he could his need to breathe in the sea air.

“Ah, darn,” he said and ran after her.

She was ankle-deep in water by the time he reached the wet spot on the beach where the water lapped, but she was no longer laughing. He slowed, his eyes locking on hers, as she reached around her back.

Before it fully registered that she was unzipping her dress, she slid it from her shoulders and down her hips, stepping delicately from it.

The breath Mitch had been about to take froze before it reached his lungs. She was wearing a black triangle of cloth where her underwear should have been and a black bra so skimpy it left most of her breasts bare. The wind tousled the blonde strands of her hair, making her look like a seductive sea nymph from Greek mythology come to life.

She balled up her dress and tossed it to him, and he was hardly aware of his hand reaching out to snag it.

“Why don’t you leave that on the beach with your clothes.” It wasn’t a question. It was an invitation.

He’d take off his suit jacket, that was all. The night was balmy, no cooler than seventy degrees, and he shouldn’t be wearing it anyway.

He shrugged out of the garment and threw it along with her dress to a dry part of the sand. Nope. Nothing wrong with a man shedding his suit jacket as long as he didn’t take off anything else. And that he wouldn’t do.
 

Neither would he make love to his brother’s girl. Heck, he wouldn’t even join her in the water.

“Hey, neighbor!” A loud, masculine voice that was much too close for comfort broke the silence. Mitch didn’t think. He reacted, striding into the ocean and moving Peyton deeper into the water. He was shielding Peyton’s body from view when the man approached them, waving jovially.

“This is the first time all week I’ve seen anyone else out here,” the man called cheerfully. Mitch couldn’t make out his features but his white hair and beard put his age in senior-citizen range.

“Yep.” Mitch figured if he kept his answers short the man would go away.

The man’s head tipped. “Hey, are you wearing a dress shirt and a tie? And. . . are those suit pants?”

“Yep.”

“But salt water is hell on clothes, young fella. Why, I once ruined my best pair of socks when I forgot to take them off. Salt nearly ate through ‘em. You better. . .” His voice trailed off and Mitch saw him reach down and pick something up off the sand. Something black. “Why, what’s that? Oh my gosh, it’s a dress.”

“It’s mine,” Peyton piped up from behind Mitch. There was a moment of sheer silence before she added. “I didn’t want to get it salty.”

“Oh my gosh,” the man sounded stunned. “There are two of you out there. Oh, my. Oh, my. I’ll just go now.”

He went, mumbling all the way.

“I think we gave him a shock.” Mitch’s body was still shielding Peyton’s, not that the old-timer was looking. He couldn’t be moving any faster had a sea monster emerged from the depths.

“He’d have gotten more of a shock if you hadn’t hidden me,” she said.

The thigh-deep water soaked his clothes but he was more aware of Peyton’s bare flesh pressed against his back.

“When did you get to be such a gentleman?” she whispered in his ear when the man was a speck in the distance. Sensual shivers started at his neck and ran down his body. “You used to try to pressure me into making love to you.”

Try? That meant the pressure hadn’t resulted in success.
Cary hadn’t made love to her
, his mind screamed.
 

“Remember how I said I’d tell you when I was ready?” she continued.

He shouldn’t turn around, but the allure of her voice was impossible to resist. He pivoted slowly until he faced her. Her eyes seemed to darken, like sinful, rich, addictive chocolate.

“I’m ready, Mitch. I want to make love to you. Tonight.”

Mitch’s heart pumped so furiously he could hear its beat in his ears. She was inviting him to live out the erotic fantasies that had been keeping him awake nights.

Thoughts of what would happen if he surrendered to his desires kept his arms at his sides. Could he live with himself if he slept with his brother’s girl?
 

“This is it, Mitch,” she said. “Tonight we either take a step toward each other or move a step back.”

If he didn’t make love to her, his brother would lose her. And so would he.

He stepped forward, knowing this moment had been inevitable since he’d first seen her on the doorstep of Cary’s home. When his lips closed on hers and he felt her soft body yield to his, all thoughts of his brother fled.
 

He had no thought to take it slowly, because he had no thought at all. He pulled her against him only to find that she was already there, pressing against him, kissing him as fervently as he was kissing her.

He didn’t have to coax her mouth open because she kissed him with open-mouthed abandon, her head slanting to give him greater access, her tongue tangling with his.

The ocean water was cool but every part of Mitch felt hot, from the heart beating so heavily against her to the erection straining against his pants. She rubbed her lower body against him and he groaned, running his hands down her back to cup her buttocks and bring her even closer.

He wanted this woman as he had wanted no other. At that moment it didn’t matter that she thought he was Cary. It didn’t matter that somebody else might be walking the beach and see them. Nothing mattered but this moment and this woman.

“Make love to me, Mitch,” Peyton said when he moved his attention from her mouth to her neck. Her head was thrown back in abandon, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze.

He put one hand behind her knee, intending to sweep her into his arms, but surprisingly she resisted. He released her at once, putting his hands on both of her shoulders and trying to read what was in her eyes.

“Not on the beach,” she whispered. “In the ocean.”

The heat flared through him again, more insistent this time. Her hands went to his belt buckle and the zipper of his slacks, although her eyes stayed on his, hot and fathomless. Within moments, she had him free of constraints. He could hardly believe his eyes when she ripped open a condom packet and stuffed the wrapper in the pocket of his slacks.