Bait & Switch (18 page)

She snatched a miniature black beaded bag from her bed, took out a tube of wild, wet lipstick in a shocking shade of red and painted her mouth.
 

She rubbed her lips together, pursed them and winked at herself. Then she sashayed out the door, practicing her sexiest walk.

She was glad she wasn’t particularly hungry. Because if she got her way, they wouldn’t get through their appetizers.

She intended to have Mitch before she had dinner.

MITCH SETTLED INTO a chair with a view of the front of the restaurant to keep a lookout for the rest of his party and informed the hostess he’d wait to order.

A line of people who hadn’t thought ahead to make reservations packed the entrance, and waitresses and busboys bustled about the room. A young boy at the next table put two straws in his nostrils and bucked his teeth, making his baby sister laugh so hard she spewed juice onto their mother.

Mitch grinned. Choosing this crowded, family-style restaurant had been a stroke of genius. So had telling Peyton he needed to meet her in Mount Pleasant.

He’d never thought of himself as weak-willed, but his determination not to make love to Peyton was growing more feeble by the moment. It would have died altogether when she offered herself to him on the Charleston Battery if the sea spray hadn’t shocked some sense into him.

Men of honor didn’t sleep with their brother’s girlfriends.

Now that he’d determined Gaston Gibbs was running a bookmaking operation, finding the evidence to convict him was only a matter of time. Until then, he had a plan that would preserve not only his honor but Cary’s relationship with Peyton.

He ignored the sharp stab of jealousy that impaled him when he thought of Cary and Peyton together and resolved to carry out his plan.

In involved making sure he and Peyton were never alone together. Just as they hadn’t been on their separate drives over the Cooper River Bridge to Mount Pleasant. Just as they wouldn’t be in this noisy, crowded restaurant.

The plan was beyond brilliant. Mitch could make sure Peyton knew he found her attractive while having a built-in reason not to act on that attraction.

A cop like him knew that making love in public places was taboo although, with Peyton, even indecent exposure sounded tempting.

Not that he’d give in to temptation. No, siree. He wouldn’t. . .

A va-va-va-voom woman in a black mini dress that molded to her skin like modeling clay approached the hostess’s stand, abruptly stopping his mental pep talk.

Because it wasn’t just any va-va-va-voom woman. It was Peyton.

The hostess indicated his table and Peyton turned her blonde head. Normally, Mitch would have raised a hand in greeting. His hormones were zinging so powerfully about his body he seemed to have temporarily lost motor control.

Peyton got a mischievous smile on her lips, lowered her eyelids to half mast and walked slowly toward him. The slow walking was probably a necessity. Her dress was so tight he was pretty sure it would have ripped had she taken a long step.

Her deliberate, unhurried pace gave him far too much time to feast his eyes on her. He’d laid awake nights envisioning what she’d look like naked and the fit of her hardly there dress provided a pretty good idea.

He’d never gone for the emaciated look on a woman, preferring instead soft, rounded curves like Peyton’s. Her legs were disproportionately long for her height and her breasts were, in a word, fantastic.

As she got nearer, he could make out the hard pebbles of her nipples under the clinging fabric of her dress. The restaurant wasn’t particularly cold, bringing up the possibility that he’d hardened her nipples simply by staring at her breasts.

His throat went Sierra-Nevada-desert dry at the thought. Another lower part of him sprang to attention.

“Hey, there, Mitch,” she whispered in a sensuous purr. She posed at the table for a moment before anchoring both hands on the table. When she leaned forward, he got an eyeful of beautiful breasts. “Are you sure it’s food you’re hungry for?”

Peyton watched Mitch’s eyes darken and felt a surge of female power. She was right! He wanted her, maybe even more than she’d imagined.

She’d nearly lost her nerve when she pulled up to the restaurant and realized why the owners had named it Cluckers. But in the end the sight of an illuminated clucking chicken hadn’t been enough to make her don the jacket she’d brought with her at the last moment.

She’d left it in the car so the G-rated atmosphere of the restaurant didn’t dissuade her from completing her mission and did her best Marilyn Monroe walk to Mitch’s table.

She could sense more than one pair of male eyes on her, but she refused to be cowed by embarrassment. After all, it wasn’t as though she and Mitch were staying long.

With the tip of her tongue she deliberately traced her upper lip, then her lower one.

“There’s a motel next door if you don’t want to drive all the way home,” she purred.

Peyton might have attributed the sound of a throat clearing to Mitch if his mouth weren’t hanging open. The noise came again, louder this time, and she realized it was coming from behind her.

She turned slowly and saw sideburns. Puffy gray ones reminding her of steel wool. The man exhibiting them peered at her through black horn-rimmed glasses as though he’d never seen a woman in a dress as tight as skin.

The noise came a third time, but the man with the steel-wool sideburns wasn’t making it. The throat clearer was the tiny, bird-like woman next to him. Her features were delicate and pointed, her small eyes alert and interested, her hair dyed a rich shade of gold.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Albert?” the woman asked in a voice as high as her arched eyebrows.

Sideburns opened his mouth. Peyton even thought he moved his lips, but it was Mitch’s voice she heard.
 

“This is Peyton McDowell, and my name’s Cary Mitchell, although you can call me Mitch.”

Peyton turned toward Mitch in surprise. Did he actually know these people?

“Peyton, this is Albert Newton and his wife.” Mitch paused and the eyes that had contained such heat a few moments ago appeared pained. “They’re joining us for dinner.”

Oh, my goodness. Not only did he know these people, he’d invited them to dinner!

“I go by my maiden name,” the small woman interjected. “The name’s Grace Kelley, like the princess. Only I spell Kelly with an ey instead of only a y.”

This time the throat clearing definitely came from Mitch. “Peyton,” he said, “Albert is my boss.”

His
boss?
Peyton closed her eyes in mortification but instantly realized the action wasn’t doing any good. Although she couldn’t see Mitch’s boss and his wife, they could still see her. And plenty of her, at that.

She snapped her eyes open, tugged downward on her hemline and sucked in her stomach in the hopes that the dress might look a tad less clingy. Then she called upon lessons she’d learned from the etiquette classes her mother had insisted she take.

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you, Mr. Newton, Ms. Kelley,” she said. Her smile was so fake she feared her face might crack.

“I’d prefer you call me Grace Kelley instead of Ms. Kelley,” Grace said, lifting her chin regally. “You know, like the princess.”

“Certainly, Grace,” Peyton said.

“Grace Kelley,” she corrected with asperity. “I prefer you use the whole name.”

“Of course, Grace. . . Kelley.” Peyton swept a hand to indicate the table. The sooner they got this over with, the better. “Won’t you both sit down?”

Peyton did so hurriedly, taking the seat next to Mitch and figuring the table would at least cover the lower half of her. Grace Kelley wasted no time in joining them, but her husband remained standing. The horn-rimmed glasses obscured much of his face, but Peyton thought he looked uncomfortable.

“We can dine with Mitch and Peyton another time, Grace Kelley. I think we should go.”

“Go?” Grace Kelley nearly shouted the word. “We just got here and I’m hungry.”

“I think they’d rather be alone,” Albert whispered, raising his eyebrows.

“If they’d rather be alone, they wouldn’t have invited us,” Grace Kelley turned to Peyton. “Isn’t that right, Peyton?”

Mitch had invited them but Peyton wouldn’t quibble over details when she meeting her boyfriend’s boss for the first time. She wondered how to enhance the couple’s opinion of Mitch. Rushing home to change clothes wasn’t an option.

“Absolutely.” She tried to make her smile wholesome. To show solidarity, she covered Mitch’s hand with hers. “We’ve been looking forward to this dinner all day. Haven’t we, Mitch?”

“How could that be?” Albert asked. The glare off his glasses reflected directly on her breasts. “Mitch only invited us a few hours ago, and I heard you ask him if he was sure it was food—”

Peyton didn’t let him finish. “Mitch knows how much I wanted to meet his boss.”

“You did?” Surprise tinged Mitch’s voice. Peyton and Grace Kelley looked at him, but Albert’s glasses were still pointed squarely at Peyton’s breasts. Mitch nodded decisively. “I mean, she did. Want to meet my boss.”

“I’m very supportive of him.” Peyton nodded, too. She and Mitch probably looked like a pair of those dashboard bobblehead dolls.

“And I’m very solicitous of her.” Mitch shrugged out of his well-cut gray suit jacket and draped it around her bare shoulders. “She tends to get cold in air-conditioned places.”

“I do.” Peyton nodded some more even though embarrassment had spiked her body temperature so high she was roasting. She pulled the lapels of Mitch’s suit jacket together, for once glad of his gentlemanly tendencies. “I’m as cold-blooded as a lizard.”

“But much prettier,” Mitch added.

“Then why didn’t you bring a jacket?” Albert asked.

“Oh, leave the poor girl alone, Al.” Grace Kelley swatted him with one of the menus the hostess had left on the table. “I’m sure we can come up with a more interesting subject.”

“Here we go,” Albert muttered a second before Grace Kelley touched a hand to her golden hair, fluffing it.

“Don’t you think it’s an amazing coincidence that Grace Kelly once starred in the movie
High Society
, which was a remake of
The Philadelphia Story
, and that I was born in Philadelphia?”

PEYTON TOOK MITCH’S ARM as they walked to the parking lot in the glow of the giant clucking chicken. Even though her body lightly brushed his with every step, he seemed to hold himself apart from her.

“Bye-bye.” Grace Kelley bestowed them with a rotating-wrist wave as she and Albert peeled off in another direction.

“It was very nice to meet you,” Peyton called, then addressed Mitch in a softer voice. “That was fun.”

Mitch groaned. “Go ahead. I deserve it. So get it over with.”

“Get what over with?”

“The yelling.”

She tipped her head for a better look at his face. Thanks to the illuminated chicken, she could tell he was bracing himself. “Why should I yell at you?”

He let out a short laugh. “Because I didn’t tell you I invited Albert and his wife to dinner. Because we just spent an hour and a half with a woman who’s fixated on Grace Kelly.”

“You should have told me,” Peyton said thoughtfully, “but I did have fun. If I hadn’t met Albert’s wife, I’d never know the princess got off her husband’s yacht during her honeymoon to have an audience with the pope.”

Mitch laughed. “Not exactly what I’d want to do on
my
honeymoon.”

Peyton had been wondering how to get the evening back on the sexy track, and she seized the opportunity. They’d reached her car. She turned to Mitch and looked up at him from under her lashes. “What would you do on your honeymoon?”

She felt his body stiffen, saw his jaw clench and knew she’d hit her mark. “Uh, you know,” he said.

“Maybe I don’t know,” she whispered and stroked the arm she was holding. Slowly, deliberately, she removed his suit jacket so that she was once again clad in only the barely there black dress. “Maybe I’d like you to show me.”

A parking lot, no matter that it was nearly deserted, wasn’t the ideal setting for seduction, but Peyton thought she was doing a fairly credible job. A muscle worked in the strong column of Mitch’s throat, his breathing was shallow and his voice kept cracking.

He blew out a breath. . . and lifted his watch. “Boy, it’s getting late.”

“It’s nine o’clock,” Peyton protested.

“I should be getting home. I don’t like to stay out too late when I have to work the next day.”

“You always stay out late. You’re a bartender.”

He shuffled his feet, yawned, stretched his arms. “That’s why I need to catch up on my sleep. If you give me your keys, I’ll open the car door for you.”

He was dismissing her! It didn’t make sense considering the way he’d looked at her in the restaurant and how he’d reacted to her a minute ago. She knew he wanted her. So why was he being so blasted gallant?

He had his hand out for her keys. If she surrendered them, within minutes they’d be driving off in different cars to separate locations. She couldn’t let that happen. Not when what she wanted was within grabbing distance.

She opened her small beaded bag and made a show of rummaging through it, trying to be careful not to jingle her keys.

“Oh, no,” she said with as much drama as she could muster. “My keys aren’t in here.”

“Are you sure?” He bent over to check for himself.

She closed the bag with a decided click bestowed him with a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I’m sure.”

Ten minutes later, after they’d traced and retraced all of Peyton’s steps, Mitch had to concede they weren’t going to find her keys.

She’d covered up her siren’s outfit with his jacket as they searched inside the restaurant, but now that they were in the fresh air she’d taken it off again. He quickly averted his gaze but couldn’t turn off his mind’s eye. That one was imprinted with how sexy she looked.

“I guess this means
you’re
going to take me home,” she said brightly.

Take her home? And wreck his plan? He didn’t think so. He whipped his cell phone out of his pocket. “I bet you dropped the keys inside the car. We can have a locksmith out here in no time.”