Bait & Switch (29 page)

He broke the kiss and turned in time to see two laughing culprits swimming as fast as they could to the shallow end. He took an instinctive step toward them, but his foot came out from under him on the slippery surface.

“Watch out,” he yelled to Lizabeth, who was still in his arms. He tried to regain his equilibrium, but it was too late. They fell into the pool, one after the other, with a mighty splash.

Cary came up sputtering, his body in shock at the coolness of the pool water after the heat of the kiss. Lizabeth broke the surface an instant later. Remembering her temerity in the water, he wrapped his arms around her and set her down where the water wasn’t over her head.

“That was a good one, Cary. Don’t you think?” Bobby, the younger brother, called. “That’ll teach you for beating us at Marco Polo.”

“You little brats,” Cary yelled, his eyes sparkling. “I’ll make you pay for this.”

“Me, too,” Lizabeth called, slogging through the water as Cary took a few powerful strokes toward the two boys. Together, they mercilessly splashed the brothers until all four of them were breathless with laughter.

When they were through and the boys had retreated to their room for a snack, Cary turned to Lizabeth, amazed and pleased that she wasn’t the least bit upset about the dunking.

She smiled at him, looking more gorgeous wet than she’d ever looked in her full Leeza regalia. Everything about her was beautiful, in fact, except for the broach pinned to her shirt.

He fingered the iridescent green legs and could no longer hold back the truth. “Sorry to break this to you, but that there’s one ugly octopus.”

She laughed up at him. “Don’t you think I know that? I only told you I liked it because I was trying to be flashy.”

“Then are you going to stop wearing it?”

“Not on your life, buster. Not when the man I love gave it to me.” She tapped the Green Monster. “I’m going to wear it to Charleston.” She pressed her lips together. “If you want me to come with you, that is.”

“There’s nothing I’d like more than to have you with me.” Cary put his hands under her arms and lifted her so her body was flush against him. “But we can’t go to Charleston in these wet clothes.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her lips were so close that her breath teased his mouth. “What do you propose we do then?”

“I think we should take them off and let them dry,” he whispered. “Check-out time isn’t for a few more hours.”

“Y-e-s,” she said.

He spun her around before he lifted her into his arms and out of the pool.

Charleston could wait, he thought as he joined her on dry land. But not, his conscience added, for too long.

Mitch yanked open the door of Cary’s townhouse later the following evening to find Peyton on the doorstep, the soft breeze lifting her short blonde hair so that it created a halo effect.

“Hi,” she said, a hint of shyness in her soda-pop brown eyes. “I know you said you had to work tonight but I saw the light on and your car in the driveway and I thought you might not mind if—”

“Peyton,” Mitch interrupted, grasping her lightly by the shoulders, “Of course I don’t mind.”

She blinked in that nervous way she had when she was unsure of something. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.” He pulled her flush against his body where he tangled his hands in her hair and brought his mouth down on hers.

She smelled of sea salt and strawberry shampoo, tasted of sweetness and passion. A moment ago, his thoughts had been consumed with G. Gaston Gibbs III, but now all he could think about was Peyton. She responded to him with such unrestrained enthusiasm that his body hardened in readiness for her. It had been that way between them from the first, he thought in awe. In that moment he knew that he would never get enough of her.

“Mitch.” She turned her mouth away from his and spoke against his cheek. “The door’s still open.”

“Oh, right,” he said, coming to his senses. He drew back, gave a gallant bow and swept a hand in the direction of the house’s interior. “Won’t you come in?”

“I’d love to,” she said and came into the home. She turned back to him with a siren’s smile. “I can even stay a while.”

Mitch’s spirits sank all the way to the floor when he realized he had to refuse what his heart wanted desperately to accept. “Unfortunately, I have to leave.”

“Oh?” Her expressive mouth curved downward. “I thought maybe you weren’t going to work tonight after all. It’s past nine. Isn’t that when you usually start?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said and cleared his throat. “But I’m starting a little later tonight.”

She nodded, completely accepting his explanation, which made him feel like a heel. He wasn’t lying — exactly. He did need to work tonight, but not at Epidermis as Peyton so plainly believed.

Since he’d gotten the idea that Gibbs might be using abandoned properties as headquarters for illegal activity, Mitch and Vincent Carmichael had conducted around-the-clock surveillance that had thus far proved fruitless. Carmichael was there now, with Mitch due to relieve him in less than fifteen minutes, but it was looking more and more like those abandoned buildings truly were abandoned.

“I got finished a little early.” Peyton made a face. “Okay, I’m not being entirely honest. I snuck out when Mother’s back was turned. I can only take so much Junior Cotillion in one night.”

“You still haven’t explained what that is,” Mitch said.

Peyton held her head at a regal angle and answered him in her most proper voice. “It’s only the most important social program a young person can embark upon. Our students receive quality instruction in dance as well as the necessary social graces and customs that will serve them for a lifetime.”

She cleared her throat. When she spoke again, it was in her own voice. “That’s my mother’s stock answer, and I suppose it has some merit. But I’m not anymore cut out for Junior Cotillion now than when I was a girl.”

“Then why are you helping?”

“Mother’s the director. How can I refuse?”

“By saying no,” Mitch suggested.

“Wouldn’t work. Mother doesn’t take no for an answer once her mind’s set.” She sighed and walked a few paces from him. “There’s something I should tell you, but it can wait if you have to be at work.”

She looked so troubled that he put his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the sofa inside Cary’s living room, where he sat down beside her. “Work can wait,” he said. “Now what is it?”

Her eyes were troubled when they met his. “You know how I told you that my mother wanted me to read Uncle Vincent’s report on you but I refused?”

“Yeah?” Mitch asked carefully.
 

“Well, earlier tonight, she and my father sort of, well, ambushed me.” Her eyes dropped and she seemed to be examining the pale pink polish on her nails. “To make a long story short, I had to listen. Oh, not to everything. I did tell them I’d heard enough after about fifteen minutes.”

Mitch’s gut clenched but he did his best not to betray his anxiety. A private investigator’s report about his brother would be largely negative. Just how negative, he wasn’t sure.

“What did they tell you?” he prompted.

“Lots of things.” She was still examining her nails, making it hard to tell what she was thinking. “How you’ve never held a job for more than six months. How you got fired from your last position for sleeping with your boss’s wife. How gambling might be an even bigger weakness for you than womanizing. How you only have thirty-seven dollars in your bank account.”

Mitch was silent as he digested the information. He hadn’t known his brother’s bank balance but the rest sounded fairly accurate. How could he dispute what was essentially the truth without confessing his lies and putting Peyton in danger from Gibbs?

“If you’re waiting for me to defend myself, Peyton, I can’t,” Mitch said slowly. “But I can promise to try to be a better man.”

Finally, at long last, she did raise her eyes. But it wasn't censure he saw in them. It was. . . something softer.

“Oh, Mitch.” She took both of his hands. “I had my doubts about you when we first met, but now I know you’re a good man. It’s not the past that’s important. It’s the future.”

Her belief in him touched him so deeply that his eyes felt damp. “That kind of reasoning must not have gone over well with your parents.”

A dull red stained her cheeks. “I haven’t exactly told my parents that yet, but it is the truth.” The hands holding his suddenly began to shake, and she gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Would you get a load of that? I’m nervous.”

“What’s there to be nervous about?” Mitch asked softly.

She wet her lips, swallowed and took a breath. “It’s not every day I tell a man I love him.”

Mitch’s chest clenched. Those were the words he wanted to hear, the words that should bring him joy. But they couldn’t, not when she didn’t know his real identity. He swallowed. “Peyton, I—”

The piercing sound of the doorbell made them both jump. Peyton released his hands, bringing her own to her quivering mouth. Whatever he’d been about to say was lost, but she’d read enough in his expression to know he hadn’t been about to declare his love for her in return.

The doorbell rang again, even more insistently this time. Peyton swallowed and nodded toward the front door. “You better answer that.”

He looked about to say something else, but then he rose and walked out of the room, leaving Peyton alone. A lump formed in her throat which seemed to be clogged with pain.

What exactly did it mean when you told a man you loved him and he didn’t say it back?

“You were right! I can’t believe it but you were right!”

Peyton sat up straighter, recognizing the voice raised in excitement as belonging to her Uncle Vincent. But what would her uncle be doing here? And what had Mitch been right about?

“I was watching the building, just like you suggested, when these men pulled up in a truck and started unloading boxes.”

Peyton rose, following the sound of her uncle’s voice, stopping shy of the entranceway where he stood talking to Mitch. The overhead light illuminated his face, which was bathed with excitement underneath his fedora.

“So I called the police. I would’ve called you, too, Mitch, but the battery in my phone went dead. I didn’t want to leave and miss the excitement so I waited until the cops came and made the arrest. Do you want to know what was inside the boxes?”

He paused, probably for dramatic effect, but it was obvious he was bursting with the news. Her curiosity piqued, Peyton took another step toward the two men. Uncle Vincent didn’t notice her, but Mitch did. He put a hand on the other man’s arm.

“Vincent, maybe you shouldn’t—” he began.

“It was drugs. A designer drug called Ecstasy that produces a short high, a
flash
. Get it, Mitch. That’s why he’s nicknamed Flash Gordon. The guys unloading the boxes gave him up right away. The cops are arresting him now.”

“Arresting who now?” Peyton asked, no longer able to keep silent. “Who is Flash Gordon?”

Her uncle’s head swiveled in her direction. Surprise bathed his face. “Peyton! I didn’t know you were here.”

Mitch tried to say something, but Peyton interrupted. “Who’s Flash Gordon, Uncle Vincent?”

“G. Gaston Gibbs III. The G. stands for Gordon,” he answered, almost gleefully. “I did some checking and found out his family disowned him six months ago, about the time they moved to Hilton Head. Probably figured out he owned Epidermis. But who would have guessed a philanthropist like that would end up being a drug dealer?”

Peyton rubbed her forehead. “Do you mean to say that Gaston was using those historic properties to warehouse drugs?”

“And laundering the money from the proceeds through his strip club,” Uncle Vincent said, then jerked a thumb at Mitch. “But Mitch here had already figured that part out.”

“What’s Mitch got to do with it?” Peyton asked, staring at him. He was strangely quiet.

“Only everything,” Uncle Vincent said. “But then he is a cop.”

Peyton shook her head, at the same time wondering why Mitch wasn’t shaking his. “Mitch isn’t a cop, Uncle Vincent. He’s a recreation specialist.”

“Nah.” It was her uncle’s turn to shake his head. “He’s a cop, all right. All the way from the fine city of Atlanta.”

Confusion descended over Peyton, every bit as heavy as the water from the Charleston harbor that had doused them that night she’d asked Mitch to make love to her.

Her eyes sought Mitch’s blue ones. They were set in a serious, unsmiling face that looked. . . guilty?

“I’m sorry,” Mitch said at the same time a couple walked through the door that Uncle Vincent hadn’t bothered to close.

The woman was a pretty brunette wearing a hideous green broach but otherwise simply dressed in shades of cinnamon and chocolate. It was the tall, handsome man who snagged Peyton’s attention.

He had thick, dark hair that grew back from a high forehead, beautiful blue eyes set perhaps a fraction too deep and a nose that went a bit crooked halfway up the bridge.

With his impressive height and build, which rivaled Mitch’s, he would have captivated her even if he’d been a stranger. But how could he be a stranger when he was wearing Mitch’s face?

“Hey, Mitch.” The man’s face split into a grin as he stuck out a hand to his look-alike. Mitch took it but within seconds turned back to Peyton. The second man also turned.

Peyton looked from one to the other, dimly noting they were mirror images. The only difference she could detect was that the second man’s hair swirled to the left while Mitch’s curled to the right.

She focused on the late-comer, realizing who he was but hoping she was wrong. “Cary?”

“Hey, Peyton.” He smiled at her, then drew the attractive brunette into the circle of his arms. “I’d like everybody here to meet Lizabeth Drinkmiller, the woman I love.”

The brunette blushed prettily. Peyton couldn’t focus on her because of the nausea rising in her throat and the question pressing at her brain.

If the man who’d just come in the door was Cary Mitchell, then who had she told she loved less than ten minutes before?

“Pleased to meet you, Lizabeth,” Uncle Vincent said with old-fashioned southern hospitality. Mitch’s vocal cords didn’t seem to be working any better than Peyton’s, but that didn’t matter to her uncle, who kept on talking. “I’m Vincent Carmichael, Peyton’s uncle. Mitch’s partner, too, but that’s a recent development.”