style="font-size:15px;"> And not when his testosterone level had reached an all-time high, leaving him little more than a quivering sack of lust.
He climbed out of the truck and waited for the aging Goliath to leap down. His stout body appeared to shudder as his paws met the hard earth, then he lumbered in the direction of a stand of trees on the north side of the property. Shaking his head, Mitch shut the door and stepped around the side of the house, noting the weeds pushing through the thin gravel of the drive. Near the one-car garage some twenty feet behind the house, he spotted the Lexus. A large green tarp he suspected was a tent was draped over the roof and hood. Little was visible except for half the Massachusetts license plate.
Interesting….
He might have believed she’d covered the vehicle to protect it from the elements, if it weren’t for the bloodstained wedding dress she’d been wearing when she drove the car into town. And her elusive answers to his questions.
“Hello?” he called through the screen door. He made out the tinny sound of a radio and stared through the screen at wet wading boots in the mudroom…right next to the pair of strappy red shoes she’d been wearing last night.
He called out again—no response. He grasped the tarnished handle and tugged the door open, cringing at the bone-chilling screech of the rusty hinges.
“I’m in the kitchen!”
Mitch stepped ever the boots, knowing it had to be Liz who invited him in. Who else would welcome Lord only knew who into the house? He froze in the open doorway to the roomy, sun-filled kitchen.
“Oh, it’s you. Tell me why I’m not surprised,” she said casually. She stood in front of the sink, yards of white fabric pooled around her feet. She yanked on the material, stuffing a good portion of it under running water.
Mitch tried to come up with a finely honed comeback, but doubted the words would make it past his closed throat anyway. His gaze moved of its own leisurely accord. Up from her slender bare feet and purple-painted toe nails, over the shapely length of her long, tanned legs to where a pair of cutoff jeans barely covered her firmly rounded bottom. He shifted until his gaze rested on the jaggedly cut edge of the Georgetown University T-shirt, an indecent scrap of cotton that came dangerously close to hiking up over her breasts. Breasts he guessed were bare given the way they swayed as she shoved the white material into the sink.
Seven years ago the outfit had been tomboyish on her almost too-slender body. Now it was downright sinful given her fuller, lusher curves.
He pushed a swallow past his dry throat and stared at her golden hair.
“You’re blond,” he said, staring at the way the sunlight made the shoulder-length straight tresses glow. The impact of her looking so much like she had before was like a blow to the stomach.
“Life as a brunette wasn’t as lucky as I thought it would be,” she said, motioning toward an empty box of hair coloring on the cluttered counter. He caught her gaze. There must have been something on his face that gave him away because she bit her bottom lip and touched a hand to her head. “What’s the matter? Did I miss a spot or something?” When she plopped her hand back in the sink, water splashed onto the threadbare front of the T-shirt. Mitch caught sight of the tightening of her nipples beneath the soft cotton, then forcibly wrenched his gaze away.
“No, it’s fine. It’s great. Couldn’t you find anything else to wear?” He plucked a travel brochure from the table and held it strategically in front of himself where his jeans had grown snug. He hadn’t gotten a hard-on so easily since… He cursed. Since he’d last seen Liz in the same outfit.
He stared at the other items on the table. More brochures, maps and travel guides littered the top, some dog-eared, others apparently untouched. He frowned and slid a map of Dallas aside, finding another pamphlet on Miami underneath.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I didn’t exactly have a suitcase with me when I rolled into town.” Liz drew his attention back to her. She turned off the water and rubbed the shining wet material together.
Oh, no you don’t, he warned himself, as his gaze yearned to watch how her breasts responded to the vigorous movement of her arms.
“It was the only thing in the house I could find that still fit,” she said between determined attacks on the dress.
Fit. She was certainly stretching the definition of that word. Then again, his own jeans had fit just fine until he came into the house.
Agitated, he rustled the brochure he held and focused his gaze on her slender hands. It suddenly struck him what she was doing.
She’s washing the bloodstain from the wedding dress.
Or at least she was trying to. Judging from the puddles of water on the countertop and around her bare feet—were her toenails really painted fluorescent purple?—she had been trying for some time with little luck.
If anything could have cooled him down, her intentions did. He put the brochure back onto the table. “What are you doing, Liz?”
She shrugged off his question as she wiped her damp forehead on her shirtsleeve. “Thought I’d do a little laundry this morning.”
He was frustrated, not only by her evasion of his question, but by the way his libido was so acutely focused on her tight little behind and the delectable curves of her flesh. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets, wincing as the coarse denim pulled tighter across certain strategic areas.
“Uh-huh.”
She looked at him then, her hazel eyes filled with amusement while her hands kept up their rapid motion. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get rid of bloodstains, would you?”
Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose. “Try sponging on some peroxide.”
Her luscious mouth curved into a smile.
“I was raised with four brothers, remember?”
She turned back to the sink, giving him full rein to do what he would with the view. “How could I forget? Your brothers hardly left us alone for a minute.”
“That’s because they were all in lust with you.” And so was I.
Her throaty laugh made him want to groan. “I can’t imagine Jake being in lust with anyone.”
“Yeah, well, you never saw the shrine he built for you in his room.” Mitch quickly reached his patience level, which was odd, because he hadn’t known he had one. He stepped forward and grabbed her arms, forcing her to face him.
“Liz, what in the hell are you doing back here? And just what…what in the hell is going on?”
The surprised shadow on her face made him want to groan all over again. Now that she had returned to her natural hair color, the electric shade of her eyes was enhanced, making it nearly impossible to look anywhere else.
Nothing about this woman was constant, smooth. Not her personality, not her actions, and certainly not her physical traits. Her nose sloped, her chin was an angular work of art with a tiny little dimple in the middle. But it was her too-wide, lavish mouth that had always done him in.
“Mitch?” she practically purred,
