Two police guards with Popeye-sized biceps hooked Mitch under the arms and pulled him toward a jail cell. His heels dragged on the cheap linoleum floor.
“But I didn’t steal the money!” Mitch cried. “All I did was try to help my brother.”
The guards threw him in the cell and locked it. Mitch scrambled to his feet, grabbing onto the vertical bars. His brother leaned negligently against a nearby wall.
“Do something, Cary,” Mitch implored.
“Can’t do anything, bro.” Cary shrugged carelessly. “You should have known better than to trust me.”
Alarm bells pealed in Mitch’s brain. Alarm bells that had sounded far too late.
One of his eyes snapped open, then the other. The prison cell disappeared. The bells continued to ring. Groaning, Mitch reached out and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock. Still, the ringing persisted.
He tried to sit up, but rolled to the middle of the bed instead, feeling as though he were navigating the sea of insanity. As his head cleared, he realized he was stuck in the middle of Cary’s water bed and somebody was ringing Cary’s doorbell.
What was it about him that encouraged others to wake him out of a sound sleep?
Unlike when Cary came calling in Atlanta, however, Mitch wasn’t expected to answer the door. Cary was.
Except Cary was safely ensconced in Atlanta, thanks to Mitch’s grudging agreement to switch places and straighten out his mess. Cary didn’t seem to appreciate that Mitch was taking risks that involved his career as well as his kneecaps. One misstep and Mitch would land in a jail cell. Then his career would surely be over.
Mitch needed to focus on the positive side of their agreement. As a concession, he’d gotten Cary to promise to stop gambling. Granted, his brother had promised before. But this time he seemed to mean it.
Besides, considering who could be on the other side of Cary’s door, Mitch would much rather open it than Cary. He was a cop. He could take care of himself.
Mitch executed a log roll that took him to the edge of the waterbed, stuck out a bare leg and foraged for dry ground. All the while, the doorbell kept buzzing. Then the pounding started.
He pulled on jeans over his boxers and tucked a handgun at the small of his back. He stepped into the hallway, caught his toe on the edge of a skinny oriental rug and lost his balance. He went sprawling, saving himself from falling by slamming into the wall with a tremendous thud.
“Son of a gun,” he shouted. He righted himself and thanked God the gun hadn’t gone off. Rubbing his sore shoulder, he stalked the rest of the way to the door and the infernal ringing.
He didn’t care if the person on the other side was there to bust his kneecaps. He flung open the door.
“You unreliable jerk!”
Standing on the doorstep of his brother’s fancy Tradd Street sublet was the most desirable woman Mitch had ever seen.
Her eyes were a smidgen too close together, her nose a hair too long and her mouth a little too wide, but the net effect slammed into him with a sensual punch. Her short blond hair was cut in haphazard, fly-away layers that framed an oval face with the highest cheekbones he’d ever seen. The eyes that glared up at him were the color of Coca-Cola, which happened to be his favorite beverage.
He wasn’t quite through admiring her figure, which tended toward the very lushness he preferred, when she thumped him once in the chest. Hard enough that he gasped.
“You are the biggest, most irresponsible jerk I have ever had the displeasure to meet.” He even liked her voice. If she sang, she’d be an alto. Maybe a tenor. “I was stupid to believe you.”
“Uh, I’m sure you’re not stupid,” Mitch stammered.
“How dare you disagree with me after what you did.”
“What did I do?” Mitch asked. Stupidly, he instantly realized.
Her full mouth narrowed in a thin line, and her dark eyes flashed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to ask that. Why, oh why, did I ever get involved with you?”
“You’re involved with me?” Mitch gaped at her. For an instant, he felt as though he’d won the lottery. Cary teased him about his dearth of dates, but the reason was because he seldom ran across a woman he wanted to ask out. For this woman, though, he’d brave a minefield. Then the reality of what was happening crashed down on his sleep-addled mind.
This enchanting blonde wasn’t involved with him. She was involved with Cary, who’d told him not much more than twenty-four hours ago that he didn’t have a girlfriend.
Knowing Cary, of course, it was possible she wasn’t his girlfriend. She could be the latest in the long string of women he’d wronged.
“I swear, Cary Mitchell—”
“Mitch,” he interrupted. She was looking at him as though he were crazy, which he probably was for agreeing to impersonate his brother in the first place. But he wasn’t going through the next two weeks answering to a name that wasn’t his. “Call me Mitch.”
“Mitch?” She shook her head, and the strands of her short hair danced. “You’re saying you want me to call you Mitch when I yell at you?”
Mitch couldn’t help smiling. Even spouting venom, she was so darned cute. “I don’t want you to yell at me at all. I want you to call me Mitch all the time.”
The space between her eyebrows narrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“No, I’m not,” Mitch said.
Something that sounded like a horse whinnying broke the morning quiet, and Mitch looked out in the narrow street in front of the house. It was a horse whinnying. A large horse that had a mate and was attached to a small carriage loaded with tourists staring at them.
“Did you know,” Mitch said, inclining his head toward the street, “that we have an audience?”
She heaved a sigh that sounded long suffering. It was then that Mitch noticed the white shirt she wore with khaki shorts was imprinted with the logo “Dixieland Carriage Tours.”
The blonde was the tour guide.
“When I spotted your car in the driveway, I told them we were stopping here because this building is a classic example of the French Huguenot style of architecture,” she said.
Mitch frowned. “Really? It looks like a simple row house to me.”
“It is.” She all but hissed at him. “See what you made me do.”
“Listen. . .” He was about to call her by name when he realized he didn’t know what it was. As spitting mad as she was, it would be unwise to try to pry any information from her.
Cary would know what this was all about, though. Cary, who was only a phone call away.
“Would you excuse me?” Mitch asked.
“Excuse you? I’m in the middle of yelling at you.”
“You can start again when I come back. Promise. But there’s something I have to do.”
He tried to shut the door but she stilled it with a hand and stomped into the house.
“You are doing something,” she sputtered, looking more adorable by the second. “You’re being yelled at by me.”
Mitch stifled a groan. How was he supposed to get information out of Cary if she listened in on the conversation? He started to head for the bedroom and his cell phone when he remembered it was out of juice and he’d forgotten his charger. His gaze ping-ponged around the house for the land line.
“Where’s the phone?” he asked before realizing why he shouldn’t.
With a puzzled nod, she indicated a phone perched on an end table in the living room. He snatched it up, relieved it had a cordless handset.
“Excuse me,” he said again, then ducked into the half-bathroom in the hall and locked the ornate door.
She immediately pounded on it. “You’re acting strange even for you, Cary!”
He navigated the discarded clothes and towels Cary had left scattered throughout the bathroom, sat down on the closed wooden lid of the toilet and realized he didn’t know Cary’s cell numb
er by heart.
“Cary. Did you hear me?”
“Mitch. Call me Mitch,” he corrected absently as he hurriedly punched in the numbers of his home telephone.
Even when he wasn’t impersonating Cary, he never used his given name of Grant. Mitch liked the old-time actor who’d been the source of their names. His mother’s sense of humor, he could do without.
The blonde pounded louder. “What are you doing in there?”
“I’ll be just a minute.” Mitch listened to the phone ring at his Atlanta apartment, then figured he better embellish his answer. “Nature calls.”
“You’re not calling nature on that telephone,” she yelled back. “What do you think I am? An idiot?”
“Of course I don’t think you’re an idiot,” Mitch answered just as Cary picked up the phone.
“I don’t think I am, either,” Cary said. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Mitch wondered how much the blonde could hear through the door. “For you, I’d use stronger language. Like inconsiderate and irresponsible.”
“What’d I do now? And why are you whispering?”
“Come out of there this instant,” the blonde demanded loudly.
“Who’s with you?” Cary asked.
Mitch gritted his teeth to keep from yelling. “That’s what I was going to ask you.”
“How would I know? I’m in Atlanta, bro. I can’t see who’s yelling at you.”
“She’s yelling at you. Except she doesn’t know I’m not you, and I don’t know who she is.”
Three quick raps sounded on the door. Mitch held the receiver out so his brother could identify the voice. “This hiding in the bathroom won’t work,” the blonde yelled.
“Almost through,” Mitch called back. He brought the receiver back to his ear and asked in a soft voice, “Did you recognize her voice?”
“You’re hiding in the bathroom?” Cary asked.
“Never mind that. I need to know who this blonde is and why she’s yelling at me.”
“What’s she look like?”
“She’s gorgeous. About five feet six with short blonde hair and freckles.” Mitch thought. “Oh, yeah. She drives a horse and carriage.”
“That has to be Peyton, although I wouldn’t call her gorgeous.” Cary sounded thoughtful. “Attractive, for sure. But not gorgeous.”
“Who exactly is Peyton to you?”
“My girlfriend,” Cary answered.
Mitch’s stomach fell so hard he thought it would hit the floor. It couldn’t be. The delectable blonde couldn’t belong to his brother.
“You said you didn’t have a girlfriend,” Mitch protested. Cary especially hadn’t said he had a girlfriend who looked like the embodiment of everything Mitch wanted in a woman.
On the other end of the line, Cary grimaced. He should have told Mitch about Peyton. Then again, he couldn’t be expected to think of everything. The woman was so unpredictable, he never knew what she’d do next. He’d guessed Splitsville, but there she was in his home.
“I didn’t think I’d still have a girlfriend after I failed to show up for dinner with the Ayatollah and his Mrs. last night.”
“The Supreme Leader of Iran?”
Cary laughed. “The Ayatollah McDowell. Her father. He’s the city solicitor, which is what they call a district attorney in Charleston. Peyton wanted me to make a good impression.”
“No wonder she’s so angry.”
“That’s my best guess,” Cary said. In the background, he could hear more pounding. He had to say one thing for Peyton. She would never drop dead of a heart attack because she bottled up her emotions.
“She’s angry enough to break up with you,” Mitch said.
Truth be told, Peyton wasn’t Cary’s type. He’d approached her at a Charleston night spot about a month ago mostly because she had a wild way of dancing. They’d break up eventually, but Cary wasn’t ready for that to happen. For one thing, Peyton was oddly appealing. For another, he’d yet to discover if that wild part of her nature played out in bed.
He wasn’t at all sure his big brother could make things right in Charleston. But if Mitch managed the improbable, it’d be nice to have something worthwhile to return to.
“Can you talk her out of it?” Cary asked.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
He thought of Betty Lou Sorenson, a high school girlfriend who’d caught him making out with Anna somebody or other the summer before their senior year. Betty Lou had been ready to rake her nails down his face until Mitch soothed the savage beast with talk of teenage boys and hormones gone haywire.
“You’ve done it before,” Cary said. “You can do it again.”
Silence filled the other end of the phone before Mitch broke it. “She means that much to you?”
She didn’t, not really. But if he admitted the truth to Mitch, Peyton was as good as gone from his life. And he didn’t want to lose her. Not yet, anyway. He made his voice sound pitiful. “Please, Mitch. Do it for me.”
Mitch didn’t answer, which meant Cary would once again get his way. His brother was being such a good sport about everything that, for an instant, Cary considered telling him he had no intention of remaining in Atlanta. He might have if he weren’t sure Mitch would dream up some reason Cary should stay put. Some reason sure to fill Cary with guilt.
Cary could hear more pounding on the bathroom door in the Charleston he’d left behind.
“Sounds like you’ve gotta go, bro,” Cary said. “You’re the best, you know that?”
He hung up without waiting for an answer, walked purposefully to the door and picked up his suitcase. He had a fleeting thought of Mitch and the mess he’d left him to deal with before he dismissed it and walked out the door.
His brother could handle whatever was thrown at him. It wasn’t as though Cary were abandoning Mitch. He’d call him in a couple of days. Whenever he got to where he was going.
CHAPTER THREE
Peyton McDowell stared at the locked door, willing her temper to cool and trying to get her breathing back under control.
Her parents would be mortified if they knew she’d been huffing, puffing and trying to blow the bathroom door down. They’d drilled into her every day of her life that she had an image to uphold.
Her doting parents, who loved her all the more because they couldn’t have other children, only asked that she take her rightful place in Charleston society. They’d sent her to the city’s most exclusive school for girls, groomed her into a debutante and given her everything she wanted.
Their fondest dream was that she one day marry a man with a Charleston lineage as illustrious as their own two-hundred-year legacy.
Yet here she was, acting out of control in the home of somebody her parents would deem most inappropriate. Especially in light of what he’d done last night.
Heck, she’d known he was unsuitable herself from the moment she’d met him. But he’d been fun and good-looking and outrageously flirtatious, all of the things the suitable men of Charleston were not.
She’d never imagined, not for a second, that the relationship would last. She didn’t even want it to. She simply yearned to have a little fun with someone less stuffy than the taxidermy specials her parents were always thrusting at her.
Except dating Cary had ceased to be fun.
Expelling a long breath, she turned and walked away just as she heard the bathroom door open. She lifted her chin in the regal manner her mother had taught her and kept moving.
“Peyton, wait.”
“Why should I?” she tossed over her shoulder. “I don’t know why I got involved with you in the first place. You’re egotistical, arrogant and inconsiderate.”
“Give me a chance to explain.” Footsteps sounded behind her.
She paused, curious as to what he would say. It wasn’t as though she’d been dying for him to meet her parents. It was way too early in their relationship for that. But when they’
d gotten past date four, her mother had insisted on inviting him to dinner. He shouldn’t have accepted if he were going to stand up the whole family.
She stood, waiting.
“I’d rather not explain to your back,” he said.
She slowly turned around, which was a mistake. One of the things that had attracted her to Cary was his appearance. He looked far better today than he ever had.
His dark hair was mussed instead of perfectly groomed and his blue eyes seemed softer, like the sky on a hazy day. She’d never seen him anything other than perfectly shaved, and she liked the slightly rumpled air the stubble on his lower face lent him. Even his mouth seemed different: gentler, more sensuous.
But it was his bare chest that commanded most of her attention. Cary Mitchell’s upper torso looked as though it were fit for a god. Light brown hair sparsely covered a broad, muscular roadmap of perfection. She had the insane desire to swoon.
She pursed her lips so she wouldn’t ask him for a bucket of water to toss over her head. How odd. She’d never reacted this way to him before. Was it because this was the first time she’d seen him shirtless?
She heard a honking sound in the background, but she couldn’t quite place where it was coming from.
“That’s better.” He smiled at her. Funny how that smile had never quite seemed to reach his eyes before now. She steeled herself against him, recalling the embarrassment he’d caused her the night before.
“Don’t bother explaining. Absolutely nothing you say will matter.” Peyton managed to glare at him. “We’re through.”
Even though he’d predicted this moments ago on the phone to his brother, Mitch wasn’t ready for it. How could they be through when he’d just found her? Not that he would let himself, even for a single second, think of his brother’s girl as his own.
“Breaking up with me is a bad idea.” He tried to come up with a reason why. For Cary’s sake. “You wouldn’t have gone out with me in the first place if you wanted to break up with me.”
She put her hands on her sweetly rounded hips. “That’s nuts.”
Okay. Bad reason. He tried to think of another one, but it was difficult considering all the honking coming from the street. Ah, what the heck. If Peyton were his girl and he was in danger of losing her, he’d go straight to begging.
Bait & Switch Page 2
