A gold-encrusted conch shell hanging from a simple gold chain caught her eye and she gravitated toward the glass case where it was displayed.
“See anything you like?” Grant asked in her ear, his breath soft and exciting against the lobe.
“Yeah, I really like—”
She stopped abruptly, realizing she couldn’t tell him the truth. The conch-shell necklace was the most understated piece of jewelry behind the counter. A flamboyant dresser like Leeza would never single it out.
She quickly scanned the rest of the items and pointed to the most garish. It was a broach shaped like an octopus, with the legs extending in all directions. Even though octopi changed color with their environment, she couldn’t imagine where the designer of the broach imagined this octopus had been. It was a brilliant, iridescent green with a bright ruby serving as an eye.
“That octopus is quite something,” she said. “One of a kind, I’m sure.”
Grant motioned to the tiny, elderly woman standing behind the counter and indicated the hideous broach. “We’d like the octopus.”
“Hallelujah.” The woman moved to the case with stunning alacrity. “I never thought anybody would buy that thing.”
Lizabeth whirled on Grant. “You can’t buy that for me!”
“Sure, I can.” He shrugged those impossibly wide shoulders and arched those incredibly perfect eyebrows. “You like it. I’d like for you to have it.”
“But it’s too. . .” Ugly, she thought. “Expensive,” she said.
“Don’t worry.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I can afford it.”
He took out his wallet, removing a hundred-dollar bill as though he paid cash for ridiculous trinkets every day of the week. But he was a cop, not a tycoon. His henley shirt and khaki shorts were modest, but he’d sprung for the charter boat yesterday. Surely he couldn’t afford to keep spending this way.
“Really, I don’t need the broach,” she said. “You should save your money.”
“What good is money if you can’t spend it on a beautiful woman?” he asked.
The protest died on her lips. No man had ever called her beautiful before. Not her brother, not her father, not even her grandfather.
Grant pinned the octopus broach to her yellow tank top, his knuckles grazing her breasts.
“Thank you,” she said, gazing down at it. “It’s lovely.”
And just like that, she broke her vow not to tell him any more lies. Even though the sentiment behind his purchase of the octopus broach was lovely, she still thought it so hideous that somebody should chuck it to the bottom of the sea.
She resisted the urge to shield her eyes when they exited the shop. The sun’s rays hit the iridescent green, but Mitch’s attention was caught by something else.
He gestured toward a man standing at a booth advertising a sunset cruise on a luxury boat complete with champagne, hors d’ouevres and a full-course dinner.
“That cruise has the name Leeza written all over it,” he said without a clue that Leeza wasn’t a real person. “Will you make me a happy man and go with me tonight?”
“That would be delightful,” she said.
The bald truth was that she’d go anywhere to be with him. She didn’t dare tell him that watching the sun go down while dangling her feet in the water at the end of a wooden pier was more her style.
She knew from high school that Lizabeth didn’t have what it took to arouse a male’s interest. She smiled her dazzling Leeza smile and he responded in kind. Now Leeza, that was a different story.
CARY WATCHED THE GLOWING sun sink into the horizon like a ball in quicksand. Perfect, he thought.
The romantics hadn’t exaggerated the spectacular beauty of a Key West sunset. Atop the shimmering Gulf of Mexico, streaks of oranges, reds and yellows lit the sky as though it were afire.
Better yet, he and Leeza were watching nature’s show from a table for two on the aft deck of a sixty-foot motor yacht, a setting that made a perfect prelude to seduction.
Cary was about to pretend he was so moved by the sunset he couldn’t help leaning across the table, cupping Leeza’s face with his hands and planting a kiss on those delectable lips.
Too bad he couldn’t completely forget that he was supposed to be his saintly brother, who wouldn’t do that. His twin would probably say something wholesome, like, “Wow.”
“Wow,” Cary made himself say.
Leeza watched the sunset with her lips slightly parted, her eyes round and staring, her breath shallow and awed. Cary vowed to make her look at him like that before the night ended.
The glowing sun sank lower and lower until the horizon appeared to have swallowed it, leaving the sky streaked in shades of gray.
“Oh, my gosh.” Leeza reached across the table and squeezed his hand. Her eyes glistened with tears. “I’ve never been so glad that red rays don’t scatter as easily as those of the other colors of the visible spectrum.”
Cary grinned at her. “I’ve never seen anyone react to a sunset the way you do.”
For some reason, she seemed to take his comment as criticism. She blinked the tears from her eyes, released his hand and lifted her chin.
“I meant to say the sunset was quite pleasing to the eye.”
She picked up her champagne glass with her pinky extended. She sipped and he would have sworn her lips pursed in distaste if she hadn’t swallowed and emitted a satisfied aaah.
“Excellent vintage,” she said.
It should be, considering how much he was paying for this sunset dinner cruise. Two other couples, whispering seductive nothings to each other at adjacent tables, were on board. That didn’t significantly cut the cost of the trip.
No matter. Leeza was undoubtedly used to being entertained in style, and far be it for him to disappoint her.
His credit cards were maxed out and the cash from his brother had dwindled faster than the champagne in his glass. Good thing he had the money from Captain Turk for transporting the crates to Miami and a promise of more where that had come from.
If those crates did contain something they shouldn’t, well, it wasn’t Cary’s fault. He’d been thrust into a position where he had to take any job he could find.
If the Boy Scout hadn’t made him give that stupid promise to stop gambling, he could have scored big on tomorrow’s college football game between Florida State and Miami.
“There’s no champagne like aged champagne,” Cary said.
“Don’t you mean new champagne?”
“Nope. Champagne doesn’t need to be fresh to be good. It develops nuance and complexity over time, just like other fine wines. An aged champagne can be exquisite.”
She tipped her head and the breeze off the Gulf blew loose some strands from her sophisticated hairstyle. “Who would have guessed a cop would know about fine wines?”
Mitch the cop didn’t know about wines. The Boy Scout barely drank, as far as Cary knew. But he couldn’t very well backtrack now that he’d let the wine out of the cellar.
“You’d find that I know lots of things if you got to know me better,” he said in a soft voice, smiling into her eyes.
“Oh, I already know lots of things about you,” she said.
“Like what?”
“I know you’re loyal and dependable and trustworthy.”
Liking the sound of those adjectives applied to himself, he asked, “How do you know that?”
“I know you’re loyal because in high school you always wore the school colors on spirit day.”
“I did?” Cary shrugged, not remembering. “Maybe I just liked blue and gold.”
“Our school colors were purple and orange.”
He grimaced at both the color combination and his gaffe. His alma mater’s colors had been blue and gold, not Mitch’s.
“Oh, yeah. How could I have forgotten? If I wore that color combination, I must’ve been loyal.”
“Of course you were. Dependable and trustworthy, too.”
“I suppos
e you know those things because of high school, too?”
“Uh, huh.” She nodded to emphasize her point. “I know you’re trustworthy because you were student council treasurer, and I know you’re dependable because you got a perfect attendance award at high school graduation.”
“Perfect attendance?” Mitch shouldn’t have been surprised that the Boy Scout had never missed a day of school. It was just that Cary had missed so many — and not because he had legitimate excuses.
“You were a model student,” Leeza said. “Hatfield High would have been the poorer without you.”
She meant Hatfield would have been the poorer without his loyal, trustworthy, dependable brother Mitch.
He’d been wondering through dinner how a woman as sophisticated as Leeza could be so hung up on his brother the cop. Hell, she was wearing a rainbow-colored dress in hand-painted silk. Even the Green Monster, which is how he thought of the horrible octopus broach he’d bought her earlier that day, didn’t detract from her air of class.
Now he had the answer.
Her fascination with his twin was rooted in high school, because she’d never gotten over her teenage crush. He wanted to tell her not to put too much stock in the past because people changed, but in a fundamental sense his brother was still much the same as he had always been.
Trustworthy and dependable and loyal, a triumvirate of qualities that Mitch possessed and Cary lacked.
But, hey, Cary was smart. He was fun. He was a survivor. And, for one of the first times in his life, he was as jealous as hell of his twin brother.
“I wasn’t all that great in high school,” he groused.
“Sure, you were.” She put down her champagne glass, balanced her elbows on the table and got a dreamy look on her face. “My heart about melted when you persuaded everybody to round up used sports jerseys and equipment for underprivileged children.”
“But that was my idea.” Cary had organized the drive after his baseball team had played a squad so poor they’d written numbers in magic marker on the backs of their white T-shirts. His brother had merely joined the effort by putting up a couple flyers at his high school.
“Of course it was your idea,” she said, giving the Boy Scout all the credit.
Not that Cary wanted accolades. . . precisely. At the time, he hadn’t wanted anything except for those kids to have shirts that wouldn’t shame them and gloves that weren’t coming apart at the seams. It seemed important, thought, that Leeza know he wasn’t a total scoundrel.
“I’m not completely irresponsible,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re irresponsible at all. Didn’t I just get finished telling you that you’re amazing? I thought so when we were in high school, and I think so now.”
Hours later, Cary was still dwelling on her proclamation when he walked with her through the lushly tropical courtyard of the waterfront resort hotel where she was staying.
Leeza thought his twin was amazing.
She smiled at him, her face aglow in the light of the moon, and he ran that thought through his head another time.
She thought his twin was amazing.
He almost smacked his forehead to dislodge the cobwebs in his brain. What was wrong with him? Since he was pretending to be his brother, that meant she thought he was amazing. Chances were good that he’d get lucky tonight.
They were in a darkened part of the courtyard, a few feet past the whitewashed gazebo but not yet at the lighted waterfall cascading into the dolphin-shaped pool.
His spirits buoyed considerably, he snaked his arm around her shoulders. He heard the quick intake of her breath and congratulated himself on making the right move.
He stopped walking and turned her in his arms, thinking he’d never seen such extraordinary brown eyes on a woman. He started to lower his head.
“Did you know a duck’s quack doesn’t echo?” she blurted out.
His head froze in mid-dip. The sensation of having her in his arms was making him lightheaded, but he was sure he’d heard her correctly.
“I’m not up on ducks,” he said.
“You’ve watched Donald Duck cartoons, right?” She rushed on before he could resume the dip. “Disney’s technical directors must be very savvy because you’ll notice that Donald’s quack never repeats.”
He ran one of his hands up her smooth bare arm and felt tiny goose bumps erupt. Her skin was soft and supple, her breath sweet and warm against his lips.
He looped his hands around the back of her waist. “Isn’t Donald a talking duck instead of a quacking duck?”
Her eyes locked on his. He could hear water trickling into the pool and smell the sweet scent of tropical flowers. He waited for some sign that she was ready for his kiss.
“I. . . I think Donald quacks, too,” she murmured in a low, sexy voice.
His body hardened. It took all his restraint not to haul her the rest of the way against him.
“Why are we talking about ducks?” he asked.
She blinked up at him, her lips moist and her mouth parted. As though she trusted him.
Before he could decipher the meaning of that, she moved forward and very softly and sweetly touched her mouth to his. This was his chance to convince her that she wanted him in her bed, buried between her thighs.
He knew the routine. He’d make sure the kiss started slow, coaxing her to open her mouth and allow him access. Next he’d stroke his tongue against hers and explore mouth until she didn’t know her own name.
Leeza stroked his cheek with a gentle hand. Her tongue shyly touched his. Blood pounded in his ears as he tangled his tongue with hers, their breath mingling. His heart pounded against her chest.
She tasted sweeter than any woman he’d kissed. She snaked her arms around his neck, and her soft breasts pressed against him. She wouldn’t be the only one in danger of forgetting her name.
Her surrender was so sweet and trusting that somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered Leeza thought she was kissing Grant — his loyal, trustworthy, dependable brother.
Ah, hell. With a supreme act of willpower, Cary pulled his mouth from hers. She looked up at him, her breath coming fast, her eyes darkened in passion, her mouth forming a questioning O.
Take what she’s offering, a voice yelled inside his head. Another louder voice drowned it out. The LTD man wouldn’t take advantage of her.
He dredged up a piece of trivia he’d heard long, long ago, “Did you know that Donald Duck comics were once banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants?”
Leeza’s lips, still swollen from his kisses, curved into a smile. She laughed and he did the same, shattering the moment.
Cary didn’t try anything more serious than holding her hand as he walked her to the lobby. He didn’t trust himself to escort her all the way to her room.
“G’night, Mitch,” she said softly an instant before the elevator doors closed behind her.
He stood there for a moment, staring at the blinking numbers on the display as the elevator crawled upward to a room and a bed he could have been sharing with Leeza tonight.
He swore ripely.
What the hell was wrong with him?
CHAPTER TWELVE
A dull throbbing began at the backs of Mitch's eyes as he studied the pages of game charts in front of him. After Monday night's fiasco at the softball field, he needed to go over the schedules to assure he didn’t have any more double bookings.
He cross-checked the rows of teams against the fields until the throbbing turned into a full-fledged headache. He was irked at Cary for overstating the simplicity of his job and at himself for not asking more questions.
If he had, he would have learned that Cary was a recreation specialist — with specialist being the operative word. His brother not only ran clinics but planned and organized league play in various sports.
Considering there were coed, men's and women's leagues in softball, basketball and tennis, it was a logistical nightmare. And, as far as Mitch could s
ee, his brother was a one-man show.
“Hey, Cary, my man.”
A teenage boy with a grin the size of the Charleston harbor bounced into the office, pulled out a chair and plopped himself down. He was swigging from a Coke he didn't need, because he already vibrated with enough energy to run a small town.
“Call me Mitch,” Mitch corrected, even though he had no idea of the boy’s name.
“You mean, like, as a nickname?” The boy shrugged. “Sure, Johnny’ll call you that if it'll float your boat. But what gives? What’re you doing here?”
Wondering who Johnny was, Mitch said, “I work here.”
“Not on Tuesdays, you don't. They changed the schedule last week.”
And Cary, of course, hadn’t bothered to note the change. It was the latest in a long list of details Cary had neglected to mention, like where in the world he’d gotten himself off to.
Mitch had returned home the night before to a message from Cary on the home answering machine, informing him he wasn’t in Atlanta. His brother hadn’t revealed his whereabouts, preferring to spew nonsense about it being safer for Mitch not to know.
Keeping Mitch in the dark was safer for Cary, because it lessened the chance of Mitch hunting down his twin and venting some frustration.
The strip club, the missing money and the job as a kneecap buster were bad enough. But Mitch was most steamed because he’d been thrust into a situation in which he was having lascivious dreams about his brother’s girl, who gave signs she was willing to let him act out those dreams.
Mitch had no business knowing Peyton kissed like an angel. He lived by the touch-her-not code when it involved any woman who was or had ever been involved with his brother.
But how could he refuse Peyton when she asked him to kiss her? And how would he summon the will to stop if she asked again? Putting a halt to things last night had nearly killed him.
“Earth to Mitch,” the kid was saying, telling Mitch he’d missed something. “You didn’t say what you were doing here.”
With a nod, Mitch indicated his mound of paperwork, yet another reason to be irked at Cary. “I've got to catch up on schedules.”
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