The pad in the other cup of her bra slipped out, and she buried her face in his shoulder. What must he think of her? How could she ever meet his eyes again? If he laughed, she’d curl up and die.
“Why would you think you needed bra pads?” he asked against her hair.
She could hardly articulate the embarrassing answer. “I’m an A cup.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Did you know only fifteen percent of American women wear an A cup?” she mumbled. “The average cup size is B.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and with a forefinger tipped up her chin so she had to look at him. His pupils were dilated, his gaze intent. “Who says I want average?”
He slipped her dress and her loosened bra from her shoulders. The garments fell in a heap to the floor, leaving her clad in only high-cut underwear and stiletto heels.
She started to cover her small breasts. Before she could, he captured both her hands in his and gazed his fill. Her stomach roiled in fear that he’d find her lacking. But when he lifted his blue eyes, they’d darkened a few shades.
“I think your breasts are way above average,” he whispered, a husky note in his voice. “In fact, I think they’re perfect.”
She tried to swallow, but couldn’t. “You do?”
He nodded. “I do.”
Joy flooded her. Her knees went weak. “Would you like to, um, see the rest of me?”
“Oh, yeah,” he rasped.
She didn’t know what had possessed her to ask the question, but she couldn’t very well take the offer back. Act sophisticated, she told herself.
She nodded toward the bedroom, which was in a separate room. “Follow me into my lair.”
She tried to move sensually into the bedroom. Her lair. Why had she said such a stupid thing? But he followed. When she turned on the light, she noticed a smile playing about his full lips.
He sat down on the bed, obviously waiting for her to follow through on her offer. Expecting, she realized with a sinking heart, a striptease.
“Would it help if I took off my clothes first?” He didn’t wait for her answer, quickly pulling his short-sleeved shirt over his head until his chest was bare. Wonderfully, mouth-wateringly bare. He had an athlete’s chest, defined with muscle and sprinkled with dark hair.
“Your turn,” he said with a sexy grin.
She took a breath for courage, balanced on one of her high heels to take off the other shoe and lost her balance.
“Oh, no,” she cried an instant before she tumbled.
Grant leaped off the bed in a flash, taking the brunt of her weight as she toppled with him to the floor. Grunting, he hit the carpet with her sprawled on top of him. He lay there with his eyes closed, as still as death.
“Grant, Grant.” She frantically slapped him in the face to revive him. First one blue eye opened, then the other.
“Now I am the one who fell for you,” he drawled, harkening back to when they’d met on the street.
Overwhelming relief hit her. She started to laugh and he joined in. They both seemed to realize at the same time that they were bare chest to bare chest. The laughter stopped.
Lizabeth wasn’t sure who made the next move. Their mouths were soon in a lip lock, their hearts beating hard against each other, their hands ridding each other of clothing. From somewhere a condom appeared, and he sheathed himself.
She felt his fingers slide inside her hot, wet center. She helped as he grabbed her hips and positioned her above him to slide her onto his penis. She cried out at the pain, biting her bottom lip to stop the sounds.
He stopped moving. “Leeza, are you okay?”
Her body gradually adjusted to the size of him and the pain lessened, just as she’d been told it would.
“I’m wonderful,” she said, hoping to convince him. For good measure, she added dahling and restlessly moved against him, asking for she hardly knew what.
“Once we get started,” he said, his voice a husky purr, “I won’t be able to stop.”
“I don’t want you to stop.” Pleasure had already started to replace the pain. The only sounds after that were murmurs and sighs and groans as they lost themselves in the wonder of each other.
Lizabeth met his thrusts with her own, feeling closer to him than she had ever felt to anybody. The warm sensation between her legs turned hot and liquid, spreading like a fan inside her. She cried out again, this time in wonder. He pumped into her a last time and met his own release.
She didn’t move as their heartbeats slowed and their breathing returned to normal, wishing she could confide in him that this had been the first time she’d made love.
At the same time, she fervently hoped he hadn’t been able to tell she’d been a virgin. Then he’d know that ultra-sophisticated Leeza Drinkmiller was a fraud.
She didn’t think it would be any compensation to find out that boring, colorless Lizabeth was falling in love with him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Peyton smoothed the sheer black stocking over one of her long legs until the lacy top hugged her upper thigh, keeping the stocking in place.
When she’d put on the other stocking, she walked over to the full-length mirror on her wardrobe and presented her back to it. Swiveling her head, she tried to make sure the black seams were straight but got an eye full of naked butt.
She laughed at herself, not because her butt looked bad naked but because her black thong was the most daring thing she’d ever worn. She turned around to face the mirror and changed her mind about the thong.
The lacy black shelf bra with the boning that strategically uplifted her cleavage but left her nipples and half her breasts bare was definitely more daring.
She went to her closet, where she’d hung the mere wisp of a minidress she’d bought that afternoon at a store miles from the downtown boutiques her mother and her friends frequented. She shimmied into the dress, grateful she hadn’t eaten much that afternoon. The black garment was so slinky that even an extra grape would show. She stepped into a pair of equally new three-inch high heels and returned to the mirror.
She posed this way and that, feeling a draft at the open oval at the back of the dress, and giggled. Her mother would faint dead away if she saw her now.
But Peyton hadn’t gone to all this trouble to shock her society-conscious mother. She’d put on the sexiest clothes she could find to propel Mitch into action.
After he’d failed to kiss her the other night while they stood under the sea spray, she’d had a crisis of confidence for, oh, maybe two minutes.
Then she’d come to her senses because there was no way Mitch didn’t want her.
He’d tried incessantly to get her into bed from the day they’d met until about a week ago. A man’s ardor didn’t cool that quickly and that completely.
Nope. Mitch wanted her, of that she was sure. But she was equally sure he’d taken her previous reluctance to get intimate too much to heart.
She didn’t jump into bed with a man on the first date or even in the first month. She appreciated that Mitch respected her and had decided to act like a gentleman.
But too much gentlemanly behavior was too much. It was Friday night and she hadn’t even seen him since Tuesday, for heaven’s sake.
She was ready, willing and about to leave him with no doubt that she was eager to make love to him. Tonight.
Mitch had asked her, for no reason that made any sense, to meet him at a restaurant across the Cooper River in Mount Pleasant. The location was fortuitous because she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to dress this way if she thought she’d run into someone she knew.
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 me
eting 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.
Bait & Switch Page 14
