Fifty feet ahead on the opposite side of the two-lane road, a stopped car with its yellow hazard lights flashing stood out against the otherwise black June night.
Still, someone with a great smile and a fine pair of thighs would be nice. He squinted at the woman standing next to the car. Anyone but—
Liz.
Mitch tightly hauled the steering wheel to the left to stop the truck from catapulting over the embankment and into the ditch. He cursed, his heart rate leaping. Marc and his damn questions. He’d never have thought of Liz if it wasn’t for his brother. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but he’d certainly never hallucinated seeing her before.
He was worse off than he thought.
A deep breath whistled from between his teeth as he stared at the brand-spanking-new Lexus gleaming in the twin beams of his headlights. In a town filled with pickups, a pricey automobile pulled off the side of the road at twelve-thirty in the morning was sure to raise some speculation. Goliath nudged his shoulder. Mitch ignored him as the bright beam of his headlights reflected off the woman kneeling next to the left rear tire.
His brakes quietly squealed as he stopped his truck even with the car. “Need some help, lady?”
The woman wrenched a crowbar up and down. Mitch’s gaze followed the way her sweetly shaped bottom within her white dress swayed with each movement. Hmmm….
“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’ve changed tires before. One more isn’t going to make much of a difference.”
Mitch glanced at the digital clock on his dash, then back to her tempting backside. To hell with wanting someone with a great smile. He’d settle for a grade-A bottom like this one had.
It’s a wedding dress.
He stared at the silky white material skimming the woman’s lavish curves and nearly choked. Okay, that was it. He’d had enough of weddings, and anything associated with them, to last a lifetime.
Goliath pawed his denim-clad legs. Mitch held the dog back from where he strained toward the open window.
“What’s up, G?” He hadn’t seen him this animated in years. The tinny sound of music reached his ears. It wafted from the open door of the Lexus. Country, he guessed, grimacing. He scanned the lighted interior, finding the car empty. No air freshener hanging from the mirror, no purse on the seat, no sign of a suitcase or overnight bag. He glanced over the roof toward the dark ditch he knew paralleled the road. He found no sign of a shadowy figure waiting to ambush him.
“You’re getting cynical in your old age,” he muttered, then said to her, “Suit yourself.”
He shifted the truck back into gear.
He’d moved thirty feet before he stepped on the brakes again. He tapped his side-view mirror until the woman in white was back in sight. Damn. He couldn’t just leave her there. Despite his natural caution and the fact that the county crime rate was basically nil, Pops had taught him and his brothers better than to leave anyone—much less a woman—stranded on the road in the middle of the night.
Sighing, Mitch hooked a U-turn, bringing his truck back behind the Lexus and its Massachusetts license plate. Nothing to indicate it was a rental. Then again, most states had done away with marking rentals. He ground to a stop directly behind the car. He rolled up the window enough to prevent Goliath from jumping out, then climbed from the truck cab.
“Indulge me,” he said, before she could protest. He hoisted the spare from the Lexus’s trunk, then nudged her out of the way. “Neither of us is going to rest until you’re safely back on the road.” He jacked the car up a little higher, his muscles bunching under his shirt at the familiar scent of wild cherries. The music battled with the cadence of crickets in a nearby cornfield.
“Mitch?” the woman said over the sound of a twangy guitar. “Mitch McCoy, is that you?”
He stood up so quickly, he nearly tripped over the spare lying on the road behind him.
Holy… It was Liz.
WELL I’LL BE….
Liz dragged her gaze over the long, delicious length of man standing before her, from his shiny boots, to his tight, new jeans, then up to where a tie hung haphazardly around the collar of his crisp white shirt. She didn’t know who was more shocked by the midnight encounter, her or Mitch. And she was definitely sure the fine specimen before her was Mitch. Years may have passed since she’d last seen him, but she’d recognize the tantalizing man anywhere. No one could fill out a pair of jeans quite the way Mitch could.
Liz ran the tip of her tongue along her suddenly dry lips.
Amazing.
She finally looked up to his face and gave a short, impulsive laugh. No, she’d have to say he was the more surprised of the two by far. He looked like someone had just whacked him in the head with a two-by-four. She smiled. Imagine that. She had rendered Mitch McCoy speechless.
“You changed your hair color,” he finally blurted, more than said.
She tucked a dark strand behind her ear, a small part of her flattered he’d noticed—which was majorly stupid. The last thing she should have been doing was blushing at a man’s attentions. Even if that man was Mitch McCoy. “Yeah. I, um, didn’t always have more fun as a blonde.” Of course, she wasn’t having that much fun as a brunette either, if her current predicament was any indication.
His gaze flicked rather than slid over her attire, lingering in certain places and causing a curious, sizzling warmth to meander through her bloodstream. Well, that certainly hadn’t changed, had it? It had taken Richard Beschloss five dates to get to first base with her. One look from Mitch and…
Well, she didn’t think it prudent to take that thought any further.
His gaze reached her breasts. The meandering heat quickened to a scamper and she found it suddenly impossible to breathe.
His gaze quickly lifted to her face. “Liz, is that blood on your dress? What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
If anything was capable of reminding her of the mess she was currently in, that was. She glanced down at the dark stain on the bright white of her dress. Trust Mitch to immediately identify it correctly. Back in Jersey she’d gotten away with telling a gas station attendant she’d spilled chocolate syrup on herself.
She looked back at Mitch, whose gaze was riveted to her breasts.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No…no, I’m fine,” she said, feeling the ridiculous urge to laugh again. Now her ex-groom, on the other hand…. “Don’t, um, worry, it’s not mine. I’m as fit as the day I last saw you.”
Mitch reached up and tugged almost violently on his tie, drawing her gaze to the base of his neck. All at once, her mind filled with the image of the two of them standing in the front room of Gran’s house, him in his new suit, her standing in her bare feet staring at him proudly. It had been his first official day as an agent of the FBI. “Why, Mitch McCoy, you clean up real nice.” She’d laid on her best southern drawl, forgetting how torn she was between wanting him to succeed in what he’d chosen to do, and needing him to be there for her.
How long had it taken her to break him of the habit of fussing with his tie? Two months? Three? How many times had she smoothed his collar, only to be sidetracked by the clean-smelling expanse of his skin there, just under his jaw?
She dragged her gaze up to his, watching her guardedly. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Somehow