Horace's face burned fire-engine red. “I've never witnessed such erratic behavior in all my born days!”
Ted laughed nervously. “Yes, well, I'm sure you'll understand. Just sit down and finish your dinner, and I'm certain I'll be able to hear what you have to say about catalogs on the putting green tomorrow. It's been a real pleasure. Really. The best raw meat I've ever had.”
Ted turned and ran out of there as fast as he could.
Â
BACK AT HOME, Mitzi was still fuming. How could she have been so gullible, so stupid? Before coming to Texas she'd sworn off romance, kissed expectations goodbye, lashed her heart into stable condition. Never again, she'd sworn solemnly to herself. It was spinsterhood or bust. She'd begun looking into intricate needlework projects and small talkative parrots.
And then Grant had come along.
“I don't want to think about it,” she moaned aloud to Chester, who bounced joyfully at her ankles, oblivious to her despair. She grabbed his leash, snapped it onto his collar and let all her thoughts focus on being tugged down a sidewalk by a twenty-pound, half-bald bundle of canine exuberance. But before she'd walked half a block from the house, she spotted a white truck racing toward her, the same white truck Grant had been driving the night of the rehearsal dinner. The hulking vehicle squealed to a halt mere feet from her.
Grant sprang from the driver's seat and then skidded to a stop, frowning. “Oh, it's just you.”
“Who were you expecting? Uma Thurman?”
He didn't crack a smile. “Are you alone?”
Did he think she had men in reserve hovering by in case their date went sour? She was about to tell him off in no uncertain terms, but surprisingly, Chester took one look at Grant and went rigid. He bared his teeth and let out a warning growl, going from dachshund to Doberman in nothing flat.
Grant scowled at him. “What's the matter with you, you little mutt?”
Mitzi gasped. She'd always thought Grant liked Chester. “How dare you talk to him that way.”
“Give me a break.” Grant scowled at the growling pup on the end of the taut leash. “That little hairball and I go way back.”
At that moment, Mitzi took great pleasure in letting the dog's leash accidentally slip out of her hands.
Chester lunged at Grant like a little red bullet, snarling and snapping, and Grant turned and ran like hell for the nearest tree. He grabbed a low branch of a live oak and had swung one leg up when Chester, with the grace of Baryshnikov and the ferocity of Mike Tyson, jumped and sank his teeth into a pant leg.
The air exploded with rips, shouts, growls and curses.
“Get that mangy little cur off me!” Grant yelled.
Mitzi stood half stunned by and half enjoying the scene. She'd never known Chester was so ferocious, but then she'd never heard Grant call him a mangy cur before, either.
“Hmm, maybe I should call for help,” she mused aloud.
Behind her, another car squealed up to the curb. She turned just in time to see Grant hopping out of his BMW. Her lips tilted up in an automatic smileâthen froze.
In fact, her whole body froze, from her toes right up to her brain, which seemed to stop working. She was staring at Grantâthat much she knew. He was standing right next to her, breathing hard. But not fifteen feet away, Chester was attempting to make hamburger of Giant's leg.
Now, how could that be?
8
M
ITZI GAPED at Grant. Grant Number Two, that is. “What the hell is going on?”
Grim-faced, he held up a hand, then attempted to pry Chester away from his double's leg. Chester, catching sight of the new arrival, immediately stopped growling and started groveling, whimpering and licking the second Grant. That Grant held the dog in his arms while Grant Number One, still cursing, fell out of the tree. He stood, stamping his feet and grumbling, and began slapping oak leaves and dirt off himself.
All three of them, the two Grants and the dog, looked up at Mitzi expectantly.
In that moment, she understood. Everything. If it had been physically possible, she would have given herself a swift kick in the pants. Instead, she settled for a sharp mental slap. How could she have been such a dummy when the evidence was there in front of her all the time? It's not like this was the first time this had happened to her. Grant wasn't a split personality. Or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was
twins!
Anger surged through her. And fury. And extreme, extreme relief.
“Mitzi?”
Grant wished he could sink into the ground. He wanted to take her into his arms and murmur every apology known to man.
Gathering his courage, he stepped forward, as close to her as he dared, remembering the punch in the jaw Ted had received. “I don't know where to begin.”
“Maybe at the beginning,” she said, tapping her foot impatiently.
The wedding. “Kay and Marty are my best friends, so I agreed to be Marty's best man. But as the wedding drew closer, I started obsessing about what a failure my own marriage had been.”
“And you were worried because Kay was matchmaking.”
Grant drew a breath of surprise. “How did you know?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Go on.”
“So I sent my brother Ted in my place, and then things started snowballing.”
Her lip quirked cynically. “Mistakes were made, as the politicians say,” she said finishing for him.
“I
made mistakes,” he said. “Incredible ones. You threw me for a loop, Mitzi. I used to be honest, and responsible, and dependable. I had a certain amount of dignity. But since you came along, I've made a public spectacle of myself on several occasions. I've lied shamelessly, and ignored my work, and behaved in a way that even has shocked my brother. I've almost topped Janice in the dishonesty department. In short, I've joined the human race. And the reason is you, Mitzi. I'm crazy about you.”
After his speech, she looked down at her feet and buried her face in her hands. Grant turned to his brother.
Ted was glaring at him in quizzical disgust. “That was an apology?”
Apparently, Mitzi didn't call it one. Her shoulders began to tremble.
Heedless of her notorious right hook, Grant ran forward. “Mitzi, I'm sorry. If I apologized a thousand times, it wouldn't be enough. If I ran a full-page apology in the
New York Times
for a solid year, it wouldn't even begin to explain how sorry I am. If I hired a skywriting plane and...Mitzi?”
A tear streaked down her cheek, piercing him to the core. Her whole body began to shake. Grant shifted Chester and reached out a hand to one of hers, pushing it away so he could see her eyes. When he'd moved her hands away, he got the shock of his life.
She wasn't crying at all. She was laughing! She let out a hoot and doubled over, pointing at him and his brother.
Grant was stunned. He turned to Ted, who was gaping at her with equal confusion. “I don't see what's so funny, do you?”
Ted swept a leaf away from his nose and shook his head. “I told you all along she was a loon.”
To which Mitzi responded with another peal of laughter.
Â
“OUCH!” Ted howled. “You're enjoying this!”
“Don't be silly,” Mitzi replied soothingly. But of course she didn't exactly mind pouring rubbing alcohol onto the open wounds on Ted's hands, which had been scraped on tree bark during his attempted escape from the jaws of a crazed dachshund.
Ted made a hissing sound through his teeth. “None of this was my fault. Grant was the one who started everything.”
They looked up into the bathroom mirror at the reflection of his brother, who was standing behind them. Grant lifted his shoulders innocently as she began to wrap Ted's hands in gauze.
“This is revenge for that itty-bitty bandage you wore on your cheek at the wedding,” she told Ted.
Ted shook his head. “That wasn't me.”
She looked into the mirror, where Grant lifted his hand to confess culpability. Would she ever sort this all out?
“Please tell me you were at least bruised,” she asked Ted.
He scowled. “I drank out of a straw all day.”
Mitzi grinned. What a relief. For the first time, she was really beginning to suspect she would be able to forgive them both. At first she'd been spitting mad, but as Grant had sputtered out his weird apology, her mood had shifted. It was all so ridiculous, and it was gratifying to know that Grant really was Grant, and not that other creature.
She finished her gauze handiwork with a flourish and herded the Bobbsey twins out of the bathroom. “There's one thing I'm still unclear about.” She glanced from brother to brother. “When we kissed at the lake...”
Ted waved his hands frantically. “I was in Austin the whole time!”
Mitzi laughed at Ted's horrified reaction. They were like oil and water, but she was beginning to appreciate him. For not being Grant.
Speaking of whom... She turned to him and found him grinning at her, and felt her own lips hitch up in response. “Why didn't you tell me that you had such an emergency at work? I would have understood.”
“You kept talking about how you hated workaholic men. Then, when I was about to tell you that Ted and I had changed places at the rehearsal dinner, you told me the Barry-Larry story.”
She put her hands on her hips. “But the whole point of that sad tale was that I got stuck with the icky brother. In this case it's reversed.”
Laughing, the two of them glanced over at Ted, who raised his wrapped hands in surrender. “Hey, a man's ego can only take so much.”
Mitzi ushered Ted out the front door and returned to Grant who was sprawled on the couch, his arm flung over his face. She giggled. “What are you doing?”
He peeked at her and sat up a little. “Just wondering how I can ever win back your trust.” He shook his head sadly, but his arch tone made her question how seriously she should be taking him. She perched on the edge of the couch. “I heard the doubts in your voice when you were wondering which of us was at the lake with you, kissing you.”
She nodded, catching his drift. “It is difficult to tell you two apart. The resemblance is uncanny.”
He raised an eyebrow. “But what if I swore to you that I was the only one who had ever kissed you?”
She leaned closer. “I guess that would be one way to make sure I had the correct brother. Of course, I would have to be absolutely familiar with every aspect of a Grant Whiting kiss.”
He frowned dramatically. “It wouldn't be easy.”
She answered with a somber nod. “It would take a lot of research.”
“And practice. You'd have to know every facet of what our kisses could be like, so that in the end, a peck on the lips would be like a PIN code between us.”
“Or a lock combination,” she agreed.
“Or like the magnetic strip on the back of a credit cardâone swipe of the lips and you'd know I was the right guy.” He pulled her achingly close, until their lips were practically touching.
“I'm pretty sure you're the right guy already.” Just being in his arms felt undeniably right.
He looked up at her through dark-blue hooded eyes, and his voice grew gritty and husky. “Why don't we make it definite?”
Their lips touched and Mitzi felt an explosion of sensation inside her. Hard to believe that just seconds before she'd been laughing and joking. This kiss didn't feel like teasing, or flirtation. It wasn't a mere touch of lips. Instead, it was almost as if they were memorizing each texture and touch. Every turn of the head and movement of lips and tongue. The usual awkward bumping of noses didn't bring a giggle out of either one of them. Right away, this was a kiss that meant business.
She sank against him, not certain at first whether he had steered her that way or not. They were both respectably clothed, but there was nothing modest about the way they were touching each other. There was something irresistible about the rich fabric of his jacket that made her want to run her hands underneath it, feeling the outlines of his chest as the silky lining of the jacket caressed her hand. She couldn't help noticing that he seemed likewise intrigued by the sueded silk of her dress. As they feasted on each other's lips, the air was thick with the sounds of whispers and rustles of fabric. Each movement of his hands as they caressed her arms, raced up and down her spine or made lazy circles around the perimeter of her low-backed dress sent spears of desire darting through her.
After the stress of an overly dramatic day, Mitzi found release in doing no thinking at all, just feeling. The taste of him, the fading scent of his aftershave, the warm strength of his lipsâreveling in these sensations could have occupied her for hours. When he ran a hand expertly over her hip and down her leg, however, she let out a low moan, causing him to look up.
“Too much?” he asked.
Not nearly enough, she thought, letting the words remain unspoken as she looked into his handsome face. His blue eyes were as dark as a midnight sky. Thank heavens for the autonomic nervous system. She couldn't think of any other way she would have been able to breathe.
“In school, I was always terrible at remembering locker combinations,” she told him. “I had to practice it over and over.”
He smiled, then reached up and idly replaced a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. “It's terrible to be locked out,” he said, giving her chin a little nibble.
Her heart started beating an erratic, insistent rhythm, like the tom-toms of an exotic jungle tribe. “And those little magnetic strips on the backs of credit cards...”
He bestowed her neck with a series of pecks and kisses. She shivered.
“...they're not very reliable. You have to keep testing to make sure they're functioning properly.”
“Mmm,” he agreed, touching that little hollow at the base of her throat with his lips. “You can never be too careful.”
The tom-toms were thumping away like crazy now, and when he experimentally undid the top button of her dress, she felt as if a whole tribe was doing a fire dance in her stomach. She looked down at Grant and maneuvered a hand over his. “Grant,” she said. Everything was happening so fast.
Then again, sometimes fast was good.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Something incredible has happened to me.”
Something incredible was happening to her, too. Namely, her blood felt as if it were transforming into molten lava. “What?” she managed to croak.
“I think I love you, Mitzi.”
Suddenly, her doubts shattered. Her inhibitions, too. And her good sense, but that had taken a hike the first time she'd looked into Grant's blue eyesâ
really
looked into his eyes, that day at the wedding.
She was on the verge of telling him that she loved him, too. That she'd loved him ever since the night he'd walked her around the neighborhood and told her about how he'd had to move out of the house where he'd harbored so many dreams of raising a family.
But he captured her lips again, making words superfluous. All that she would have had such a hard time saying aloud, she could now express in their kiss. And when the vocabulary of their lips seemed to fall short of what she wanted to communicate, she moved her body needfully against his, and perfectly expressed her mounting desire by boldly pushing off his coat and undoing his tie and the buttons of his dress shirt. She longed to feel his bare skin against her palms.
He caught her hand again and smiled. “I don't want to make love to you on a couch, Mitzi.”
She drew back, smiling. “Whoever built this house was ingenious. There's a bedroom just steps away from here.”
But when she looked toward the bedroom door, it seemed miles away. There was nothing more awkward than standing up, half-dressed, and stumbling for the nearest bed.
But she should have known that Grant would allow nothing about intimacy between them to be awkward. In one fast movement, he stood, gave her a hand up, then lifted her off her feet, carrying her against his chest into the bedroom. It was the first time a man had ever truly swept her off her feet.