Bait & Switch (8 page)

Well before she got in her fair share of ogling, he positioned himself on the edge of the boat and plunged into the water. The sleek muscles in his back moved as he paddled over to the coral reef.

“You know what I always wonder?”

Lizabeth was so focused on the rippling glory of Grant’s back that Captain Turk’s voice came as a surprise. She was vaguely aware of him sitting beside her and putting up his feet.

“Hmmm?” she asked, her attention riveted on Grant. He’d gotten the Most Likely to Succeed award in high school. Personally she would have come up with a new accolade just for him: Most Watchable.

“Why didn’t the captain and his crew encounter marine life in outer space?” Captain Turk asked. “I mean, they met just about every other life form. Why not fish people?”

Lizabeth pulled her eyes from Grant and focused on the strange, little man. “Pardon me?”

“Okay, maybe fish people is too far out there. I mean, how could they walk? But why not a race of lobster men? They could get around on pincers.”

He seemed to be settling in for a long chat. Lizabeth reached for a pair of flippers. She kicked off her high-heeled sandals and tugged them on.

“Their eyes could be on the ends of stalks shooting out of their foreheads,” Captain Turk said, “and if you got on their bad side. . . Pow! They’d clamp down on you with those sharp pincers.”

Lizabeth pulled on the mask next. As soon as it was snugly in place, she grabbed for a snorkel and scurried over to the side of the boat.

“They could call the episode Long Live the Lobster Men,” he said.

Lizabeth swung her legs over the side of the boat, took a deep breath and plunged. The water closed over her, a cool bath after the heat. She came up for air, shivering and sputtering. Within seconds, however, her body was acclimatized to the water temperature.

“Hey!” Captain Turk called. “You didn’t tell me what you thought of the lobster men.”

She stroked away from the boat. She hadn’t been in the water for years, not since the YMCA classes she took as a child. Even then, she hadn’t been much good at keeping herself afloat.

She was surprisingly adequate at it now. Her arms cut through the water, propelling her forward toward the coral reef. She was actually swimming.

Except she couldn’t swim.

She flailed her arms and her legs went dead. Her head dipped once under the clear blue sea. She surfaced, sputtering.

“Help! Help!” she cried.

She went under the water a second time. Strong hands grasped her under the arms and pulled her up. She coughed, tasting the salt of the water she’d swallowed. She gulped in fresh, sweet air and looked into the handsome face of her savior. My hero, she thought.

“You saved my life,” she breathed.

A few days ago, Cary wouldn’t have thought twice about taking credit where none was due. He’d had no reason to act the way he thought Mitch would in the same situation until he meet Leeza.

“No, I didn’t,” he said, and the words hurt, like physical blows. “The water’s shallow enough to stand.”

“It is?” Surprise lit her dark eyes. She struggled to right her body and planted her flipper-clad feet on the bottom of the sea. “You’re right. It is!”

He spotted the instant embarrassment washed over her skin. With the big black mask pulled tight over her features, she should have looked silly rather than charmingly contrite. She wasn’t quite as comfortable in the water as she’d claimed, but how could he hold pretense against her?

“I don’t know what came over me. It must’ve been that hot sun.” She placed the back of her hand on her forehead. “Did you know the sun is more than 330,000 times larger than the earth?”

“Can’t say that I did.” Cary took her hand firmly in his. Just holding it made him feel good, like a man who’d finally made the connection that would help the rest of his life snap in place. Where have you been all my life, Leeza Drinkmiller?, he thought. “You better stick by me. That way, I can show you the wonders of the sea.”

For the next few hours, that’s exactly what he did. They floated together, the water sleek and silky against their flesh, their eyes feasted on the reef’s dazzling display. Coral in rich jewel tones provided a stunning backdrop for tropical fish so beautiful they seemed unreal, like paintings from a master artist’s vivid imagination.

Cary lived in the moment for the most part, but a fleeting thought of his brother got in the way of his enjoyment of a sea anemone. He was taking this masquerade too seriously if he was worried about what Mitch would think of his agreement to transport those crates for Captain Turk.

With the measly thousand dwindling fast, how else was he supposed to romance a woman like Leeza? He could have made some quick cash by placing a couple of bets, but the Boy Scout had made him promise not to.

He squeezed Leeza’s hand and stubbornly refused to give another thought to anything except the radiant coral, the shimmering sea and the stunning woman at his side.

He certainly wouldn’t speculate about what might be inside those crates. He didn’t
know
they contained illegal goods.

Suspecting it didn’t count.

Peyton stalked toward the baseball field early on Monday evening, imagining that dating Cary Mitchell must be analogous to performing high-wire acrobatics.

The exhilaration of twisting, turning and leaping into the air couldn’t be any more thrilling than the way her heart had raced the last few times she’d been with Mitch.

Unfortunately, Peyton could also relate to crashing to earth. Unlike most high-wire artists, she hadn’t set up a safety net.

How could Mitch have left the preservation league’s ball Saturday night before she’d gotten her Volunteer of the Year award? She’d stepped up to the podium, eagerly searched the crowd for his face and came up empty.

She’d struggled through her acceptance speech as the knowledge that he’d fooled her again penetrated her thick skull. She couldn’t count on him. Not even a little bit. No matter what he claimed.

The anger had come swiftly, as it always did. But this time something that felt far too much like pain had accompanied it. Somehow, in the last few days, Mitch had pierced her heart and crept inside. For her self-preservation, she needed to extricate him.

“Hey, sweetheart. Where you headed in such a hurry?” One of a group of men kicking around a soccer ball yelled as she passed.

Peyton ignored him, keeping her eyes straight ahead, like a pointer directed at its prey.

It was Mitch’s fault she’d resorted to confronting him at work. She’d intended to wait until he contacted her, but more than a day had passed with no word and then he hadn’t answered his cell phone or doorbell.

She spotted him in the distance surrounded by a virtual army of teenage boys dressed in baseball uniforms of various colors. Mitch stood out despite the generic T-shirt and gym shorts all the parks and rec employees wore. The sun was low in the sky, adding a burnished quality to his skin. His dark hair gleamed, like sun-washed coal.

Peyton steeled herself against his good looks. She was breaking up with him. Right here. Right now. He wouldn’t talk her out of it this time.

With her long strides eating up the ground and closing the distance between them, she got ready to blast him. Somebody else beat her to it.

“The schedule says the Red Eyes are playing the Blue Moons on Field One,” shouted a burly boy in a red uniform.

“But Mitch said we’re playing the White Heads on Field One,” a boy in blue piped up.

“That’s right. The White Heads are on Field One,” one of the white-shirted team members interjected. “But we’re playing the Black Death.”

“Death to Mitch, I say,” announced a boy in a black shirt. “He’s the one who screwed up.”

“Killing me won’t help.” Mitch backed up a step as the group advanced. “Let’s look on the bright side. We have a field, right? You guys can combine teams.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. Black and Blue versus Heads and Eyes.”

The team members’ voices erupted into angry chaos. If they’d been aboard a ship, Mitch would have a full-fledged mutiny on his hands. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking beleaguered and out of his element.
 

Peyton’s heart sank.

The boy in black yelled something resembling a battle cry. That did it.

“Quiet!” Peyton yelled.

Nobody shut up. If anything, the volume rose. Peyton stepped into the fray, clearing a path through the noisy boys to Mitch. His head jerked up and his eyebrows rose in a silent question. She positioned herself in front of him, wasting no time with explanations.

“I said shut up!” she shouted.

As if by magic, the voices quieted. She looked out over the sea of young faces and shook her index finger.

“Shame on you, behaving like this,” she said. “Haven’t you ever heard of compromise?”

“Compromise?” One angry voice rose out of the silence. “We paid our league fee. We shouldn’t have to compromise.”

“This never happened before.” The speaker was a White Head, whose acne was so bad he could have been his team’s poster boy. “There have always been plenty of fields.”

“You mean there are more than one?” Peyton asked.

A member of the Red Eyes gestured to the green expanse surrounding them. “There are lots of fields.”

“Then go see if any of them are free,” Peyton ordered.

“Hey, good idea,” one of the Blue Moons cried. He raced off between a Head and an Eye.
 

Peyton moved away from Mitch, careful not to look at him.

“Haven’t seen you around before.” The boy in black sidled up to her. He was tall and reed thin, with eye black under his eyes and black polish on his fingernails. “Call me Poe, like the poet.”

“Your mom named you after Edgar Allan Poe?” Peyton asked.

“I named myself,” he said. “Edgar and I are both masters of horror. If you want, I’ll write a poem for you.”

From the corner of her eye, Peyton noticed Mitch listening to their exchange with his arms crossed over his chest and a smile playing about his lips. The boy looked so hopeful she searched for a way to let him down easy. “Thanks, but I’m not into scary things.”

“Too bad,” the boy said. “Horror’s the bomb.”

Mitch had the audacity to catch her eye and smile, as though they were on good enough terms to share a private moment. She’d straighten him out, but good.

The trio of boys rushed back, announcing that Field Four was empty. Things happened quickly after that. Peyton assigned the Death to play the Heads and instructed the Moons and the Eyes to stay where they were. The players went off to start their games and quite suddenly she and Mitch were alone on the sidelines.

She hazarded a look at him. The last vestiges of the sun had disappeared from the sky, and the overhead lights were flickering to life. His mouth kicked up in that half-grin that made her stomach do crazy things.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s about the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.”

Peyton’s stomach flipped so hard that for an insane moment she was tempted to grin back at him. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.“Don’t you dare accuse me of being nice to you!”

The space between his eyebrows knotted. “But you were.”

“I wasn’t being nice. I was being. . . humane. That crowd was about to turn on you.”

“Then thanks for being humane to me.”

“Oh.” She let out an angry sound and balled her hands into fists. “Can’t I do anything without it being about you?”

“What?”
 

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m angry.”

“I had noticed.” He ran his hands through his hair, lending it a tousled, just-out-of-bed quality. Peyton could have flogged herself for letting her thoughts run to Mitch and bed. “This is about the ball, isn’t it? I tried calling you a bunch of times
 
to apologize, but couldn’t reach you.”

Peyton didn’t have any missed calls on her cell but supposed it was possible he’d phoned her at home. “Then why didn’t you leave a message?”

“I wanted to apologize to you, not to an answering machine.”

“Give it up, Mitch.” She let her sarcasm show. “You and I are through.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

She needed to think about that for a moment. “Telling you we’re through.”

“Why the personal visit? Why didn’t you just call and say we were through?”

“Because you didn’t answer your cell.”

“I didn’t?” he asked, as though that came as a surprise to him. He focused on her, squinting his eyes and shaking his head. “That’s not it. I think you wanted to see me in person.”

“Why would I want that?”

“So I could talk you out of breaking up with me.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She noticed a lock of his dark hair swirling across his forehead. That was strange. Didn’t it usually swirl in the opposite direction? She stopped herself from brushing it back from his face. “You can’t change my mind about dumping you.”

He cocked his head. “You don’t want to hear why I had to leave the ball early?”

“No!” Peyton refuted. Except she was already here. What would it hurt to listen to his explanation? “Why?”

“Because—”

“You better not say anything about Ho Hos or dead rock stars,” she interrupted.

“Will you let me explain?”

She put her hands on her hips, giving him some attitude. “Go ahead. Talk.”

“I have a second job tending bar.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “If I hadn’t showed up for work, I would’ve been fired.”

Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. Then again, it explained so much. Since they’d started dating, he’d been about as reliable as the tour-guide business in the dead of winter.

“How long has this been going on?” she asked.

He seemed to be mentally adding up days. “About a month.”

A month. All of a sudden, the broken dates and early exits made sense. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Because he hadn’t told her, that’s why. He’d merely let her think he was either irresponsible, heedless of her feelings or fooling around with another woman.

“You’re such a jerk, Mitch,” she said.

“For having a second job?”