Mitch hooked an arm around her waist and yanked her forward. The thin cotton of her sleep shirt and robe weren’t nearly enough protection from his searing flesh. Her torso fused to his.
Mitch took her mouth roughly, the initial contact slamming his teeth against hers. She squeaked a protest, but he didn’t release her. He merely changed the angle of the kiss.
Every cell in her body screamed with alarm. With arousal.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Mitch Kincaid had hurt and insulted her sister. Carly didn’t even like him. How could she when he made no secret of his desire to dump her and keep Rhett locked up like a dog in quarantine?
She had every intention of shoving him away when she dug her fingers into his arm and pressed her free hand against his waist. But the moment his bare, supple skin melded to her palm her body seemed to come up with a different plan. It burned and ached and needed, reminding her that she hadn’t been with a man in a while. And even then, making love with Sam hadn’t felt like this—like a swarm of fireflies taking flight, flickering and sparking nerve endings that had previously lain dormant.
Mitch’s lips parted and his tongue traced the outline of her mouth, caressing, stroking. She gasped, and he swept the inside of her bottom lip, tempting her against her will into settling against him and relaxing her jaw. Their tongues touched, intertwined.
She shouldn’t be kissing him back. But his flavor filled her mouth and his musky scent invaded her lungs. Dizziness rocked her. She grappled for steady ground.
One hand mapped an upward path along his bicep to grasp his shoulder. The other spread over his back. Hard muscles flexed beneath his smooth skin.
Mitch’s big hands raked her back, her waist. He cupped her buttocks and pressed her against his thickening flesh. Her internal muscles clenched and wept in appreciation of the length pressing her belly. A moan snaked up her throat.
He shoved her robe from her shoulders. It snagged at her waist. His frustrated growl filled her mouth. A quick tug and the belt gave way. Her robe parted. His hot hands found her waist through the thin fabric and raked upward. He traced the underside of her br**sts with his thumbs and the air thinned.
She ought to protest, but she couldn’t seem to put the words together. She could barely think. All she could do was feel. His heat. His strength. His ravenous mouth. Lust, unlike anything she’d experienced before, rose within her. Her short nails dug into firm tissue and held on.
He palmed her breast and unerringly found her nipple, stroked it, then rolled it between his fingers. A lightning storm of desire shot straight to her core, melting her, making her heart race and her thighs quiver.
A snuffle from the crib penetrated her sensual high and shocked her back to awareness of where she was and with whom.
She ripped herself out of Mitch’s arms. Gasping for air, she backed away, righted her clothing and cinched her robe around her waist like a tourniquet.
How could she be turned on by Mitch Kincaid? She knew too much about him. None of it good.
She swiped the back of her hand across her damp and still tingling lips. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
Mitch’s nostrils flared on a sharply indrawn breath. The passion in his eyes turned to frost and his mouth twisted in derision. “Oh, c’mon, Carly. Don’t act like it wasn’t your plan to soften me with dinner and a sexy sundress. Screwing me is only the next step on your agenda.”
“What agenda?” She had one. But it had nothing to do with sex.
“Did you and your sister have a contest going to see who could land the richest sugar daddy?”
Shock and fury and grief ripped through Carly like an explosion. She dug her nails into her palms to keep from slapping his face. “I was engaged, you moron, to an intern with student loans to rival the national debt. Not a sugar daddy. And don’t blame that kiss on me. I’ve done nothing to attract your attention.”
“Haven’t you? What would you call the curve-hugging clothes, the braless sundress and the hypnotic walk?”
She had a hypnotic walk? “I don’t dress suggestively.”
“Give me a break. You have a damned good body and you display it like a trophy. Men probably fall at your feet.”
Flattering, in an insulting kind of way. But wrong. “Are you deluded?”
“Not deluded enough to fall into your trap. Cast your line somewhere else. Because you’re not landing this Kincaid.” He stalked toward the stairs.
“If I landed you, Kincaid, I’d throw you back or use you for shark bait. Go to hell, you conceited jerk.”
“I’ve already been there,” Mitch growled to the empty foyer. “And you’re not taking me back.”He strode down the hall, heading straight to the book-lined study—formerly his father’s, but now Mitch’s domain. He dragged his father’s old Rolodex out of the drawer and flipped through the cards until he found the one he needed. The cool leather chair against his back did nothing to soothe his overheated skin as he punched out the cell phone number.
“Lewis Investigations,” a man’s voice answered on the second ring despite the late hour.
“Frank, this is Mitch Kincaid.”
“Sorry to hear about your father, Mitch. Everett and I went way back.”
“That’s why I know I can trust you with this job.” He briefly summarized the situation, and then said, “I need you to dig up dirt on Carly Corbin. I want anything that could discredit her or prove her an unfit guardian. And I need it yesterday.”
The P.I. laughed. “You’re definitely Everett’s son. I’ll get right on it. Any chance you can get me a set of fingerprints?”
He remembered the dinner dishes. “I’ll get them tonight and have them couriered to you first thing tomorrow. While you’re checking into Carly I want you to look into her sister, too.”
“Anything in particular I’m looking for?”
“I want to know what Marlene Corbin did with the hundred grand we paid her. And I want you to see what you can find out about the hit-and-run that killed her three months ago. The police have moved the investigation to the back burner.”
Mitch’s fingers tightened around the receiver. He had to know the truth, and his father had sworn Frank Lewis was the soul of discretion.
“I need to know if my father was involved in her death.”
Four
T he rat bastard could kiss.
Carly did not want to know that.She increased her speed, trying to outrun her disturbing thoughts and banish the grogginess left over from a restless night. Rhett cackled in his stroller ahead of her, loving the faster pace and the wind in his face. He pounded the squeaky horn on his toy steering wheel, shattering the stillness of the morning.
Rebound romance.
That’s the only way she could explain her reaction to Kincaid’s kisses. It had been three months since Sam had dumped her. When he’d learned Carly had been appointed as Rhett’s guardian, her fiancé had claimed he wasn’t ready for an instant family, and he’d added that he didn’t want to raise someone else’s brat anyway. Sam had given Carly an ultimatum, him or Rhett.
After the brat comment Carly hadn’t had a choice. She couldn’t love a man who refused to even try to bond with a child simply because he hadn’t genetically contributed to its DNA or one who’d ask her to make that kind of sacrifice a second time. Although to his credit, Sam hadn’t known about the daughter she’d given up for adoption at sixteen. She hadn’t told him for fear he’d find that decision as unforgivable as her college boyfriend had.
She’d chosen her nephew over fiancé and that had been the end of her engagement. And her sex life.
Okay, so chalk up last night’s fiasco to neglected hormones. But still…it was one thing to acknowledge Mitch Kincaid was good-looking and sexy. It was another to have locked lips with him and thought even for one second about jumping his bones.
But she had.
And that’s why she’d taken the coward’s way out this morning and gone for an early run rather than face the rat ba—Mitch—over breakfast. She couldn’t look in his eyes and know he’d made her as antsy as a dog in heat. Not until she had her hormones locked back in their kennel.
Maybe she should go out on one of those dates Mitch had mentioned. She weighed the idea and discarded it. Sex with some guy she picked up in a bar or with one of the blind dates her coworker seemed determined to arrange for her just didn’t appeal. She preferred a steady, monogamous relationship with her sex. And love. Or at least exceptionally strong and optimistic like.
The distant scruff of footsteps behind her pulled her out of her funk. Safety wasn’t an issue here since the gated community had only one entrance, but company on her run would be surprising. She glanced over her shoulder, but a curve in the road and a lush oleander hedge blocked her view. Funny how many of the mansions were surrounded by the toxic plant. She made a point to keep Rhett’s curious fingers out of reach.
If there was one thing she could count on in this very exclusive section of Miami, it was the solitude she needed to get her head together. Rich folks, she’d learned since moving into Kincaid Manor, stayed behind their tall fences. They didn’t jog or stroll through the meandering, tree-and shrub-lined streets. The pricey peninsula couldn’t be more different from her friendly neighborhood of culs-de-sac and block parties. She knew all of her neighbors.
She jogged in place at a hand-carved wooden Stop sign and waited for a banana-yellow Lamborghini to pass. She waved a greeting, but couldn’t see through the darkly tinted windows whether or not the occupant waved back.
The nearing footsteps told her the other runner was gaining on her. She glanced back again. Mitch. A nearly nak*d Mitch. Her heart rate shot up.
He wore skimpy running shorts and shoes. Nothing else. And the view of his torso in the bright sunlight was a hundred times better than it had been in Rhett’s shadowy room last night. A fitness model would envy that body, those legs, those abs, and oh, mama, those mile-wide shoulders. There wasn’t an ounce of surplus fat on him. Corded muscles wrapped in tight, tanned, glistening skin, bunched and flexed with each long stride and pump of his arms as he closed the distance between them and drew up alongside her.
If not for her tight grip on the stroller handle, Carly would have fallen flat on her face—after tripping over her tongue.
“Good morning, Carly.” Like her, he jogged in place. Unlike her, he wasn’t winded. Or drooling. His gaze raked over her, lingering on her br**sts encased in a sports bra tank before traveling to her shorts and her legs.
So much for avoiding him for a few days. She hoped he’d attribute the heat in her face to exertion and not lust—which had hit her like a hurricane the second she spotted him. His kisses had been that good.
“Morning, Mitch.” Carly snapped her attention back to the road and resumed her run. He kept pace beside her.
“Don’t let us keep you.” Not exactly subtle, Carly.
“I’ve decided to join you and the kid when you run.”
Why did she doubt it was for the pleasure of their company? “His name is Rhett.”