Every Move You Make
Every Move You Make
Tori Carrington
Businessman turned P.I. Zach Letterman doesn't expect his first case to be easy.But he never dreamed the real challenge would be keeping his hands off his sexy new partner, Mariah Clayborn. The seasoned P.I. says she'll take Zach under her wing, promising to show him the ins and outs of the detective business. Only, Zach has no idea what else Mariah intends to show him….After losing three boyfriends to marriage–one week after they dumped her–Mariah Clayborn knows she has to change her image. The new Mariah is going to be seductive, irresistible…addictive, even. And gorgeous Zach Letterman is just the man to get her there. Her plan? To offer her investigative expertise in exchange for some lessons in lust. Little does she guess she'll end up the one addicted….
Time was running out…
Zach glanced down at Mariah’s sleeping face, hearing a silent clock tick off in his head. She’d offered to show him the ropes. He’d agreed to show her how to be sexy. Zach swallowed hard. The only problem was, Mariah would send him into cardiac arrest if she were any sexier.
He trailed his fingers down over her hip. She shivered in her sleep, bringing a grin to his face as he edged his fingers over her hipbone toward the soft curls between her thighs. Her breathing grew shallower and her thighs opened in sweet invitation.
Good God, but she was beautiful.
Now that she was no longer lying against his chest, Zach saw the chance to further Mariah’s sensual education. Still teasing her lightly with his fingers, he trailed gentle kisses down her throat, along her breasts and stomach, and was delighted by her body’s uninhibited response. Feeling her growing restlessness, Zach shifted on the bed and continued his downward path of kisses. He felt supreme satisfaction when he heard Mariah’s breath hitch the moment his mouth touched her, giving her what she’d been unconsciously asking for.
They might not have much time together. But Zach intended to make every minute count….
Dear Reader,
If you’re like us, you read every book in the TRUEBLOOD, TEXAS continuity series. So you can only imagine how tickled we were when we were asked to pick up the reins—along with fellow Blaze authors Vicki Lewis Thompson and Debbi Rawlins—and revisit the Truebloods, this time with a Blaze twist.
In Every Move You Make, ex-cowhand, now P.I. Mariah Clayborn offers up a striking proposal Indiana Trueblood Zach Letterman is loath to refuse—she’ll teach him about private investigating if he teaches her all the things a man wants in a woman. All too quickly, telling leads to showing, and showing leads to the discovery of a passion so hot it burns them both. Only, their encounters leave Mariah even more confused than ever. Because rather than showing her what a man wants, Zach’s teaching her to take what she wants. And what she wants is…him!
We hope you enjoy our sizzling addition to the TRUEBLOOD, TEXAS series. We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 1271, Toledo, OH 43611, or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.com.
Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading!
Lori & Tony Karayianni
aka Tori Carrington
Every Move You Make
Tori Carrington
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one’s for all our Texan friends!
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Prologue
WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?
Jennifer Rodriquez Madison balanced the phone between her chin and shoulder while she wildly wrote notes with one hand and stuffed a cracker into her mouth with the other, trying like crazy to do the work of three people. She was afraid she was not only failing, but failing miserably. She eyed the agitated potential new client talking nonstop in front of her desk, then felt her heart squeeze as she glanced at her crying infant in the portable crib next to her.
When both Ralph Budnick and Roy Morales of Budnick and Morales Private Investigations retired, Jennifer saw their departure as an opportunity of a lifetime. Of course she’d taken the fact that she was newly married and about to have a baby completely for granted.
Now that the baby was three months old and Jen was back at the outside office, instead of working in the comfort of her home office, she was terrified that her decision to take on the company alone would be the death of her.
The cowbell on the front door clanged. Jennifer spared the latest visitor enough of a glance to notice he was tall, gorgeous and about as welcome at that moment as a deadly virus. “If you’re here for an ongoing investigation, or looking to hire us for a new one,” she told him, “I’m going to have to ask you to come back at another time.”
She blindly found Annie’s pacifier, where it was attached by a length of yarn to the front of her jumpsuit, and popped it into her mouth. Annie instantly spit it out and continued vying for the “most neglected baby of the year” award.
“So are you going to take my case or not?” the woman in front of her desk asked, tapping red fingernails against an alligator-skin purse Jennifer suspected was real. “A friend of mine recommended your agency to me.” She looked around, disdain written on her well made-up face. “But seeing what I have so far, I can’t imagine why.”
Jennifer bristled and moved the silent receiver to her other ear, hoping the client she had on hold wouldn’t hang up as she waited out someone else who had put her on hold. She absently realized that the tall stranger who had entered hadn’t left. “You’re right, Mrs. McCabe. Maybe we’re not equipped to handle cases like you’re describing. Have you ever thought of actually asking your husband if he’s being unfaithful?”
“What kind of question is that?” Mrs. McCabe asked. Her carefully painted face had turned red.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A commonsense one? And definitely a step up from hiring an attractive, flirty woman to entrap him at a country club.”
The woman scoffed.
The stranger moved out of Jennifer’s eyeshot and almost instantly Annie quieted. Jennifer swiveled to find him hesitantly tickling the fussy infant. He gave Jennifer a sheepish grin that made her blink then began to pull his hand back. With a loud cry, Annie let her thoughts on the matter be known. Jennifer couldn’t blame her daughter. She’d much rather have a great-looking guy tickling her, too.
“May I?” the stranger asked, indicating he’d like to pick Annie up.
Let’s see, a choice between earsplitting screams and a happy baby? Jennifer gestured for him to go ahead. She watched as he awkwardly lifted her up and held her at arm’s length, staring at her as curiously as Annie stared back. Jen opened her mouth to tell him to support her head, then the stranger awkwardly but successfully held Annie to his wide chest. He wore a coffee-colored suit that had Northerner written all over it, and he had the type of handsome good looks that would have turned her head before she had stumbled into Ryan’s life for a case she was working on and had her own life turned upside down.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Jennifer asked him, thinking it a pretty good guess that he hadn’t popped up out of the blue to help her with her unhappy daughter.
Maybe Ryan was right about what he had said that morning. He’d tried to convince her to keep working out of the house so that they could, um, pursue their personal interests as well as her business interests. He had also said she had bitten off a little more than she could chew. She sat up straighter, merely thinking the words making her feel combative. His overprotective tendencies both endeared him to her and irritated her. And those tendencies had quadrupled with the birth and his adoption of little Annie.
Of course Ryan was easily sidetracked if need be. A scrap of sexy lingerie and he was putty in her hands.
Jennifer’s mind began to drift to all things sexy and hot but she forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.
“I’m Zach Letterman,” the visitor said with a mid-western accent, a smile softening his striking features as he looked into Annie’s face.
“Is there another agency you could recommend?” Mrs. McCabe was saying insistently, making no secret that she found the intrusion insulting. “Someone who can handle the type of case I’m proposing?”
Letterman, Letterman, Jennifer thought, trying to place the name.
Another telephone line rang, only adding to the general state of chaos. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCabe, but as you can see, I’m very busy right now. If you’d like to leave your card, I’ll contact you later with any possibilities I come up with.”
Jennifer’s gaze was again pulled to the stranger.
He quietly cleared his throat. “Lily recommended me to you.”
“Lily?”
“The job opening?” He grinned at her and she widened her eyes at the megawatt smile. “Looks like you could certainly use a hand around here.”
“Oh. Oh!” Jennifer nearly pushed the package of crackers from her desk in her rush to shake his hand. “You’re that Mr. Letterman. Lily’s cousin from Indiana. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” She checked her calendar. “Oh. Tomorrow is…well, today, isn’t it?”
She recalled the phone conversation she’d had with Lily last week. Lily Garrett Bishop and her brother Dylan Garrett had established Finders Keepers out of San Antonio, Texas, in honor of their great-grandmother Isabella Trueblood. Aside from being a good friend, Lily regularly sent work Jennifer’s way, doubling and sometimes tripling her workload. Her first case for Lily was also instrumental in her meeting and marrying her husband, Ryan. Lily had known Budnick and Morales Private Investigation desperately needed new blood and had recommended Zach Letterman to Jennifer.
And here he was now in the flesh…and what handsome flesh it was.
Mrs. McCabe slapped a postcard-sized piece of stiff paper filled with phone numbers onto the desk in front of Jennifer. “I expect to hear from you promptly with suggestions on who else I might consult.”
Jennifer made a face and forced herself to be polite.
“Mrs. Madison?”
The voice coming through the receiver nearly startled her, she’d been on hold for so long. Jennifer straightened the phone. “I’m still here.”
“Sorry to have taken so long, but someone misplaced your test results and it took some doing to find them.”
Jennifer waved her hand as she watched Mrs. McCabe huff through the front door. “And…?”
“And congratulations,” her ob-gyn told her. “You and your husband are going to have a new addition to your family in about eight months.”
Jennifer stared sightlessly at the blinking lights on the phone in front of her, and glanced at the man holding her infant baby. She and Ryan had talked of having several children. But so soon?
“Mrs. Madison? Jennifer? Are you still there?”
Jennifer was so distracted by the news she hung up the receiver without saying goodbye.
Then she turned toward Zach. “You’re hired.”
1
WELL, THINGS CERTAINLY WORKED differently down here, didn’t they?
In the two days since Zach Letterman had traded Indianapolis, Indiana, for first San Antonio, then Midland, Texas, that was his most remarkable discovery. Things worked differently in the Lone Star State. Sure, he’d expected some differences—the sweltering summer heat, the manner of speaking, the types of food. But he’d been unprepared for the generosity of character, the easygoing nature that each Texan he’d so far encountered had displayed as proudly as he wore his custom-made suits. The most remarkable people so far being his cousins Lily Bishop and Dylan Garrett.
From the moment he’d contacted Lily and Dylan a month ago with his proposal, they’d treated him like part of the family. It hadn’t mattered that he’d never seen them before. They’d accepted him as easily as if they’d had countless snowball fights in the backyard when they were kids. He glanced out the window at the Texas landscape, thinking maybe snowballs wouldn’t have been an option. Playing cowboys and Indians probably would fit better.
The infant in his arms wriggled. Zach gazed down at the bundle as if surprised to find he still held her. She was all pink and new and weighed next to nothing in his arms. He’d never held an infant before. Somehow he hadn’t expected them to be so…light.
Zach carefully put the now sleeping infant back in her carrier then wiped at a spot of drool on the front of his suit.
“How soon can you start?” Jennifer Madison asked. “Oh! I can’t believe I left Denton Gawlick on hold. Give me a minute.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
And he did. Zach crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Jennifer pick the phone receiver back up and punch at one of the red blinking lights. After ten years of grueling, twenty-hour days spent building up his tool and die company in Indianapolis, Indiana, he’d taken a good long look at his life and the way he was living it and decided it was time to make some changes. But it had taken his grandmother’s death six months ago to compel him to implement those changes.
Of course, becoming a private investigator hadn’t even been on the list of possibilities. He’d debated entering the Peace Corps, starting a charity to fight world hunger, traveling the world with little more than the clothes on his back, leaving his credit cards and tremendous cash resources at home. But losing his last, closest living relative, the woman who had raised him after his father disappeared and his mother died, had had a tremendous effect on him he was still trying to sort through. It had ignited in him a longing for family connections he no longer had. Stories Nana had told him as a kid sitting in front of the fireplace with her had come back to him, and he’d realized he’d absorbed every word and could probably recite them even now. And it had been the stories of his Texas relatives that had captured his imagination the most. And so had Trueblood, Texas, the town that had been named after his great-aunt Isabella Trueblood.
With Nana’s death, he’d felt adrift, in need of more than just the changes he’d wanted to make to his life that would send him in a direction toward a more fulfilling career. He’d needed to connect with someone. His family.
So he’d hired a local detective agency and found out that his cousins Lily Bishop and Dylan Garrett had continued on with the family legacy laid out by Isabella Trueblood by opening their own agency, Finders Keepers, a detective agency dedicated to reuniting family members and lost loves. The rightness of their pursuit, and how it tied into what he knew about Great-Aunt Isabella Trueblood, had his mind start clicking in directions he would never have considered before. And within two months of receiving the background report on his Texas relatives, he’d made contact and offered up a business proposal.
But meeting Lily and Dylan in the flesh had been less business-oriented and much more personal than he could have ever imagined. And fruitful in so many ways. After spending a day with them and their blossoming families, he’d gone into Finders Keepers and was immediately hooked. After hearing their many success stories, he’d known down to the bone that his decision was the right one. That he was doing the right thing. The only problem was that everyone in Trueblood knew who he was. There weren’t all that many true Truebloods left without creating a fuss in the small town. And that’s when Lily came up with the idea of sending him to Jennifer Madison to learn the ropes incognito, the only ones knowing his true identity being Jennifer and her husband, Ryan. He would become a private investigator. Just as he’d worked from the bottom rung of the ladder up in his tool and die business, he would learn the art of private investigating in the same way.
And here he was, gazing at pretty Jennifer Madison, waiting for the next step of his life to begin.
Jennifer Madison was more than merely pretty; she was stunning in ways Zach couldn’t begin to count. Lily had spoken highly of the young woman, and Zach could see why. Anyone would have been overwhelmed by the busyness of the office he’d seen so far. But Jennifer seemed to be managing, although barely. And the little one dozing next to her desk was a gem. Whoever Jennifer’s husband was, he was one lucky guy.
Jennifer gave a deep sigh of relief, pulling Zach’s gaze and attention back to her. “Mr. Gawlick. Good, good, you’re still there. I’m sorry to have kept you on hold for so long…” She smiled. “Yes, of course, I understand that you want a spot person from our agency involved with your case.” She eyed Zach. “In fact, I’m looking at just the person for the job as we speak.”
Zach raised a brow.
“I understand the urgency. Yes. No. Very good, Mr. Gawlick. My associate should be there shortly.”
She replaced the receiver and smiled at Zach.
He cleared his throat. “I take it you were talking about me?”
“Uh-huh.” Jennifer reached down and tucked a blanket around the infant’s tiny body. “Mr. Denton Gawlick, of the Odessa Gawlicks. He and his wife are renewing their wedding vows in a week. Only the dress Mrs. Gawlick was hoping to wear, well, it’s been languishing somewhere in lost airline baggage hell for the past week.”
Zach rubbed his chin and grinned. “The case of the missing wedding dress?” Definitely not Mickey Spillane material. Then again, it had its possibilities.
Jennifer laughed and tilted her head to look at him closely. “You’re not licensed yet, right?”
Zach narrowed his gaze, hoping she wouldn’t use his lack of experience as a reason to change her mind. “Right. I’m not just wet behind the ears, I’m soaked.”
She opened a drawer and fingered through files before taking one out and handing it to him. “Then this should be a great case to break you in with.” He must have registered the surprise on his face because she said, “Don’t worry. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was an accountant. You have Lily’s highest recommendation, so you have my complete trust.”
Zach eyed her, still not sure how to take this new way of operating. He didn’t think he’d be half as generous if their positions were reversed. Referral or not, he’d have checked the applicant’s references, asked a ton of questions, and still would have been hesitant to trust the candidate.
Things really did work differently down here.
He swallowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Madison. I’ll make sure your trust isn’t misplaced.”
“It’s Jennifer,” she said as if by rote, then paused while going through some papers and looked at him. “Are you staying in town?”
“Actually, I haven’t checked into my hotel yet.”
“Good. Because right after meeting the client, you’ll have to head down to Houston and Clayborn Investigations. You see, I already farmed the case out to another agency to look into the dress down there since the flight the bag was scheduled to be on was bound for Hobby. But Mr. Gawlick wants someone from our agency to be hands-on, and so long as he’s paying for it…”
“We’re there.”
Her smile widened. “Yes. We’re there.”
Zach couldn’t help but grin back at her even as he mentally prepared a list of questions. What groundwork had been laid down on the case already? Was there any advice on how to handle Mr. Gawlick? How should he document his expenses? Was there some sort of ID he should use? But before he could ask a single question, the phone started ringing, the baby started crying, and the few quiet moments they had just experienced vanished into a chaotic never-never land.
“Call if you need anything,” Jennifer said as she propped the phone between chin and shoulder then reached for the wailing infant.
“Right.” Zach hesitated. He supposed he’d have to find answers to his own questions, which, when you thought about it, was what being a private investigator was all about, right? He started toward the door, nodding at Jennifer’s light wave as she adeptly handled both the caller and the baby. He stepped outside the office and into the warm Texas sun, then squinted at the file in his hands. His first case.
His first case.
He turned his face up to the sun and grinned.
THIS WAS THE LAST CASE she was going to take on from another agency.
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Mariah Clayborn said into the telephone. “I look forward to meeting your associate…” What had Jennifer Madison, the P.I. from Midland, said his name was?
“Zach Letterman,” Jennifer said.
“Yes. Zach. Got it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. She opened her mouth to end the call.
“Is everything all right?” Jennifer cut her off at the pass.
Mariah pushed back her thick dark hair then slumped in her chair. Was her emotional state so apparent that a woman she didn’t even know except via a couple phone calls could tell something was wrong?
“Everything’s fine.” Mariah forced a smile, even though Jennifer couldn’t see it. “Thanks for asking.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll give you a call once Zach and I retrieve the piece of luggage with your client’s dress in it.”
“Good. Good.”
After exchanging goodbyes, Mariah sat pole straight in her chair, her hand still on the receiver that rested in the cradle.
Oh, she supposed just a short time ago everything had been fine, just as she’d proclaimed. She’d been a woman in charge of her own life, with her own agenda, well down the road to convincing herself that she didn’t need a man after her latest breakup.
Then this morning she’d come in to find a section of the office roof had finally given way under the most recent Texas deluge—surely the saying “when it rained, it poured” originated in Texas. Of course it wouldn’t be just any section, but a stretch just above her desk, soaking piles of paperwork and the brand-new chair she’d finally given in to and splurged on a week ago.
But that wasn’t what made today so bad. No. That reason had come while she was cleaning up the mess and her phone rang. She’d snatched it up to find on the line her least favorite person from Hoffland, the small town about forty miles southwest in which she was raised—gossipy Miss Twila Seidwick.
At first she’d been more than a little irritated that the woman was calling her at work. Then she’d been afraid that something had happened to her widowed father and Twila was calling with the news.
Thankfully her father was fine. Twila had been calling to gloat over the fact that Mariah’s third ex-boyfriend in two years had just gotten engaged within a week of breaking up with her.
Merely thinking about it made her brain go numb.
Normally Mariah would have said good riddance, and maybe even called up and offered her condolences to the blushing bride-to-be. But all three? Not one, not two, but all three of her ex-boyfriends had dumped her then become engaged within a week of breaking up with her.
It was enough to give a girl a complex.
She could see her headstone now. She inspired men to want to get married. Just not to her.
She leaned back in her chair, cringing when the sound of the plastic bag under her rear end mixed with the squishy sound of the water that still soaked the pad of her chair. Her brand-new chair. The chair she’d dropped two hundred dollars on because, well, she’d liked it. And now it was ruined.
“Good morning, Mar. My, don’t you look pretty today.”
Mariah made a face at her cousin as he came in the front door. For all intents and purposes, George was a pretty good guy. He had inherited the trademark Clayborn dark hair and pleasing features, but where they looked good on him, they made her look…well, tom-boyish. She glanced at her watch. But the biggest difference between them lay in that she didn’t know when to stop working, and her slightly younger cousin didn’t know when to start. “You always tell me that,” she murmured, glancing down at her old, faded jeans and T-shirt, then pushing at her thick hair again.
“And you never believe me.”
“Yes, well, you’re two hours late. Again.”
George took the rebuke with his usual grinning charm as he made his way to the back where she’d put out the usual morning donuts and had made coffee.
Mariah sighed and returned to trying to make some sort of sense out of her ruined desktop. And if she could figure out what was going on her life at the same time, well, so much the better.
Of course, it was only par for the course that George wouldn’t even have noticed that the roof had caved in. She tried to remember a time when her cousin wasn’t so careless, but came up with a blank. It probably explained why her Uncle Bubba, George’s father, had left the P.I. agency of Clayborn Investigations to her when he finally kicked the proverbial bucket last year. Of course, the inheritance had been attached with the stipulation that George always have a job there so long as he wanted one and that he be paid a living wage, as well as be entitled to a percentage of the net income.
Not that Mariah would have fired her cousin. He was as much a fixture around the office as the coffeemaker. She only wished he was as productive as the machine. He made juggling her life between the office and the ranch a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t carry his own weight; it was that the weight he did try to carry on occasion she ended up having to take on herself. Especially now that her uncle was no longer there to help carry the load.
George leaned against his own squeaky-clean desk across from hers, took a bite of a sprinkle-covered donut, then chased it down with coffee from his Oilers mug. “Heard Justin is getting married.”
Mariah stared at him, wishing at that one moment that she could fire him. “Boy, news sure does travel fast.”
She pulled her garbage can out from under the desk and scooped into it the paperwork she couldn’t salvage.
“That’s the way it usually is with news. Bad news. Good news.” He finished off his donut. “Which category do you suppose this falls under?”
“Good news,” she said. “Definitely good news.”
Because it meant that she wouldn’t be marrying Justin Johnson, also known as J.J.
Bad news because it meant that by the time she returned to the ranch by the end of the day, everyone and his brother in Oklahoma would have heard the news and be calling to commiserate.
“J.J. is a good man.”
“J.J. is a jerk.”
George grinned. “Well, then there’s that.”
“An awfully big ‘that,’ don’t you think?”
George shrugged and rounded his desk to sit down. He immediately leaned back in his chair and crossed his cowboy boots on the desktop. “I don’t know. He wasn’t so bad.” He shook his head. “You know, we all thought for sure this would be it for you—you’d finally take that long walk down the aisle.”
Instead prissy Miss Heather Walker would be taking the walk.
Mariah stared at the opposite wall, not really registering the outdated dark paneling or the oil paintings of ranch scenes hung on it. Instead she thought about the girl who couldn’t have been much out of high school, who wore pretty flowered dresses to church and whose only pair of jeans rode low, low on her boyish hips and were usually worn with clingy, belly-baring knit tops. She glanced down at her own regular uniform of classic Levi’s and old T-shirt, clothing that varied only in the winter when she wore a denim shirt over them, and her scuffed brown cowboy boots, then pushed her hair back from her face again.
There had been a time not so long ago when she’d felt very comfortable in her own clothing, even in a place where the state motto seemed to be The Higher The Hair, The Closer To God. Wearing what she had on had allowed her membership into the exclusive all boys’ club. It had permitted her to ride the range with her father and the ranch hands, and had, in essence, made her one of the guys. And, oh, how she’d always liked that. Barbie dolls had really never done it for her. Give her an ornery filly that needed breaking in any day and miles and miles of Texas earth, and she was a happy woman.
Oh, yeah? Then where was all that happiness now?
Somewhere down the line, the rules had changed—rules she hadn’t even known existed but was seeing all too clearly now.
She grimaced then let loose a stream of inventive cuss words under her breath that left George chuckling. She glared at him and continued cleaning her desk.
Well, just who in the hell had gone and changed all the rules on her anyway? The ones that said that when she turned eighteen she would have to start acting like the Barbie dolls she’d never played with? That she’d miraculously know what to do with her hair, how to apply makeup and how to walk in a pair of heels? And just when, exactly, had meat and potatoes not been enough? Why had her father started mentioning on almost a daily basis all the exotic foods her mother used to make for him to eat—if you could count crepes as exotic? And why did he now talk about how delicate her mother had been?
Sure, Hallmark commercials made her blubber. But delicate was definitely not a word anyone would use to describe Mariah Clayborn, the only child of widower Hughie Clayborn and his late wife, Nadine. At five foot seven in stocking feet and with a solid build, she once took a great deal of pride in being able to better many of the boys. She could probably still get the better of them even now. But whenever a physical competition of any sort was mentioned with her as the opponent, the men merely grinned and held up their hands in a mock version of being gentlemen.
Gentlemen, her rear. She knew just how ungentlemanly all these guys could get. Had been privy to some of their more honest and graphic conversations on observations of the opposite sex. They might hold a door open for their latest lady of choice, light her cigarette and appear to bless the very ground she walked on, but it was all toward one end: getting that same “lady” into the back seat of their cars by night’s end.
Unfortunately she, herself, had seen a back seat more times than she cared to count. But never had it come after a nice dinner out or dancing. No. Her handful of experiences had usually taken place on the back nine of her father’s ranch after one of her boyfriends visited. And had lasted as long as the drive out, making her wonder just why so many girls were dying to get into the back seats of all those cars. Her? She didn’t get it at all. Aside from being vastly uncomfortable, she’d always been left feeling…well, as if she’d missed something.
Of course, she knew what she had missed, but even thinking the word “orgasm” made her flush.
The telephone rang and she started, nearly jumping straight out of her skin at being caught thinking what she had.
“Do you want me to get that?” George asked.
“You could have just answered it, you know,” she said, picking up the extension. She shot a look at George, who’d taken her jab in stride and simply turned the page in the magazine he was reading. “Clayborn Investigations.”
“You got your man, Mariah.”
She instantly sprang up and out of her chair. She didn’t need any more explanation than that. “Thanks, Joe.” She hung up the receiver, slid her revolver into her hip holster, then pocketed her cell phone.
George didn’t even look up from his magazine. “Word on Claude Ray?”
Mariah found cause for her first smile of the day. “Oh, yeah.”
“Need some help roping him in?”
“Oh, no.”
He turned a page. “Didn’t think so.”
Mariah headed for the door, her mood instantly lightening. She liked this part of the job. This is where she excelled. No matter what else was happening in her life, she always managed to get her man.
Her smile slipped.
Well, she always managed to get her man on the job, anyway. In her personal life…
She wasn’t going to go there now.
She opened the door and darted outside—and ran straight into someone. A tall someone, who made her feel absolutely puny. A hard, nice-smelling someone who instantly grabbed her arms to steady her, sending a jolt of warmth over her skin.
“Excuse me,” she said, finding her feet and stepping backward.
The man grinned, nearly sending her off balance all over again.
Whoa, cowboy.
“I think I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Okay, he wasn’t a cowboy. His accent identified him as a Yankee. Mariah found herself tucking her hair behind her ears. And she never tucked her hair behind her ears.
She quickly fluffed her hair back out as if the move alone could erase the nervous gesture. Instead she probably came off looking even more nervous.
“So long as neither of us is seriously injured,” she said. “Pardon me again.”
She began to skirt around him, surprised she was capable of any movement at all.
“Mariah?”
Her blood sizzled through her veins at the sound of her name rolling off the stranger’s tongue. How did he know her name?
She turned slightly to face him.
“Are you Mariah Clayborn?” he asked.
“Um, yes. I am.”
He grinned that grin again. “I’m Zach Letterman. I believe you’re expecting me?”
Expecting him? In her dreams, maybe. Then his name sank in. Zach Letterman, Zach Letterman….
This was Zach Letterman? The P.I. Jennifer Madison had sent down to work with her? No, it couldn’t be. He didn’t look anything like a P.I. He looked more like he’d stepped straight from the pages of GQ. Not that she had ever read Gentlemen’s Quarterly, but she was familiar with the comparison. And if anyone looked like he deserved to be on the cover of a gentlemen’s magazine, it was this guy.
Whoa.
2
A PRIZE BULL UP FOR AUCTION, that’s what Zach felt like. He stood stock-still under the blazing Texas sun and waited while Mariah Clayborn examined him as if she were considering making a bid. Then she seemed to realize what she was doing. Her large brown, almost black, eyes widened and she stared at him as if caught doing something she shouldn’t. Zach grinned, suppressing the desire to ask her if he made the grade.
They stood outside a modest one-story building with Clayborn Investigations written in large block letters on the window. The four-lane boulevard behind him buzzed with traffic, and just over the rooftops of the other one-story buildings across the street lay the Houston skyline. But Zach paid attention to none of it as he gave the woman standing in front of him the same once-over she’d given him. He thought it fair that he not be the only one up on the auctioning block.
He absently rubbed his chin as he took her in. Her clothing of old jeans and T-shirt screamed tomboy through and through. He didn’t think she had on a sweep of makeup, and her hair was naturally wavy, shining a warm cinnamon in the bright midday sunlight. But there was something…very appealing that struck him straight off. An energy. Vitality. Freshness. An out-and-out sexiness that made him come away from his perusal feeling attracted to her in a way that puzzled him. A sleek, polished woman like Jennifer Madison was more his type. Still, he couldn’t ignore the zing of attraction that sizzled along his nerve endings as he looked at Mariah Clayborn.
“Sorry,” she finally said as she squared her feet and steadied herself under his gaze when other women might have fidgeted or struck a coy pose. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” She glanced at her watch—a simple Timex. “I only just talked to Jennifer an hour ago.”
He remembered how busy the P.I. had been before he left. “It was probably the first chance she had to contact you.”
“Mmm.” Mariah licked her lips then glanced through the windows into the office. She appeared not to know whether to bid on him or pass and wait for the next lot up for auction. “The case of the missing wedding dress, right?”
He chuckled, mildly amused that she referred to the case the same way he had. “That would be it. Have you made any progress on it?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“Good.”
“Yes. But unfortunately I have to see to the closure of another case first.” She motioned toward the door. “If you’d like you could, um, wait in there. My cousin George will keep you company until I get back.”
“And how long would that be?”
“About an hour or two.”
“Would you mind if I accompany you?”
“You want to come with me?”
Her frown was so complete it was almost comical. “If you don’t mind. I’ve been on planes for the better part of the morning and would just as soon not do much sitting right now.”
“You’d be sitting in the truck.”
“Yes, but the truck would be moving.” He glanced around. “Besides, I haven’t had much of a chance to see Houston yet.”
“My destination is about a half hour west of here. Outside the city.”
He grinned. “Better yet.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear again, appeared agitated that she had, then released a long sigh. “Okay. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to bring you along.” She started in the direction of the street.
Zach picked up his single suitcase and followed her, his gaze drawn to the back of her faded jeans. The old denim fit just so across her lush, rounded bottom. While Mariah Clayborn’s clothes shouted tomboy, the body that lay underneath murmured one hundred percent woman.
“You can put that in the bed.”
“Pardon me?” he asked, blinking at where she was opening the door of a beat-up old blue Ford.
“Your suitcase. You can put it in the back.”
He eyed the truck bed, which held a rusty gas container, a partial bale of hay and an old gray-and-red wool blanket. He put the suitcase on top of the blanket then climbed into the truck cab, the door protesting against the movement and letting rip a loud squeak.
“Sorry,” she said, starting the ignition. “I don’t usually have much company in the truck.”
She put the truck into gear then gathered together countless fast-food wrappers littering the floor at his feet. She didn’t appear to know what to do with them. She finally tossed them back behind the bench seat.
“I can see why.”
She glanced at him for a long moment, then seemed to come to some sort of decision as she smiled. “A guy with a sense of humor. I like that.” She gestured toward the door. “You may, um, want to buckle up. Nelly rides a little rough.”
Nelly. She’d named her truck. He fastened his safety belt and quickly found out just how bumpy the ride was going to be as the truck lurched forward.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said over the roar of the engine.
Zach grinned at her, wondering just how much of a ride he was in for….
ZACH LETTERMAN WAS definitely not your normal, run-of-the-mill thorn in the side. Mariah sneaked another glance at him and his cool, clean looks, and the admirable way he looked. He appeared relaxed as her truck bumped and rutted over the dirt road leading to Claude Ray’s place, which was little more than a shack tucked away on a corner of someone else’s land. It had been that someone else, namely Joe Carter, who had called to tip her off about Claude’s return.
“What’s the case about?” Zach Letterman asked.
Mariah pulled her gaze from where she’d been staring at his thick, long-fingered hands and looked into his face. The gleam of recognition in his moss-green eyes made her skin heat up. “Pardon me?”
“This case you have to close. What’s it regarding?”
She gripped the steering wheel tighter when she hit a particularly nasty pothole. “Horse thief.”
Zach’s eyebrows shot up high on his smooth forehead. “Horse thief?”
“Yeah.” She slowed down a bit so the engine didn’t roar too loudly. Claude wouldn’t be going anywhere without her seeing him anyway, seeing as this was the only road leading in or out of the place. “A nearby breeder had two of his prime studs come up missing day before yesterday. Maybe you recognize the names? Gentle As Rain won the Kentucky Derby last year and Black Thunderfoot won the Triple Crown three years ago.”
He slowly shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t follow racing.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, those are the studs that came up missing. Carter charges twenty-five grand a pop for stud fees.”
“That much?”
She smiled. “Yes. Funny, isn’t it? Kind of like male prostitution of the animal variety.” She waved her hand toward the west. “Anyway, when Carter called me to look into the matter, I knew immediately who was behind the theft. A guy by the name of Claude Ray. He’s a local of sorts who sweeps into town every now and again, leaving a trail of illegal activities in his wake. He usually shows up again when the fuss dies down and the local authorities have moved on to bigger and better things.” She hit a nasty bump and would have catapulted from the seat if not for her own safety belt. “I heard Claude showed up again about a week or so ago.”
“Is this something P.I.s usually handle around here?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard. “Isn’t this something for the authorities?”
“Usually, yes. But Carter’s spread borders my daddy’s ranch and our families go way back. My uncle Bubba—the P.I. business was his before he kicked, er, before he passed on last year—always saw to these kinds of favors for friends.”
Zach turned his head to look out the window at the passing landscape. Long stretches of open plains extended as far as the eye could see.
Mariah took a deep breath, finding a deep satisfaction being near the place where she’d grown up. There was something about the Texas plains that crawled right up under your skin and stayed there, much as the soil did when it got under your fingernails. She glanced at Zach to find him shrugging out of his suit jacket then tossing it over the back of the seat. His shirt was white and crisp and covered him to the wrists. Well, at least until he popped the buttons at the cuff and rolled the material up to the top of his forearms. Mariah swallowed. And what forearms they were, too. While his hands looked much softer than she was used to—hell, they looked softer than hers—his forearms were nothing but thick, corded muscles, his skin dotted with soft almost black hair. And he had the kind of wrists she doubted she could get the fingers of one hand around.
Oh, the man next to her might be a Northern city boy, but she suspected he was as strong as any man who had spent his life on the range.
“You’re from out here?” Zach asked, pulling her attention back to his face.
She nodded and pointed to the west again. “Daddy’s cattle ranch is about five miles that way.”
His gaze on her face was softly probing. “How did you end up a P.I.?”
Mariah stared determinedly ahead. Now there was a question you didn’t want to have to answer when you least expected it. “Long story.”
“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” he said with a grin.
She cleared her throat, thankful it couldn’t be heard over the roar of the engine as she sped up again. “Let’s just say it was serendipity along with a healthy dose of nepotism.”
While that was true, she didn’t want to delve into the fact that there had come a point a couple years back when she felt her presence at the ranch wasn’t welcome anymore. “A distraction,” that’s what her father had called her. A woman doing a man’s job is how she interpreted his explanation. It seemed that overnight she had moved from a valued member of the ranch to unwanted company. The ranch hands went silent when she joined them for dinner. Her father scowled whenever she came back from a run. And she’d been relegated to menial tasks a two-hundred-year-old woman could have done.
She blessed the day when her uncle Bubba had offered her a one-time only assignment that included tracking down the very man she was tracking now: Claude Ray. He’d stolen some of her father’s cattle back then, re-branded them, and was selling them at auction in the next county. The idiot.
Conniving, Ray definitely was. Smart, he was not.
But the one-time assignment had quickly turned into a full-time job. And it had basically become her mission in life since she couldn’t work at the ranch.
“How about you?” she asked him.
Zach stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. And she supposed in some way maybe she was. It usually took Yanks a bit of an adjustment period before they got used to the easy cadence of Texas speak. And she had the impression that he’d definitely just gotten off the boat. Or plane.
He shrugged and squinted against the sun as he stared out the window. “You could say I came about it much the same way.”
Mariah smiled. So he didn’t want to share his reasons any more than she did. Good. That was just fine with her. More than fine. Because it meant he wouldn’t hound her.
She turned her attention back to the road. They were maybe a half a mile up from the shack where Claude Ray sometimes hung his hat. And there it was. She could see the smear of weathered gray boards against the horizon. And behind the shack she made out horses. Two of them. Exactly the number she suspected Claude had stolen from the Carter ranch.
She stepped on the gas, then noticed a spot of red dart from the shack and make a run for a white pickup nearby.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Mariah muttered under her breath.
Finally she elicited a physical reaction to her driving from Zach as he gripped the dusty dashboard. “I, um, take it this is the part where I should hold on?”
“If you value your life.” Mariah smiled at him, feeling a rush of adrenaline that warmed her entire body.
She told herself the rush had nothing to do with the man next to her. She got a rush from tracking someone down, especially someone like Claude Ray, who was a regular. And who gave good chase.
She spared Zach another glance as she bore down on Claude. There was no way Claude was going anywhere anyway. Not with this being the only road out. “You okay?” she asked.
Zach grinned at her in a way that made her stomach leap higher than it should have. “Great.”
“Good. Hold on.”
Ten yards away from Claude’s white truck she stood on the brakes and pulled the steering wheel to the left, sending her own truck careening to a stop and blocking the road.
“Here.” Mariah slid her revolver from her holster and tossed the firearm to the seat next to Zach. “If he comes running back this way without me, shoot him.”
The expression on his face was priceless. “Shoot him?”
“By shoot him, I don’t mean execute him. A simple nick to the arm should do the trick.”
His expression didn’t change.
Mariah opened her mouth to ask if he knew how to use a gun, but caught sight of Claude making a run for it.
The question could wait for later. She had a horse thief to catch.
HOLY SHIT.
Zach stared at the firearm in his hand then at Mariah Clayborn’s retreating back. He’d never held a gun before, much less fired one. Okay, sure, he’d had a cap gun and a BB gun when he was a teenager. But this was no peashooter. This was a full octane Colt that weighed at least two pounds if not more.
The longer he held it, the warmer the metal grew against his skin. He swallowed, excitement ricocheting through his bloodstream. Before he knew it he was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. He had to shoulder the door to get it to open and he stood on the hard-packed dirt outside, squinting against the dust that remained from Mariah’s daredevil maneuvers. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. There she was behind the shack. His brows rose. She was grabbing the mane of a sleek dark stallion and hauling herself up onto the horse’s bare back. He shifted a little to the right to find Claude Ray doing the same with less success some couple yards away, his caramel-colored stallion in a full run while Ray tried to pull himself up on top, completely graceless.
Mariah, on the other hand, was as fluid as the animal she commandeered. The horse seemed immediately to sense she was the boss and held still while she hauled herself up, waiting until her toned thighs straddled him and her boot heels gently nudged his sides before shooting out after Ray. Mariah’s dark hair blew out behind her, her back straight, her fingers tangled in the horse’s dark mane as she bent over the back of his neck, using the power of her thighs to stay astride.
Holy shit. Things did work differently down here.
Sure, like most Americans, he was well-versed on the stories of Texas and the Southwest, cowboys and Indians and Clint Eastwood movies. But he’d never thought that that kind of stuff still went on down here.
The two riders galloped out of sight. Zach stared at the truck with the tricky gearshift and scanned the landscape. The road ran out beside the shed. There was no way he could follow in the ancient vehicle.
Instead, he undid the top couple of buttons on his shirt and leaned against the door to get just a bit out of the unrelenting sun. He grinned. He’d never met anyone quite like Mariah Clayborn before. He’d bet dollars to donuts that she ran Clayborn Investigations. And if what he’d seen so far was any indication, he suspected she was very good at what she did.
He tried to tuck the gun into the waist of his dark slacks. The shear weight of the firearm bent the material back, nearly sending the weapon to the dirt at his feet. He fumbled for the gun then laid it on the hood of the truck instead, his gaze watchful, as if he was afraid the revolver would take on a life of its own.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Okay, so he hadn’t given the gun part of the job that much thought before. He hadn’t thought there would be a reason to, what with the focus of Finders Keepers being the recovery of lost loved ones, rather than dangerous horse thieves. But while Finders Keepers knew Jennifer Madison because they subcontracted work from her, it didn’t mean Jennifer Madison’s agency was strictly a low-risk venture. And, so it appeared, neither was Mariah’s.
He did have to admit to feeling a thrill as the truck hurled over the dirt road toward their quarry, though. And the gun…
He heard the clump-clump of hooves hitting the earth before he spotted the horse. Given his thoughts on Mariah, he expected the rider to be her. Instead the caramel-colored horse shot out of the brush and straight by him.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Zach fumbled for the gun, although he wasn’t entirely certain what he was going to do with it. He eyed the back of the horse, the gun, then aimed the muzzle skyward and pulled the trigger. Nothing.
“The safety!” Mariah called, shooting past him moments after Claude. “Release the safety!”
The safety. Zach hurriedly eyed the metal in his hands and pushed a button. The clip slid out and dropped onto the ground.
Not the safety.
Damn.
Not that it mattered. He shielded his eyes and watched as Mariah caught up with Claude and yanked on the back of his shirt, pulling him from his horse and plopping him into the middle of a particularly prickly looking bush. Within minutes, Mariah shoved Claude in the direction of the truck, his hands bound behind his back with some sort of plastic tie, while the horses followed behind her.
Zach smoothed down the front of his shirt. He’d never before witnessed such a sight. But given the high color in Mariah’s cheeks, the bounce to her gait, she was not only used to such events, she thrived on them. And Zach couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Mariah paused in front of him and picked up the clip still on the ground. “Drop something?”
Zach grimaced and accepted the ammunition pack, then stepped aside to let Mariah put Claude inside the cab of the truck.
Claude spit on the ground near her boots. “Don’t think this is over, Clayborn. Because it’s not. Not by a long shot.”
Mariah closed the truck door then pulled a cell phone out of her front pocket and placed two calls—one to the authorities to pick up Ray, another to what he thought must be the horse owner to pick up his animals.
She clapped the phone closed and turned to look at him.
“Handle a gun often, cowboy?”
Zach grinned. “Not often.”
“We’ll have to fix that if we’re going to work together.”
The prospect of working with Mariah Clayborn took on a whole different sheen. Zach watched her round the truck and take a couple of leather leads from the bed, wondering what else the fiery Texas lass would have in store for him. And wondering how quickly he could see if she performed as well in bed as she did on the back of a horse.
3
NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.
Mariah drove back to the office feeling psyched and energized, mentally ready to deal with anything and everything, even the news about her latest ex and his wedding plans. Well, mostly ready, anyway. If the handsome man next to her made her think of hot and heavy honeymoons, it was solely because his case involved a missing wedding dress. And her reluctance to feel in any way attracted to him had nothing to do with his lack of skill with a gun in a state where it was almost a requirement that a person know how to handle one, and own at least one or two…or ten or twelve. Her reluctance was because, let’s face it, he was as far away from her type as it was for a man to get.
If a little part of her mind reminded her that what she thought was her type appeared not to be her type…well, she was ignoring it.
“Anything happen while I was away?” Mariah glided into the office on triumphant wings, holding the door open for Zach behind her.
George looked up from where he was idly playing a game of Spider Solitaire on his computer, appearing not to have budged more than an inch since she’d left him a couple of hours ago. “Nope.”
Mariah looked to their visitor, feeling her stomach bottom out again, like it did every time she glanced his way. She figured it was probably the effect he had on most women, simply because of his tremendous looks. “Zach Letterman, meet my cousin George Clayborn. George, Zach.”
Zach crossed the office and offered his hand. George glanced at it, raised his brows then got to his feet to give Zach’s hand a shake. “How do you do?” George said.
Zach appeared not to know how to respond, and didn’t.
Mariah rounded her desk, happy to find most of the damage from the morning’s drenching of her chair had dried out. Still, she repositioned the plastic bag she’d laid across it earlier before sitting down.
“Did Buckley come over to take a look at the roof?”
George nodded. “Yeah. Said he’d come by with the materials in a couple of hours and patch it up.”
“Did you get an estimate on what it would take to redo the entire roof?”
“He said he couldn’t get to a job that big for two months anyway, so the patch is all he can swing now.”
She noticed Zach eyeing the hole above her desk. He grinned at her. “Do something to anger the gods?”
The gods? “I figure if I had, I’d be toast right now.”
He chuckled then pulled a nearby chair closer to the front of her desk.
“Did you get Ray?” George asked.
“Of course. Don’t I always?”
“Oh.” Her cousin looked around on top of his desk and lifted his clean blotter. “Justin called. He wants you to call him back at this number.”
ZACH HAD NEVER SEEN anyone go so pale. Where moments before Mariah’s face had been full of color and her eyes had danced with excitement, now she looked as if someone had just hit her in the stomach.
“A client?” Zach asked, referring to the caller.
“An ex.”
The way she said it made it sound as if she had a whole battalion of exes. Zach squinted at her.
“He, um, just got engaged.”
“Ah,” he said, as if that explained everything. “To you?”
“No,” she said a little too curtly. “Not to me. The word never even came up while we were dating.”
“And that was?”
“Five days ago.”
Zach lifted his brows. “Fast worker, your ex.”
“Fast workers, all three of my exes. Only not with me.”
She made busy with her hands as he watched.
Zach silently pondered the striking woman not three feet from him. If he bought what she was trying to sell him, he’d think it didn’t bother her one iota that her latest ex was engaged to someone else. In all honesty, he couldn’t say it bothered her in the way one might expect. She didn’t appear heartbroken, on the verge of tears or particularly sad that the man she had dated was about to bite the big one.
She did, however, appear highly agitated. As if she could go after another four Claude Rays, on foot if necessary, to expend the energy that radiated from her. An energy that intrigued him, drew him in, made it impossible for him to look anywhere but at Mariah Clayborn. The woman was fascinating.
He absently rubbed the back of his neck. What was he thinking? He was supposed to be focusing on the case. His first case. And here he was entertaining ideas of how he and Mariah might expend some of that primo energy she exuded.
“So, the case,” he said slowly.
She blinked at him as if having forgotten he was there. “The case? Oh. Yes.” Talk about your grimaces. Mariah wore one that could go up against the best of them. “The case of the missing wedding dress.”
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Where should we start? A trip to Hobby Airport?”
She picked up the telephone receiver, dialed information, then dialed the airport, consulting a fax that resembled the fact sheet he had folded in his front shirt pocket.
Zach looked over at George, noticing the way he tuned in to the goings-on without really appearing to. George glanced at him and Zach grinned.
“It’s not there,” Mariah stated.
Zach turned toward her. “What’s not where?”
“The bag with the dress in it. It never made it to Hobby.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh.” She handed him a notepad in which she had written an address in Alabama. “But it may be here.”
“Here, as in…?”
“Here as in the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. According to the airline supervisor I talked to, that’s where all the lost luggage in the universe piles up until it’s either claimed or auctioned or sold off after ninety days.”
Zach scratched his chin, thinking a couple of pieces of his own luggage probably had ended up there over the years. “A kind of graveyard for dead baggage.”
Mariah smiled. “Yes. Something like that.”
“So when do we go?”
Her soft brows lifted. “How do you mean?”
He glanced at his watch. “My client renews his vows in less than a week. He’s willing to pay us whatever it takes to retrieve the dress posthaste.”
“Us?”
“He’s covering all expenses.”
“Ah.”
Zach grinned. “Unless, of course, you want to sign off on the case.”
“No, no. Of course not.”
Zach could tell that’s exactly what she wanted to do. And it surprised him how much he wished she wouldn’t. He was highly attracted to her and he’d like to see what it would be like to kiss that saucy mouth of hers. He couldn’t do that if she sent him packing.
The telephone at her elbow rang. She glanced at the display showing the number of the caller, the ashen color returning to her face.
She reached back and picked up what looked like a duffel bag. “Let’s say we go now.”
“Just like that?”
She nodded, barely looking at him as she headed for the door. “Just like that.”
MARIAH SECURED both her tray and her seat in the upright and locked position then rubbed her arms.
“Cold?”
She glanced at where Zach Letterman seemed to take up the air of half the plane, his knees jammed against the seat in front of him, his shoulders nearly topping the back of the chair.
She cleared her throat. “Um, yes. A little. But we’ll be landing soon, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Here.” He gestured to a nearby flight attendant, who immediately stepped to him, a solicitous smile on her pretty face.
Mariah grimaced and watched as Zach Letterman charmed another willing female. The strange thing about it was that he didn’t even appear to be trying. He looked a woman’s way and she was all smiles and readiness. She’d witnessed it first at the airport when the desk clerk had practically drooled on the counter separating her from Zach. Then she’d seen it at the airport coffee shop, where he’d stopped off for some caffeine and the Wall Street Journal.
“No, it’s not for me,” Zach told the pretty blonde.
The blonde definitely looked disappointed, not that Mariah could blame her. To have the perfect excuse to touch Zach ripped out from under you…well, that would be enough to make anyone frown.
“Thank you,” Zach said, accepting the plastic-wrapped blue blanket.
Mariah watched the flight attendant reluctantly make her way back to the front of the plane.
She cleared her throat. “Thanks, Zach, but no, really, that’s okay…”
Mariah’s words trailed off as she watched him make quick work of the plastic then begin to cover her with the nappy cotton. The back of his fingers skimmed her bare arm, making her feel like the plane had hit an air pocket as her stomach bottomed out. “I…um, can do it.”
His eyes scanned her face, making a whole different sort of goose bumps dot her flesh.
“Thanks,” she said.
She’d never seen a guy grin with his eyes before. But if anyone could, Zach Letterman was the man. A pure knowing seemed to lurk in the meadow-green depths, inviting her in, robbing her of both breath and words.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, then he returned his attention to the Wall Street Journal.
Mariah puffed out a long breath and settled the blanket over the upper part of her body. She turned to look out the window. Why was it that whenever he looked at her she found it suddenly impossible to breathe?
She shifted and made a face. P.I., her butt. If the man next to her was a private investigator then her name was Cindy Crawford. She surreptitiously watched him turn the page of his newspaper, her gaze lingering on his long, thick fingers and the springy dark hair that dotted the backs. He struck her as a man used to traveling. He barely looked at the flight attendant who offered a drink and a snack, while she had spotted the attendant the instant he began serving the passengers fifteen rows up. She never took her eyes from him for fear that he would miss her. Okay, so she wasn’t a frequent flier. This was her third time on an airplane and, admittedly, she didn’t much like being so far up off the ground. There was something…unnatural about it.
But it was more than Zach’s comfort with airplane travel that fueled her suspicions. Take the gun incident. Investigation training usually required the investigator to take at least one course in the art of using a firearm. She knew things worked differently up North, but she didn’t think they worked that differently. Then he had avoided answering her question on what had led him to be a P.I.
She made a face. Okay, so she hadn’t shared her reasons, either, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a licensed P.I. She was.
Maybe he just didn’t get out in the field much.
Still, a niggling part of her suspected that Zach Letterman knew as much about being a P.I. as she knew about weeding a flower garden, which was basically limited to whatever she saw when she tuned in to Martha Stewart. And that wasn’t all that often.
Her gaze slowly slid back to Zach’s handsome profile. While he lacked experience in the private detecting arena, she’d guess he had a whole lot of experience in other more intimate arenas. He was the type of male who would know exactly what a woman wanted from a man. And would be able to give it to her.
Zach folded his newspaper and slid it into the pocket in the seat in front of him. His gaze met hers and, as usual, her stomach bottomed out—especially when his eyes darkened, an unmistakable attraction lurking in the green depths. In fact, for a moment she thought he might even kiss her. She caught herself licking her lips in preparation.
“So what do we do once we get there?” he asked.
“Hmm?” Mariah slowly blinked, his words taking even longer to register. “Oh. We rent a car and drive the forty miles from Huntsville to Scottsboro to visit the Unclaimed Baggage Center.”
The gleam in his eyes turned into a grin, making Mariah’s own mouth suddenly go dry. “I’d gathered that. I meant, will we be checking into a hotel?”
Checking into a hotel? With what had to be the most attractive guy she’d come across since she used to pin up pictures of rodeo stars on her bedroom walls?
“No. No, I don’t think a hotel will be necessary.” She swallowed hard and wished she could pull the little blue blanket up over her head. “If luck is on our side, we’ll find the bag and be on the next flight back to Houston.”
“And if luck isn’t on our side?”
“Then we should be able to ascertain that the bag isn’t in Scottsboro, and be on the next flight back to Houston.”
He glanced at his watch, making her crane her neck to look at the sleek crystal as well, completely forgetting that she wore a watch of her own. “Well, then, we’d better make quick work of getting to the center, because the last flight out to Houston is at six.”
Mariah’s eyebrows shot up.
He seemed to notice the move. “I asked back at Hobby.”
“Oh. Good. Good.”
That was a P.I. move, wasn’t it? Either that or he was a man used to being prepared.
The question was, prepared for what?
Okay, what was it with her today? Her thoughts seemed to bounce all over the universe and back again. Then she remembered Justin’s announcement and collapsed against the chair and frowned. So, this was what being a reject did to you. It made you look, feel and act like a fool.
Or maybe being a fool was exactly the reason she couldn’t land a forever guy to begin with.
SO MARIAH CLAYBORN WASN’T the chatty type. As Zach watched her climb out of the rental car outside the Unclaimed Baggage Center, he told himself he should be thankful. He wasn’t much for small talk himself. In fact, he told himself he should be glad she wasn’t asking him too many questions. He’d decided early on that he was going to keep his real reason for being in Texas, and working for Jennifer Madison, to himself. Yes, while the entire P.I. business intrigued him, he had no intention of making a living as a P.I. He reminded himself that he was down here strictly to get the feel for the territory so that when he returned to Indiana he’d be prepared for the task of opening satellite offices of Finders Keepers.
He was, however, used to letting other people do the talking. Ask a couple of questions, and most people went off on long tangents that usually left him knowing more than he’d like.
But with Mariah, he found he didn’t know nearly enough. She’d been quiet ever since they’d left her office in Houston. Throughout the drive to the airport, the plane ride, then the drive to Scottsboro, the few questions he had asked had received little more than one-word answers.
Zach rubbed the back of his neck as he closed the cab door, watching Mariah lead the way to the door of what looked like a retail store about as big as a city block. While he didn’t consider himself a ladies’ man, he certainly thought he knew a whole lot about women. And one of those things was that they loved to talk. All you had to do was find the key word. Shopping usually did the trick. But he’d tried no fewer than ten of the regular conversation words on Mariah and she hadn’t bitten on a one of them. Not even politics had gotten more than a small smile from her.
He shrugged and followed after her. Okay, so she wasn’t interested in idle conversation. It was a new one for him, but Zach could handle it. Well, he could if there wasn’t the whole P.I. angle to think about. He’d like to get to know more about the business. And he’d like to get to know a whole lot more about Mariah Clayborn.
They talked to a clerk who told them that the type of baggage they were talking about wouldn’t be on the sales floor yet, but back in the warehouse behind the store. She made a phone call then walked them back to a large door. “Go on in. You’re expected. You’ll find James somewhere in the piles.”
Piles? Zach scanned the countless objects for sale, the place looking like a garage sale lover’s paradise, then stepped through the door the clerk held open. He immediately saw what she was talking about. Everywhere he looked were mountains of luggage. Big pieces, small pieces, expensive pieces, cheap pieces. All things that belonged to somebody somewhere and held cherished memories from their trips.
“Oh boy,” Mariah said, next to him.
“You can say that again.”
“Oh boy.”
Zach jerked to look at her and grinned. “I meant figuratively.”
She smiled back. “I know. I thought it deserved two.”
“Ah.”
Zach couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but whenever Mariah smiled, he either grinned or grinned wider, and an inexplicable heat slinked through his abdomen, making him want to touch her. It didn’t matter where. To tuck her wild hair behind her ear. To run his finger down the smooth column of her throat. To circle her right breast where the soft cotton of her T-shirt draped enticingly over the small mound.
“Hello!”
Zach heard the greeting, but was at a loss as to where it had come from.
“I take it you’re Miss Clayborn?”
It seemed to take Mariah a great effort to tear her gaze away from him. The heat he felt sizzled, knowing that she was as compelled by him as he was by her.
“Um, yes, that would be me,” she said finally.
A middle-aged guy with thick glasses popped up from behind a pile of suitcases nearest to them. Zach raised his brows.
“James, at your service,” he said, wiping his hands against his striped, short-sleeved shirt, then offering his hand. “Would either of you like some Starbucks?”
“No, thank you,” Zach said.
Mariah shook James’s hand. “You’re the one I talked to?”
“No. That would be Sally. I don’t sound like a woman to you, do I?”
Zach suppressed a chuckle. The guy in front of them definitely didn’t look like a woman.
Mariah cleared her throat. “Sorry. I was calling from the Houston airport so I really couldn’t make out much about the voice with all the background noise.”
“Airports. Hate ’em,” James said, offering his hand to Zach.
Zach nodded in complete agreement as he gave James’s hand a brief shake.
“So you all are looking for a wedding dress.” James pushed up his glasses again and peered around him. “Someone else here on the same errand. You’d be surprised how many of those things end up here.”
“Wedding dresses?”
“No, people looking for them.”
“Ah.”
“Found one the other day.” He kicked a suitcase out of the path and called out to another guy nearby, telling him to keep the pathways clear. “Wouldn’t be able to find your way out without the pathways,” James explained.
“By ‘found,’ do you mean people or wedding dresses?”
“Wedding dresses, of course.”
Zach tuned in on where Mariah was going. “And by the other day, which day, exactly, do you mean?”
“Two days ago.”
The right timeframe.
“Where is it? The dress, I mean?”
James motioned toward the far corner of the room. “Right where I directed the other guy who got here about twenty minutes ago looking for a dress, too.”
“Ah,” Zach said again, barely hiding his amusement.
Mariah laughed.
James stared at them both, having missed out on the joke.
“Sorry,” Mariah said. “I was just wondering if, you know, the guy looking for the dress actually plans on wearing it.”
James’s brows hovered above the dark rims of his glasses. “You don’t mean…you aren’t saying…” He let out a deep breath. “Oh Lord, I hope not. Either way, I don’t care, though. I’m a firm believer in the don’t ask, don’t tell policy. But now that you’ve said that, it’s put…well, an image in my head, you know? And that’s one image I could do without.”
“You and me both,” Zach said.
Zach took Mariah’s elbow and steered her toward where James was leading the way down one of the paths he’d mentioned. Little more than two feet wide, the path wound around mountains of varying sizes and colors. A Louis Vuitton here, a knockoff there. A khaki duffel bag in the way of the path, a package of skis at shoulder level, ready to decapitate anyone who wasn’t watching where they were going. How did all of this stuff come to be lost?
“James, what happens to all this?”
He shrugged. “Well, the airline does extensive tracking for ninety days. Sometimes the owners themselves find their way here, but not often. If they do, or the airline matches up the bag with the passenger, they regain their things. Otherwise, we sell the stuff in the front room. We also hold auctions. We wouldn’t have room otherwise. We have a Web site, you know. Sell stuff there, too.”
The older man stopped and scratched his chin, considering the piles in front of him when they came to a fork in the path. He looked one way, then the other, then pointed to the right. “This way, I think. Yes, yes. This way.”
Zach gazed down at Mariah, who was looking at the baggage with as much curiosity as he. “Lose anything recently?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “No. But it looks to me as though it wasn’t for lack of the airline trying.”
“I’ve lost no fewer than three bags over the years.”
“Do a lot of traveling, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Work related?”
Zach rubbed his chin. P.I.s traveled, didn’t they? Sure they did. “Yes. Don’t you?”
“This was my third time on a plane. And, this trip aside, my travels have been strictly personal. I haven’t had much call to travel out of Texas yet, you know, for the job.”
“Personal? That one trip wouldn’t have had anything to do with your exes, would it?”
She winced, making him wish he hadn’t said anything. “No. It was for my mother’s funeral. I was eight.”
Zach felt lower than the bottom of his shoes. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, obviously trying to pull off a nonchalance he was sure she didn’t feel. “That’s all right.”
He cleared his throat. “My mother died when I was nine.”
Her big brown eyes widened. “Your father?”
“Out of the picture. I don’t even know where he is. Not that it matters. He wasn’t around long enough to make an impression.”
Zach grimaced. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d volunteered the information. He didn’t think he’d told anyone in his adult life how old he’d been when he’d lost his mother. Yet here he had known this woman for only a few hours and he’d shared the information with her as easily as he did the time.
“I guess it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”
He mimicked her moves and shrugged his shoulders, knowing the casualness he was going for fell far short of the mark. “That’s all right.”
His response brought a warm smile to her face. He discovered again he liked it when she smiled. He liked it a lot.
“Here we are,” James said, coming to a halt and breaking the quiet moment. The older man scratched the top of his head. “At least this is where I think it is.” He looked around. “But where’s the other guy?”
Fifteen or so jumbo suitcases were stacked behind Mariah. Zach squinted, trying to make out whether or not one of them had just moved. Then suddenly the entire stack began to teeter precariously.
He calmly reached out and touched her arm. She blinked up at him, her tongue darting out to moisten her bottom lip. Then he yanked her into his arms, away from where she’d been standing, where the cases were now hitting the floor one at a time.
“Dang nab it!” James shouted.
Zach had never actually heard a person say the words in the flesh and, despite what had just happened, he fought a smile.
“If I’ve told the kid once, I’ve told him a thousand times, you’ve got to stack these bags carefully.” He eyed where Mariah had curled her hands into the front of Zach’s shirt, the side of her head resting against his chest.
Zach could hear the thump-thump of his own heartbeat. He wondered if Mariah could hear it, too. The soft smell of sunshine—Texas sunshine—filled his nose, and the feel of one-hundred-percent Mariah Clayborn filled his arms. The heat that had earlier taken up residence in his abdomen dropped to his groin. His condition was not helped any by the shifting of Mariah’s hips.
“You okay?” James asked her.
Zach looked down to find her staring at the man as if just realizing he was there. She pushed away from Zach so fast she nearly toppled them both over. Zach caught her and chuckled.
“I’m fine,” Mariah said, squaring her shoulders and looking everywhere but at Zach. “Where did you say this damn suitcase was?”
4
WHOA, COWBOY.
Mariah could swear she was shaking. She eyed the avalanche of suitcases, then Zach Letterman’s wide, hard chest, and swallowed hard. The problem was she wasn’t sure what bothered her most—that a few measly suitcases were to blame for her shaken demeanor, or Zach Letterman.
Definitely Zach Letterman.
She covertly lifted her hand. Definitely shaking. She smacked the hand back to her side and made a fist.
Okay, so for those few moments it had felt good to be pressed against his hard male length as if she was a damsel in distress and he the brave hero. Even if he’d only been protecting her from suitcases. She’d breathed in the crisp scent of his shirt, felt his large hands pressing against her back, and felt…different somehow. At least different from the way she’d felt with any other guy. She was used to the smell of chewing tobacco and sweat. But somehow she got the impression that when Zach sweated, he smelled like cologne.
It didn’t make any sense, really. All her life she’d been around real cowboys. Men who hiked up their pants and puffed out their chests and made it their mission in life to play the role of heroes. Yet whenever any of them had tried to help her, she’d shunned them. Felt insulted. Had even broken her leg in three places once in her haste to show she could take care of herself. Her horse had rolled and caught her underneath.
Yet let a few bags fall to the floor and she was hopping into a Yankee’s arms and batting her lashes as if she wasn’t capable of tying her shoes right.
“I’ll be darned,” James said, breaking into her mental musings.
Zach moved up next to the man and Mariah moved to the other side. Before them sat no fewer than fifteen suitcases, all hanging open and gutted, their contents mixing with the next.
“I take it this isn’t the way to go about searching for bags,” Zach said dryly.
“Heck no, it ain’t.” James kicked a few steps forward. “All the stuff gets mixed up then.” He threw his hands in the air.
Zach looked down at something he’d taken out of his front pocket. “Blue canvas suitcase with blue leather straps.”
Mariah noted that all the suitcases that had been opened matched that description.
“The guy,” James said.
“The guy? What guy?”
He waved his hand. “You know, the one who got here just before you looking for a wedding dress.” He looked around and Mariah followed his gaze, finding no other person in sight. At the far end of the warehouse, a door clanged. She couldn’t say for sure, but she’d have chanced a guess that the man in question had just left the building.
Zach frowned and glanced at her. “I don’t have a very good feeling about all of this.”
Mariah had to admit she felt the same way, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him. It reeked too much of the damsel-in-distress situation. “We’re talking about a wedding dress here.”
“A wedding dress our client is paying through the nose to locate.”
James wasn’t paying attention to them. Instead he was stepping through the small piles of clothing. A moment later he said, “Forgot one.”
Zach leaned closer. “If the dress is in there, that means the guy who got here before left without it.”
“Maybe he found the dress he was looking for.”
“Only one dress in this lot,” James said.
James unzipped the bag then flopped the lid open.
Sitting in the middle of wads of balled up tissue paper sat the wedding dress in question.
“Coincidence,” Mariah said.
“Fact,” Zach countered.
“WE’RE BEING FOLLOWED.”
Zach stared in the rearview mirror through the back window of the rental car, watching another sedan shadow their moves. He didn’t miss Mariah’s exasperated roll of her eyes.
“We’re not being followed. Maybe the driver is going to the same hotel we are. Have you thought about that?”
Zach sat forward and straightened his suit jacket. Ever since discovering that they were too late to catch the last flight out to Houston, Mariah had been a tad bit cranky. When he’d asked why, she’d said something about not having her toothbrush. Zach told her he always carried an extra and she was more than welcome to have it. He’d barely heard her murmur, “What kind of P.I. carries an extra toothbrush?”
Okay, so since Jennifer had first given him the case this morning, he’d felt a little let down that it had been something so menial, so unexciting. His meeting with Denton Gawlick and his wife had gone smoothly, no red bells. They were renewing their wedding vows next week and needed to have the dress, simple as that.
Then they’d arrived at the Unclaimed Baggage Center to discover someone else was looking for a wedding dress in a suitcase similar to the suitcase in which they’d found their dress. That is the client’s dress.
Zach pulled at his tie, which had grown a little tight around his neck. The mere mention of a “their” in the same sentence with “wedding dress” was enough to choke off air.
Hey, he was just as willing as the next guy to stand in front of an altar, only he intended to be ready for it when it happened. Of course his longtime girlfriend Kym had found out the hard way that he wasn’t anywhere near ready for it now. After two years of dating, of mingling their lives, she’d come out and asked him to marry her. That the proposal had come on the heels of his explaining to her what he planned to do, namely pass over control of his tool and die business and pursue what she subsequently called this “P.I. thing” hadn’t helped matters. That he didn’t want to get married had been his response. Kym hadn’t given him a chance to add the “yet” he was sure had been about to come out of his mouth. She’d up and walked out on him, never to be heard from again. Well, except for a voice-mail message telling him not to bother retrieving anything from her apartment because there was no longer anything there to retrieve. The whir of what he’d suspected was her garbage disposal on the other end of the line hadn’t sounded good.
“You’d think the rental car companies would make sure their vehicles had air-conditioning, wouldn’t you?” Zach said.
“That’s okay,” Mariah said, closing her eyes against the hot breeze wafting in the open window. “I don’t like air-conditioning anyway.”
Zach gazed at her. At the warm stains of color on her smooth cheekbones. The dots of moisture on her forehead and long, long neck. The way her damp T-shirt clung to her small breasts. Of course she’d say that. She was used to the heat south of the Mason-Dixon line. Dealt with it on a daily basis.
He settled back against the seat but he couldn’t say it was comfortable. The truth was, looking at Mariah Clayborn made him think of crisp sheets and sweaty bodies. Namely his and hers. Entangled together. Beads of moisture sliding down her elegant neck and over the crest of a breast and pausing there, waiting to be licked off.
“Are you okay?”
Mariah’s voice surprised him out of his reverie. “Yes, I’m fine.” If you counted being in a high state of arousal fine.
It wasn’t like him to be so…obsessed with the idea of sleeping with somebody. Of imagining how her thighs would look pressing against his hips instead of a horse’s back. Or how her mouth would purse just so as she fought to catch her breath.
Zach wiped the sweat from his brow.
“You don’t seriously think someone’s still following us, do you?”
Zach blinked at Mariah. She’d obviously tuned into his distracted state. But just as obviously she didn’t appear to have a clue as to the nature of his distraction.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He judged the hotel to be another mile or so down the road. Good. Because he didn’t think he could last another minute in a car alone with Mariah without either spontaneously combusting…or doing something a professional man shouldn’t be thinking about doing with a colleague, no matter how temporary that working relationship would be.
IF YOU TAKE ZACH LETTERMAN out in public, they will come.
As Mariah unpacked the entire inventory of her travel necessities—the toothbrush Zach had given her—she stared at herself in the dimly lit hotel bathroom mirror and sighed. Okay, so he was a striking man. Tall, lean with an air of self-confidence that could equal any rodeo cowboy’s. But Mariah couldn’t remember being around a man who attracted so much female attention. From the flight attendant hoping to be totally at his service, to the hotel clerk who had thrown in room amenities Mariah hadn’t known existed, Zach Letterman seemed to be a walking, talking billboard for male sexuality. Sure, she’d tuned into it the instant they’d met. But to be a victim of it, and having to witness how it affected others were two completely different things.
She ran her fingers through her hair, piling it up on top of her head then considering the results. Not that Zach seemed any the wiser for the attention. He had spoken to the clerk and the flight attendant the same way as he had to James, the flighty baggage caretaker. But she wasn’t entirely convinced that his being oblivious to his effect on women was any better than him knowing.
Of course it didn’t help at all that the women barely spared her a glance before writing her out of the picture altogether. No competition. She didn’t even have to see it written on their pretty faces. Their attitudes spoke volumes.
She sighed again and released her hair so it hung around her face again in thick, unruly waves. Not that being no sexual competition was anything new to her. She may have grown up competing with the males, but the females… Well, at first she hadn’t been interested in competing with them. Then there had come the time when she was so far behind in the imaginary competition she’d had to drop out of the race altogether.
Recently a confusing kind of restlessness had begun to coat her insides. A strange kind of itchy sensation, only it was under her skin, not on top where she could get at it. She caught herself scratching her arm and stopped. Had her exes found her sexy? Desirable? She figured they had, considering their physical attentions. But if that was so, where did that leave her in the sex appeal race? Did she have a minute amount that allowed her to go only so far, but just short of the altar?
Not that she was all that experienced. Sure, she’d been intimately involved with three men. Well, two. The first didn’t count because they’d never really had intercourse. Heavy breathing was about as far as things had gone with him, then he’d been in a hurry to drive her back to the ranch. She’d always thought it was because at the last minute he’d decided he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her.
And the other two…
Well, she didn’t want to think about them right now. She couldn’t change them. But she could change herself. She leaned forward and studied what looked like an on-coming zit on her cheek. She made a face then eyed the travel-sized toothpaste tube. One of her cousins had put a dab on a pimple when they were teenagers. Personally, she had thought the action pretty gross. But now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember Jolene ever really having a full-blown zit.
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Tori Carrington
Businessman turned P.I. Zach Letterman doesn't expect his first case to be easy.But he never dreamed the real challenge would be keeping his hands off his sexy new partner, Mariah Clayborn. The seasoned P.I. says she'll take Zach under her wing, promising to show him the ins and outs of the detective business. Only, Zach has no idea what else Mariah intends to show him….After losing three boyfriends to marriage–one week after they dumped her–Mariah Clayborn knows she has to change her image. The new Mariah is going to be seductive, irresistible…addictive, even. And gorgeous Zach Letterman is just the man to get her there. Her plan? To offer her investigative expertise in exchange for some lessons in lust. Little does she guess she'll end up the one addicted….
Time was running out…
Zach glanced down at Mariah’s sleeping face, hearing a silent clock tick off in his head. She’d offered to show him the ropes. He’d agreed to show her how to be sexy. Zach swallowed hard. The only problem was, Mariah would send him into cardiac arrest if she were any sexier.
He trailed his fingers down over her hip. She shivered in her sleep, bringing a grin to his face as he edged his fingers over her hipbone toward the soft curls between her thighs. Her breathing grew shallower and her thighs opened in sweet invitation.
Good God, but she was beautiful.
Now that she was no longer lying against his chest, Zach saw the chance to further Mariah’s sensual education. Still teasing her lightly with his fingers, he trailed gentle kisses down her throat, along her breasts and stomach, and was delighted by her body’s uninhibited response. Feeling her growing restlessness, Zach shifted on the bed and continued his downward path of kisses. He felt supreme satisfaction when he heard Mariah’s breath hitch the moment his mouth touched her, giving her what she’d been unconsciously asking for.
They might not have much time together. But Zach intended to make every minute count….
Dear Reader,
If you’re like us, you read every book in the TRUEBLOOD, TEXAS continuity series. So you can only imagine how tickled we were when we were asked to pick up the reins—along with fellow Blaze authors Vicki Lewis Thompson and Debbi Rawlins—and revisit the Truebloods, this time with a Blaze twist.
In Every Move You Make, ex-cowhand, now P.I. Mariah Clayborn offers up a striking proposal Indiana Trueblood Zach Letterman is loath to refuse—she’ll teach him about private investigating if he teaches her all the things a man wants in a woman. All too quickly, telling leads to showing, and showing leads to the discovery of a passion so hot it burns them both. Only, their encounters leave Mariah even more confused than ever. Because rather than showing her what a man wants, Zach’s teaching her to take what she wants. And what she wants is…him!
We hope you enjoy our sizzling addition to the TRUEBLOOD, TEXAS series. We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 1271, Toledo, OH 43611, or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.com.
Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading!
Lori & Tony Karayianni
aka Tori Carrington
Every Move You Make
Tori Carrington
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one’s for all our Texan friends!
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Prologue
WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?
Jennifer Rodriquez Madison balanced the phone between her chin and shoulder while she wildly wrote notes with one hand and stuffed a cracker into her mouth with the other, trying like crazy to do the work of three people. She was afraid she was not only failing, but failing miserably. She eyed the agitated potential new client talking nonstop in front of her desk, then felt her heart squeeze as she glanced at her crying infant in the portable crib next to her.
When both Ralph Budnick and Roy Morales of Budnick and Morales Private Investigations retired, Jennifer saw their departure as an opportunity of a lifetime. Of course she’d taken the fact that she was newly married and about to have a baby completely for granted.
Now that the baby was three months old and Jen was back at the outside office, instead of working in the comfort of her home office, she was terrified that her decision to take on the company alone would be the death of her.
The cowbell on the front door clanged. Jennifer spared the latest visitor enough of a glance to notice he was tall, gorgeous and about as welcome at that moment as a deadly virus. “If you’re here for an ongoing investigation, or looking to hire us for a new one,” she told him, “I’m going to have to ask you to come back at another time.”
She blindly found Annie’s pacifier, where it was attached by a length of yarn to the front of her jumpsuit, and popped it into her mouth. Annie instantly spit it out and continued vying for the “most neglected baby of the year” award.
“So are you going to take my case or not?” the woman in front of her desk asked, tapping red fingernails against an alligator-skin purse Jennifer suspected was real. “A friend of mine recommended your agency to me.” She looked around, disdain written on her well made-up face. “But seeing what I have so far, I can’t imagine why.”
Jennifer bristled and moved the silent receiver to her other ear, hoping the client she had on hold wouldn’t hang up as she waited out someone else who had put her on hold. She absently realized that the tall stranger who had entered hadn’t left. “You’re right, Mrs. McCabe. Maybe we’re not equipped to handle cases like you’re describing. Have you ever thought of actually asking your husband if he’s being unfaithful?”
“What kind of question is that?” Mrs. McCabe asked. Her carefully painted face had turned red.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A commonsense one? And definitely a step up from hiring an attractive, flirty woman to entrap him at a country club.”
The woman scoffed.
The stranger moved out of Jennifer’s eyeshot and almost instantly Annie quieted. Jennifer swiveled to find him hesitantly tickling the fussy infant. He gave Jennifer a sheepish grin that made her blink then began to pull his hand back. With a loud cry, Annie let her thoughts on the matter be known. Jennifer couldn’t blame her daughter. She’d much rather have a great-looking guy tickling her, too.
“May I?” the stranger asked, indicating he’d like to pick Annie up.
Let’s see, a choice between earsplitting screams and a happy baby? Jennifer gestured for him to go ahead. She watched as he awkwardly lifted her up and held her at arm’s length, staring at her as curiously as Annie stared back. Jen opened her mouth to tell him to support her head, then the stranger awkwardly but successfully held Annie to his wide chest. He wore a coffee-colored suit that had Northerner written all over it, and he had the type of handsome good looks that would have turned her head before she had stumbled into Ryan’s life for a case she was working on and had her own life turned upside down.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Jennifer asked him, thinking it a pretty good guess that he hadn’t popped up out of the blue to help her with her unhappy daughter.
Maybe Ryan was right about what he had said that morning. He’d tried to convince her to keep working out of the house so that they could, um, pursue their personal interests as well as her business interests. He had also said she had bitten off a little more than she could chew. She sat up straighter, merely thinking the words making her feel combative. His overprotective tendencies both endeared him to her and irritated her. And those tendencies had quadrupled with the birth and his adoption of little Annie.
Of course Ryan was easily sidetracked if need be. A scrap of sexy lingerie and he was putty in her hands.
Jennifer’s mind began to drift to all things sexy and hot but she forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.
“I’m Zach Letterman,” the visitor said with a mid-western accent, a smile softening his striking features as he looked into Annie’s face.
“Is there another agency you could recommend?” Mrs. McCabe was saying insistently, making no secret that she found the intrusion insulting. “Someone who can handle the type of case I’m proposing?”
Letterman, Letterman, Jennifer thought, trying to place the name.
Another telephone line rang, only adding to the general state of chaos. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCabe, but as you can see, I’m very busy right now. If you’d like to leave your card, I’ll contact you later with any possibilities I come up with.”
Jennifer’s gaze was again pulled to the stranger.
He quietly cleared his throat. “Lily recommended me to you.”
“Lily?”
“The job opening?” He grinned at her and she widened her eyes at the megawatt smile. “Looks like you could certainly use a hand around here.”
“Oh. Oh!” Jennifer nearly pushed the package of crackers from her desk in her rush to shake his hand. “You’re that Mr. Letterman. Lily’s cousin from Indiana. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” She checked her calendar. “Oh. Tomorrow is…well, today, isn’t it?”
She recalled the phone conversation she’d had with Lily last week. Lily Garrett Bishop and her brother Dylan Garrett had established Finders Keepers out of San Antonio, Texas, in honor of their great-grandmother Isabella Trueblood. Aside from being a good friend, Lily regularly sent work Jennifer’s way, doubling and sometimes tripling her workload. Her first case for Lily was also instrumental in her meeting and marrying her husband, Ryan. Lily had known Budnick and Morales Private Investigation desperately needed new blood and had recommended Zach Letterman to Jennifer.
And here he was now in the flesh…and what handsome flesh it was.
Mrs. McCabe slapped a postcard-sized piece of stiff paper filled with phone numbers onto the desk in front of Jennifer. “I expect to hear from you promptly with suggestions on who else I might consult.”
Jennifer made a face and forced herself to be polite.
“Mrs. Madison?”
The voice coming through the receiver nearly startled her, she’d been on hold for so long. Jennifer straightened the phone. “I’m still here.”
“Sorry to have taken so long, but someone misplaced your test results and it took some doing to find them.”
Jennifer waved her hand as she watched Mrs. McCabe huff through the front door. “And…?”
“And congratulations,” her ob-gyn told her. “You and your husband are going to have a new addition to your family in about eight months.”
Jennifer stared sightlessly at the blinking lights on the phone in front of her, and glanced at the man holding her infant baby. She and Ryan had talked of having several children. But so soon?
“Mrs. Madison? Jennifer? Are you still there?”
Jennifer was so distracted by the news she hung up the receiver without saying goodbye.
Then she turned toward Zach. “You’re hired.”
1
WELL, THINGS CERTAINLY WORKED differently down here, didn’t they?
In the two days since Zach Letterman had traded Indianapolis, Indiana, for first San Antonio, then Midland, Texas, that was his most remarkable discovery. Things worked differently in the Lone Star State. Sure, he’d expected some differences—the sweltering summer heat, the manner of speaking, the types of food. But he’d been unprepared for the generosity of character, the easygoing nature that each Texan he’d so far encountered had displayed as proudly as he wore his custom-made suits. The most remarkable people so far being his cousins Lily Bishop and Dylan Garrett.
From the moment he’d contacted Lily and Dylan a month ago with his proposal, they’d treated him like part of the family. It hadn’t mattered that he’d never seen them before. They’d accepted him as easily as if they’d had countless snowball fights in the backyard when they were kids. He glanced out the window at the Texas landscape, thinking maybe snowballs wouldn’t have been an option. Playing cowboys and Indians probably would fit better.
The infant in his arms wriggled. Zach gazed down at the bundle as if surprised to find he still held her. She was all pink and new and weighed next to nothing in his arms. He’d never held an infant before. Somehow he hadn’t expected them to be so…light.
Zach carefully put the now sleeping infant back in her carrier then wiped at a spot of drool on the front of his suit.
“How soon can you start?” Jennifer Madison asked. “Oh! I can’t believe I left Denton Gawlick on hold. Give me a minute.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
And he did. Zach crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Jennifer pick the phone receiver back up and punch at one of the red blinking lights. After ten years of grueling, twenty-hour days spent building up his tool and die company in Indianapolis, Indiana, he’d taken a good long look at his life and the way he was living it and decided it was time to make some changes. But it had taken his grandmother’s death six months ago to compel him to implement those changes.
Of course, becoming a private investigator hadn’t even been on the list of possibilities. He’d debated entering the Peace Corps, starting a charity to fight world hunger, traveling the world with little more than the clothes on his back, leaving his credit cards and tremendous cash resources at home. But losing his last, closest living relative, the woman who had raised him after his father disappeared and his mother died, had had a tremendous effect on him he was still trying to sort through. It had ignited in him a longing for family connections he no longer had. Stories Nana had told him as a kid sitting in front of the fireplace with her had come back to him, and he’d realized he’d absorbed every word and could probably recite them even now. And it had been the stories of his Texas relatives that had captured his imagination the most. And so had Trueblood, Texas, the town that had been named after his great-aunt Isabella Trueblood.
With Nana’s death, he’d felt adrift, in need of more than just the changes he’d wanted to make to his life that would send him in a direction toward a more fulfilling career. He’d needed to connect with someone. His family.
So he’d hired a local detective agency and found out that his cousins Lily Bishop and Dylan Garrett had continued on with the family legacy laid out by Isabella Trueblood by opening their own agency, Finders Keepers, a detective agency dedicated to reuniting family members and lost loves. The rightness of their pursuit, and how it tied into what he knew about Great-Aunt Isabella Trueblood, had his mind start clicking in directions he would never have considered before. And within two months of receiving the background report on his Texas relatives, he’d made contact and offered up a business proposal.
But meeting Lily and Dylan in the flesh had been less business-oriented and much more personal than he could have ever imagined. And fruitful in so many ways. After spending a day with them and their blossoming families, he’d gone into Finders Keepers and was immediately hooked. After hearing their many success stories, he’d known down to the bone that his decision was the right one. That he was doing the right thing. The only problem was that everyone in Trueblood knew who he was. There weren’t all that many true Truebloods left without creating a fuss in the small town. And that’s when Lily came up with the idea of sending him to Jennifer Madison to learn the ropes incognito, the only ones knowing his true identity being Jennifer and her husband, Ryan. He would become a private investigator. Just as he’d worked from the bottom rung of the ladder up in his tool and die business, he would learn the art of private investigating in the same way.
And here he was, gazing at pretty Jennifer Madison, waiting for the next step of his life to begin.
Jennifer Madison was more than merely pretty; she was stunning in ways Zach couldn’t begin to count. Lily had spoken highly of the young woman, and Zach could see why. Anyone would have been overwhelmed by the busyness of the office he’d seen so far. But Jennifer seemed to be managing, although barely. And the little one dozing next to her desk was a gem. Whoever Jennifer’s husband was, he was one lucky guy.
Jennifer gave a deep sigh of relief, pulling Zach’s gaze and attention back to her. “Mr. Gawlick. Good, good, you’re still there. I’m sorry to have kept you on hold for so long…” She smiled. “Yes, of course, I understand that you want a spot person from our agency involved with your case.” She eyed Zach. “In fact, I’m looking at just the person for the job as we speak.”
Zach raised a brow.
“I understand the urgency. Yes. No. Very good, Mr. Gawlick. My associate should be there shortly.”
She replaced the receiver and smiled at Zach.
He cleared his throat. “I take it you were talking about me?”
“Uh-huh.” Jennifer reached down and tucked a blanket around the infant’s tiny body. “Mr. Denton Gawlick, of the Odessa Gawlicks. He and his wife are renewing their wedding vows in a week. Only the dress Mrs. Gawlick was hoping to wear, well, it’s been languishing somewhere in lost airline baggage hell for the past week.”
Zach rubbed his chin and grinned. “The case of the missing wedding dress?” Definitely not Mickey Spillane material. Then again, it had its possibilities.
Jennifer laughed and tilted her head to look at him closely. “You’re not licensed yet, right?”
Zach narrowed his gaze, hoping she wouldn’t use his lack of experience as a reason to change her mind. “Right. I’m not just wet behind the ears, I’m soaked.”
She opened a drawer and fingered through files before taking one out and handing it to him. “Then this should be a great case to break you in with.” He must have registered the surprise on his face because she said, “Don’t worry. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was an accountant. You have Lily’s highest recommendation, so you have my complete trust.”
Zach eyed her, still not sure how to take this new way of operating. He didn’t think he’d be half as generous if their positions were reversed. Referral or not, he’d have checked the applicant’s references, asked a ton of questions, and still would have been hesitant to trust the candidate.
Things really did work differently down here.
He swallowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Madison. I’ll make sure your trust isn’t misplaced.”
“It’s Jennifer,” she said as if by rote, then paused while going through some papers and looked at him. “Are you staying in town?”
“Actually, I haven’t checked into my hotel yet.”
“Good. Because right after meeting the client, you’ll have to head down to Houston and Clayborn Investigations. You see, I already farmed the case out to another agency to look into the dress down there since the flight the bag was scheduled to be on was bound for Hobby. But Mr. Gawlick wants someone from our agency to be hands-on, and so long as he’s paying for it…”
“We’re there.”
Her smile widened. “Yes. We’re there.”
Zach couldn’t help but grin back at her even as he mentally prepared a list of questions. What groundwork had been laid down on the case already? Was there any advice on how to handle Mr. Gawlick? How should he document his expenses? Was there some sort of ID he should use? But before he could ask a single question, the phone started ringing, the baby started crying, and the few quiet moments they had just experienced vanished into a chaotic never-never land.
“Call if you need anything,” Jennifer said as she propped the phone between chin and shoulder then reached for the wailing infant.
“Right.” Zach hesitated. He supposed he’d have to find answers to his own questions, which, when you thought about it, was what being a private investigator was all about, right? He started toward the door, nodding at Jennifer’s light wave as she adeptly handled both the caller and the baby. He stepped outside the office and into the warm Texas sun, then squinted at the file in his hands. His first case.
His first case.
He turned his face up to the sun and grinned.
THIS WAS THE LAST CASE she was going to take on from another agency.
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Mariah Clayborn said into the telephone. “I look forward to meeting your associate…” What had Jennifer Madison, the P.I. from Midland, said his name was?
“Zach Letterman,” Jennifer said.
“Yes. Zach. Got it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. She opened her mouth to end the call.
“Is everything all right?” Jennifer cut her off at the pass.
Mariah pushed back her thick dark hair then slumped in her chair. Was her emotional state so apparent that a woman she didn’t even know except via a couple phone calls could tell something was wrong?
“Everything’s fine.” Mariah forced a smile, even though Jennifer couldn’t see it. “Thanks for asking.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll give you a call once Zach and I retrieve the piece of luggage with your client’s dress in it.”
“Good. Good.”
After exchanging goodbyes, Mariah sat pole straight in her chair, her hand still on the receiver that rested in the cradle.
Oh, she supposed just a short time ago everything had been fine, just as she’d proclaimed. She’d been a woman in charge of her own life, with her own agenda, well down the road to convincing herself that she didn’t need a man after her latest breakup.
Then this morning she’d come in to find a section of the office roof had finally given way under the most recent Texas deluge—surely the saying “when it rained, it poured” originated in Texas. Of course it wouldn’t be just any section, but a stretch just above her desk, soaking piles of paperwork and the brand-new chair she’d finally given in to and splurged on a week ago.
But that wasn’t what made today so bad. No. That reason had come while she was cleaning up the mess and her phone rang. She’d snatched it up to find on the line her least favorite person from Hoffland, the small town about forty miles southwest in which she was raised—gossipy Miss Twila Seidwick.
At first she’d been more than a little irritated that the woman was calling her at work. Then she’d been afraid that something had happened to her widowed father and Twila was calling with the news.
Thankfully her father was fine. Twila had been calling to gloat over the fact that Mariah’s third ex-boyfriend in two years had just gotten engaged within a week of breaking up with her.
Merely thinking about it made her brain go numb.
Normally Mariah would have said good riddance, and maybe even called up and offered her condolences to the blushing bride-to-be. But all three? Not one, not two, but all three of her ex-boyfriends had dumped her then become engaged within a week of breaking up with her.
It was enough to give a girl a complex.
She could see her headstone now. She inspired men to want to get married. Just not to her.
She leaned back in her chair, cringing when the sound of the plastic bag under her rear end mixed with the squishy sound of the water that still soaked the pad of her chair. Her brand-new chair. The chair she’d dropped two hundred dollars on because, well, she’d liked it. And now it was ruined.
“Good morning, Mar. My, don’t you look pretty today.”
Mariah made a face at her cousin as he came in the front door. For all intents and purposes, George was a pretty good guy. He had inherited the trademark Clayborn dark hair and pleasing features, but where they looked good on him, they made her look…well, tom-boyish. She glanced at her watch. But the biggest difference between them lay in that she didn’t know when to stop working, and her slightly younger cousin didn’t know when to start. “You always tell me that,” she murmured, glancing down at her old, faded jeans and T-shirt, then pushing at her thick hair again.
“And you never believe me.”
“Yes, well, you’re two hours late. Again.”
George took the rebuke with his usual grinning charm as he made his way to the back where she’d put out the usual morning donuts and had made coffee.
Mariah sighed and returned to trying to make some sort of sense out of her ruined desktop. And if she could figure out what was going on her life at the same time, well, so much the better.
Of course, it was only par for the course that George wouldn’t even have noticed that the roof had caved in. She tried to remember a time when her cousin wasn’t so careless, but came up with a blank. It probably explained why her Uncle Bubba, George’s father, had left the P.I. agency of Clayborn Investigations to her when he finally kicked the proverbial bucket last year. Of course, the inheritance had been attached with the stipulation that George always have a job there so long as he wanted one and that he be paid a living wage, as well as be entitled to a percentage of the net income.
Not that Mariah would have fired her cousin. He was as much a fixture around the office as the coffeemaker. She only wished he was as productive as the machine. He made juggling her life between the office and the ranch a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t carry his own weight; it was that the weight he did try to carry on occasion she ended up having to take on herself. Especially now that her uncle was no longer there to help carry the load.
George leaned against his own squeaky-clean desk across from hers, took a bite of a sprinkle-covered donut, then chased it down with coffee from his Oilers mug. “Heard Justin is getting married.”
Mariah stared at him, wishing at that one moment that she could fire him. “Boy, news sure does travel fast.”
She pulled her garbage can out from under the desk and scooped into it the paperwork she couldn’t salvage.
“That’s the way it usually is with news. Bad news. Good news.” He finished off his donut. “Which category do you suppose this falls under?”
“Good news,” she said. “Definitely good news.”
Because it meant that she wouldn’t be marrying Justin Johnson, also known as J.J.
Bad news because it meant that by the time she returned to the ranch by the end of the day, everyone and his brother in Oklahoma would have heard the news and be calling to commiserate.
“J.J. is a good man.”
“J.J. is a jerk.”
George grinned. “Well, then there’s that.”
“An awfully big ‘that,’ don’t you think?”
George shrugged and rounded his desk to sit down. He immediately leaned back in his chair and crossed his cowboy boots on the desktop. “I don’t know. He wasn’t so bad.” He shook his head. “You know, we all thought for sure this would be it for you—you’d finally take that long walk down the aisle.”
Instead prissy Miss Heather Walker would be taking the walk.
Mariah stared at the opposite wall, not really registering the outdated dark paneling or the oil paintings of ranch scenes hung on it. Instead she thought about the girl who couldn’t have been much out of high school, who wore pretty flowered dresses to church and whose only pair of jeans rode low, low on her boyish hips and were usually worn with clingy, belly-baring knit tops. She glanced down at her own regular uniform of classic Levi’s and old T-shirt, clothing that varied only in the winter when she wore a denim shirt over them, and her scuffed brown cowboy boots, then pushed her hair back from her face again.
There had been a time not so long ago when she’d felt very comfortable in her own clothing, even in a place where the state motto seemed to be The Higher The Hair, The Closer To God. Wearing what she had on had allowed her membership into the exclusive all boys’ club. It had permitted her to ride the range with her father and the ranch hands, and had, in essence, made her one of the guys. And, oh, how she’d always liked that. Barbie dolls had really never done it for her. Give her an ornery filly that needed breaking in any day and miles and miles of Texas earth, and she was a happy woman.
Oh, yeah? Then where was all that happiness now?
Somewhere down the line, the rules had changed—rules she hadn’t even known existed but was seeing all too clearly now.
She grimaced then let loose a stream of inventive cuss words under her breath that left George chuckling. She glared at him and continued cleaning her desk.
Well, just who in the hell had gone and changed all the rules on her anyway? The ones that said that when she turned eighteen she would have to start acting like the Barbie dolls she’d never played with? That she’d miraculously know what to do with her hair, how to apply makeup and how to walk in a pair of heels? And just when, exactly, had meat and potatoes not been enough? Why had her father started mentioning on almost a daily basis all the exotic foods her mother used to make for him to eat—if you could count crepes as exotic? And why did he now talk about how delicate her mother had been?
Sure, Hallmark commercials made her blubber. But delicate was definitely not a word anyone would use to describe Mariah Clayborn, the only child of widower Hughie Clayborn and his late wife, Nadine. At five foot seven in stocking feet and with a solid build, she once took a great deal of pride in being able to better many of the boys. She could probably still get the better of them even now. But whenever a physical competition of any sort was mentioned with her as the opponent, the men merely grinned and held up their hands in a mock version of being gentlemen.
Gentlemen, her rear. She knew just how ungentlemanly all these guys could get. Had been privy to some of their more honest and graphic conversations on observations of the opposite sex. They might hold a door open for their latest lady of choice, light her cigarette and appear to bless the very ground she walked on, but it was all toward one end: getting that same “lady” into the back seat of their cars by night’s end.
Unfortunately she, herself, had seen a back seat more times than she cared to count. But never had it come after a nice dinner out or dancing. No. Her handful of experiences had usually taken place on the back nine of her father’s ranch after one of her boyfriends visited. And had lasted as long as the drive out, making her wonder just why so many girls were dying to get into the back seats of all those cars. Her? She didn’t get it at all. Aside from being vastly uncomfortable, she’d always been left feeling…well, as if she’d missed something.
Of course, she knew what she had missed, but even thinking the word “orgasm” made her flush.
The telephone rang and she started, nearly jumping straight out of her skin at being caught thinking what she had.
“Do you want me to get that?” George asked.
“You could have just answered it, you know,” she said, picking up the extension. She shot a look at George, who’d taken her jab in stride and simply turned the page in the magazine he was reading. “Clayborn Investigations.”
“You got your man, Mariah.”
She instantly sprang up and out of her chair. She didn’t need any more explanation than that. “Thanks, Joe.” She hung up the receiver, slid her revolver into her hip holster, then pocketed her cell phone.
George didn’t even look up from his magazine. “Word on Claude Ray?”
Mariah found cause for her first smile of the day. “Oh, yeah.”
“Need some help roping him in?”
“Oh, no.”
He turned a page. “Didn’t think so.”
Mariah headed for the door, her mood instantly lightening. She liked this part of the job. This is where she excelled. No matter what else was happening in her life, she always managed to get her man.
Her smile slipped.
Well, she always managed to get her man on the job, anyway. In her personal life…
She wasn’t going to go there now.
She opened the door and darted outside—and ran straight into someone. A tall someone, who made her feel absolutely puny. A hard, nice-smelling someone who instantly grabbed her arms to steady her, sending a jolt of warmth over her skin.
“Excuse me,” she said, finding her feet and stepping backward.
The man grinned, nearly sending her off balance all over again.
Whoa, cowboy.
“I think I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Okay, he wasn’t a cowboy. His accent identified him as a Yankee. Mariah found herself tucking her hair behind her ears. And she never tucked her hair behind her ears.
She quickly fluffed her hair back out as if the move alone could erase the nervous gesture. Instead she probably came off looking even more nervous.
“So long as neither of us is seriously injured,” she said. “Pardon me again.”
She began to skirt around him, surprised she was capable of any movement at all.
“Mariah?”
Her blood sizzled through her veins at the sound of her name rolling off the stranger’s tongue. How did he know her name?
She turned slightly to face him.
“Are you Mariah Clayborn?” he asked.
“Um, yes. I am.”
He grinned that grin again. “I’m Zach Letterman. I believe you’re expecting me?”
Expecting him? In her dreams, maybe. Then his name sank in. Zach Letterman, Zach Letterman….
This was Zach Letterman? The P.I. Jennifer Madison had sent down to work with her? No, it couldn’t be. He didn’t look anything like a P.I. He looked more like he’d stepped straight from the pages of GQ. Not that she had ever read Gentlemen’s Quarterly, but she was familiar with the comparison. And if anyone looked like he deserved to be on the cover of a gentlemen’s magazine, it was this guy.
Whoa.
2
A PRIZE BULL UP FOR AUCTION, that’s what Zach felt like. He stood stock-still under the blazing Texas sun and waited while Mariah Clayborn examined him as if she were considering making a bid. Then she seemed to realize what she was doing. Her large brown, almost black, eyes widened and she stared at him as if caught doing something she shouldn’t. Zach grinned, suppressing the desire to ask her if he made the grade.
They stood outside a modest one-story building with Clayborn Investigations written in large block letters on the window. The four-lane boulevard behind him buzzed with traffic, and just over the rooftops of the other one-story buildings across the street lay the Houston skyline. But Zach paid attention to none of it as he gave the woman standing in front of him the same once-over she’d given him. He thought it fair that he not be the only one up on the auctioning block.
He absently rubbed his chin as he took her in. Her clothing of old jeans and T-shirt screamed tomboy through and through. He didn’t think she had on a sweep of makeup, and her hair was naturally wavy, shining a warm cinnamon in the bright midday sunlight. But there was something…very appealing that struck him straight off. An energy. Vitality. Freshness. An out-and-out sexiness that made him come away from his perusal feeling attracted to her in a way that puzzled him. A sleek, polished woman like Jennifer Madison was more his type. Still, he couldn’t ignore the zing of attraction that sizzled along his nerve endings as he looked at Mariah Clayborn.
“Sorry,” she finally said as she squared her feet and steadied herself under his gaze when other women might have fidgeted or struck a coy pose. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” She glanced at her watch—a simple Timex. “I only just talked to Jennifer an hour ago.”
He remembered how busy the P.I. had been before he left. “It was probably the first chance she had to contact you.”
“Mmm.” Mariah licked her lips then glanced through the windows into the office. She appeared not to know whether to bid on him or pass and wait for the next lot up for auction. “The case of the missing wedding dress, right?”
He chuckled, mildly amused that she referred to the case the same way he had. “That would be it. Have you made any progress on it?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“Good.”
“Yes. But unfortunately I have to see to the closure of another case first.” She motioned toward the door. “If you’d like you could, um, wait in there. My cousin George will keep you company until I get back.”
“And how long would that be?”
“About an hour or two.”
“Would you mind if I accompany you?”
“You want to come with me?”
Her frown was so complete it was almost comical. “If you don’t mind. I’ve been on planes for the better part of the morning and would just as soon not do much sitting right now.”
“You’d be sitting in the truck.”
“Yes, but the truck would be moving.” He glanced around. “Besides, I haven’t had much of a chance to see Houston yet.”
“My destination is about a half hour west of here. Outside the city.”
He grinned. “Better yet.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear again, appeared agitated that she had, then released a long sigh. “Okay. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to bring you along.” She started in the direction of the street.
Zach picked up his single suitcase and followed her, his gaze drawn to the back of her faded jeans. The old denim fit just so across her lush, rounded bottom. While Mariah Clayborn’s clothes shouted tomboy, the body that lay underneath murmured one hundred percent woman.
“You can put that in the bed.”
“Pardon me?” he asked, blinking at where she was opening the door of a beat-up old blue Ford.
“Your suitcase. You can put it in the back.”
He eyed the truck bed, which held a rusty gas container, a partial bale of hay and an old gray-and-red wool blanket. He put the suitcase on top of the blanket then climbed into the truck cab, the door protesting against the movement and letting rip a loud squeak.
“Sorry,” she said, starting the ignition. “I don’t usually have much company in the truck.”
She put the truck into gear then gathered together countless fast-food wrappers littering the floor at his feet. She didn’t appear to know what to do with them. She finally tossed them back behind the bench seat.
“I can see why.”
She glanced at him for a long moment, then seemed to come to some sort of decision as she smiled. “A guy with a sense of humor. I like that.” She gestured toward the door. “You may, um, want to buckle up. Nelly rides a little rough.”
Nelly. She’d named her truck. He fastened his safety belt and quickly found out just how bumpy the ride was going to be as the truck lurched forward.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said over the roar of the engine.
Zach grinned at her, wondering just how much of a ride he was in for….
ZACH LETTERMAN WAS definitely not your normal, run-of-the-mill thorn in the side. Mariah sneaked another glance at him and his cool, clean looks, and the admirable way he looked. He appeared relaxed as her truck bumped and rutted over the dirt road leading to Claude Ray’s place, which was little more than a shack tucked away on a corner of someone else’s land. It had been that someone else, namely Joe Carter, who had called to tip her off about Claude’s return.
“What’s the case about?” Zach Letterman asked.
Mariah pulled her gaze from where she’d been staring at his thick, long-fingered hands and looked into his face. The gleam of recognition in his moss-green eyes made her skin heat up. “Pardon me?”
“This case you have to close. What’s it regarding?”
She gripped the steering wheel tighter when she hit a particularly nasty pothole. “Horse thief.”
Zach’s eyebrows shot up high on his smooth forehead. “Horse thief?”
“Yeah.” She slowed down a bit so the engine didn’t roar too loudly. Claude wouldn’t be going anywhere without her seeing him anyway, seeing as this was the only road leading in or out of the place. “A nearby breeder had two of his prime studs come up missing day before yesterday. Maybe you recognize the names? Gentle As Rain won the Kentucky Derby last year and Black Thunderfoot won the Triple Crown three years ago.”
He slowly shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t follow racing.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, those are the studs that came up missing. Carter charges twenty-five grand a pop for stud fees.”
“That much?”
She smiled. “Yes. Funny, isn’t it? Kind of like male prostitution of the animal variety.” She waved her hand toward the west. “Anyway, when Carter called me to look into the matter, I knew immediately who was behind the theft. A guy by the name of Claude Ray. He’s a local of sorts who sweeps into town every now and again, leaving a trail of illegal activities in his wake. He usually shows up again when the fuss dies down and the local authorities have moved on to bigger and better things.” She hit a nasty bump and would have catapulted from the seat if not for her own safety belt. “I heard Claude showed up again about a week or so ago.”
“Is this something P.I.s usually handle around here?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard. “Isn’t this something for the authorities?”
“Usually, yes. But Carter’s spread borders my daddy’s ranch and our families go way back. My uncle Bubba—the P.I. business was his before he kicked, er, before he passed on last year—always saw to these kinds of favors for friends.”
Zach turned his head to look out the window at the passing landscape. Long stretches of open plains extended as far as the eye could see.
Mariah took a deep breath, finding a deep satisfaction being near the place where she’d grown up. There was something about the Texas plains that crawled right up under your skin and stayed there, much as the soil did when it got under your fingernails. She glanced at Zach to find him shrugging out of his suit jacket then tossing it over the back of the seat. His shirt was white and crisp and covered him to the wrists. Well, at least until he popped the buttons at the cuff and rolled the material up to the top of his forearms. Mariah swallowed. And what forearms they were, too. While his hands looked much softer than she was used to—hell, they looked softer than hers—his forearms were nothing but thick, corded muscles, his skin dotted with soft almost black hair. And he had the kind of wrists she doubted she could get the fingers of one hand around.
Oh, the man next to her might be a Northern city boy, but she suspected he was as strong as any man who had spent his life on the range.
“You’re from out here?” Zach asked, pulling her attention back to his face.
She nodded and pointed to the west again. “Daddy’s cattle ranch is about five miles that way.”
His gaze on her face was softly probing. “How did you end up a P.I.?”
Mariah stared determinedly ahead. Now there was a question you didn’t want to have to answer when you least expected it. “Long story.”
“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” he said with a grin.
She cleared her throat, thankful it couldn’t be heard over the roar of the engine as she sped up again. “Let’s just say it was serendipity along with a healthy dose of nepotism.”
While that was true, she didn’t want to delve into the fact that there had come a point a couple years back when she felt her presence at the ranch wasn’t welcome anymore. “A distraction,” that’s what her father had called her. A woman doing a man’s job is how she interpreted his explanation. It seemed that overnight she had moved from a valued member of the ranch to unwanted company. The ranch hands went silent when she joined them for dinner. Her father scowled whenever she came back from a run. And she’d been relegated to menial tasks a two-hundred-year-old woman could have done.
She blessed the day when her uncle Bubba had offered her a one-time only assignment that included tracking down the very man she was tracking now: Claude Ray. He’d stolen some of her father’s cattle back then, re-branded them, and was selling them at auction in the next county. The idiot.
Conniving, Ray definitely was. Smart, he was not.
But the one-time assignment had quickly turned into a full-time job. And it had basically become her mission in life since she couldn’t work at the ranch.
“How about you?” she asked him.
Zach stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. And she supposed in some way maybe she was. It usually took Yanks a bit of an adjustment period before they got used to the easy cadence of Texas speak. And she had the impression that he’d definitely just gotten off the boat. Or plane.
He shrugged and squinted against the sun as he stared out the window. “You could say I came about it much the same way.”
Mariah smiled. So he didn’t want to share his reasons any more than she did. Good. That was just fine with her. More than fine. Because it meant he wouldn’t hound her.
She turned her attention back to the road. They were maybe a half a mile up from the shack where Claude Ray sometimes hung his hat. And there it was. She could see the smear of weathered gray boards against the horizon. And behind the shack she made out horses. Two of them. Exactly the number she suspected Claude had stolen from the Carter ranch.
She stepped on the gas, then noticed a spot of red dart from the shack and make a run for a white pickup nearby.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Mariah muttered under her breath.
Finally she elicited a physical reaction to her driving from Zach as he gripped the dusty dashboard. “I, um, take it this is the part where I should hold on?”
“If you value your life.” Mariah smiled at him, feeling a rush of adrenaline that warmed her entire body.
She told herself the rush had nothing to do with the man next to her. She got a rush from tracking someone down, especially someone like Claude Ray, who was a regular. And who gave good chase.
She spared Zach another glance as she bore down on Claude. There was no way Claude was going anywhere anyway. Not with this being the only road out. “You okay?” she asked.
Zach grinned at her in a way that made her stomach leap higher than it should have. “Great.”
“Good. Hold on.”
Ten yards away from Claude’s white truck she stood on the brakes and pulled the steering wheel to the left, sending her own truck careening to a stop and blocking the road.
“Here.” Mariah slid her revolver from her holster and tossed the firearm to the seat next to Zach. “If he comes running back this way without me, shoot him.”
The expression on his face was priceless. “Shoot him?”
“By shoot him, I don’t mean execute him. A simple nick to the arm should do the trick.”
His expression didn’t change.
Mariah opened her mouth to ask if he knew how to use a gun, but caught sight of Claude making a run for it.
The question could wait for later. She had a horse thief to catch.
HOLY SHIT.
Zach stared at the firearm in his hand then at Mariah Clayborn’s retreating back. He’d never held a gun before, much less fired one. Okay, sure, he’d had a cap gun and a BB gun when he was a teenager. But this was no peashooter. This was a full octane Colt that weighed at least two pounds if not more.
The longer he held it, the warmer the metal grew against his skin. He swallowed, excitement ricocheting through his bloodstream. Before he knew it he was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. He had to shoulder the door to get it to open and he stood on the hard-packed dirt outside, squinting against the dust that remained from Mariah’s daredevil maneuvers. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. There she was behind the shack. His brows rose. She was grabbing the mane of a sleek dark stallion and hauling herself up onto the horse’s bare back. He shifted a little to the right to find Claude Ray doing the same with less success some couple yards away, his caramel-colored stallion in a full run while Ray tried to pull himself up on top, completely graceless.
Mariah, on the other hand, was as fluid as the animal she commandeered. The horse seemed immediately to sense she was the boss and held still while she hauled herself up, waiting until her toned thighs straddled him and her boot heels gently nudged his sides before shooting out after Ray. Mariah’s dark hair blew out behind her, her back straight, her fingers tangled in the horse’s dark mane as she bent over the back of his neck, using the power of her thighs to stay astride.
Holy shit. Things did work differently down here.
Sure, like most Americans, he was well-versed on the stories of Texas and the Southwest, cowboys and Indians and Clint Eastwood movies. But he’d never thought that that kind of stuff still went on down here.
The two riders galloped out of sight. Zach stared at the truck with the tricky gearshift and scanned the landscape. The road ran out beside the shed. There was no way he could follow in the ancient vehicle.
Instead, he undid the top couple of buttons on his shirt and leaned against the door to get just a bit out of the unrelenting sun. He grinned. He’d never met anyone quite like Mariah Clayborn before. He’d bet dollars to donuts that she ran Clayborn Investigations. And if what he’d seen so far was any indication, he suspected she was very good at what she did.
He tried to tuck the gun into the waist of his dark slacks. The shear weight of the firearm bent the material back, nearly sending the weapon to the dirt at his feet. He fumbled for the gun then laid it on the hood of the truck instead, his gaze watchful, as if he was afraid the revolver would take on a life of its own.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Okay, so he hadn’t given the gun part of the job that much thought before. He hadn’t thought there would be a reason to, what with the focus of Finders Keepers being the recovery of lost loved ones, rather than dangerous horse thieves. But while Finders Keepers knew Jennifer Madison because they subcontracted work from her, it didn’t mean Jennifer Madison’s agency was strictly a low-risk venture. And, so it appeared, neither was Mariah’s.
He did have to admit to feeling a thrill as the truck hurled over the dirt road toward their quarry, though. And the gun…
He heard the clump-clump of hooves hitting the earth before he spotted the horse. Given his thoughts on Mariah, he expected the rider to be her. Instead the caramel-colored horse shot out of the brush and straight by him.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Zach fumbled for the gun, although he wasn’t entirely certain what he was going to do with it. He eyed the back of the horse, the gun, then aimed the muzzle skyward and pulled the trigger. Nothing.
“The safety!” Mariah called, shooting past him moments after Claude. “Release the safety!”
The safety. Zach hurriedly eyed the metal in his hands and pushed a button. The clip slid out and dropped onto the ground.
Not the safety.
Damn.
Not that it mattered. He shielded his eyes and watched as Mariah caught up with Claude and yanked on the back of his shirt, pulling him from his horse and plopping him into the middle of a particularly prickly looking bush. Within minutes, Mariah shoved Claude in the direction of the truck, his hands bound behind his back with some sort of plastic tie, while the horses followed behind her.
Zach smoothed down the front of his shirt. He’d never before witnessed such a sight. But given the high color in Mariah’s cheeks, the bounce to her gait, she was not only used to such events, she thrived on them. And Zach couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Mariah paused in front of him and picked up the clip still on the ground. “Drop something?”
Zach grimaced and accepted the ammunition pack, then stepped aside to let Mariah put Claude inside the cab of the truck.
Claude spit on the ground near her boots. “Don’t think this is over, Clayborn. Because it’s not. Not by a long shot.”
Mariah closed the truck door then pulled a cell phone out of her front pocket and placed two calls—one to the authorities to pick up Ray, another to what he thought must be the horse owner to pick up his animals.
She clapped the phone closed and turned to look at him.
“Handle a gun often, cowboy?”
Zach grinned. “Not often.”
“We’ll have to fix that if we’re going to work together.”
The prospect of working with Mariah Clayborn took on a whole different sheen. Zach watched her round the truck and take a couple of leather leads from the bed, wondering what else the fiery Texas lass would have in store for him. And wondering how quickly he could see if she performed as well in bed as she did on the back of a horse.
3
NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.
Mariah drove back to the office feeling psyched and energized, mentally ready to deal with anything and everything, even the news about her latest ex and his wedding plans. Well, mostly ready, anyway. If the handsome man next to her made her think of hot and heavy honeymoons, it was solely because his case involved a missing wedding dress. And her reluctance to feel in any way attracted to him had nothing to do with his lack of skill with a gun in a state where it was almost a requirement that a person know how to handle one, and own at least one or two…or ten or twelve. Her reluctance was because, let’s face it, he was as far away from her type as it was for a man to get.
If a little part of her mind reminded her that what she thought was her type appeared not to be her type…well, she was ignoring it.
“Anything happen while I was away?” Mariah glided into the office on triumphant wings, holding the door open for Zach behind her.
George looked up from where he was idly playing a game of Spider Solitaire on his computer, appearing not to have budged more than an inch since she’d left him a couple of hours ago. “Nope.”
Mariah looked to their visitor, feeling her stomach bottom out again, like it did every time she glanced his way. She figured it was probably the effect he had on most women, simply because of his tremendous looks. “Zach Letterman, meet my cousin George Clayborn. George, Zach.”
Zach crossed the office and offered his hand. George glanced at it, raised his brows then got to his feet to give Zach’s hand a shake. “How do you do?” George said.
Zach appeared not to know how to respond, and didn’t.
Mariah rounded her desk, happy to find most of the damage from the morning’s drenching of her chair had dried out. Still, she repositioned the plastic bag she’d laid across it earlier before sitting down.
“Did Buckley come over to take a look at the roof?”
George nodded. “Yeah. Said he’d come by with the materials in a couple of hours and patch it up.”
“Did you get an estimate on what it would take to redo the entire roof?”
“He said he couldn’t get to a job that big for two months anyway, so the patch is all he can swing now.”
She noticed Zach eyeing the hole above her desk. He grinned at her. “Do something to anger the gods?”
The gods? “I figure if I had, I’d be toast right now.”
He chuckled then pulled a nearby chair closer to the front of her desk.
“Did you get Ray?” George asked.
“Of course. Don’t I always?”
“Oh.” Her cousin looked around on top of his desk and lifted his clean blotter. “Justin called. He wants you to call him back at this number.”
ZACH HAD NEVER SEEN anyone go so pale. Where moments before Mariah’s face had been full of color and her eyes had danced with excitement, now she looked as if someone had just hit her in the stomach.
“A client?” Zach asked, referring to the caller.
“An ex.”
The way she said it made it sound as if she had a whole battalion of exes. Zach squinted at her.
“He, um, just got engaged.”
“Ah,” he said, as if that explained everything. “To you?”
“No,” she said a little too curtly. “Not to me. The word never even came up while we were dating.”
“And that was?”
“Five days ago.”
Zach lifted his brows. “Fast worker, your ex.”
“Fast workers, all three of my exes. Only not with me.”
She made busy with her hands as he watched.
Zach silently pondered the striking woman not three feet from him. If he bought what she was trying to sell him, he’d think it didn’t bother her one iota that her latest ex was engaged to someone else. In all honesty, he couldn’t say it bothered her in the way one might expect. She didn’t appear heartbroken, on the verge of tears or particularly sad that the man she had dated was about to bite the big one.
She did, however, appear highly agitated. As if she could go after another four Claude Rays, on foot if necessary, to expend the energy that radiated from her. An energy that intrigued him, drew him in, made it impossible for him to look anywhere but at Mariah Clayborn. The woman was fascinating.
He absently rubbed the back of his neck. What was he thinking? He was supposed to be focusing on the case. His first case. And here he was entertaining ideas of how he and Mariah might expend some of that primo energy she exuded.
“So, the case,” he said slowly.
She blinked at him as if having forgotten he was there. “The case? Oh. Yes.” Talk about your grimaces. Mariah wore one that could go up against the best of them. “The case of the missing wedding dress.”
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Where should we start? A trip to Hobby Airport?”
She picked up the telephone receiver, dialed information, then dialed the airport, consulting a fax that resembled the fact sheet he had folded in his front shirt pocket.
Zach looked over at George, noticing the way he tuned in to the goings-on without really appearing to. George glanced at him and Zach grinned.
“It’s not there,” Mariah stated.
Zach turned toward her. “What’s not where?”
“The bag with the dress in it. It never made it to Hobby.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh.” She handed him a notepad in which she had written an address in Alabama. “But it may be here.”
“Here, as in…?”
“Here as in the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. According to the airline supervisor I talked to, that’s where all the lost luggage in the universe piles up until it’s either claimed or auctioned or sold off after ninety days.”
Zach scratched his chin, thinking a couple of pieces of his own luggage probably had ended up there over the years. “A kind of graveyard for dead baggage.”
Mariah smiled. “Yes. Something like that.”
“So when do we go?”
Her soft brows lifted. “How do you mean?”
He glanced at his watch. “My client renews his vows in less than a week. He’s willing to pay us whatever it takes to retrieve the dress posthaste.”
“Us?”
“He’s covering all expenses.”
“Ah.”
Zach grinned. “Unless, of course, you want to sign off on the case.”
“No, no. Of course not.”
Zach could tell that’s exactly what she wanted to do. And it surprised him how much he wished she wouldn’t. He was highly attracted to her and he’d like to see what it would be like to kiss that saucy mouth of hers. He couldn’t do that if she sent him packing.
The telephone at her elbow rang. She glanced at the display showing the number of the caller, the ashen color returning to her face.
She reached back and picked up what looked like a duffel bag. “Let’s say we go now.”
“Just like that?”
She nodded, barely looking at him as she headed for the door. “Just like that.”
MARIAH SECURED both her tray and her seat in the upright and locked position then rubbed her arms.
“Cold?”
She glanced at where Zach Letterman seemed to take up the air of half the plane, his knees jammed against the seat in front of him, his shoulders nearly topping the back of the chair.
She cleared her throat. “Um, yes. A little. But we’ll be landing soon, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Here.” He gestured to a nearby flight attendant, who immediately stepped to him, a solicitous smile on her pretty face.
Mariah grimaced and watched as Zach Letterman charmed another willing female. The strange thing about it was that he didn’t even appear to be trying. He looked a woman’s way and she was all smiles and readiness. She’d witnessed it first at the airport when the desk clerk had practically drooled on the counter separating her from Zach. Then she’d seen it at the airport coffee shop, where he’d stopped off for some caffeine and the Wall Street Journal.
“No, it’s not for me,” Zach told the pretty blonde.
The blonde definitely looked disappointed, not that Mariah could blame her. To have the perfect excuse to touch Zach ripped out from under you…well, that would be enough to make anyone frown.
“Thank you,” Zach said, accepting the plastic-wrapped blue blanket.
Mariah watched the flight attendant reluctantly make her way back to the front of the plane.
She cleared her throat. “Thanks, Zach, but no, really, that’s okay…”
Mariah’s words trailed off as she watched him make quick work of the plastic then begin to cover her with the nappy cotton. The back of his fingers skimmed her bare arm, making her feel like the plane had hit an air pocket as her stomach bottomed out. “I…um, can do it.”
His eyes scanned her face, making a whole different sort of goose bumps dot her flesh.
“Thanks,” she said.
She’d never seen a guy grin with his eyes before. But if anyone could, Zach Letterman was the man. A pure knowing seemed to lurk in the meadow-green depths, inviting her in, robbing her of both breath and words.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, then he returned his attention to the Wall Street Journal.
Mariah puffed out a long breath and settled the blanket over the upper part of her body. She turned to look out the window. Why was it that whenever he looked at her she found it suddenly impossible to breathe?
She shifted and made a face. P.I., her butt. If the man next to her was a private investigator then her name was Cindy Crawford. She surreptitiously watched him turn the page of his newspaper, her gaze lingering on his long, thick fingers and the springy dark hair that dotted the backs. He struck her as a man used to traveling. He barely looked at the flight attendant who offered a drink and a snack, while she had spotted the attendant the instant he began serving the passengers fifteen rows up. She never took her eyes from him for fear that he would miss her. Okay, so she wasn’t a frequent flier. This was her third time on an airplane and, admittedly, she didn’t much like being so far up off the ground. There was something…unnatural about it.
But it was more than Zach’s comfort with airplane travel that fueled her suspicions. Take the gun incident. Investigation training usually required the investigator to take at least one course in the art of using a firearm. She knew things worked differently up North, but she didn’t think they worked that differently. Then he had avoided answering her question on what had led him to be a P.I.
She made a face. Okay, so she hadn’t shared her reasons, either, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a licensed P.I. She was.
Maybe he just didn’t get out in the field much.
Still, a niggling part of her suspected that Zach Letterman knew as much about being a P.I. as she knew about weeding a flower garden, which was basically limited to whatever she saw when she tuned in to Martha Stewart. And that wasn’t all that often.
Her gaze slowly slid back to Zach’s handsome profile. While he lacked experience in the private detecting arena, she’d guess he had a whole lot of experience in other more intimate arenas. He was the type of male who would know exactly what a woman wanted from a man. And would be able to give it to her.
Zach folded his newspaper and slid it into the pocket in the seat in front of him. His gaze met hers and, as usual, her stomach bottomed out—especially when his eyes darkened, an unmistakable attraction lurking in the green depths. In fact, for a moment she thought he might even kiss her. She caught herself licking her lips in preparation.
“So what do we do once we get there?” he asked.
“Hmm?” Mariah slowly blinked, his words taking even longer to register. “Oh. We rent a car and drive the forty miles from Huntsville to Scottsboro to visit the Unclaimed Baggage Center.”
The gleam in his eyes turned into a grin, making Mariah’s own mouth suddenly go dry. “I’d gathered that. I meant, will we be checking into a hotel?”
Checking into a hotel? With what had to be the most attractive guy she’d come across since she used to pin up pictures of rodeo stars on her bedroom walls?
“No. No, I don’t think a hotel will be necessary.” She swallowed hard and wished she could pull the little blue blanket up over her head. “If luck is on our side, we’ll find the bag and be on the next flight back to Houston.”
“And if luck isn’t on our side?”
“Then we should be able to ascertain that the bag isn’t in Scottsboro, and be on the next flight back to Houston.”
He glanced at his watch, making her crane her neck to look at the sleek crystal as well, completely forgetting that she wore a watch of her own. “Well, then, we’d better make quick work of getting to the center, because the last flight out to Houston is at six.”
Mariah’s eyebrows shot up.
He seemed to notice the move. “I asked back at Hobby.”
“Oh. Good. Good.”
That was a P.I. move, wasn’t it? Either that or he was a man used to being prepared.
The question was, prepared for what?
Okay, what was it with her today? Her thoughts seemed to bounce all over the universe and back again. Then she remembered Justin’s announcement and collapsed against the chair and frowned. So, this was what being a reject did to you. It made you look, feel and act like a fool.
Or maybe being a fool was exactly the reason she couldn’t land a forever guy to begin with.
SO MARIAH CLAYBORN WASN’T the chatty type. As Zach watched her climb out of the rental car outside the Unclaimed Baggage Center, he told himself he should be thankful. He wasn’t much for small talk himself. In fact, he told himself he should be glad she wasn’t asking him too many questions. He’d decided early on that he was going to keep his real reason for being in Texas, and working for Jennifer Madison, to himself. Yes, while the entire P.I. business intrigued him, he had no intention of making a living as a P.I. He reminded himself that he was down here strictly to get the feel for the territory so that when he returned to Indiana he’d be prepared for the task of opening satellite offices of Finders Keepers.
He was, however, used to letting other people do the talking. Ask a couple of questions, and most people went off on long tangents that usually left him knowing more than he’d like.
But with Mariah, he found he didn’t know nearly enough. She’d been quiet ever since they’d left her office in Houston. Throughout the drive to the airport, the plane ride, then the drive to Scottsboro, the few questions he had asked had received little more than one-word answers.
Zach rubbed the back of his neck as he closed the cab door, watching Mariah lead the way to the door of what looked like a retail store about as big as a city block. While he didn’t consider himself a ladies’ man, he certainly thought he knew a whole lot about women. And one of those things was that they loved to talk. All you had to do was find the key word. Shopping usually did the trick. But he’d tried no fewer than ten of the regular conversation words on Mariah and she hadn’t bitten on a one of them. Not even politics had gotten more than a small smile from her.
He shrugged and followed after her. Okay, so she wasn’t interested in idle conversation. It was a new one for him, but Zach could handle it. Well, he could if there wasn’t the whole P.I. angle to think about. He’d like to get to know more about the business. And he’d like to get to know a whole lot more about Mariah Clayborn.
They talked to a clerk who told them that the type of baggage they were talking about wouldn’t be on the sales floor yet, but back in the warehouse behind the store. She made a phone call then walked them back to a large door. “Go on in. You’re expected. You’ll find James somewhere in the piles.”
Piles? Zach scanned the countless objects for sale, the place looking like a garage sale lover’s paradise, then stepped through the door the clerk held open. He immediately saw what she was talking about. Everywhere he looked were mountains of luggage. Big pieces, small pieces, expensive pieces, cheap pieces. All things that belonged to somebody somewhere and held cherished memories from their trips.
“Oh boy,” Mariah said, next to him.
“You can say that again.”
“Oh boy.”
Zach jerked to look at her and grinned. “I meant figuratively.”
She smiled back. “I know. I thought it deserved two.”
“Ah.”
Zach couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but whenever Mariah smiled, he either grinned or grinned wider, and an inexplicable heat slinked through his abdomen, making him want to touch her. It didn’t matter where. To tuck her wild hair behind her ear. To run his finger down the smooth column of her throat. To circle her right breast where the soft cotton of her T-shirt draped enticingly over the small mound.
“Hello!”
Zach heard the greeting, but was at a loss as to where it had come from.
“I take it you’re Miss Clayborn?”
It seemed to take Mariah a great effort to tear her gaze away from him. The heat he felt sizzled, knowing that she was as compelled by him as he was by her.
“Um, yes, that would be me,” she said finally.
A middle-aged guy with thick glasses popped up from behind a pile of suitcases nearest to them. Zach raised his brows.
“James, at your service,” he said, wiping his hands against his striped, short-sleeved shirt, then offering his hand. “Would either of you like some Starbucks?”
“No, thank you,” Zach said.
Mariah shook James’s hand. “You’re the one I talked to?”
“No. That would be Sally. I don’t sound like a woman to you, do I?”
Zach suppressed a chuckle. The guy in front of them definitely didn’t look like a woman.
Mariah cleared her throat. “Sorry. I was calling from the Houston airport so I really couldn’t make out much about the voice with all the background noise.”
“Airports. Hate ’em,” James said, offering his hand to Zach.
Zach nodded in complete agreement as he gave James’s hand a brief shake.
“So you all are looking for a wedding dress.” James pushed up his glasses again and peered around him. “Someone else here on the same errand. You’d be surprised how many of those things end up here.”
“Wedding dresses?”
“No, people looking for them.”
“Ah.”
“Found one the other day.” He kicked a suitcase out of the path and called out to another guy nearby, telling him to keep the pathways clear. “Wouldn’t be able to find your way out without the pathways,” James explained.
“By ‘found,’ do you mean people or wedding dresses?”
“Wedding dresses, of course.”
Zach tuned in on where Mariah was going. “And by the other day, which day, exactly, do you mean?”
“Two days ago.”
The right timeframe.
“Where is it? The dress, I mean?”
James motioned toward the far corner of the room. “Right where I directed the other guy who got here about twenty minutes ago looking for a dress, too.”
“Ah,” Zach said again, barely hiding his amusement.
Mariah laughed.
James stared at them both, having missed out on the joke.
“Sorry,” Mariah said. “I was just wondering if, you know, the guy looking for the dress actually plans on wearing it.”
James’s brows hovered above the dark rims of his glasses. “You don’t mean…you aren’t saying…” He let out a deep breath. “Oh Lord, I hope not. Either way, I don’t care, though. I’m a firm believer in the don’t ask, don’t tell policy. But now that you’ve said that, it’s put…well, an image in my head, you know? And that’s one image I could do without.”
“You and me both,” Zach said.
Zach took Mariah’s elbow and steered her toward where James was leading the way down one of the paths he’d mentioned. Little more than two feet wide, the path wound around mountains of varying sizes and colors. A Louis Vuitton here, a knockoff there. A khaki duffel bag in the way of the path, a package of skis at shoulder level, ready to decapitate anyone who wasn’t watching where they were going. How did all of this stuff come to be lost?
“James, what happens to all this?”
He shrugged. “Well, the airline does extensive tracking for ninety days. Sometimes the owners themselves find their way here, but not often. If they do, or the airline matches up the bag with the passenger, they regain their things. Otherwise, we sell the stuff in the front room. We also hold auctions. We wouldn’t have room otherwise. We have a Web site, you know. Sell stuff there, too.”
The older man stopped and scratched his chin, considering the piles in front of him when they came to a fork in the path. He looked one way, then the other, then pointed to the right. “This way, I think. Yes, yes. This way.”
Zach gazed down at Mariah, who was looking at the baggage with as much curiosity as he. “Lose anything recently?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “No. But it looks to me as though it wasn’t for lack of the airline trying.”
“I’ve lost no fewer than three bags over the years.”
“Do a lot of traveling, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Work related?”
Zach rubbed his chin. P.I.s traveled, didn’t they? Sure they did. “Yes. Don’t you?”
“This was my third time on a plane. And, this trip aside, my travels have been strictly personal. I haven’t had much call to travel out of Texas yet, you know, for the job.”
“Personal? That one trip wouldn’t have had anything to do with your exes, would it?”
She winced, making him wish he hadn’t said anything. “No. It was for my mother’s funeral. I was eight.”
Zach felt lower than the bottom of his shoes. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, obviously trying to pull off a nonchalance he was sure she didn’t feel. “That’s all right.”
He cleared his throat. “My mother died when I was nine.”
Her big brown eyes widened. “Your father?”
“Out of the picture. I don’t even know where he is. Not that it matters. He wasn’t around long enough to make an impression.”
Zach grimaced. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d volunteered the information. He didn’t think he’d told anyone in his adult life how old he’d been when he’d lost his mother. Yet here he had known this woman for only a few hours and he’d shared the information with her as easily as he did the time.
“I guess it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”
He mimicked her moves and shrugged his shoulders, knowing the casualness he was going for fell far short of the mark. “That’s all right.”
His response brought a warm smile to her face. He discovered again he liked it when she smiled. He liked it a lot.
“Here we are,” James said, coming to a halt and breaking the quiet moment. The older man scratched the top of his head. “At least this is where I think it is.” He looked around. “But where’s the other guy?”
Fifteen or so jumbo suitcases were stacked behind Mariah. Zach squinted, trying to make out whether or not one of them had just moved. Then suddenly the entire stack began to teeter precariously.
He calmly reached out and touched her arm. She blinked up at him, her tongue darting out to moisten her bottom lip. Then he yanked her into his arms, away from where she’d been standing, where the cases were now hitting the floor one at a time.
“Dang nab it!” James shouted.
Zach had never actually heard a person say the words in the flesh and, despite what had just happened, he fought a smile.
“If I’ve told the kid once, I’ve told him a thousand times, you’ve got to stack these bags carefully.” He eyed where Mariah had curled her hands into the front of Zach’s shirt, the side of her head resting against his chest.
Zach could hear the thump-thump of his own heartbeat. He wondered if Mariah could hear it, too. The soft smell of sunshine—Texas sunshine—filled his nose, and the feel of one-hundred-percent Mariah Clayborn filled his arms. The heat that had earlier taken up residence in his abdomen dropped to his groin. His condition was not helped any by the shifting of Mariah’s hips.
“You okay?” James asked her.
Zach looked down to find her staring at the man as if just realizing he was there. She pushed away from Zach so fast she nearly toppled them both over. Zach caught her and chuckled.
“I’m fine,” Mariah said, squaring her shoulders and looking everywhere but at Zach. “Where did you say this damn suitcase was?”
4
WHOA, COWBOY.
Mariah could swear she was shaking. She eyed the avalanche of suitcases, then Zach Letterman’s wide, hard chest, and swallowed hard. The problem was she wasn’t sure what bothered her most—that a few measly suitcases were to blame for her shaken demeanor, or Zach Letterman.
Definitely Zach Letterman.
She covertly lifted her hand. Definitely shaking. She smacked the hand back to her side and made a fist.
Okay, so for those few moments it had felt good to be pressed against his hard male length as if she was a damsel in distress and he the brave hero. Even if he’d only been protecting her from suitcases. She’d breathed in the crisp scent of his shirt, felt his large hands pressing against her back, and felt…different somehow. At least different from the way she’d felt with any other guy. She was used to the smell of chewing tobacco and sweat. But somehow she got the impression that when Zach sweated, he smelled like cologne.
It didn’t make any sense, really. All her life she’d been around real cowboys. Men who hiked up their pants and puffed out their chests and made it their mission in life to play the role of heroes. Yet whenever any of them had tried to help her, she’d shunned them. Felt insulted. Had even broken her leg in three places once in her haste to show she could take care of herself. Her horse had rolled and caught her underneath.
Yet let a few bags fall to the floor and she was hopping into a Yankee’s arms and batting her lashes as if she wasn’t capable of tying her shoes right.
“I’ll be darned,” James said, breaking into her mental musings.
Zach moved up next to the man and Mariah moved to the other side. Before them sat no fewer than fifteen suitcases, all hanging open and gutted, their contents mixing with the next.
“I take it this isn’t the way to go about searching for bags,” Zach said dryly.
“Heck no, it ain’t.” James kicked a few steps forward. “All the stuff gets mixed up then.” He threw his hands in the air.
Zach looked down at something he’d taken out of his front pocket. “Blue canvas suitcase with blue leather straps.”
Mariah noted that all the suitcases that had been opened matched that description.
“The guy,” James said.
“The guy? What guy?”
He waved his hand. “You know, the one who got here just before you looking for a wedding dress.” He looked around and Mariah followed his gaze, finding no other person in sight. At the far end of the warehouse, a door clanged. She couldn’t say for sure, but she’d have chanced a guess that the man in question had just left the building.
Zach frowned and glanced at her. “I don’t have a very good feeling about all of this.”
Mariah had to admit she felt the same way, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him. It reeked too much of the damsel-in-distress situation. “We’re talking about a wedding dress here.”
“A wedding dress our client is paying through the nose to locate.”
James wasn’t paying attention to them. Instead he was stepping through the small piles of clothing. A moment later he said, “Forgot one.”
Zach leaned closer. “If the dress is in there, that means the guy who got here before left without it.”
“Maybe he found the dress he was looking for.”
“Only one dress in this lot,” James said.
James unzipped the bag then flopped the lid open.
Sitting in the middle of wads of balled up tissue paper sat the wedding dress in question.
“Coincidence,” Mariah said.
“Fact,” Zach countered.
“WE’RE BEING FOLLOWED.”
Zach stared in the rearview mirror through the back window of the rental car, watching another sedan shadow their moves. He didn’t miss Mariah’s exasperated roll of her eyes.
“We’re not being followed. Maybe the driver is going to the same hotel we are. Have you thought about that?”
Zach sat forward and straightened his suit jacket. Ever since discovering that they were too late to catch the last flight out to Houston, Mariah had been a tad bit cranky. When he’d asked why, she’d said something about not having her toothbrush. Zach told her he always carried an extra and she was more than welcome to have it. He’d barely heard her murmur, “What kind of P.I. carries an extra toothbrush?”
Okay, so since Jennifer had first given him the case this morning, he’d felt a little let down that it had been something so menial, so unexciting. His meeting with Denton Gawlick and his wife had gone smoothly, no red bells. They were renewing their wedding vows next week and needed to have the dress, simple as that.
Then they’d arrived at the Unclaimed Baggage Center to discover someone else was looking for a wedding dress in a suitcase similar to the suitcase in which they’d found their dress. That is the client’s dress.
Zach pulled at his tie, which had grown a little tight around his neck. The mere mention of a “their” in the same sentence with “wedding dress” was enough to choke off air.
Hey, he was just as willing as the next guy to stand in front of an altar, only he intended to be ready for it when it happened. Of course his longtime girlfriend Kym had found out the hard way that he wasn’t anywhere near ready for it now. After two years of dating, of mingling their lives, she’d come out and asked him to marry her. That the proposal had come on the heels of his explaining to her what he planned to do, namely pass over control of his tool and die business and pursue what she subsequently called this “P.I. thing” hadn’t helped matters. That he didn’t want to get married had been his response. Kym hadn’t given him a chance to add the “yet” he was sure had been about to come out of his mouth. She’d up and walked out on him, never to be heard from again. Well, except for a voice-mail message telling him not to bother retrieving anything from her apartment because there was no longer anything there to retrieve. The whir of what he’d suspected was her garbage disposal on the other end of the line hadn’t sounded good.
“You’d think the rental car companies would make sure their vehicles had air-conditioning, wouldn’t you?” Zach said.
“That’s okay,” Mariah said, closing her eyes against the hot breeze wafting in the open window. “I don’t like air-conditioning anyway.”
Zach gazed at her. At the warm stains of color on her smooth cheekbones. The dots of moisture on her forehead and long, long neck. The way her damp T-shirt clung to her small breasts. Of course she’d say that. She was used to the heat south of the Mason-Dixon line. Dealt with it on a daily basis.
He settled back against the seat but he couldn’t say it was comfortable. The truth was, looking at Mariah Clayborn made him think of crisp sheets and sweaty bodies. Namely his and hers. Entangled together. Beads of moisture sliding down her elegant neck and over the crest of a breast and pausing there, waiting to be licked off.
“Are you okay?”
Mariah’s voice surprised him out of his reverie. “Yes, I’m fine.” If you counted being in a high state of arousal fine.
It wasn’t like him to be so…obsessed with the idea of sleeping with somebody. Of imagining how her thighs would look pressing against his hips instead of a horse’s back. Or how her mouth would purse just so as she fought to catch her breath.
Zach wiped the sweat from his brow.
“You don’t seriously think someone’s still following us, do you?”
Zach blinked at Mariah. She’d obviously tuned into his distracted state. But just as obviously she didn’t appear to have a clue as to the nature of his distraction.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He judged the hotel to be another mile or so down the road. Good. Because he didn’t think he could last another minute in a car alone with Mariah without either spontaneously combusting…or doing something a professional man shouldn’t be thinking about doing with a colleague, no matter how temporary that working relationship would be.
IF YOU TAKE ZACH LETTERMAN out in public, they will come.
As Mariah unpacked the entire inventory of her travel necessities—the toothbrush Zach had given her—she stared at herself in the dimly lit hotel bathroom mirror and sighed. Okay, so he was a striking man. Tall, lean with an air of self-confidence that could equal any rodeo cowboy’s. But Mariah couldn’t remember being around a man who attracted so much female attention. From the flight attendant hoping to be totally at his service, to the hotel clerk who had thrown in room amenities Mariah hadn’t known existed, Zach Letterman seemed to be a walking, talking billboard for male sexuality. Sure, she’d tuned into it the instant they’d met. But to be a victim of it, and having to witness how it affected others were two completely different things.
She ran her fingers through her hair, piling it up on top of her head then considering the results. Not that Zach seemed any the wiser for the attention. He had spoken to the clerk and the flight attendant the same way as he had to James, the flighty baggage caretaker. But she wasn’t entirely convinced that his being oblivious to his effect on women was any better than him knowing.
Of course it didn’t help at all that the women barely spared her a glance before writing her out of the picture altogether. No competition. She didn’t even have to see it written on their pretty faces. Their attitudes spoke volumes.
She sighed again and released her hair so it hung around her face again in thick, unruly waves. Not that being no sexual competition was anything new to her. She may have grown up competing with the males, but the females… Well, at first she hadn’t been interested in competing with them. Then there had come the time when she was so far behind in the imaginary competition she’d had to drop out of the race altogether.
Recently a confusing kind of restlessness had begun to coat her insides. A strange kind of itchy sensation, only it was under her skin, not on top where she could get at it. She caught herself scratching her arm and stopped. Had her exes found her sexy? Desirable? She figured they had, considering their physical attentions. But if that was so, where did that leave her in the sex appeal race? Did she have a minute amount that allowed her to go only so far, but just short of the altar?
Not that she was all that experienced. Sure, she’d been intimately involved with three men. Well, two. The first didn’t count because they’d never really had intercourse. Heavy breathing was about as far as things had gone with him, then he’d been in a hurry to drive her back to the ranch. She’d always thought it was because at the last minute he’d decided he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her.
And the other two…
Well, she didn’t want to think about them right now. She couldn’t change them. But she could change herself. She leaned forward and studied what looked like an on-coming zit on her cheek. She made a face then eyed the travel-sized toothpaste tube. One of her cousins had put a dab on a pimple when they were teenagers. Personally, she had thought the action pretty gross. But now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember Jolene ever really having a full-blown zit.
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Tori Carrington
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Businessman turned P.I. Zach Letterman doesn′t expect his first case to be easy.But he never dreamed the real challenge would be keeping his hands off his sexy new partner, Mariah Clayborn. The seasoned P.I. says she′ll take Zach under her wing, promising to show him the ins and outs of the detective business. Only, Zach has no idea what else Mariah intends to show him….After losing three boyfriends to marriage–one week after they dumped her–Mariah Clayborn knows she has to change her image. The new Mariah is going to be seductive, irresistible…addictive, even. And gorgeous Zach Letterman is just the man to get her there. Her plan? To offer her investigative expertise in exchange for some lessons in lust. Little does she guess she′ll end up the one addicted….