Distinguished Service & Every Move You Make (Uniformly Hot!) (16 page)

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Mariah stared at the opposite wall, not really registering the outdated dark paneling or the oil paintings of ranch scenes hung on it.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 backseat 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 backseats 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....

* * *

Z
ACH
L
ETTERMAN
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, rebranded 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.

* * *

H
OLY
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.