Distinguished Service & Every Move You Make (Uniformly Hot!) (32 page)

“We’ve talked on the phone and agreed we’d like to see each other.”

“Good.”

He smiled. “Yes, very good.” He tugged on her hips until she was flush against his very apparent arousal. Need and longing swept through her so intensely she was dizzy with it.

“But you see, before I can do that, there’s this other thing I had to see to.”

“Other thing?” Mariah’s gaze was plastered to his mouth. His full, well-defined ultimately delectable mouth that she wished would stop talking and kiss her.

“Mmm-hmm.” His hand slid down over her bottom, pressing him more tightly against her. A sound rumbled in his chest, a groan. “It’s about that possibility of pursuing a business venture....” He blinked as if trying to remember something. Then his eyes cleared. “Did you get the box?”

“Box?” She stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language, fixated on her need for him to kiss her.
Now.
She didn’t care that he’d been gone. That he’d left her standing alone in front of the house without so much as a goodbye. She didn’t even care how long he planned to stay. Just so long as he was there for the next five minutes, time enough for her to feel him buried deep with her slick flesh, that’s all that mattered to her.

“Oh, the box,” she whispered, his words finally penetrating her distracted state. She looked over his shoulder. “It’s over there. On the kitchen table.”

He released her and she wanted to object. Instead she brushed by him on her way across the room, feeling him even when he wasn’t touching her, as if he’d worked his way under her skin and would be there always.

She picked up the box. “Are you talking about this?”

He nodded and came to stand on the other side of the island. “Open it.”

She really didn’t want to. She didn’t know what she would do if it was some exotic piece of lingerie, or worse, a dress or something equally feminine. Over the past two weeks she’d gotten comfortable with herself. She no longer felt the need to change, to alter who she was in order to grab herself a man.

She took a deep breath and went to work on the box. It took her a good five minutes and an attack with her pocketknife before she finally opened it. She put it down on the table and peeled back the white tissue paper.

She gasped.

Nestled in the box was a dress. Only it wasn’t just any dress. It was Ellie’s wedding dress.

She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

She turned to face where Zach was leaning against the island, his arms crossed over his chest, warmth shining from his gorgeous face. “Marry me, Mariah.”

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t even know if she was capable of speech.

“The moment I first saw you in that dress, how right you looked in it, I knew there was something different about you. About what was happening between us.” His thick throat worked around a swallow. “And, damn it, it seems like I’ve been fighting fate ever since.”

“Fate?”

“That business venture you proposed? Well, I think we’d make a great team getting the Finders Keepers satellite offices off the ground. But it comes with a price attached. It has to be a full personal venture as well as a business one.” Then he breathed in deeply. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

Mariah looked from him, to the dress, and back again. “I can’t…leave Texas, Zach.”

“You won’t have to.”

She stared at him.

“If your answer is what I hope it will be, I thought there’d be enough room for me right here.” Zach groaned. “God, woman, you don’t know how much I want to touch you right now.”

“Then why don’t you?” she whispered, wanting that more than anything in the world, as well.

“Because I want you to be able to think when you give me your answer. And we don’t seem to do a whole helluva lot of thinking when we touch.”

Mariah realized in that one moment that you didn’t have to be a Texan to have a Texas-sized heart. Tears pricked the back of her eyes. But rather than turn away from Zach, hide the emotion, she lifted her chin and stared straight into Zach’s eyes, aware that moisture swam in hers. “Yes. Oh, yes, I’ll marry you, Zach Letterman.”

She thought he would come to her then. Sweep her into his arms. Satisfy the desire in her to have his arms wrapped around her again.

Instead she watched as he tightly gripped the counter with both hands. “Strip for me, Mariah.”

Flames flicked through her veins, threatening to consume her and the provocatively whispered request. She remembered when he’d asked her the same thing such a very short time ago. And she all too readily remembered her response. It had been the same one she was going to give him now.

She slowly peeled off her T-shirt, kicked off her boots, wriggled out of her jeans and panties, then popped the clasp on her bra. Before it hit the floor Zach was hauling her to him, burying his hands in her hair, plundering her mouth with his.

“Oh, how I love you, Mariah Clayborn,” he murmured, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hands branding her hypersensitive skin as he ran them over her back and her bottom, then up again. “I was such a fool for leaving. For staying away so long. Can you ever forgive me?”

Mariah kissed him back, fumbling with first the buttons of his shirt, then abandoning them for the buttons on his jeans and the ultimate prize just beyond. “I’m marrying you, aren’t I?”

The back door opened.

Mariah froze, staring into Zach’s widened eyes. “Don’t tell me,” he whispered.

“Okay,” she said, swallowing hard. “I won’t. But that doesn’t make it any less true. It, um, looks like this is a complete replay of that other time. Hughie—”

“Included,” her father finished for her.

Zach turned and faced the older man, allowing Mariah the coverage she needed to get dressed again.

“Damn good to see you, son!” Hughie boomed.

Epilogue

“A
RE
YOU
GOING
TO
BE
all right?”

Jennifer Madison took in her husband Ryan’s concerned
expression from where she stood holding their four-month-old daughter, Annie. At
two months’ pregnant, she had already experienced some of the worst morning
sickness of her life. And she had seven months yet to go.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer admitted, trying to calm the ominous
churning in her stomach.

Ryan took Annie from her. “Go on. You can probably make it to
the bathroom before the wedding starts.”

“But I’m Mariah’s matron of honor.”

“Better to do it now than risk tossing your cookies all over
Mariah’s wedding dress.”

Jennifer held up a single finger. “Good point. Wait here.”

“Forever.”

Jennifer rolled her eyes then made a dash for the ranch house
some twenty feet behind her, leaving behind the white tent with its neat rows of
chairs, countless flower arrangements and dozens of brightly dressed guests.

No one could have been more surprised than she when Mariah
Clayborn had called her up out of the blue a couple of weeks ago and asked her
to be her matron of honor. But, Mariah had explained, it was due to Jennifer
that she’d met Zach Letterman at all.

Bathroom…bathroom.

There. She spotted the door with a small group of women already
lined up outside it.

“Pregnant woman about to heave!” she called out.

Gasps, then the group parted like the Red Sea, leaving Jennifer
with a direct line to the bathroom.

She opened the door then quickly closed it behind her, skirting
the person standing in front of the sink so she could access the toilet. She
pushed up the seat and bent over. Only nothing came.

She took a few deep breaths just to make sure, then slowly
straightened. She glanced at the woman still in there with her and smiled.
“False alarm.” She realized she was looking at the bride. “Oh, Mariah! You’re
beautiful.”

She supposed that Mariah looked a lot like any bride did mere
minutes before the ceremony. She plucked nervously at her hair, looked as if she
could use a half a tube of blush to make up for the color that had drained from
her face, and appeared a breath away from doing what Jennifer had nearly done
moments before. But all that aside, she was absolutely stunning.

“Are you sure the dress is okay?” Mariah asked.

Jennifer had never laid eyes on the other woman until that
morning when she and Ryan and the baby had arrived at the ranch house for the
ceremony, but the instant she had, she’d felt a kinship with her. Mariah
reminded her so much of herself. Not in looks, but in pure tenacity. She was a
woman making it work not only in a man’s world, but in a man’s profession.

“‘Okay’?” Jennifer looked over the antique dress, knowing its
history, and bits and pieces of what had happened a month ago during the simple
case of the missing wedding dress that Jennifer now wore. “No. Okay is
definitely not the word I’d use.” She smiled at Mariah’s panicked expression.
“It’s perfect.”

Jennifer automatically reached to fluff out the back of the
dress. “You know, there are reporters out there. I don’t know how they got word,
but they’re scouring the place, looking to get a snapshot of you in Ellie’s
dress.”

Mariah groaned and Jennifer questioned having shared the
news.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said quietly, giving Mariah’s
shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure they just want to share this moment
with you. To see everything come full circle. You know, the dress that Ellie
never wore being worn at the wedding of the local woman who found Jock’s
Treasure.”

A smile played around Mariah’s lips. “Yes, it does sound
romantic, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Jennifer’s smile widened. “It does.”

There was an urgent knock at the door. “Are you about done in
there?”

Jennifer cocked a brow.

Mariah took a deep breath then nodded. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

T
HE
FALSE
ALARM
three hours behind her, Jennifer had been able
to fully enjoy the traditional ceremony alongside Ryan. A while before, she’d
reluctantly handed over a sleeping Annie to a woman named Miss Winona, who was
watching over a couple of other infants in a spare bedroom in the house. She
checked her portable baby monitor, hearing what was presumably Miss Winona
softly singing a lullaby, then tucked her hand into Ryan’s arm. He grinned down
at her.

“It reminds me of our wedding at your parents’.”

Jennifer visually sought out the bride and the groom and the
way they looked at each other, dancing as if no one else existed, the physical
chemistry between them seeming to raise the temperature at least another ten
degrees. Mariah’s father cut in on Zach, leaving the groom to sit out the rest
of the dance. After watching his new wife for a moment, he came to stand next to
Jen and Ryan. They exchanged some small talk about the ceremony, then Zach asked
how everything was going with the agency in Midland.

“Things are going very well,” Jennifer responded as Ryan put
his arm around her waist, the heat of his hand causing shivers to run over her
skin. “In fact, I’m thinking of expanding the agency.”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Someone put an idea into her head
about offering entrapment services.”

Jen laughed. “It’s not entrapment.” She looked at Zach. “I’m
thinking that offering up forbidden fruit and seeing whether or not a client’s
husband or wife bites is an affordable way to find out if an extramarital affair
is a possibility. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“It’s still entrapment,” Ryan said.

Jen rolled her eyes. “Good thing I don’t have anything to worry
about, isn’t it?”

Ryan kissed her soundly, his eyes sparkling with attraction.
“We could be seventy and I still couldn’t get enough of you.”

Zach quietly cleared his throat. Jen shifted her attention to
him. “Anyway, enough about me, how are your plans to franchise Finders Keepers
going?” she asked.

“Two satellite offices are set to open in St. Louis and Detroit
next month,” he said, pride evident on his handsome face. But as evident as the
emotion was, it didn’t come near matching his expression whenever he gazed at
his bride.

Mariah had stopped dancing with her father and was now chatting
with another couple across the tent from them.

“Uh-oh.”

Jen blinked at Zach. His expression had changed as he looked at
a man who had entered the side of the tent in jeans and a denim shirt.

“What is it?” Ryan asked.

“Claude Ray.”

Jen gasped as Zach shot toward the man. But it wasn’t he who
reached the latest addition to the party first. Rather it was Mariah, her skirt
hiked up around her knees, who tackled the man as he tried to run the instant he
realized he’d been made.

A collective gasp when up around the tent. Jennifer hid her
smile against Ryan’s jacket sleeve.

Mariah had the man named Claude Ray facedown on the ground and
was tugging his arms behind his back. “I knew I’d catch up with you again,” she
said, grabbing a silk ribbon from her hair and winding it around his wrists.
“And this time I’m going to make sure you stand trial if I have to guard the
sheriff’s office to do it.”

Ryan chuckled softly, his hand lightly caressing the small of
Jen’s back. “You can take the girl off the ranch…” he whispered to Jen so he
wouldn’t break the shocked silence that had settled over the tent.

Zach stepped up to his bride and her detainee. He looked around
the stunned group and swept an arm toward his wife. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d
like to present my bride, Mariah Clayborn Letterman.”

Mariah looked up at him as if just realizing what she had done
and where she had done it. A blush stained her pretty cheeks as she accepted her
husband’s outstretched hand. She slowly got to her feet to a smattering of
applause that quickly escalated into a standing ovation.

Jennifer tightened her grip on Ryan’s arm and sighed. “Apart
from ours, of course, this is the best wedding I’ve been to in a long, long
time.”

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of
Just One
Night
by Nancy Warren