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

by Tori Carrington

  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

  “ARE 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.”

  * * *

  THE 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

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  1

  “SICK LEAVE?” Rob Klassen yelled, unable to believe what he was hearing from the editor of World Week, the international current affairs magazine he’d worked for as a photojournalist for twelve years. “I’m not sick!”

  Gary Wallanger pulled off his glasses and tossed them onto his desktop cluttered with Rob’s proof sheets documenting a skirmish in a small town near the Ras Ajdir border between Tunisia and Libya. “What do you suggest I call it? Shot-in-the-ass leave? You damned near got yourself killed. Again.”

  Gary didn’t like his people getting too close to the action they were reporting on and his glare was fierce.

  Rob put all his weight on his good leg, but even so, the throbbing in his left thigh was hard to ignore. “I was running away as fast as I could.”

  “I saw the hospital report. You were running toward the shooter. Bad luck for you. They can tell those things from the entry and exit wounds.” In the uncomfortable silence that followed Rob heard the roar of traffic, honking cabs and sirens on the Manhattan streets far below. He hadn’t counted on Gary finding out the details he’d have rather kept to himself.

  “You want to be a war hero,” his editor snapped, “join the forces. We report news. We don’t make it.”

  Another beat ticked by.

  “There were bullets flying everywhere. I got disoriented.”

  “Bull. You were playing hero again, weren’t you?”

  Rob could still picture the toddler cowering behind an oil drum. Yeah, his boss would have been happier if he’d left her scared and crying in the line of gunfire. But he was the one who had to wake up every morning and look himself in the mirror. Truth was he hadn’t thought at all. He’d merely dashed over to the girl and hauled her to safety. Getting shot hadn’t been in his plan.

  Would he have acted any differently if he’d known what the outcome would be? He sure as hell hoped not.

  He knew better than to tell Gary any of that. “You don’t win Pulitzers with a telephoto lens. I needed to get close enough to capture the real story.”

  “Close enough to take a bullet in the leg.”

  “That was unfortunate,” Rob admitted. “I can still handle a camera though. I can still walk.” He made a big show of stalking across the carpeted office, scooting around the obstacle course of stacked back issues, piled newspapers and a leaning tower of reference books. If he concentrated he could manage to stride without a limp or a wince though he could feel sweat begin to break out from the effort.

  “No.” The single word stopped him in his tracks.

  He turned. “I’m the best you’ve got. You have to send me back out on assignment.”

  “I will. As soon as you can run a mile in six.”

  “A mile in six minutes? Why so fast?”

  Gary’s voice was as dry as the North African desert. “So the next time you have to run for your life you can make it.”

  Rob paused for breath and grabbed a chair back for support. He and Gary had been friends for a long time and he knew the guy was making the right decision even if it did piss
him off. “It was pure bad luck. If I’d dodged right instead of left...”

  “You know most people would be pretty happy to be alive if they were you. And they’d be thrilled to get a paid vacation.” Gary picked up his glasses and settled himself behind his desk.

  “They patched me up at the closest military hospital. It was nothing but a flesh wound.”

  “The bullet nicked your femur. I do know how to read a hospital report.”

  Damn.

  “Go home. Rest up. The world will continue to be full of trouble when you get back.” Rob knew Gary was still aggravated by the fact that he didn’t compliment him on his photos, which they both knew to be superb. Instead of getting the praise he deserved, he was being sent home like a kid who’d screwed up.

  He scowled.

  Home.

  He’d been on the road so much in the past few years that home was usually wherever he stashed his backpack.

  If he’d ever had a home, it was in Fremont, Washington, a suburb of Seattle that prided itself on celebrating counterculture, considering itself the center of the universe and officially endorsing the right to be peculiar. Fremont seemed a fitting destination for him right now that he was feeling both self-centered and peculiar. Besides, it was the only place he could think of to go even though everything that had made the place home was now gone.

  “All right. But I heal fast. I’ll be running six-minute miles in a couple weeks. Tops.”

  “You’ll be under a doctor’s care and I’ll be needing the physician’s report before I can reinstate you for any assignments in the field.”

  “Oh, come on, Gary. Give me a freakin’ break.”

  Once more the glasses came off and he was regarded by tired hazel eyes. “I am giving you a break. I could assign you to a desk right here in New York. That’s your other option.”

  He shook his head. No way he was being trapped in a small space. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Not ever. “See you in a couple of weeks.”