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