Every Move You Make. Tori Carrington

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.