A Cavanaugh Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Well, now that we’re here like this,” she proposed. “We might as well make the best of it.”

  The grin on his lips went straight to her heart, as well as parts beyond. She was now definitely warmer. “I thought we already were,” he said to her softly, moving just enough to establish his point.

  “So we are,” she agreed.

  He framed her face between his hands and brought her mouth down to his. And those gates he’d mentioned earlier, the ones that led straight to paradise, opened up right before her startled eyes.

  And invited her in.

  Kait didn’t really remember what came next, or in what order. Only that she enjoyed it. Every second of it. Immensely.

  She didn’t recall falling asleep, either. But she must have because she was opening her eyes now and in order to do that, at some point they must have closed.

  Closed tightly, she deduced, because she wasn’t on the living-room sofa anymore, or even the floor next to it. She was in a warm bed. Not the one she’d been frequenting these past few nights, but a wider one.

  And, now that she focused, it was definitely a masculine one.

  The bed was a four-poster that looked as if it had been fashioned in the middle of some forest and shipped out the second the trees had been felled and sections had been carved out to form this massive, dark piece of furniture. The bureau could be described the same way, as could the nightstand. All made with wood as dark as midnight.

  Above her, decorative beams were built into the cathedral ceiling. Definitely a place where Grizzly Adams would have felt right at home. Except the man with whom she’d made love with not once or twice but—if memory served—a total of three times last night was as removed from the persona of someone typified by the label “Grizzly” as the earth was from the moon. Tom had been gentle and surprisingly tender. More so each time they did it.

  The woman who finally landed him was going to be very, very lucky, Kait couldn’t help thinking.

  “’Morning, Detective Two Feathers,” he whispered against her ear softly.

  Whispered or not, she jumped as if he’d just leaped out from behind a building and yelled out “Boo.” For a second, her heart almost leaped out of her chest.

  “I thought you were asleep,” she told him.

  The grin he sported encompassed his entire face. “Nope,” he told her. “I woke up a little more than half an hour ago.”

  And he had just stayed in bed? Tom didn’t strike her as the type who was lazy and content just to while away the time in bed. He was a doer. Or had she been wrong about that?

  “Why didn’t you get up?”

  He pretended to be surprised at the suggestion. “And what? Miss the show?”

  Puzzled, she looked at him. She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “What show?”

  The grin grew softer, almost sentimental. That also didn’t fit in with the personality she’d attributed to him so far.

  “The one right in front of me,” he told her. “I’ve been watching you sleep. You’re a lot more expressive when you sleep. You even smile sometimes. You looked almost soft that way. Made me want to ask you what you were smiling about. Except in order to do that, I’d have to wake you up, and I really didn’t want to disturb you.”

  He couldn’t be that thoughtful—or could he?

  Kait shook her head. “I can’t figure out if you’re really on the level, Cavanaugh, or if you’re making fun of me.”

  So they were back to last names, were they? Did that mean that the party was over? The thought brought a pang to him. “Why would I make fun of you, Detective Two Feathers?”

  That sounded way too formal, even if he was just kidding. “You’ve seen me naked, so I think you can keep calling me by my first name,” she told him.

  Tom mulled over her words, pretending to be intrigued. “Is that your criteria for informality? Someone has to see you naked?”

  She blew out an impatient breath. “Do you ever stop asking questions?” she wanted to know.

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not often. It’s what makes me a good detective,” he said with all sincerity. And then a glint of mischief entered his eyes. “But there is one surefire way to stop me from asking questions,” he told her. Shifting so that he could easily trace the curve of her cheek with his fingertips—which he did slowly—he smiled into her eyes. “Guess what it is?”

  Kait laughed, a trace of nervousness bubbling up in her throat—why, she couldn’t begin to guess. “More questions.”

  She was about to show him rather than just make a verbal “guess,” but just as she raised her head to kiss him, the phone on the nightstand rang. The jarring, insistent noise broke the spell the moment had woven around them.

  “You better answer it,” she told him, sitting up.

  She drew the blanket around her, thinking that the bedroom felt a little chilly now that her body was separated from his by this distance. Kait tried to remember just where her clothes were. She began to get up and suddenly sucked in her breath as Tom snaked his arm around her waist.

  The smile on his lips, even as he was talking to someone on the phone, was meant just for her. He kept his arm where it was, intent on preventing her from getting up. She heard him agreeing with someone on the other end of the line, promising solemnly to be “there,” wherever “there” was.

  “Another crime scene?” she asked.

  It was Saturday, but there was no such thing as a day off if you worked for the police department. If there was a crime and your name was up in the rotation, you had to come down, even during Christmas dinner.

  Not that that had been a problem of hers for the past four years. Dinner on Christmas was just like dinner any other day for her. It amounted to something that came either directly out of the freezer in her refrigerator or from a takeout place between the precinct and her apartment. Nothing fancy, just a snack to sustain her until the next meal, whenever that might come up.

  Tom laughed. “Only if we don’t show up,” he told her. When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “That was Andrew Cavanaugh, making sure you and I were coming to the get-together today. He thought the invitation might have slipped our minds.”

  The former chief had extended the invitation only last night. “Why would he think that?”

  Tom looked at her knowingly. The woman was the antithesis of a social butterfly. “He’s a good judge of character, I hear.”

  That was debatable, she thought, but she wasn’t going to get sucked into a debate she probably didn’t have a prayer of winning. So she asked the question that had been nagging at her mind.

  “Why is it so important to Cavanaugh that we show up?”

  That went hand in hand with the way the man felt about family. Tom tried to put it succinctly for her. “The way I hear it, family’s the most important thing in the world to the man. To all of the Cavanaughs,” he added.

  She supposed there had to be more than one man like that. After all, Ronald had been like that. He’d been the only family she’d really known—and that had been completely of his choosing. He could have walked away when he turned her over to social services—but he didn’t. He kept on coming back until he could finally take her into his own home, first as a foster child and then as his own adopted daughter.

  “Okay, I’ll buy that,” she conceded. “But I’m not family.”

  There Tom had to contradict her. “It’s not always blood that makes a family,” Tom told her. As he talked, he paused to combine his words with gestures, lightly passing his lips along the slopes of her shoulders. “To Andrew Cavanaugh, every good cop is part of his extended family.”

  “You realize you’re making it very hard for me to think when you’re doing that,” she told him, grabbing his hand as he trailed his fingertips between her breasts.

  But she couldn’t quite make herself push him away.

  “I’m counting on that,” he teased. He pressed a kiss to the dip of her collarbone and then p
rogressed down farther to where his fingers had last lingered.

  She struggled to focus her mind, which began to drift again. “You can’t tell me that you’re ready to do it again,” she said in disbelief.

  “I wasn’t planning on telling you. I was planning on showing you,” he said quietly after a beat. “I initially set out on a very noble mission,” he informed her with almost a completely straight face.

  Lord, but he was doing wonderfully arousing things to her, wreaking havoc on her thought process.

  “And that was?” she asked with effort.

  “I wanted to help you unwind. You were much too tense.” And then he grinned. “Mission is almost accomplished. You’re almost unwound. A couple more times should do it.”

  “A couple more…” She blinked in disbelief. “Are you a man or a machine?”

  “I guess we’re about to find out,” Tom theorized. He moved his lips up along her throat slowly until they reached hers.

  The rest of the discussion was tabled. Indefinitely.

  “You came!” Andrew declared with palatable pleasure late that afternoon. He had thrown open the door the moment Tom had rung the bell.

  The only way the man could have anticipated his arrival, Tom thought, was if he had a surveillance monitor mounted somewhere on the other side of the door to go with what he assumed was a hidden camera on the outside of the entrance.

  “It was a royal invitation,” Kait answered before Tom had an opportunity to reply. “To refuse seemed treasonous.”

  Rather than issue a disclaimer, or frown sternly at the remark, Andrew turned his attention momentarily toward his new nephew and laughed heartily.

  “This one catches on fast.”

  And then suddenly Andrew turned his full attention on her. The smile he flashed at her stripped Kait of any residual suspicions or leery feelings she might have toward him or the whole gathering in general. It somehow managed to scoop her up out of the realm of “outsider” and made her one of them.

  “I’m very glad you decided to humor me and come with Tom, Kaitlyn. I’ll try very hard to make sure you won’t regret your decision.” He turned toward Tom. “Your father’s already here. He, Kendra and Bridget are out on the patio, talking with Brian. He’s more or less the family historian,” he said, confiding in Tom. “Your dad’s full of questions, as any of us would be, given the circumstances.”

  He guided them both through the foyer and then pointed to what looked like a family room tucked away at the rear of the house. Blocking part of the view was the biggest Christmas tree she had ever seen. It looked to be about ten feet tall and absolutely laden with decorations. Left on her own, she would have been satisfied to stare at it all day.

  “The patio’s just beyond that,” Andrew was telling them. “If either one of you find yourself needing anything, just give a yell. I’ll hear you eventually,” he promised. “In the meantime, feel free to dig in. The table’s still full but there’s plenty more if that runs out. Never sent anyone home hungry yet,” he told them with a wink. “By the way, Kait, you might enjoy meeting Brian’s stepson’s wife. Her name was Julianne White Bear before she crossed paths with Frank. Like you, she came here following up leads in a case that started out in her home state.” Andrew smiled. “After she accomplished what she set out to do, she decided that maybe Aurora had a few things to offer that she couldn’t find back in Arizona.”

  To be polite, Kait asked, “And what was it that she couldn’t find in Arizona?”

  The wide, pleased, not to mention radiant smile was back. “Frank.”

  The next moment, Andrew had melded into the crowd, responding to someone who had called out to him. For the first time, Kait was able to focus on the number of people who literally filled the house to overflowing. She turned to Tom with wonder in her eyes. “Are all these people actually—”

  “Cavanaughs?” he ended her sentence for her. “One way or the other, mostly, yes.”

  “What do you mean one way or another?”

  “Well, if I have my figures correct, Andrew has five kids—all married with families of their own. Brian had four with his first wife. When she died, he eventually married his old partner, who has four of her own.” He paused and laughed at the confusion on Kait’s face. “Are you keeping up on this?”

  “Just barely,” she admitted.

  “That gives Brian four kids and four stepkids—”

  “And they’re all married?” she asked.

  “Yup. Then there’s the group that belongs to Mike—”

  She cocked her head, as if the information made it list to one side. “And that is…?”

  “Was,” Tom corrected. “Andrew and Brian’s brother who died in the line of duty. He had two kids with his wife and apparently three more with a mistress. I hear they’re all married, too. And then there’s us,” he concluded. “My siblings and me,” he clarified in case she thought he was referring to himself and her.

  “You people should issue scorecards at the door,” she told him.

  “I hear that they’re seriously thinking about it,” he answered with a laugh. Taking her arm, he coaxed her to come along. “Let’s go talk to my dad and see if he’s as overwhelmed as you are.”

  She would have argued with him—she didn’t like being perceived as out of her depth—but in this case, it was really true.

  Chapter 12

  “So what do you think of them?” Tom asked her as they drove home much later that evening.

  As the day had worn on, Kait had found herself drawn into discussions where her opinion was genuinely sought. The Cavanaughs wouldn’t allow her to sit silently on the sidelines, much as she would have wanted to.

  The one thing that all the Cavanaughs seemed to have in common was that participation was encouraged and actively urged.

  “They all seemed very nice,” Kait granted, then couldn’t help adding, “I also think there were probably less people in my dad’s tribe than I saw at that house today.”

  Tom slanted a look in her direction. She’d opened the door and he took the advantage to slip in. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

  She wasn’t aware that she’d said anything that begged for an answer. “About what?”

  “Your last name.”

  That again. “What about it?” Kait asked, instantly on her guard.

  Just because she’d been sucked into one conversation after another when they’d been at the former chief of police’s house didn’t mean she wanted to bare her own soul.

  Tom began slowly, like someone trying to gain the confidence of a skittish colt that hadn’t been tamed yet. “You’re a redhead.”

  There was no denying that, so she just moved on. “Yes?”

  “A real redhead,” he emphasized. She had that true, warm reddish hue that no bottle of hair dye could begin to approximate. “I’ve never seen a Native American of any tribe with red hair.”

  That was because she wasn’t a Navajo. She was Irish and Welsh with some other parts she had no direct knowledge of thrown into the mix, as well.

  “Maybe you’ve been sheltered,” she answered loftily. “I can’t help it if you don’t get out much.”

  He’d thought that interacting with the Cavanaughs would get her to open up a little, but he’d obviously underestimated her stubbornness.

  He sighed. “You’re still not going to tell me, are you?”

  She laughed quietly, pleased that he seemed resigned that she wouldn’t tell him anything. “A little bit of mystery is good. Keeps things lively.”

  He thought of last night. They’d come close to setting the bedsheets on fire. “I don’t think there were any complaints in that department. At least I know I don’t have any.” He glanced at Kait again as a streetlight they drove past lit up the car’s interior. “Do you?”

  “Complaints?”

  This was the part where she made a comment so blasé that he wouldn’t know or even guess just how much she’d enjoyed last night. How much hi
s lovemaking had pleasured her down to the very core.

  But when she opened her mouth, her lips betrayed her—much the way they had last night, when she was the one who essentially began the torrid night of lovemaking.

  “No, none.”

  He knew to grin outright would most likely cost him his head—or some other, possibly more vital part of him—so he suppressed any outward signs of victory as best he could.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said with growing enthusiasm, “I have nothing but high marks, praise and commendations to give you.”

  He ended the sentence on a high note, as if he expected her to come in and add her two cents, Kait thought. She merely smiled at him and said, “Don’t push it, Detective.”

  Arriving at the house, Tom pulled his vehicle into the driveway and turned off the ignition. But rather than get out, he turned and faced her. “You’re being formal again.”

  She felt as if she was struggling to keep even a semblance of a wall up. Her need to protect herself was great, but she was having a great deal of trouble executing the necessary steps for that to continue. He’d managed to all but burn away her defenses.

  “Shouldn’t I be?” she asked, struggling to sound distant.

  “You can if you want to,” he allowed. “Makes it a little strange kissing you, but I’ll manage.”

  She would have been lying if she didn’t admit, at least to herself, that tonight had been in the back of her mind the entire day. Specifically, what it would be like once they were back at his house with the party behind them and the prospect of lovemaking tantalizingly shimmering before them. Would he want a repeat of last night, or was he one of those men who lost interest after the conquest had taken place and the challenge was no longer there?

  But now that he’d said what he had about kissing her, she felt that at least tonight would be wonderful. Tonight they’d make love again.

  The idea pleased her more than she was happy about. Because she didn’t want to count on anything outside of herself, and this was definitely counting on him.