“Consider it done,” she assured him. “Don’t forget it could still be just what you said earlier—a matter of some maniac with a grudge against people who don’t live from paycheck to paycheck.”
“I know,” he replied. She didn’t need to remind him of his own idea. “But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s really something more,” he added, then shrugged. “I could just be shadowboxing in the dark.”
“Then that makes two of us,” she told him. “Because I’ve got the same feeling after I saw that look on Wilcox’s face.”
As Kane drove them back to Aurora, twilight began to tiptoe in, cloaking the road ahead in murky darkness.
Kelly chewed on her lower lip, debating whether to prod her partner about his evasiveness. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was bugging him and it really bothered her, more than she wanted to admit. Asking him about it wouldn’t get her anywhere, but maybe, if she offered him some sort of a diversion, eventually he might share just a little of what was on his mind.
“What are you doing this weekend?” she asked, the question coming out of the blue.
“Why would you want to know?”
The man never merely volunteered information. Everything turned into a chess game with him.
Kelly told herself just to jump in rather than go through the trouble of feeling the man out before she spoke. “I thought you might want to have a really good meal, that’s all.”
“You’re offering to cook?” he asked a little uncertainly.
He wasn’t prepared to hear her laugh. Nor was he prepared for the effect that sound had on him. Her laughter was infectious and, though the fact made him far from happy, he found it rather irresistible.
“I’d be offering to poison you if I did that,” Kelly told him quite honestly. “No, Andrew is holding one of his famous brunches, and I thought that maybe you’d like to come over and enjoy a good meal and some good company to boot.”
“What makes you think I need either?”
“Well, most people don’t turn down a good meal—unless they’re pretentious gourmets—and only hermits turn down good company.”
There was no point in pretending he could cook. He couldn’t, not beyond basic survival mode, which involved scrambled eggs and toast. But he could lay claim to the latter if need be.
“Maybe I am a hermit,” he countered.
Kelly didn’t bother pretending she was considering that.
“No, if you were a hermit, you wouldn’t be involved in a line of work that has protect and serve as its credo.’” She studied him again. There was nothing but the open road and time in front of them, so she decided to risk asking. “Why did you become a cop, anyway?”
He thought of telling her that it was none of her business, but that seemed rather a harsh response in light of the concerned way she’d been acting. The woman was getting more and more difficult to just push away.
So he told her the truth, thinking that in this instance she wouldn’t be able to make any connections. “Somebody I admired was a cop. I thought I could do worse than follow in his footsteps.”
That would be his uncle, the man who ultimately had taken him in and raised him after he’d suffered the worst kind of tragedy that could befall a child.
She almost blurted out as much, but then Kelly remembered she wasn’t supposed to know about his uncle or the rest of his background. She wasn’t good at lying or at containing her responses. But she knew she had to make some sort of effort.
Kelly decided to try a different approach to get her partner to lower his guard and allow her in, at least partially.
Baby steps, she cautioned herself. “Can I ask you who that was?” Kelly watched his profile as he drove.
Kane never even flinched. “You can ask,” he told her.
Kelly could read easily between the lines.
“But you’re not going to tell me,” she guessed.
She saw the corner of his mouth rise just a little. She’d guessed right. Just then his single word of victory confirmed her thoughts.
“Bingo,” he said.
She decided to leave the matter alone. At least for now. If she pushed too hard she would negate everything she’d managed to accomplish until now.
“Okay, you’re entitled to your secrets,” she told him.
Her answer aroused his curiosity.
“What are you up to?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“Nothing,” she told Kane in all innocence. Then she stated firmly with a wide grin, “But you are coming to brunch.”
“I don’t think so,” he answered with finality. As far as he was concerned, there was no think about it. He had no intention of attending anything that had any social implications whatsoever.
“Afraid?” she challenged slyly.
From her vantage point she could see his eyes. They had suddenly grown steely. “Not interested,” he told her in a monotone voice.
“Everyone’s interested in eating,” Kelly informed her partner. “Besides, some of the people who will be there are people you interact with.”
And she thought that was a selling feature? Kane found himself wondering.
“My point exactly,” he told her. “I see them on the job. There’s no reason for me to have to see them after hours.”
He was putting up more of a fight than a freshly caught marlin. Two could play that game, Kelly thought.
“Okay, how about this?” she said gamely. “You attend the brunch and I’ll do all the reports for both of us for the next week—”
“No,” Kane answered flatly.
“For the next two weeks,” she countered.
His answer remained the same and he delivered it without so much as glancing her way.
“No.”
“Okay.” This was her final offer. After this, she didn’t intend to keep going. She’d find another way to bring the antisocial Kane to the table. “A month. I’ll do all the arrest reports for a full month.” She watched his face as she made the offer. It remained impassive. “C’mon, Durant. You hate writing reports.”
Kane kept up his guard. He’d gone his whole life this way, but the heavy veneer was beginning to crack. “How would you know that?”
“Because everyone hates writing reports.”
He raised one inquisitive eyebrow. “That means you do, too.”
“Guilty as charged, your honor,” she replied with an exaggerated nod of her head.
“But you’re willing to do them for a month to get me to come to some brunch?”
“Not just some brunch. One presided over by the legendary Andrew Cavanaugh. But to answer your question, yes,” she repeated. “I’m willing to do them for a month if you come to the brunch.”
Picking up speed on what was close to a deserted stretch of freeway, Kane repeated the same question. “Why?”
She placed no spin on it, feeling honesty was what ultimately would sell this to her partner.
“Because I think you need it. Because this lone-wolf thing of yours is getting old. Because there isn’t a single human being who doesn’t respond to the kind of warmth that a good family provides. And that includes you,” she concluded, giving him a very steely eye in the bargain.
Kane was struggling to keep his irritation in check. “Look, Cavanaugh, I appreciate what you think you’re trying to do—”
She cut him off, not wanting to ruin the sentiment. “Good, then you’ll come,” she said as if it was a done deal.
Kane sighed wearily. “You’re not going to give me any peace about this latest thing of yours until I say yes, is that it?”
Her smile all but raised the temperature in the car. “That’s it.”
She was getting to him—and he really couldn’t have that, he thought darkly. He
couldn’t become a lighter, warmer version of himself. Nice guys didn’t finish last. They got creamed before the credits even rolled on the screen.
“Then I guess I’m going to have to ask for another partner in order to make it—and you—stop.”
Kelly brazened it out. “It’s not going to work, you know,” she informed him. “HR is not going to let you have another partner.” Mentally, she crossed her fingers and hoped that in the wider scheme of things, she would be forgiven for the lie. “You have a choice of sticking it out with me or getting placed on administrative leave
“So, when you stack that up against just agreeing to attend an informal breakfast with a great bunch of people for a couple of hours, it doesn’t really seem like that big a deal,” she told him.
It was obvious he was stuck going to this brunch. He didn’t like not having control over a situation, no matter how minor.
His eyes narrowed as he threw her a glance. “You’re my own personal plague, aren’t you?”
She offered him a beatific smile. “I’d rather think of myself as your personal guardian angel.”
“No,” he contradicted. “Plague. I got it right to begin with.” Kane blew out a long breath. She never took her eyes off him as he wrestled with the problem, debating in silence. “All right,” he surrendered. “I’ll come. Just this once, I’ll come. But after that, you have to leave me alone about this kind of thing or suffer the consequences.”
“Consequences?” Kelly questioned, more curious than worried.
He wasn’t about to be won over. Certainly not so quickly. “Trust me, you won’t want to know.”
“But you will come, then?” she questioned. The more securely she pinned him down, the better the odds were of his actually showing up.
He nodded. “Just give me the time and place.”
“I’ll do better than that,” she assured him. “I’ll come and pick you up.”
He quickly vetoed the idea. Or so he thought. “I don’t need to be picked up.”
“Oh, but I think you do.”
He passed a slow-moving flatbed truck before resuming the debate. “You don’t trust me?”
There was no point in denying the obvious. “Not any farther than I can throw you—and I’m pretty strong for my size,” she added.
Picking up speed again, Kane spared his partner a glance. A few choice words rose to his lips, but he bit them back. However, the incredulous look on his face said it all.
“Right, you’re a regular Hercules,” he said with a dismissive laugh.
“That’s not the image that immediately comes to mind,” she told him. “But if it makes you happy I can live with it.”
“What would make me happy is if you just cease and desist,” he told her forcefully—not that that did any more good with her than it had with her predecessor, he was beginning to think.
“I guess you are right,” she conceded. “We can’t have everything we want.”
Kane said something unintelligible under his breath. She thought it best to leave it that way. As her mother used to say, there was no sense in borrowing trouble.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Kane dropped her off in the parking lot beside her car.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kelly told him as she got out of his vehicle.
“Threatening an officer of the law is a punishable offense,” he quipped.
She grinned at him. “I’ll still see you tomorrow. Good luck with whatever you’re doing tonight,” she added as an innocent afterthought.
It was neither innocent nor an afterthought.
Kane’s expression instantly sobered.
She wondered if, just for a moment, whatever it was that was bothering him had been moved to the background and, just temporarily, forgotten.
She would have asked him, but she already knew that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. The man just refused to communicate with her.
Kelly fervently wished that the man driving away believed that sharing a problem helped to lighten the burden. Just for a second, it had struck her that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Broad or not, eventually that could break him. He needed to tell her what was bothering him.
But one small victory at a time was about all she could hope for.
With that she got into her car.
Chapter 12
He woke up disoriented to the sound of a ringing phone.
His phone.
Kane groped around on his nightstand for his phone while trying to keep his eyes closed for a couple of seconds longer.
The sun, shining into his bedroom, pried them open, just as his cell phone pried open his brain.
His first thought was that they had caught another case.
He put his phone to his ear.
“Durant,” Kane announced, trying to remember what day of the week it was. His brain function was lagging behind.
The second he heard her voice the rest of his system came online. His brain was no longer fuzzy. It just felt as if it was under siege.
“Are you ready?”
Kane scrubbed his hand over his face. Bits and pieces of his life were pulling themselves together into a recognizable whole. “For you?” He laughed harshly. “Never.”
Rather than take offense, Kelly said breezily, “Your chariot awaits, Cinderella.”
Okay, maybe he was still asleep and having a nightmare, Kane thought. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m here to take you to brunch—just like we talked about,” Kelly cheerfully, albeit patiently, reminded her partner.
That wasn’t the way he recalled it. “You talked. I said no.”
“No. You didn’t,” she contradicted maddeningly. “You wisely surrendered because you knew I was right about this. You also knew I wasn’t going to give up, so you held out for the best bargain, which is my doing your reports for a month. Ringing a bell yet?” she prodded.
Kane stuck to his guns. “Nope. None of this sounds even vaguely familiar,” he replied.
Her tone shifted, telling him she wasn’t going to continue playing games. “It doesn’t have to sound familiar, you just have to comply. Now open your damn door.”
Propping his phone up with his shoulder and the side of his head, he had his hands free. He grabbed his jeans and slid them on. He felt better prepared to handle things—and her—with clothes on.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I’m standing right outside it waiting to take you to Andrew’s for brunch,” she told him patiently.
“And if I refuse to go?” he challenged.
“Don’t make me use force,” she threatened.
Wearing only his jeans and a bemused expression, Kane pulled opened the front door. Kelly was standing less than an inch away. Had she been leaning against the door, she would have fallen in at his feet.
For just half a second, he indulged himself with that fantasy: having her fall at his feet, necessitating his having to put his arms around her to pick her up...
The next moment, he shook himself free of the seductive thought and came back to reality and his apartment.
“Damn, you weren’t kidding,” he marveled. The woman really didn’t give up easily.
“Nope, I wasn’t. I’d give you fair warning if I was just pulling your leg.” Her eyes swept over him. It was impossible to remain neutral to a man whose physique was the closest to perfect she had ever seen. “You might want to put something on before we go.”
His amusement was definitely growing. “And if I don’t?”
She shrugged. His bare chest was not a deal breaker. She knew of several cousins who would have judged it a real plus as far as livening up the gathering. “As long as you’re comfortable, I guess it’ll be
okay. But one way or another you’re coming with me, Durant, so stop fighting it.”
Kane sighed. He had a feeling his partner was not above dumping his body into a wheelbarrow and running with him all the way to her uncle’s house if it came down to that.
For a second he considered resisting just to see if he was right. But when he came right down to it, he had to admit that part of him—a very small part—was curious about these so-called famous gatherings that the former chief of police held.
“Give me a minute,” he said in a less-than-cheerful voice. There was no point in letting her think she had won him over easily.
“I’m feeling generous. I’ll give you two,” she told him magnanimously.
Kane shot her a dark look and warned, “Don’t push it.”
She offered him a Cheshire-cat grin and said, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
As if he believed her, Kane thought with a touch of cynicism.
* * *
Less than ten minutes later Kane was ready to go. Since it was Saturday, he was dressed even more casual than usual.
“Let’s get this over with,” he told her.
On some level he was looking forward to this, Kelly thought. If he wasn’t, if he really didn’t want to go, no power on earth—certainly not her—could get him to attend.
However, since he was obviously giving more than an inch, she could afford to do the same and play along. “Cheer up. You’re going to enjoy this,” she promised.
The look Kane gave her all but shouted, “We’ll see about that.”
“Still don’t understand why my coming to brunch seems to be so important to you.”
“I realize that,” she acknowledged as she waited for him to lock up. “But you will. Eventually,” she added, not wanting him to think that she expected some sort of an epiphany to transform him. It was that, just for a second the other day, she had glimpsed the little boy who had witnessed his entire family as well as his own innocence and trust being wiped out. She wanted, in some small way, to give a little of that back to him. Wanted him to be part of an actual family atmosphere for the space of a few hours.
How to Seduce a Cavanaugh Page 12
