How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

by Marie Ferrarella

  * * *

  She rode in the ambulance with Anderson while Kane followed behind in his car. Eventually, they were going to need a car to drive back to the precinct. Otherwise, he would have ridden in the ambulance along with Kelly and the unconscious suspect.

  To his relief, Kane had managed to get the man breathing again just as the paramedics arrived. He’d stepped back to allow them to take over.

  Although he was now breathing on his own, Anderson remained unconscious and unresponsive.

  She would have to wait to get answers to the questions that filled her head, Kelly thought impatiently. Questions that went beyond the clichéd: “Did you really think you were going to get away with it?”

  Over the course of their investigation, she had found herself growing to dislike the so-called victims, and now that they apparently had the man responsible for the home invasions in custody, she totally sympathized with him. Being an outsider who desperately wanted to belong the way that Anderson had during those years, had to have been brutal. Especially during high school when insecurities ran rampant and egos fed on the destroyed self-esteem of others.

  It was obvious that Anderson had been put through hell and still had kept coming back for more, praying the worst was over.

  Except that it never was.

  She couldn’t excuse what the software genius ultimately had done, but she definitely could understand why he had done it.

  In his place, who knew, she might have done the same thing, Kelly thought, studying the unconscious man strapped to the gurney.

  * * *

  Kane was less than a minute behind the ambulance. When it arrived at the hospital, he parked almost right next to it.

  The paramedics disembarked and took possession of the gurney, bringing Anderson through the ER entrance. Kane caught Kelly by the arm, stopping her from following the man into the exam room.

  He could see by the expression on her face where her sympathies were. The woman was definitely too softhearted for her own good. But at the same time, it made her appealingly human.

  “Anything?” Kane asked, releasing her arm.

  Kelly shook her head. “He didn’t regain consciousness,” she told him. “Considering what’s waiting for him once he wakes up, remaining unconscious might be the better way for him to go. At least for a while.”

  Kane looked at the wide double doors the paramedics had gone through with Anderson. “Why do you think he wanted to kill himself?”

  “My first thought is that he probably believed that he killed the last guy and was consumed with guilt.” She looked toward the closed doors, as if she could see Anderson if she concentrated hard enough. “Murder was never on his agenda.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kane questioned.

  “I just am,” she replied with conviction. “Anderson wanted to humiliate these people who made his life a living hell, not kill them.”

  “And you know this because?” Kane asked her.

  This, for once, was simplicity on a half shell. “Because if they’re dead, their humiliation is effectively at an end, and Anderson wants those people who tortured him in high school to suffer as much as he did.”

  They were currently standing right outside of the ER examination room, waiting for a prognosis from the attending physician. They also were waiting for permission to talk to Anderson the second the man regained consciousness.

  Kelly frowned, looking through the upper portion of the swinging doors. It was made of glass, and she had a clear view of what was happening in the next room.

  An ER physician as well as several nurses were all working over Anderson. So far it didn’t appear as if the man was responding.

  “I almost wish we didn’t have to arrest him,” Kelly murmured.

  Kane looked at her for a long moment, but his thoughts had nothing to do with the man beyond the swinging double doors. Instead, he was thinking how far he and the woman he’d been partnered with had come in such a short amount of time. It all but took his breath away. Something like this had never happened to him before. He’d never felt the kind of connection to another human being—other than his uncle—that he felt with her. He hadn’t allowed it.

  But this time, allowed or not, it made no difference. She had come on like gangbusters, breeching the wall he’d always kept in place around himself and crumbling it as if it was just so much powdered sugar.

  He wondered what Kelly would say if she knew what he was thinking right this moment. Would she smile triumphantly—or run for the hills?

  “You getting soft on me, Cavanaugh?” he asked her, doing his best to stick to the subject at hand.

  “I’ve always been soft,” she informed him. “I just pretend to have a crusty exterior. Keeps people from pushing me around.” She looked at Kane. “Do you think if we put in a good word for him, whoever winds up prosecuting the case will go easy on Anderson?”

  Something in her tone, something about what she’d just said about keeping people from pushing her around, gave him pause.

  “Do you identify with him?” Kane asked incredulously. In his eyes, the two couldn’t have been more different, but that was just his take on the matter. Maybe he was missing a piece of the puzzle.

  It was a yes-and-no situation. She tempered her answer to indicate that. “Not completely. I’ve always had people sticking up for me until I could do it myself.” She looked through the glass again at Anderson. “Still, there but for the grace of God... You know the rest.” And then she shook off her somber mood and smiled at Kane. “I already told you, I identify with the underdog.”

  The next moment, Kane tapped her arm to redirect her attention. The attending ER physician, a tall, authoritative-looking doctor by the name of Walter Manheim, was coming toward them.

  “How is he?” Kane asked the gray-haired man

  “Lucky,” the doctor answered with feeling. “If you hadn’t gotten there when you did, he’d be in the morgue right now rather than on his way to recovery.”

  “Has he regained consciousness at all?” Kelly asked.

  To her surprise, the doctor nodded. “In the last five minutes—but just barely.”

  “Can we talk to him?” Kane asked.

  Dr. Manheim took a deep breath, as if that would help him decide what was best for the patient. Finally, he nodded. “Just don’t stay too long,” he cautioned. “The man is very weak, and he needs his rest.”

  Kane was already on his way, but Kelly hung back. She had another question for the attending physician. “There was a man brought in by ambulance earlier today. He had a head trauma,” she specified. “Can you tell me what his prognosis is? It’s all part of the same case,” she interjected before Dr. Manheim could protest that he wasn’t able to discuss another patient.

  The doctor nodded. Apparently, he was familiar with the case she was asking about. “Turned out that there was no internal swelling of the brain. The man was just knocked out. There’s every indication that he’s going to make a full recovery.”

  “One less thing to worry about,” Kelly told her partner, who had retraced his steps when he saw that she was still talking to the ER doctor.

  “At least they won’t be charging him with second-degree murder,” Kane commented as they went in to see the man whose life they had saved.

  Howard Anderson’s eyelids were just fluttering open when they walked into the room.

  “I’m not dead, am I?” Anderson asked weakly when he saw them. There was a touch of resigned hopelessness in his voice.

  “Doesn’t look that way,” Kane replied, reverting to the monotone voice he used when questioning suspects.

  “Can’t even die successfully,” Anderson lamented in pure disgust. Tears shone in his eyes as he stared up at the ceiling. It was obvious that he was struggling not to cry.

&nb
sp; “Oh, you were definitely on the right road,” Kelly told him. “If Detective Durant hadn’t found you when he did and held you up so someone else could get the noose off your neck, you would have become just another suicide statistic.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kane glare at her, but she pretended not to notice. Instead, she continued to focus on Anderson. “Why did you try to kill yourself?” she asked.

  “Because I killed Matthew!” Anderson cried. There was a hitch in his voice. “You have to believe me. I didn’t mean for that to happen.” He was pleading for their understanding, even though his voice was filled with self-loathing. “He grabbed me and I guess I freaked out. For a second I was back in the gym locker room in high school.” He shivered at the memory. “I just pushed back with all my might.” Anderson let out a shaky breath, looking as if he was reliving an ordeal. “When it happened the last time, I swore I’d never let one of them ever lay a hand on me again. But now Matthew’s dead and it’s all my fault.” Before he turned his head away Kelly thought she glimpsed tears sliding down the man’s cheek.

  “You said you swore you’d never let one of them ever lay a hand on you again. They did before?” Kelly questioned. She was already aware of the story, thanks to Jill Wallace, but she wanted to hear Anderson’s side of it.

  Anderson’s face turned a bright shade of red out of pure embarrassment. But then he shrugged, as if nothing mattered any more. Not dark secrets and certainly not pride.

  “Back in high school. A bunch of the jocks stole all my clothes, tied them to a flagpole line and ran them straight up the flagpole. They told me if I wanted them I’d have to climb up the pole, naked, to get them. When I started to go up, they took turns swatting my butt like I was some kind of an animal who moved faster when whacked...” His voice caught and then just trailed off.

  Kelly couldn’t stand it. Anderson looked wretched and tortured. “He’s not dead,” she told him.

  Anderson turned his face in her direction, his eyes listless. “Who?”

  “Matthew Wallace. He’s not dead,” she repeated.

  His face suddenly came alive. “What? I saw him. He hit his head on that ugly marble coffee table and then went down like a stone.”

  “The stone bounced,” Kane remarked, taking pity on the man, as well. “You didn’t kill anybody.”

  There was a hitch in Anderson’s voice, this time forged by pure relief. “Oh, thank God!” he cried. And then, as the gravity of the situation hit him again, he sobered. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “You’ll have to be arraigned and charged with several counts of robbery,” Kane told him. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  Anderson nodded. Rather than concerned, he still appeared exceedingly relieved. “He’s the best around.”

  “Good,” Kane responded. “I’d say that you’re going to need him.”

  “But you’re sure that Matthew’s alive?” Anderson asked again.

  “Absolutely,” Kelly replied. “He’ll probably be discharged before you are.”

  The sigh that escaped Anderson’s lips was one of utter relief.

  * * *

  “How do you think it’ll go for him?” Kelly asked as she and Kane left the ER and walked to the front of the hospital.

  “It’s hard to say, but if his lawyer gets those so-called victims on the stand and they start running their mouths off, I’d say they’ll be lucky if the jury doesn’t recommend putting them in jail and letting Anderson go free.” He stopped walking. Something had been bothering him for a while now. “Why did you tell Anderson that I was the one who saved his life?”

  “Because you did,” she replied, looking, he couldn’t help thinking, incredibly wide-eyed and innocent. And absolutely damn sexy. It took all he had not to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

  She had managed to trigger a side of him that he’d never even suspected existed—and he had to admit that he rather liked it.

  “Not alone,” he pointed out. “You were the one who got the noose off his neck. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

  She shrugged. “It sounded more dramatic with just you being the hero. Besides, I thought you could do with a little gratitude sent your way. Given the man’s ever-growing company, you’ll probably be the recipient of an endless stream of video games for the rest of your natural life.”

  A less than overjoyed look entered Kane’s eyes. “Video games,” he repeated.

  Kelly nodded. “For the rest of your natural life.”

  “What would I want with video games?” Kane asked, playing along with what he viewed as her outrageous scenario. “I don’t even know how to play one.”

  It was Kelly’s turn to stare. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “I thought we already established that I never kid,” Kane reminded her.

  “I’ll just get Valri to give you a crash course in gaming. She was a gamer for a while,” Kelly told him, fairly confident that Kane didn’t know. “She was pretty damn good at it, too. Won tournaments and everything—had my father pretty worried for a while,” she confided.

  “A gamer,” he echoed. “I take it that’s someone who plays games.”

  Kelly shook her head and grinned, doing her best not to laugh. “Can’t put anything over on you, can I?” she asked, amusement sparkling in her eyes. And then she abruptly changed the subject as she remembered something. “Tell you what, since we’re already here, why don’t we go pay your uncle a visit, see how he’s doing, before we report back to the precinct?”

  “Sounds good,” he replied.

  For the second time in as many minutes, Kane felt a very strong urge just to pull her into an alcove, sweep her into his arms and kiss her. He realized that since he’d made love with her, no matter what they were doing, his thoughts kept coming back to Kelly. Back to wanting her.

  And even more now.

  His uncle was right. She was a keeper. He just had to be clever enough to figure out how to do that.

  “We need to talk,” he told her—then drew her into that alcove he’d just been fantasizing about. He wanted to talk to her away from the rest of the foot traffic. What he had to say was private.

  “I always hated that line,” she told him, doing her best to hide her uneasiness. “Can it wait? We just solved a string of home invasions and that means we get to write up the report,” she reminded him with a touch of sarcasm. That was when she remembered their bargain, the one she’d made with him in order to get him to attend Andrew’s brunch. “Tell you what. Since I am a woman of my word, I’ll write up our report and you can go and do whatever it is you do after you solve a case.”

  She waited for Kane’s response, assuming that he would take her up on it since no one liked to write reports.

  His answer was not what she expected.

  Rather than happily agree to let her do the work, or dutifully refuse to allow her to handle the burden alone, he said, “You’re babbling.”

  Kelly did not respond well to what she took to be criticism. “I’m making perfect sense,” she countered.

  “You’re babbling,” Kane repeated quietly. His eyes took her prisoner. “Why?”

  She wasn’t about to allow him to interrogate her. “One person’s babbling is another person’s talking,” she argued.

  Kane went on as if she hadn’t said anything. “Most people babble when they’re nervous. What are you nervous about, Kelly?”

  “Being accused of babbling,” she answered defiantly.

  Kane’s eyes narrowed, effectively pinning her in place. He wasn’t buying it.

  “Talk,” he ordered.

  “I thought I was.” Even so, she squirmed under his intense scrutiny. And then she gave up all pretense and just told it to him straight. “You had a strange look in your eyes and I— Well, I just didn’t want to have to hear you
say that you’ve decided to put in for another partner.”

  Where had that come from? He certainly hadn’t given her any cause to think he was ending their association. If anything, he thought he’d done just the opposite.

  “Why the hell would you think I was going to do that?” he asked.

  “Because that’s your style. You go through partners like a person with a cold goes through a box of tissues.” She glanced away for a minute, gathering her courage to her. “And because of what happened between us,” she added in all but a whisper.

  God, but she had gotten her wires crossed this time. He was going to have to do something about improving communication between them, Kane thought.

  His eyes captured hers. “Did it ever occur to you that it’s because of what happened between us that I wouldn’t want to change partners?”

  “You wouldn’t?” she questioned, allowing her uncertainty to surface.

  “Let me see if I can make this clearer for you,” he said, searching for the right words to get through to the woman who had suddenly come to mean so much to him. More than he would ever be able to convey. “You’re like the refrain of a song that’s stuck in my head, making me crazy, but I can’t seem to unstick you.”

  She looked at Kane, trying to absorb what he was actually telling her. And then she grinned. “I can make that work as a compliment,” she finally said.

  “It’s not a compliment,” he contradicted, being honest with her. “It’s just the way things are. And I like the way things are,” he told her before she could take what he was saying to her otherwise. “I like them because of you. Now that’s a compliment,” he concluded.

  “So we’re going to stay partners?” Kelly asked him as she drew a little closer to Kane. They were both ignoring the people who were moving around just outside the small alcove.

  “Oh, I’d like us to stay a whole lot more than that,” Kane admitted. “But partners will do for now.”

  The unfathomable look on his face was causing her heart to do some very strange, acrobatic things in her chest. But she was afraid to put a meaning to his words. There was a huge chance that she would be wrong. She needed to hear it from his lips, not just let her imagination take off.