Cavanaugh Strong

by Marie Ferrarella

  “We can talk to Lucy together about getting her to okay Henry’s exhumation.”

  He upbraided himself for allowing his imagination to run off and get the better of him. What else could she have meant except for that? The woman was as straitlaced as the day was long. “Oh. You want me to talk to Lucy.”

  And then, stopping by her vehicle and turning around to face him, she said something that blew everything else sky-high. “After she goes home, you can talk to me—if you want.”

  Their eyes met and held for a moment as he tried to tell himself that his imagination was running away with him again. They definitely could not be on the same page—could they?

  He would have doubted it, doubted there was anything but the most innocent of statements behind her words. But the expression he caught in her eyes had him thinking that maybe, just maybe, he needed to reexamine his conclusions and the evidence one more time.

  He let his breath out slowly, sounding very much in control of himself and the moment.

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” he said. “I’ll follow you home,” he offered, then added for good measure, “To talk to Lucy.”

  Her smile was not just compelling, it was also enigmatic. He had never felt quite this confused before.

  * * *

  Lucy looked from her granddaughter to Duncan. Melinda was upstairs, asleep, and they had succinctly placed their idea before her, waiting for her response.

  “I can do that? I can request an autopsy after the fact?” Lucy asked, digesting what Duncan and her granddaughter had told her.

  “Yes,” Duncan answered.

  “But I wasn’t Henry’s next of kin,” Lucy protested.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he assured her. “You’re the executor of his estate.”

  “What estate?” she asked dismissively. “Henry left seven thousand in a savings certificate for his funeral expenses. The other money, that big payoff from the insurance policy, I found out that’s going to some charity he got talked into,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, then looked at her granddaughter. “Do you know if the charity is legitimate?”

  “We will work on it,” Noelle said.

  Lucy snorted. “Well, my gut tells me that floozy at the senior home just made it up to get her hooks into the death benefit. Okay, I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Lucy volunteered. “See you in the morning,” she told Noelle, kissing her forehead. And then she looked at Duncan. “What about you, will I see you in the morning?”

  Taken aback at the casual question and its obvious implication, Noelle cried, “Lucy!”

  “Well, I was just wondering,” Lucy said innocently. Her eyes swept over her granddaughter and Duncan. “We’re all adults here, no reason to be embarrassed.”

  “I can think of one,” Noelle murmured, eyeing her grandmother pointedly.

  Lucy sighed. “Do something with her,” she told Duncan, patting him on the arm as she passed him. “And keep me posted about Henry,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out.

  Feeling exceedingly antsy and somewhat nervous, Noelle crossed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Want some dinner?” she asked.

  Duncan followed her into the small kitchen. “As long as I’m not putting you out,” he said. “I guess I could eat.”

  She turned to look at him. He sounded rather vague about that. “You’re not hungry?”

  “I filled up on nuts at the bar,” he told her.

  There’d been so much activity at Malone’s, she hadn’t noticed whether he was eating something or not. “What do you usually have?” she asked, searching the refrigerator again. Nothing there tempted her or really lent itself to whipping up a decent meal.

  Duncan shrugged casually in response to her question. “Anything I can get at a drive-through.”

  “You don’t cook?”

  He grinned. “Does pressing buttons on the microwave count?”

  “Not really. I guess that Andrew’s talents didn’t rub off on you,” she speculated.

  The appetite that was currently raising its head within him had nothing to do with food.

  Duncan came around the small kitchen table to stand right next to her.

  “Hey, until a year ago, I didn’t even know there was an Andrew, much less that he was my uncle. Probably wouldn’t have known, either, if Brennan hadn’t been working undercover for the DEA.”

  She couldn’t fathom what one had to do with the other. “You’re not going to just leave that sentence dangling like that, are you?”

  There was mischief in his eyes as he said, “I was thinking about it. Why?” he asked. “Would that drive you crazy?”

  “Yes,” she cried with no hesitation.

  His eyes skimmed over her face. “Then I’d say we’d be even.”

  Why did she feel as if the kitchen had suddenly grown smaller? And hotter? Definitely hotter. “How would we be even?”

  There was a tug-of-war going on inside of him. Either way, he was going to lose. “Because wondering something about you has been driving me crazy for the last six months,” he admitted quietly.

  “We’ve only been working for the last six months.”

  He never took his eyes off her lips. “Exactly.”

  “And what is it, exactly, that you’ve been wondering about for the last six months?” she asked.

  The question was barely audible.

  Chapter 13

  Instead of answering her question right away, Duncan slipped his fingers into her hair, cupping the back of her head.

  Bringing her closer to him.

  His lips covered hers, making not just her breath stop, but time and space, as well.

  For both of them.

  “That,” he answered, his voice low, intimate, husky when he finally drew away from her. “I’ve been wondering about that. About what it would be like to kiss you.”

  “And what’s the final verdict?” Noelle heard herself asking.

  “Not sure yet,” Duncan murmured. His heart was pounding, but he did his best to ignore it. “I need more input.”

  “Then by all means, input,” Noelle urged, positioning herself directly in front of him. Her body fitting up against his, she wove her arms around his neck and tilted her head back, making her lips even more accessible to his.

  He kissed her. Kissed her as if he hadn’t just kissed her a moment ago. Kissed her as if the whole experience was completely new to him and he had discovered exactly what it was about life that made it worth living.

  Gathering her to him as if she were the very lifeline to his existence, Duncan kissed her long and deep until he and Noelle were both out of breath, singularly and collectively.

  When Duncan finally drew his lips away from hers and the insane beating of her heart had toned down to a simple roar rather than the deafening echo of thunder, Noelle gazed up at him, struggling to collect all the countless pieces she had suddenly disintegrated into, so that she could reconstruct herself, at least to some extent.

  Part of her felt that she would never be the same again.

  “So?” she whispered hoarsely, “What’s your conclusion now?”

  It took Duncan a few seconds to find his tongue and remember how to use it.

  “That I shouldn’t have waited six months.”

  He’d no sooner uttered the last word than his lips had found hers again. The wild whirlwind of a ride began all over again, sending her head spinning and arousing feelings and responses from within her that, after the last time, after Christopher had died and her heart had been crushed, she had tried so very hard to bury.

  Buried or not, they were back, out in force and reminding her that whatever else she had become and was, she was still very much a woman with a woman’s desires and needs.

  D
esires and needs that demanded to be addressed.

  Kissing him like this was making her summarily crazy. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold herself in check.

  For the second time that evening, Duncan drew his head away. “I’ll stop if you want me to.”

  She stared at him in stunned disbelief. “Just like that?”

  “No, I’ll probably implode,” he allowed. “But as far as continuing along this path, if you don’t want to—”

  “Oh, God, I want to,” she assured him before he could finish his sentence. Grabbing on to his shirt, Noelle anchored him in place. And then she took a deep breath as a tiny measure of sanity made its way back to her. “But not here.” Before he could ask her what she meant, Noelle took his face between her hands to get his undivided attention. “Upstairs. My bedroom.”

  Location—even a mattress—made no difference. He would have been willing to let what was happening between them sweep them both away right here.

  And then it hit him.

  They had to take this somewhere more private. What if her daughter suddenly wandered out of her room, maybe even drawn out by their revelry. He didn’t want to be responsible for possibly creating nightmares for the little girl, for introducing her way too soon to something that, in its proper place and context, was lightning in a bottle, pure and simple.

  The very best human experience possible.

  But visually intercepted, it was also enough to scar a six-year-old for a very long time.

  “Right,” he agreed, physically and mentally putting himself on hold. “Lead the way. Show me where it is.”

  She took his hand as if they were both just teenagers and had him follow her up the stairs, bringing him to her room.

  The second she closed the door, he spun her around to face him.

  “I believe I left off here,” he said, emphasizing the word as his mouth covered hers again.

  She raised herself up on her toes, falling into the ever-growing fiery pit he had created for her. The flames felt as if they were all around her, licking at her body, heating it to unbelievably high levels. Desire fairly crackled within her.

  Noelle pressed her body against his, seeking out his heat, searching for gratification.

  Never in his wildest dreams would he have predicted that there was such a hellcat living just beneath his partner’s straitlaced exterior. Having Noelle kiss him back just as eagerly as he kissed her, he was surprised to discover that they were almost on an equal footing when it came to this explosive game of tease and possess.

  Clothes were shed and tossed aside as the strong motivation to get closer overtook them.

  It was a game, a game he’d played countless times before, Duncan kept reminding himself.

  Except that somewhere along the line, between just absorbing the heat of her body and discovering the marvels and joys of their two naked bodies intertwining with one another, he realized that it had ceased being so much a game as it became something else.

  Something a great deal more.

  What the definition of that was, he found he was almost powerless to say. An adequate description eluded him at this particular point.

  All he knew was that the memory of countless women who had come before faded from his mind. And gradually, by evening’s end, those memories had been completely erased.

  Moreover, there was no satiating point, nothing that had him finally gasping and settling back into a contented sleep.

  This time, this multifaceted hellcat he was with had aroused such a hunger within him, it made Duncan feel as if there was no point where he could stop. No point where the overwhelming craving would stop.

  He just wanted this moment to continue.

  He found himself just wanting to bring Noelle up and over these heights he seemed to be able to create for her, causing climaxes to flower into one another, claiming her over and over again and in so doing, bringing her enormous pleasure.

  It made him feel eighteen feet tall, both powerful and humbled at the very same time.

  He could feel the way those climaxes built and dovetailed for her by the way Noelle dug her fingertips into his shoulders, struggling to muffle cries of sheer ecstasy.

  She made him weak.

  She made him feel humble that it could be this way between a man and a woman. In that one instance, as he realized that his final moment—his complete release—was about to overtake him, Duncan suddenly thought he could empathize with what had gone through Brennan’s head when his brother had committed to the woman he’d wound up marrying, turning his back on the playground he had always frequented. The one that he’d been more than welcomed to frequent for many years to come.

  Immersing himself in the many did not compare to becoming part of the one.

  The very thought, coming from nowhere, stunned Duncan.

  Gathering Noelle so that she was totally beneath him, Duncan shifted his weight until he was over her.

  Then, his heart once again pounding and his mouth sealed to hers, he entered her, melding, becoming one in every way.

  An emotion flowed through him. For now, he tried to block it.

  The sound of her increased rate of breathing excited him.

  And then he felt her begin to move, inducing him to join in the rhythm, to mimic the movement, and soon they were clinging to one another for dear life, stopping time and sealing themselves in eternity for as long as they were allowed.

  Stardust, she could have sworn that bursts of stardust had fallen all around her when that final glorious moment of free-falling ecstasy had surrounded him. Making him feel as close to immortal as was possible for someone to feel.

  And then, all too soon, it was over and the earth rose up to meet them.

  “Now what?” she asked, catching herself clinging to Duncan, trying to hold on to a split second of happiness for just a little longer.

  It slipped through her fingers anyway.

  Noelle blew out a long breath and then drew an equally long one in. It took a while for the pulses in her body to return to almost normal. But they did.

  Finally.

  Turning her head toward Duncan, she asked, “Now what?”

  “I could applaud,” he told her with the straightest face she had ever seen on him. “Because that’s what you do when your mind’s been blown.”

  “Idiot,” she laughed.

  “Or, I could lie here and let you insult me to your heart’s content if you’d rather do that,” he said. “I’m flexible.”

  God, there was an understatement, she thought. Her mouth curved as she responded to his last “suggestion” and she murmured, “My heart doesn’t want to insult you.”

  He tucked her a wee bit closer against him. “Good to know.”

  They might as well face this and get it out of the way. Otherwise, it was going to only grow larger and larger, an obstacle for them to come to grips with down the line. Now was better. “But we did just cross a line here.”

  “Line?” he repeated with studied innocence. “I didn’t see any lines,” he said. “Stars, yes. Lines, no.”

  Doubling her fists, she punched his shoulder. “You know what I mean.”

  “O’Banyon, right now I don’t even know what I mean,” he confessed. Raising himself up on his elbow, he looked at her, an earnest expression on his face for a fleeting moment. “You changed the rules on me.”

  Was he being serious, or just teasing her? She couldn’t tell. “What does that mean?” Noelle asked.

  The sigh was a soulful one—and one of surrender. “It means I want to make love with you again.”

  Wasn’t that what the past hour had been about? “Now?” she cried.

  “Now,” Duncan repeated. His expression was playful, but his tone was deadly serious as he added, “Next week, n
ext month. Three days after Tuesday.”

  She put her fingers to his lips to stop him as she said, “I’m confused.”

  “You’re confused?” Duncan laughed shortly, shaking his head. “Lady, I wouldn’t recommend visiting my head right now.” And then he lay down again, turning his body in toward hers. “Speaking of right now...”

  She could feel his body hardening, wanting her. The excitement within her was growing at an almost frightening rate. “Yes?”

  “I figure we shouldn’t let all this nakedness just go to waste,” he theorized, the light in his eyes teasing her. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

  The feelings inside of her worried Noelle.

  She knew exactly what was happening—what she had sworn she would never allow to happen again—and it scared her. Badly. But she just couldn’t make herself get up and walk away from it.

  From him.

  “So what do you propose we do?”

  “Give me some time to think on it,” Duncan said as he began to skim his fingers along her breasts. “It’ll come to me.”

  It was happening again, the longing was seizing her in a viselike grip. Making her want him with a fierceness she couldn’t subdue. “How much time?”

  “Not much,” Duncan promised. His mouth curved as she turned into his caresses. “I am a fast study.”

  She was about to comment on that, but found she couldn’t.

  His lips had already found hers again and that insanely wild ride on the speeding roller coaster was beginning all over again.

  What was most surprising to her was that her desires had all returned in full force, not a single one was remotely worn or diminished in the slightest way by having had made love with him just a few short minutes ago.

  The passions, the needs, they had all reappeared in powerful force, each bringing her up to heights that were dizzying, almost terrifying, but oh-so thrilling all the same.

  As an edginess began to nibble away at her, Noelle made love with Duncan, knowing full well that when tomorrow actually did come, all this was going to seem like an impossible dream, never to be realized again.

  This, she told herself, was going to have to last her until forever.