The Strong Silent Type

by Marie Ferrarella

  Teri pushed the gown onto the chair.

  “What are you doing?” Hawk asked.

  “There’s no way I’m putting one of those things on. If they want to see this wound, all I have to do is lift up my shirt and they can cut away the bandages the paramedic put on.” She saw he was about to say something and cut him off. “I won’t be reduced to something sitting on an assembly line table.”

  Color rose to her cheeks. In the nine months they’d been partnered, he didn’t remember ever seeing her get angry.

  Or was that fear doing it to her? “Try me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said you didn’t think I would understand why you’re afraid of hospitals. Try me.”

  Even as the words came out of his mouth, he wasn’t entirely sure just how they got there. He made his way through life not getting involved on any level with anything but the cases he was assigned, and then only in strictly a professional way. It was more than a matter of needing to be focused or possessing tunnel vision, he just didn’t care to have people’s lives touch his. It was cleaner that way. Neater.

  Getting involved in someone’s life wasn’t worth the effort or the trouble. That, too, had been a lesson he’d gleaned while raising himself in his parents’ rundown, rat-infested apartment.

  Yet there was something about Cavanaugh that reached out to him.

  Hawk was probably going to use this against her somehow, but since he asked, she felt she owed him an explanation. After all, he was still here, not turning his back and walking away.

  “My uncle died in a hospital. This hospital,” she added. “I was twelve.”

  Twelve.

  The same age as he’d been when everything in his life had changed for him.

  It felt odd having something beyond the police force in common with her. But then, having an uncle die in the line of duty wasn’t exactly the same thing as seeing your parents gunned down in front of you for less money than some people spent for a week’s groceries.

  Restless, he shoved his hands into his pockets and wondered why he wasn’t leaving. “You and your uncle were close?”

  “Not as close as I am to my other uncle. Or my father,” she added.

  The time her father had been wounded in the line of duty, she thought her whole world had been shattering. She’d been so terrified, she couldn’t get herself to come to the hospital with the rest of her siblings, afraid that if she did, if she came, it would be the last time she would see her father alive.

  Just as it had been with her uncle.

  “My whole family’s close,” she told him. Her words echoed back to her. Because he had no family, would he take that the wrong way? Would he think she was gloating because she had such a wonderful support system and he had no one to turn to?

  Hawk made it seem as if he didn’t need anyone, she reminded herself. He liked being alone.

  Someone was paging a doctor to neurology. Hawk waited for the voice over the loudspeaker to fade away. “If you’re so close, why didn’t you want me to call one of them?”

  “Because I don’t want them to worry.” She could almost envision the lot of them, crowding around the bed, shooting questions at her, looking like a backup for a worried Greek chorus. She could deal much better with them once she was completely patched up and this was behind her. “You, on the other hand, won’t worry. You can just keep my mind off the fact that it hurts like a son of a gun.”

  His eyes narrowed. They both knew that she was responsible for ninety-nine percent of the conversations they did have. “And just how do you figure I’d do that?”

  Teri grinned from ear to ear despite the pain that insisted on shooting through her with the precision of a Swiss watch. “Snappy patter comes to mind.”

  The remark was so incongruous, the image so out of character for him, Hawk laughed. The rich sound encompassed the tiny area they occupied.

  She thought of her father’s fresh coffee, first thing in the morning. Rich, smooth. Fortifying. “You know that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh. Nice. You should do that more often.”

  His face was somber again. “You do like telling people what to do, don’t you?”

  “Second nature, I guess.” The pain had been melting away, but now the room was in danger of having the same thing happen to it. She grasped on to the metal railing on one side of the bed. “Damn, what did that nurse jab into me?”

  “Well, if I’m lucky, something to put you to sleep.” She began struggling to get off the bed. He caught her by the arm, holding her in place. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I don’t want to go to sleep here. I want to go home.” She was going to leave while she could still feel her legs. Sort of.

  “Cavanaugh—”

  She clutched his hand and raised imploring eyes up to his face. That was twice today she’d looked at him that way, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like the position it put him in or how it made him feel—uncertain of his parameters around her. “Promise me that you’ll take me home.”

  He’d seen prisoners less desperate to escape their jail cells. Hawk tried to remove her fingers and found that they were locked in almost a death grip around his wrist. Very firmly, he peeled back her fingers from his flesh. “Look, they have to stitch you up first, clean the wound—”

  “Okay, okay,” she interrupted, “but I’m not staying here overnight. Do you understand?”

  What he understood was that somehow, the department had paired him with a woman who was a damn good detective, but that didn’t change the fact that she was irritating and crazy to boot.

  “If I say no, you’re not going to let go of my hand, are you?”

  He saw Teri slowly move her head from side to side and knew that she wasn’t kidding. He could, of course, disengage himself from her. She had a good grip but she was, at bottom, absolutely no match for him. Even if he were a ninety-pound weakling, once the medication put her out, he could easily just slip away.

  Again, he didn’t know why he didn’t. Maybe it was because for some reason she looked as if she needed him, and even though he told himself he didn’t want to become involved, he had a hell of a hard time turning his back on that. On her.

  It was why he was in law enforcement in the first place. Because people needed to be protected. From drug dealers, like the ones who had snuffed out his parents long before they were murdered, and from burglars, like the ones they’d caught today who had gotten off on seeing the terrified faces of their victims.

  People needed protecting. And his badge made him a protector.

  He sighed, surrendering the battle that had never really gotten onto the battlefield. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

  “And take me home when the time comes.”

  “And take you home when the time comes,” he finally said after she’d pinned him with those blue-gray eyes of hers.

  It was another three hours before she was finally able to get into his car again. Three hours in which she’d been tortured, injected, stitched and finally bandaged. Three hours in which she’d hovered between pain and a drug-enabled euphoria.

  She was still somewhere in the region of the latter. Stretching as best she could, she sighed and leaned back against the seat.

  “God, I feel like I could just leap off the top of something and fly,” she said.

  Knowing that a silly grin had taken over her face, and not caring, Teri turned to flash it at her partner. She congratulated herself for finding a soft spot within his hard exterior. It made her feel giddy. She liked getting to him. Because he sure as hell had gotten to her.

  Cavanaugh wasn’t even attempting to put on her seat belt. Probably out of her head, Hawk decided. Reaching over her, he took hold of the seat belt and pulled it around her until he could fit the metal tongue into the groove and snap it in place.

  “You feel that way because they pumped you full of Vicodin.” He snapped his own seat belt into place, then looked at her. A tinge of amusemen
t came out of nowhere and almost made him smile. She looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “You don’t have much tolerance for medication, do you?”

  “Nope,” she breathed, watching as the word floated away from her. She could almost see it. “But I can tolerate pain pretty well. And pain-in-the butts,” she tacked on, looking at him significantly. Her grin widened, then narrowed as she attempted to pull thoughts together. It was like trying to corral six-week-old puppies in an open yard. “You know, you’re a pretty nice guy when you let yourself.”

  Hawk began to thread his way out of the small side parking lot. He wasn’t about to let her get sloppy on him. He was already having a hard enough time dealing with her and the strange undercurrent of feelings bubbling within him, as well. “You didn’t leave me any choice.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Jackie, we both know better.”

  His spine stiffened at the sound of the name. He stepped a little too hard on the brake at the light. “Don’t call me that.”

  His mother had called him Jackie when he was very, very young. Hearing the name set off chords he didn’t want touched.

  Her head spinning and bursts of joy throbbing through her veins, Teri backed off. “Sorry. ‘Hawk’ just seems too harsh for someone who held my hand.”

  “I didn’t hold your hand, you held mine,” he reminded her. It wasn’t strictly true. He’d held hers while the doctor had stitched her up. “And it’s Hawk. It always has been.”

  She sighed, cotton beginning to spread itself all around her as she sank back in the seat. The scenery was whizzing by her at a rate that made it hard for her to fully absorb. She still had trouble putting the sequence of events in order. Everything seemed to be vying for the same exact place. Holding her head didn’t help. “My brain feels like mush.”

  He laughed under his breath. “And this is different from normal—how?”

  Even in her present state of confusion, she was aware that he was trying to regain ground, trying to come off like the fire-breathing prince of darkness he always was. Too late.

  “Sorry, I’ve seen your underbelly. You can’t retrace your steps.”

  She was babbling. It was probably the codeine the doctor had injected her with. But, God help him, she’d aroused his curiosity. “Retrace my steps? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m on to you, Jack Hawkins. You come on like some Clint Eastwood knockoff, snapping out eight, nine words a day and keeping everyone at bay, but inside, you’re a decent guy.” She turned to look at him. “Just like your alter ego.”

  “What alter ego?” Bullet wound or no bullet wound, he was quickly losing his patience with her. “Cavanaugh, what the hell are you babbling about?”

  It was as clear as a bell to her. “Clint Eastwood’s a really nice guy when he’s not playing tough guys. I heard somewhere that he’s a real pussycat.”

  There was traffic on the road at this hour, which meant that he was stuck in the car even longer than he could tolerate. Served him right, he thought darkly. No good deed ever went unpunished.

  “Cavanaugh, get this through your addled brain. I am not interested in your font of useless knowledge or your Vicodin-laced attempt at psychoanalysis. Now why don’t you be a good little detective and just pass out the way the doctor said you would?”

  “And make it easy for you?” she scoffed gleefully. “Nope. I want to enjoy this little breach.” The sound of her own voice egged her on. “Don’t get me wrong. I like tough guys. My cousin Patrick could spit nails—until his fiancée came into his life.” And good luck to her, she thought. She adored her cousin, but living with him was going to be a tough thing. Patrick had his demons.

  Not unlike the man next to her.

  He had to stop her before she was off and running in another direction. He’d thought she was bad before, but that didn’t hold a candle to the way she could run off at the mouth with this painkiller in her.

  “Look, I don’t know what gave you the idea that I’m interested in your family history, but I’m not, so save your breath.” He glanced at her as he came to a light. She was smiling broadly at him. “Now what?”

  “It’s not working.”

  He knew he should just keep quiet. After all, that was his way, wasn’t it? Allowing himself to enjoy silence? But something about the look on her face had him ask, “What’s not working?”

  “Your tough-guy act. I’ve seen the light.”

  He just bet she had. And it was probably all the shades of the rainbow. “That’s the pain medication. It distorts things.”

  “Not enough to fool me.”

  There was no point in arguing with her. He’d already learned that she could argue the ears off a stone statue.

  “Look, Cavanaugh, just save your breath,” he repeated. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He’d won that round. Hawk found that difficult to believe. She never retreated like that. It wasn’t like her. As he came to a stop before another light, wondering if she was all right, Hawk looked at her.

  The next thing he knew, Teri was kissing him.

  Chapter Four

  I t just happened. She hadn’t planned it, or even thought it out.

  To say she had never thought about kissing Hawk would have been a lie. She had. Several times. The man was tall, dark and handsome by absolutely anyone’s standards. But she wasn’t really attracted to him, she’d insisted. Brooding men weren’t her type. She liked outgoing, gregarious men. Men who knew how to have fun and didn’t mean anything by it once the good times were over.

  Simple. That was the way she liked it.

  Jack Hawkins, on the other hand, just breathed complexity. Every word he uttered—when he deigned to utter any—all but screamed the word.

  No, she wasn’t attracted to him. Nope, not a whit.

  If anything, Hawk was her pet project. She meant to drag her partner out among the living if it was the last thing she did on this earth. She had to get him to loosen up and smile more than once every nine, ten months or so. Nothing else, just that.

  Kissing him hadn’t been a means to that goal.

  What had brought her today to this junction of skin pressed against skin was extreme gratitude, or at least that was the excuse she fed herself. Hawk had remained by her side at the hospital when she knew every single inclination inside his body leaned toward walking away. That he didn’t meant a great deal to her.

  So she was kissing him because she was filled with gratitude. Gratitude and a healthy dose of Vicodin, or whatever painkiller the nurse had injected into her.

  And maybe it was the Vicodin spiking up through her system, but suddenly, the outside world faded away. The wound, the traffic, the car itself that Hawk was driving—all melted into oblivion as she became aware of this intense rise of heat all around her. Not like when she’d gotten shot and yet, somehow oddly similar.

  Except without the pain.

  No matter which way you sliced it, Teri felt she was definitely having an out-of-body experience and not really minding it one bit.

  What the hell was going on here? Always aware of his surroundings, Hawk had not seen this coming. Not in his wildest dreams. Not Cavanaugh.

  It wasn’t even as if they had particularly easy access to one another and her lips had accidentally bumped against his. The car had bucket seats, for Pete’s sake.

  One hand on the wheel, he grabbed Teri by the shoulder with his other for the purpose of removing her mouth from his. He was as surprised as anyone when he found himself holding on to her instead.

  Surprise very quickly turned into something that involved not just his brain but his whole body. Desire moved through it like a sleeping snake uncoiling itself after an aeon of inactivity.

  Worse still, Hawk could feel himself reacting to her in ways he didn’t welcome. Sure, the woman was attractive—anyone with eyes could readily see that. But she was also a walking mouth, someone who never knew when to cease and desist—which for him would have been before the very first
word was uttered. As it was, Cavanaugh had more words in her arsenal than could be found within the pages of a congressional investigation.

  So why the hell did he feel as if someone had just knocked him off his feet by swinging a wrecking ball into him?

  The sound of horns blaring directly behind his vehicle pulled Hawk out of the center of the vortex he found himself in and pushed him quickly back out into the real world.

  Finally wedging a space between them, he turned and quickly clamped both hands firmly on the steering wheel before he was tempted to repeat the offense.

  Before he was tempted to initiate the next kiss himself.

  The woman tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever had.

  The moment his eyes were back in focus, Hawk took his foot off the brake and stepped down on the gas pedal.

  Hard.

  They flew through the intersection.

  He realized that they’d come extremely close to having an accident. It would have taken very little for his foot to have slipped off the brake while his attention had been directed to other regions. Although there was no car in front of them, there was an intersection. They could have been smack in the middle of it with through traffic slamming into them before his brain would have registered the danger.

  That had never happened to him before.

  His pulse was racing harder than if he’d just done a 10K run.

  Once they were on the other side of the intersection, he glared at her. She’d made him lose control and he didn’t like that. It didn’t go with the image he had of himself.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Teri took a deep breath. It didn’t help. Her heart was pounding harder than a drum soloist showing off his expertise. She took another breath before slanting her eyes in his direction. “Boy, you do need to get out more. That’s commonly known as a kiss.”

  If he clenched the steering wheel any harder, he had a feeling it would shatter. “I know what the hell it is, I want to know why it was coming from you.”