Davis sincerely doubted she was telling him the truth.
And yet, there were all these banquet-style folding tables spread out on either side of the backyard. Every square inch had dishes piled high with all sorts of different foods, prepared in a variety of ways.
“How can the man afford all this food?” Davis asked in disbelief as he took in the overwhelming sight. There were people everywhere, talking, laughing, eating and, above all, having a good time.
It looked like something out of a feel-good movie, Davis thought. Scenes like this didn’t exist, and yet, here he was, in the middle of one.
“Everyone contributes,” Moira said matter-of-factly, answering his question. “Sometimes, Uncle Andrew even lets someone else bring an appetizer or a dessert if they really want to.” At least, that was what she had heard. “But for the most part, he prepared everything that you see.”
“Uncle Andrew loves to cook,” said a very attractive blonde who came up behind Davis just then. “It’s his passion. Hi, I’m Kelly,” she said. “Moira’s older sister. You must be Davis.”
Shaking her hand, Davis slanted a glance at his not-temporary-enough partner. It was easy to see that he was wondering just how his name seemed to be getting around this way.
Moira spread her hands wide in a gesture of pure innocence. “I never said a word to anyone,” she protested.
“She didn’t,” Kelly told him, backing up her younger sister. “Word seems to always spread fast at the precinct. But then, you probably already know all about that.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Moira told her sister before Davis could respond to her assumption. “He doesn’t spend much time talking—on or off the job.”
Kelly gave him a very knowing look. “That’s going to have to change if you want to have a prayer of surviving around my sister,” she advised. And then she winked as she added, “Trust me on that.” She paused to look around for a moment. “Well, I’d better go find my other half before he stuffs himself to the point of exploding. Kane,” she confided before disengaging, “can’t resist Uncle Andrew’s cooking.”
“Nobody can,” Moira added for Davis’s benefit. “The man’s cooking is just out of this world—certainly the best I’ve ever tasted. This is not the place to start a diet,” she assured him.
This was also not the place, Davis quickly found out, to attempt to be an island and isolate himself in any manner, shape or form. There was no place to go for solitude. He quickly began to feel that there was a sign on his back that said Talk to Me because so many people—people he didn’t know by sight when he arrived—did just that.
They engaged him in conversations, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes en masse, asking his opinions on various topics and sharing stories of events that occurred both on and off the job.
No matter where he wandered, throughout the various different rooms in the house or around the backyard, there was always someone who would talk to him. A good deal of the time when they did, they acted as if he were an old friend they had just lost temporarily contact with—and were now making up for lost time.
By the time the cake—an incredibly tall, multitiered French-vanilla-and-strawberry-cream-filled confection with pale pink cream-cheese frosting—was cut, a completely stunned and overwhelmed Davis looked at Moira in abject wonder. He had just been overrun and conquered by a small, independent country—and everyone was so nice, he couldn’t find fault with them.
“Something wrong?” she asked as they lined up for a piece of cake. Silently, she braced herself, really surprised that he hadn’t been won over by her gregarious family members.
He didn’t answer her question with a yes or no. Instead he asked, “Are they always like this?”
“No,” she admitted, doing her best to keep a straight face. “This is probably one of the more subdued parties.”
Ordinarily, he could tell if someone was pulling his leg. But then, up until this morning, he hadn’t believed that members of a family could behave in such a personal, warm manner when dealing with a stranger. And yet, he’d witnessed nothing else all day.
Just to be on the safe side, Davis attempted to pin her down. “You’re kidding.”
For some reason the grin that flashed across her lips wasn’t annoying the way he would have expected it to be. The same was true of the way her eyes seemed to laugh at him.
“Yes, I am,” Moira admitted. “And, yes, they are always like this. Sometimes even more so. This is family at its finest,” she told him proudly. She loved each and every member of this family. “Don’t get me wrong,” she quickly added, knowing how Davis’s mind worked. “They’re not syrupy and you won’t go into a sugar coma around any of them. They’re a tough bunch when they need to be, but they’re loyal and loving, and I am so thrilled we found them.”
Davis looked at her, confused. What did she mean “found them”? It didn’t make any sense. “You want to explain that last part?”
She kept forgetting that he was a newcomer to all this—and a reluctant one at that. He seemed to be coming around a bit now, she thought, well pleased.
“Sure. A number of us are latecomers to the party.” She could see by his expression that nothing had gotten any clearer for him with that line. She tried again. “There was a whole branch—me included—who lived in another city about fifty miles from Aurora.”
She took a breath. She was getting ahead of herself. “Let me start at the beginning,” she suggested. “Andrew’s father, Shamus, had a younger brother. Shamus’s parents were divorced—a really big deal in those days,” she said as a sidebar. “And when they split up, they each took one of their sons with them. Shamus lost track of his brother and eventually assumed he was dead.
“A couple of years ago, Uncle Andrew looked into the matter for his father and found this whole swarm of Cavanaughs no one knew existed. The really funny thing is, the so-called ‘missing’ branch also went into law enforcement. Maybe it’s a Cavanaugh calling,” she ventured with a dismissive shrug.
“Anyway, once the discovery was made, the members of the ‘missing’ branch slowly began to migrate here to Aurora, to reunite the family, so to speak. Besides, it’s nicer here.” She flashed a grin again, her eyes lighting up with humor. “Eventually, we’ll probably take over the entire city—so my advice to you is that you had better learn to be nice to me. It might just pay off in the long run.”
“I am nice to you,” Davis informed her. When she looked at him skeptically, he pointed out the obvious. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
At the front of the line now, Moira laughed as she accepted her slice of the cake and turned around to face Davis. “Can’t argue with that.”
But she would undoubtedly try, Davis thought. As surely as the sun came up in the morning, he was certain she would undoubtedly try.
Chapter 17
It was close to midnight by the time Moira pulled her car into guest parking in Davis’s garden apartment complex. Even she was surprised at the lateness of the hour.
Initially she’d hoped she could get Davis to spend about three, possibly four, hours at the celebration. When four hours had come and then gone, she’d said nothing, deciding to leave it up to Davis to raise the subject of leaving the party.
After more time had passed and Davis still hadn’t said anything about wanting to leave, she’d relaxed and eventually lost track of time.
It wasn’t until eleven o’clock, after more than half the people attending the christening party had said their goodbyes, that Davis finally turned to her and said, “Maybe we should be going, too.”
Moira had spread her hands wide. “You’re the one calling the shots,” she’d told him.
To which Davis had responded with a very hearty “Ha!” before he started taking his leave.
It took almost twenty-five minutes for them to finally g
et to the front door. Even though half the people had already gone home, that still left a great many others to say goodbye to. Leave-taking, it turned out, was rather exhausting if no one was to be left out.
Grateful beyond words that it had gone even better than she’d hoped for, she’d happily granted Davis an island of silence during the drive to his apartment.
When she pulled up into the parking space and got out, she finally decided to say something about the day they had just spent together.
“Admit it,” she coaxed as she closed her own door and then rounded the trunk to join him on the passenger side, “you had fun.”
He shrugged. “It was okay.”
Moira covered her heart with her hands, as if to try to still the wild palpitations that had suddenly begun in response to his reaction.
“Oh, please, Detective Gilroy, contain your enthusiasm,” she pleaded as she proceeded to lay her wrist across her forehead like a heroine in an old-fashioned melodrama.
They’d just reached his door and he turned to face her. Davis was well aware that she had gone out of her way to get him to enjoy himself and he really did appreciate that, even if he wasn’t able to show it. But she had to understand something about him. He just wasn’t built that way.
“Look, I never get excited about anything,” he told her flatly.
“Never?” she asked, widening her eyes in that way he found utterly captivating. It didn’t help that she moved a little closer to him, either. There wasn’t much space between them to begin with. “So you’re telling me that you’re completely self-contained. Should I take that as a challenge?” she asked, turning her face up to his.
A strong, compelling urge to kiss her corkscrewed through him and he had to clamp down hard to keep it from getting the better of him.
In what amounted to a last-ditch effort to put her off, he asked, with an accusatory, belittling edge in his voice, “Just why are you walking me to my door?”
She paused, as if to seriously consider his question before giving him an answer. “I picked you up. I figured it was only right that I put you back.”
Inserting his key in the lock, Davis opened the door to his apartment. “You mean like some kind of toy you took off a shelf?”
Her eyes met his.
For a split second her breath just seemed to freeze in midjourney in her chest.
“Nobody would ever think of you as a toy,” she finally told him, her voice coming out in a barely audible whisper.
He didn’t remember turning the doorknob, didn’t really remember closing the door behind them, but, reflecting back on it later, he was grateful that at least he’d had the presence of mind to do so.
Or maybe some peripheral things had just gone on automatic pilot.
What he did remember was the lightning-swift desire that went through him with the speed of a Texas twister, taking him prisoner.
Or maybe she was the one who had taken him prisoner and desire was just as much a hostage of the whole thing as he was. He wasn’t thinking clearly enough to know the answer to that.
If he had been thinking clearly, he wouldn’t have done what he had.
He wouldn’t have kissed her as if the end of the world was right behind his door waiting to annihilate them—or at least him. He wouldn’t have kissed Moira at all. What he would have done was quickly push her across the threshold and shut the door as fast and as hard as he could.
Then, maybe, he could have saved himself.
He had only himself to blame for what had happened next. Him and maybe magic because only magic could have transformed him as quickly from being a rational, sane and reasonably cautious man to a reckless daredevil, the kind who dove headfirst from the top of a twenty-five-foot-high diving board into a tumbler of water.
Magic most definitely had to be involved because he found that the more he kissed Moira, the more he wanted to kiss Moira. He had never been the type to overindulge. If he had a flaw, it was that he had a tendency to overthink things. Since reaching adolescence—and losing his parents—he had never just given himself up to pleasure or to any other emotion for that matter.
But today had been different almost from the moment he had walked into Andrew Cavanaugh’s house. Without fully understanding why, he had just begun reacting differently to things. He certainly hadn’t been able—or inclined—to withdraw into himself the way he normally did.
And thinking at all, much less deeply, just hadn’t been part of the process.
What had this woman done to him? he now wondered. And why didn’t he really care? But the simple truth was that he didn’t. He was enjoying this emotional roller-coaster ride with its exhilarating highs and lows. Actually enjoying it and wanting nothing more than to have it continue.
Framing Moira’s deceptively delicate oval face with his powerful hands, he kissed her over and over again, moving—again, without any memory of it—from the front door through the kitchenette and finally into his bedroom.
The path was littered with clothing. His. Hers. It was all tangled with one another and only a hazy memory of how the articles initially came off lingered in the faraway perimeter of his mind.
After so much restraint, Davis desperately needed this release, needed to be doing this.
With her.
Not just with any woman, but with her.
It was also a fact that he intended to take with him to his grave. It was not something he ever wanted her to know.
But for now, there were no real thoughts of safeguards. All he wanted to do was to make love with her.
He was convinced he was crazy.
He didn’t care.
* * *
In all honesty, Moira hadn’t known where any of this was going when she’d gotten out of her car and walked with Davis to the door of his apartment. She’d just known that she’d wanted to spend more time with him, even if that “more time” just amounted to a few extra minutes.
It was still more than just dropping him off in the parking lot and then taking off.
Once at his door she’d just gone with whatever followed, not thinking it through, definitely not being cautious.
She hadn’t expected them to turn into Romeo and Juliet—especially not in light of the way that had ended for the duo. But neither had she thought of them as the embodiment of the Hatfields and the McCoys, given the attraction she’d felt shimmering between them.
The attraction she could almost reach out and grasp in her hand.
So when Davis suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her hard, with feeling, Moira kissed back, reveling in the sensation but determined not to just be a passive recipient. She gave as good as she got and for that, she got more.
Her head spinning, she could feel Davis’s strong hands on her body, could feel him tugging on the zipper at her back. And then he was peeling away her dress as if it was the wrapping paper that kept an extra-special gift from being viewed.
As the material fell away, her body heated in high anticipation, wanting to feel the touch of his hands on her naked body. And when she did, Moira was close to bursting into flame.
The next moment they were tumbling onto his bed, a tangle of naked limbs and full-blown desires. She thought her heart would pound straight out of her chest, especially as his lips trailed along every uncovered inch of her body.
Aching, arching against him, Moira absorbed every sensation Davis created, every nuance that danced along her skin, moving her ever closer to the ultimate moment.
Forcing herself to give rather than to just receive, she had a feeling she surprised Davis by turning the tables on him. She deliberately shifted their positions so that, for the moment, she was on top of him.
Davis’s body responded to the reversal. His desire for her grew and hardened.
That only excited her more, wh
ich, in turn, did the same for him, judging from the way his body shifted against her.
* * *
Toward the end, it was hard for Davis to say which of them wanted the other more. He derived a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that he was exciting her to this pinnacle, and that same sense of satisfaction doubled when she strove to pleasure him, as well.
Somewhere in the back of Davis’s mind was the realization that although he’d experienced lovemaking a number of times before, the experience had never reached this height before, nor had the satisfaction ever promised to be as immense and overwhelming to this degree.
As a matter of fact, what it had promised prior to tonight was disappointment.
Disappointment was no longer on the roster tonight.
Unable to hold himself in check even a second longer, mindful of desperately wanting to share this experience with her, Davis pulled her beneath him.
Covering her body with his and firmly capturing her mouth with his own, he entered her—not hard or possessively, but as if they were equal partners in what had just gone before and what was still to come.
It was a complete change for him. He tried not to dwell on it.
Moving his hips in a rhythmic, ever-increasing tempo, Davis lost himself within her—something he had just assumed, heretofore, was impossible for him to do even if he had wanted it—which, until now, he hadn’t.
But he did it this time. He lost himself in her, without thought, without plan. It just happened.
The speed—and lure of what was happening between them—increased exponentially until the final explosion encompassed them both. Davis held on to her as hard as he could, trying his best to steady his breathing and wishing, irrationally, that what he was feeling would just go on indefinitely—until he finally expired.
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