Racing Against Time

by Marie Ferrarella

  A clean break might be better, Callie thought hours later, after the day had long since dragged itself to an end and she was dragging herself up the walk to her apartment, but it certainly didn’t feel better. What it felt like was hell.

  So did coming home to her small apartment. She flipped on the light switch next to the front door. The ensuing illumination did nothing to dispel the mood that was hanging over her.

  The apartment felt lonelier tonight. As lonely as it had when she’d walked into it that first night she realized Kyle would no longer be part of her life.

  Callie stripped off her jacket, then her service revolver with its holster. Her body ached. She tried to concentrate on the pain there and not the darkness surrounding her heart.

  It didn’t help.

  She’d done it again. She’d gone and left her defenses down, allowed her feelings to get loose. Allowed herself to fall for someone.

  How hard could you fall in just a few days, she tried to argue, clinging to rationality. But she knew the answer to that. Hard. Very hard.

  The time line didn’t matter, and if it did, legally it had started years ago. On a dance floor for a fund-raiser. She sighed as she plopped down on her sofa. It sighed along with her.

  The blinking light on her answering machine caught her eye. She decided to ignore it. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone tonight.

  Needing noise, she reached for the remote control and turned on the television set, not bothering to see what station it was on. The low drone of voices was all she required. It didn’t even matter if the program was in English or not, as long as there was no silence to bounce her thoughts around in.

  The phone rang. Murmuring an oath under her breath, wishing everyone would leave her alone for a little while, she let her machine pick it up.

  “Callie, if you don’t answer me, I’m coming over.”

  He would, too, she thought. With a sigh she reached for the cordless receiver.

  “Hi, Dad, here I am, answering. No need for you to come over.”

  “You weren’t here for breakfast this morning.” Andrew Cavanaugh’s voice wasn’t judgmental. It sounded as if he was merely stating a fact the way he might have once read from his notepad. He liked having his brood around.

  Weary, Callie dragged her hand through her hair. Maybe she was being needlessly stubborn. Maybe she should take one of those painkillers the E.R. doctor had given her and just let oblivion claim her.

  But she knew that it wouldn’t do a damn thing for the real pain she was feeling. When she woke up, it would still be there.

  “I’ve missed mornings before, Dad,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, you have.” His voice was patient. “But you usually called during the day to say why.”

  There were times when having a big family felt confining. The second the thought was formed, she felt guilty. Droves of people would kill to have what she had and she knew it. “The case heated up.”

  “And?”

  She smiled to herself. You could take the badge away from the policeman, but you couldn’t take the policeman away from the badge. “And we found her.”

  “Alive?”

  She was so involved in the case, she’d forgotten that everyone else didn’t know the details of the outcome. “Yes, thank God. Rachel’s home now with her father. And mother,” Callie added after a beat.

  Her father was silent for a moment. She knew he was doing the father thing. Reading into her words. Reading her mind. “Is everything okay, Callie?”

  “Sure,” she said a little too quickly, even for her own ear.

  “You wouldn’t be lying to your old dad now, would you?”

  She picked up on the words she wanted and ran with them. “I don’t have an old dad. My dad’s young and virile and a pain in the butt sometimes.”

  Andrew laughed heartily. She hadn’t answered his question, but he knew to leave it alone. Privacy was something they all respected. Up to a point. “I just worry about my kids. No law against that. See you tomorrow?”

  She feigned surprise at the question. “What, miss two days in a row and risk being drawn and quartered?” And then her voice softened. “I’ll be there, Dad.”

  She hung up and stared at the phone. It was the first time she’d lied to her father since her teens. Everything wasn’t all right. But it would be. By and by.

  The phone rang again.

  The man just didn’t give up, did he? she thought with a sigh. Jerking the receiver back up, she said shortly, “I said I’d be there, so I’ll be there. Do you want it confirmed in blood?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “No. But how did you know I was going to invite you over? You didn’t tell me you were clairvoyant.”

  Brent.

  She could feel her heart leaping up, then thundering against her bruised ribs.

  “Oh. Brent.” For a second she was completely flustered. Her mind went blank. And then she pulled herself together, doing her best not to sound like the idiot she felt. “I’m not. That is, I thought you were my father calling again.” Her tongue was tangling, tripping her up. She tried again. “He wanted to know if I was planning on coming to breakfast tomorrow.”

  “That’s right, you missed going there this morning.”

  For the very best of reasons, she thought. She blew out a breath, feeling a little more in control. “How’s Rachel?”

  “Great. Asleep.” She wasn’t the only one fumbling, she thought. A smile spread across her lips as she listened. “I don’t know if I ever said thank you.”

  She pulled the morning’s events back into focus before answering. “No, not in so many words, but you didn’t have to. Seeing you and Rachel reunited again said it all.”

  “Still, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. I’ll never be able to begin to repay you.” His voice was warm against her ear. “Look, I’m having a little party tomorrow to celebrate Rachel’s homecoming. We’d like you to be there.”

  We.

  He was talking about Jennifer and him, she realized. Had this whole terrible incident brought his ex-wife and Brent together?

  Damn it, it’s none of your business, Cavanaugh. And this is better for Rachel, she argued silently. Children needed parents. One of each. In one house.

  Still, she didn’t have to be there to see this particular pair of parents. She knew she wasn’t up to it. “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass, Your Honor. I’ve still got a lot of work to catch up on and—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Rachel’s going to be very disappointed.”

  Callie laughed shortly. She needed to cut her losses and pull back now, even though it was already too late. “She has you and her mother. I don’t think she’ll really miss me.”

  “Well, she has me.” Brent sounded just the slightest bit puzzled. “But Jennifer’s already caught a plane for home. She left early this afternoon.”

  “She caught—” Stunned, Callie tried to make sense out of what she was hearing. “But you said ‘we.’”

  “Yes, we. Rachel and I.” His laugh was low, curling its way into her stomach. Just where she didn’t need it to be. “What did you think I meant?”

  “You and Jennifer. I thought the two of you got back together again.”

  “What gave you that idea?” Was it her imagination, or did he sound a little annoyed by her assumption? “Is that why you said no?”

  “No, I really do have paperwork, I, um—” She was running out of steam. And out of the desire to keep pushing him away.

  “I wish I was there right now,” he said.

  I do, too, but probably for a whole different reason than you. Callie kept her voice mild as she asked, “Why?”

  “So I could see your nose growing. You’re lying, Detective Cavanaugh. And really doing a very poor job of it.”

  She couldn’t suppress the grin, but since she was alone, she figured there was no harm in it. “I’ll work on it.”

  “Work on it when you come over tomorrow,” he told h
er. His voice left no room for argument this time. “Six o’clock. Sharp.”

  Maybe it was her imagination, but the apartment looked just a touch brighter to her. Maybe there’d been a surge in the electricity she hadn’t noticed. “Is there a penalty for being late?”

  Brent laughed again. “I’ll let you know when you get here.”

  “All right, you’re on.” Hanging up, Callie found she couldn’t stop smiling.

  By the time she drove up to Brent’s house, she’d had close to twenty-four hours to talk herself out of smiling. She was just the detective on record who had helped solve the case, nothing more. There was no reason to think that anything had changed from yesterday.

  It hadn’t. The case was closed. And they both had lives to get on with. Apart.

  There were a great many cars parked along the circular driveway as she approached. Too many.

  Her car’s engine still running, Callie debated turning the vehicle around and going home. He’d never miss her amid all these people. And she had already said her goodbyes. Why prolong the inevitable?

  Making up her mind, she circled the driveway and began to pull out again.

  “You can’t leave until after you’ve arrived.”

  Startled, she looked out the passenger side. The window was down partially. Just enough so that she could hear Brent. He was walking quickly beside the car, matching its pace.

  Where had he come from?

  She ignored her scrambling pulse. “Why aren’t you inside with your guests?”

  “Because I’ve been standing out here on the front lawn, waiting for the only guest who counts to arrive.”

  She had the car down to barely a crawl, but it was still moving. The opportunity for flight comforted her. “Me?”

  “You.” He pointed to the left. “Pull your car over there, Detective, I need to talk to you.”

  She didn’t know how to read that. He sounded almost stern. “Officially?”

  He shrugged. “Officially, unofficially, any way you want to call it.”

  She did as she was told, leaving the car parked in the center of the circular driveway. By her count, she was blocking at least four other cars. Brent didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care.

  As she got out of the car, he took her hands in his. She was surprised to feel how cold they were.

  “You should get inside,” she told him, nodding toward the house behind him. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, and even with the windows closed, she could hear the sound of laughter. “Your hands are freezing.”

  His eyes washed over her, making her warm, before he answered. “They always get that way when I’m faced with something that scares the hell out of me.”

  She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “And that is?”

  “Hearing the word no.”

  It still made no sense. Callie cocked her head, curious. Unable to fathom anything that would frighten the judge now that his daughter was alive and safe. “In response to?”

  “My question.”

  It was like pulling teeth. “Which is?”

  He searched her face first, looking for a sign that he wasn’t about to make a colossal fool of himself. That she did feel the way he’d told himself she felt. The way he felt. And that her reticence to be here was due to cold feet and not something else.

  “Damn it, Judge, you’ve got to say it first. I don’t want to be out of order.” And what she really didn’t want was to jump to conclusions. Because they certainly were jumping at her.

  “Callie Cavanaugh, would I be completely out of line if I asked you to marry me?”

  Callie’s mouth dropped open. She’d thought he was going to ask her for a date, not for her hand and the rest of her in marriage.

  For a moment, she could only stare at him. And then, finally, she found her tongue. “That depends.”

  Brent braced himself. He’d gone too far to back down. Not that he wanted to. “On what?”

  This had come out of nowhere. The way he’d made love to her had all the tenderness she could have ever wished for, but she wasn’t all that experienced when it came to men. She was afraid she was reading things into it she’d wanted to be there.

  And God forbid he was laboring under some kind of emotional overload. “On whether you’re asking me out of some misguided sense of gratitude, or—”

  “Or—” he coaxed, still holding her hands.

  Taking a deep breath, she took the plunge. “Or because you love me.”

  His eyes smiled into hers. Stirring her soul. “B. Definitely B.”

  He loved her? He loved her? It didn’t seem possible. She knew she wasn’t going to believe it until she heard it. Maybe not even then. “Oh, no, you can’t just spout a letter at me. You have to say it.”

  “Because I love you,” he told her softly. “Because I’ve been in love with you for a very long time. Because coming home and knowing you weren’t going to be part of my life anymore was too painful a thing for me to contemplate. You gave me back my daughter and I will always be grateful, but that’s not a reason to want to marry someone, Callie. I want to marry you because you’re you. You’re good with Rachel, you’re good with me.” And then he grinned. “And on top of all that, you’ve got killer legs.”

  She felt herself beaming, inside and out. “I’d say that was good enough.”

  Oh, no, she didn’t get off that easy. He needed to hear the same words she did, he thought. “What else do you say?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited. “And?” he prodded.

  Could a person feel this wonderful and still live? “Double yes?”

  “Callie.”

  She laughed, then withdrawing her hands, she threaded them around his neck. The wind had picked up, but she didn’t care. She was warm all over. “Your Honor, if you don’t know by now that I’m in love with you, then you’re not nearly as shrewd as rumor says you are.”

  “Sometimes,” he acknowledged, his voice brimming with the love he felt for her, “rumors are true.”

  “Amen to that,” she murmured just before he kissed her.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6849-8

  RACING AGAINST TIME

  Copyright © 2003 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  *Unflashed series

  *Unflashed series

  *Unflashed series

  *Unflashed series