Michael’s gaze bounced between Daire and Finn for a few seconds before he gave his partner an encouraging smile. “Sure, I know where it is.”
Daire’s stomach tightened for a second, because he knew where it was, too. Finn had taken the big album filled with family pictures from both sides of the family and spent countless nights after the murders lying in bed and staring at them. He’d been so compulsive about it, Daire had actually consulted with a grief counselor about whether Finn’s behavior was worrisome. Ultimately he’d been told to wait and see if it continued and developed into a bedtime ritual that couldn’t be ignored by Finn. After a few weeks, Daire no longer found Finn sleeping curled around the album, although his own nightly wanderings didn’t let up. As long as Finn was coping okay, Daire didn’t care about himself.
Some kind of intimate partner-type communication passed silently between the men before Michael moved to where Craig remained sprawled on the couch. “Come on, Craig.” When the boy glared up at him, Michael put some mean in his expression and his tone. “Now.”
That one word ended the standoff. The boy that Daire thought of without hesitation as his nephew was a good kid underneath the usual teenage façade. He’d been through more than the average adolescent, having been kicked out of his home just for being gay, and then preyed upon by pedophiles. It would take time for him to truly trust Michael and Finn, to believe they wouldn’t hurt him or abandon him, and to accept that he had a good life ahead of him.
Craig pushed off from the couch. “Fine.”
Daire had to give the kid some credit. He’d managed to capitulate without losing any of his dripping contempt for his elders. Daire watched the two guys head upstairs before he faced Finn again. But his brother beat him to the punch.
Ignoring Daire, Finn approached Li. “Is there a problem here? Is my brother under investigation for something?”
Parker blinked back at the youngest Callaghan brother, wondering in a totally inappropriate and irrelevant way how a family could produce two men who could take a woman’s breath away with their masculine beauty. As young as he looked, Finn had the smoldering thing down pat, just like his older brother. Well, not exactly like his older brother. Daire Callaghan’s innate hotness was off the charts. Sitting next to the lieutenant, sipping her tea as if she hadn’t been affected by his proximity, had taken more acting skill than she’d known she possessed. Cool and calm had always been her default mode, drilled into her by her parents from a young age. Proper women were demure, unruffled, unfailingly polite.
Yeah, except every fiber of her being had screamed at her to toss the tea aside and jump into Callaghan’s lap. Even the solemnity of their discussion hadn’t squelched that impulse. God, what was the matter with her? She’d sworn off men for the foreseeable future, and even if she wanted to break her vow, a man in the middle of an investigation hardly qualified as an appropriate choice, even though he wasn’t the one being investigated.
The lieutenant opened his mouth to answer his brother, knocking her out of her own head and back into the conversation. “No,” she managed to say first. “The lieutenant correctly stated that I’m looking into the Mahurin case and have reopened your parents’ murders as part of that.”
She inwardly winced at how stilted her words sounded. If the two men in the room with her could only see the little vignette playing in the back of her mind—the one where she and Daire Callaghan had just stripped off their clothes and were writhing on top of the big, old table behind them—they’d understand her tone better. Overcompensating much?
Stepping to one side, she gestured toward her netbook. “I was showing the lieutenant the information I have on Mahurin’s dealings with another cop and hoping he could shed some more light on things.”
“We’re going to go over the file, as well,” the lieutenant chimed in. The way he said “the file” told her the Callaghan brothers were intimately familiar with it. Of course they were. She would be too if she were in their situation.
Finn’s mouth turned down, and he knitted his brows. “I see. Just the old file, huh?” He looked at his brother, and they exchanged some kind of facial message she couldn’t decipher. The instincts that made her good at investigating went on high alert. Something was up that she didn’t know, and when the lieutenant answered, she knew she wasn’t going to be clued in by either of them.
“Yeah, just the usual stuff.”
“Do you need any help?”
Parker started to answer, but Callaghan overrode her. “No, thanks. We’ve got it covered.” He looked at Parker. She could easily read his message in those bright blue eyes of his. He didn’t want his little brother involved.
With a roll of her own eyes, she nodded. “Thanks, we’re good. I don’t really expect to get anywhere with the old information. I’m hoping to dig up new stuff through the Mahurin angle.”
Again something passed between the brothers. Before she could even think to press them on it, Caruso and the boy came trotting downstairs again. The kid held an old, bulging photo album under his arms.
“We’re all set,” Caruso said, coming to stand by his partner. Even though a friendly smile graced his lips, his body language was all don’t fuck with my man. “Do you want me to go home with Craig and come back for you later?” he asked Finn.
“No, that’s okay. I’m coming with you.” The guy’s tone dripped with reluctance.
Lieutenant Callaghan ushered the three guys out with brisk efficiency. His little brother was the last one out the door. They exchanged words too low for her to hear, but the younger Callaghan shot her a look before he left. She still wasn’t sure what to make of the men’s behavior, other than a strong feeling the Callaghan family held secrets they weren’t ready to reveal to her. That stirred up her curiosity and her temper.
When the lieutenant returned to the table, it was on the tip of her tongue to confront him. But when she looked into his eyes, they held such a strong sadness, she couldn’t do it. Instead, she reached for her tea and sat back down. “Shall we continue, sir?”
Chapter Three
Parker let herself into her shoebox sized apartment and leaned against the wall by the door with an audible sigh. It was okay, she could fall apart as much as she wanted here. No one would hear her, no one would ever know. She’d waged a pitched battle with her parents to move out on her own. If she’d married Evan, it would have been an acceptable decision. But an unmarried woman leaving her parents’ house to live on her own? Unheard of.
Often she wondered if she’d always live in this in-between world, with one foot in her ancestral culture and the other in twenty-first century America. She loved aspects of both and was still convinced she could have the best of each world. Having this one little place to herself, even though it sat only a block away from the building where her parents lived and worked, kept her sane. After a long day like the one she’d had, coming home to quiet was a Godsend.
All she wanted was a long, hot shower and decent night’s sleep. Not that she had any particular plans for the weekend. It was just that the last few hours of this day had proven to be unexpectedly trying. Digging through the details of her case was only partially to blame. Doing so with Lieutenant Callaghan had far more to do with it. It had kept her on edge in a completely inappropriate way. Her body still twitched and ached from the proximity of him and all that to-die-for sexiness. Ridiculous really. She prided herself on being more practical and under control. Besides, she’d never gone for the obvious guys. Not even in high school had she drooled over star athletes, preferring the more intellectual ones who permeated her world in the library.
Pushing off the wall, she went to her small dining table and dumped her stuff on it. The four-chair table was nothing special, just something from Ikea. None of her furniture fell into the category of “stuff I’ll leave to the generations to come,” not like the beautiful old table in the Callaghan house. In fact, the whole Charlestown place had a homey feel, the kind of house to raise a family in.
And a family had been raised in it, although now it contained only one man. She wondered how Lieutenant Callaghan felt rattling around there with his brothers gone.
Daire. He’d told her at some point in the evening to stop calling him sir and start calling him Daire. She’d tried to object, although not very hard. In the end, she’d capitulated and allowed him the same courtesy. The way he said Parker with his smooth, mellow voice that held just a trace of the Charlestown boy he was, sent delicious shivers skittering up her back. Pathetic, really. As if a man like that would be even remotely interested in her. He must have women lined up around the block for the chance to spend time with him. And yet, he’d been free on a Friday night and his brother’s look of shock when he thought she’d been Daire’s date told her he didn’t hang with women often.
She stepped into the tiny bathroom of her tiny apartment and stripped down. Once in the shower, she tried to turn her mind off. It was hard when the pulsing spray hit all of the sensitive areas of her body. Her nipples already jutted out in hard points, and the pounding water teased them to greater lengths. When she parted her labia with soapy fingers, a jolt hit her deep in her core. She was tempted to get herself off right here, but decided she deserved more pampering.
She finished up the shower quickly, and after drying her hair enough not to soak her pillow, she pulled on a T-shirt and climbed into bed. This was the best part of living on her own. She no longer had to worry about disturbing her sister when she indulged herself. Amy slept soundly and always had, first in the bunk below Parker and then in the twin next to hers. Still, it was nice to be able to touch herself with abandon. Plus, being alone meant she’d been able to finally try out a vibrator.
Her experience with sex, with having sex with actual men, left a lot to be desired. Painful and unfulfilling pretty much summed it up. She’d worried for a while that she was too small and too uptight to ever enjoy sex. Thankfully, the internet had set her straight. She reached to open her nightstand and take out her small, pink wonder. Narrow and battery operated, her vibrator was as tiny as everything else in her life. It made a low hum when she flicked it on. She ran it over her nipples first, keeping it over the T-shirt to ramp up her pleasure slowly. Her whole body shimmied at the sensation of the vibration against her hard nubs.
She considered herself a patient person, but for some reason tonight was an exception. She wanted it all faster than usual. Of course, she’d spent hours really in a form of tortured and secret fore-play. Such was the power of the unattainable Daire.
She gave her nipples only a few seconds of attention before moving the vibrator to her clit. It slid effortlessly through her wet, swollen cunt lips, tickling her clit and making her writhe. She pressed it harder into her flesh and bucked as the pleasure rocketed up.
Her pussy quivered rhythmically, demanding attention. The vibrator was a perfect fit for her cunt, sliding in easily with the aid of her juices. She clamped down on it, picturing it as a hot cock and not a piece of plastic. That cock was attached to a tall man with dark hair, yet blue eyes. The eyes got to her, so strangely out of place with the hair. So unlike the men she’d known, the acceptable men for her family. This man courted danger and made her shiver with a heady mixture of alarm and desire. As the image of Daire grew in her mind’s eyes, she picked up the pace of her thrusts.
With her other hand, she reached for a throbbing nipple and pinched hard. She cried out, free to be as loud as she wanted in her pleasure. The palm of her hand rubbed her clit with each stroke of the vibrator. The climax peaked and broke over her, and she reared up, bending her body in half. She wrung the last of her orgasm out of her quaking body by sliding the vibrator from her grasping cunt and pressing it against her clit.
Her lungs burned with fast and heaving breaths. Staccato moans passed her lips while she remained doubled over. The force of her coming surprised her and scared her. Even in her seclusion, she usually took her pleasure with lady-like decorum. Something had broken through her ingrained sense of reserve. Flopping back onto her pillow, she stared up at her ceiling. She knew what that something was, of course she did.
That something was Daire Callaghan.
****
Daire swore under his breath when he heard the perfunctory knock on his doorjamb. He didn’t need to look up to recognize who made that sound. Only one person was cocky enough and comfortable enough in Daire’s presence at work to be so casual.
“What do you want, Ronan?”
“Do you have a minute, sir?”
Yeah, like he bought that respectful address in that prim tone of voice. His brother could put on the charm and appear to play by the rules when it suited him. With the bull pen occupants in earshot, Ronan was showing the proper deference to his superior officer, even one in a different district. Daire knew better, however. Ronan seeking him out in the middle of a work day could only mean he’d heard about Friday night.
Daire sat back and pinned Ronan with a baleful stare. “I suppose.”
Ronan grinned back at him obnoxiously, perfectly aware that Daire didn’t want to have this chat right now yet determined to do it anyway. Ronan shut the door after he entered and took a seat in one of the visitor’s chairs.
“So, why the fuck didn’t you tell me someone from the rat squad’s breathing down your neck?” Ronan kept his tone nice and pleasant, but his question sent Daire’s blood pressure into the stratosphere, as undoubtedly intended.
Mindful that people could still see him even though they couldn’t hear what was going on, Daire kept his expression neutral. “Because internal affairs is not investigating me. I explained that to Finn, who I assume is your source of information.”
“Yeah, he is, and when did I become the odd man out in this family, learning something second hand?”
Daire didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow, although his grip on the chair’s arms tightened. “I didn’t confide anything to Finn. He just happened to come home when I was in the middle of a meeting with Li. I told him what she and I were up to. She’s trying to help with the murders. How is it you’ve managed to twist that into something bad?”
“Because I assume you lied to Finn. We always lie to Finn, remember, to protect him?”
Yes. How could he forget those first terrible, horrible, no good, very bad months after they’d buried their parents and the rumors flew around? They’d shielded Finn from as much of it as they could for as long as they could. Keeping their baby brother safe had included telling lies directly and by omission.
And what Ronan didn’t appreciate, because Daire would never let him know, was how much Daire had shielded him, too, from trouble. Not only had he not shared all of the rumors and snide remarks he’d been subjected to on the job, there’d been some lean years financially as Daire struggled to provide for his instant family. Some older cousins had insisted Daire and Ronan were too young to raise Finn. They’d even hired a lawyer to see about fighting for custody. Ronan hadn’t known about that legal struggle, either. Thank God Uncle Jack and the now-Commissioner Finnegan had stepped in to help thwart that little maneuver and keep it out of the courts.
Wild horses couldn’t drag all that information out of Daire, but neither did he have to worry about any of it anymore. “Those days are over, Ronan.”
His brother shot him a skeptical look. “Since when?”
“Since he put on the badge and nearly got killed, yet came out the other side stronger for it.” He heaved an audible sigh. “Look, I didn’t lie to him, and I’m not lying to you now. Li’s investigation seems to be on the level to me. She’s a straight arrow.” And gorgeous, although his brother didn’t need that fact included.
Ronan crossed his leg over his knee and slouched down in the chair, a sign, unfortunately that he wasn’t going anywhere soon. “I know. I looked into her.”
Really? “Christ, Jesus, Ronan, sometimes you don’t have the sense God gave a goose. Checking out an officer from internal affairs isn’t a good move.”
Ronan shr
ugged. “Why not? You just said she’s on the level. Besides, I wanted to see for myself what woman managed to get my monk of a brother to invite her over to the house.”
Daire’s knuckles turned white against the black leather of his chair. “I am not a monk.” Which was the worst possible response because, of course, now Ronan smirked back at him. Shit, his younger brother always managed to get under his skin. Plus the fucker was right. Daire’s lack of a social life made a monk seem like a slut in comparison. “We decided to meet at the house because we both agree the walls around here have too many eyes and ears.”
“You got that right.” The smirk disappeared from Ronan’s face. “Did you tell her about the evidence we found at Mahurin’s?”
“No. I’m not an idiot. Li may be playing straight with me, but she is in the business of nailing cops for breaking the law. Taking and keeping that stuff falls squarely under that category.”
“Good. I didn’t really think you would, and if it were just me on the line, I wouldn’t care so much. I don’t want Diego getting into trouble. I’m the one who dragged him into our problems, and if he and I both get sent down for withholding evidence, where would that leave Cassidy?”
Sincere worry was written on Ronan’s face, and Daire’s instinct to protect him reared up. His brother’s living arrangement with his partner and the woman they both loved didn’t exactly fall into a familiar category of family for Daire. There was no denying, however, that the three people loved each other. Even without the formality of a marriage, Daire viewed Cassidy Barnes as his sister-in-law and, in a weird sort of way, Diego felt like a brother-in-law, the same way Michael Caruso did. The family had become complicated in only a few months’ time. The one thing that hadn’t changed was that Daire reigned as the head of it. He hadn’t asked for the title, but with it came tremendous responsibility. The weight of it pressed down on him.
Internal Affair Page 4
