Cavanaugh's Woman

Shaw looked at his partner sharply, replaying part of the man’s last words. Reese talked as if he knew that his brother and sisters were committed to marching down the aisle and plighting their everlasting love. At last count, Teri hadn’t been among that group. That was this morning’s news.

His eyes narrowed to two bright blue slits. “How did you know?” They’d been partners for three years and in that time, Shaw felt as if Reese had learned to read him better than most husbands could read their wives. But this went beyond the norm.

“About Teri?” Reese offered him a gleaming white, toothy grin. “Haven’t you heard? Word travels fast around here.” He shook his head in wonder. “Gotta admit, though, it was one of the first times I’ve ever seen Hawk grin. Kinda scary.”

Shaw laughed shortly. “That’s because Teri hasn’t cooked for him yet.”

Reese’s laugh echoed his partner’s. “Like your father would ever let her get close to the stove. He’ll just set another place at the table,” he predicted. A small note of longing entered his voice. “You Cavanaughs don’t know how lucky you’ve got it. Only thing my old man knew how to make was TV dinners—and he usually burned them.”

The lament bore no weight with Shaw. “Hey, you know you’ve got a standing invitation to the house, day or night. Nothing my dad likes better than feeding a fellow cop.”

Before he’d retired, Andrew Cavanaugh had worked his way up through the ranks to become chief of the entire Aurora Police Department. It was a known fact that he thought of all the officers on the force as members of his extended family. His door was always open and his table was always available.

Reese paused. They were standing right in front of the chief’s door. Sobering somewhat, he glanced at his taller, handsomer partner.

“You sure you didn’t do anything that would get us called out on the carpet?”

Shaw’s eyes met his. There was barely a hint of amusement in them as he said, “Other than have you for a partner, no.”

Never one to hesitate, Shaw knocked on the door once, then opened it. He didn’t bother waiting for an invitation.

Shaw was fortunate that the man wasn’t in the middle of talking, or else he might have been in danger of swallowing his tongue.

Or, at the very least, gagging on it.

His uncle Brian was not alone.

Rather than sitting at his desk, surrounded by piles of papers, Brian Cavanaugh, considered more than passingly handsome and a great deal younger-looking than his fifty years of age, stood on the far side of his desk, talking to a striking-looking blonde, who sat opposite him.

Even as Shaw took in the scene, the blonde turned and looked directly at him with the greenest pair of eyes he’d ever seen.

The second before he collected himself, Shaw felt as if a four-hundred-pound linebacker had just jumped on his chest before grabbing the game-winning football away from him.

The woman wore a light blue, two-piece suit. Powder-blue, he thought it was called by people, such as his sisters, who had more than six colors within their mental repertoire. Whatever the color was called, it appeared that most of the material had been used up making the jacket because there was precious little left over for the skirt.

Not that he would have registered a complaint with anyone. The less skirt there was, the more leg was visible. And he had to admit that the woman had the longest, shapeliest legs he’d ever seen.

Belatedly, Shaw realized that his saliva had completely disappeared. Which made up for the fact, he supposed, that Reese stood beside him, almost visibly drooling.

A vague feeling buzzed around in his slightly disoriented brain that he recognized the woman from somewhere, although for the life of him, Shaw couldn’t have said where. He supposed if it mattered, his uncle would fill him in. If it didn’t matter, he didn’t need to be wasting time trying to remember.

Like a five-star general who finally saw the key members of his army come into view, Brian Cavanaugh clapped his hands together.

“And here they are now,” the chief said, although it was obvious that while he said “they,” he was looking at only one of them. He was looking at Shaw.

Shaw nodded a respectful greeting toward his uncle, then let his eyes move back toward the woman.

Was this a personal case his uncle wanted to be handled discreetly?

It didn’t seem very likely, but stranger things had turned out to be true. Since he and Reese were assigned to Vice and Narcotics, he wondered just what this woman’s connection was to the shady world that he was sometimes required to travel through. The mistress of an up-and-coming drug lord, ready to turn state’s evidence in exchange for immunity and a new identity?

Or was there a more personal connection?

He stopped speculating and decided to wait out his uncle, who was smiling wider than ever.

Shaw then became aware that his venerable partner, the man he relied on to guard his back and be the other set of eyes to sharply watch the mean streets, had stopped breathing. Reese had sucked in one long breath and then nothing.

Shaw turned to look at him and saw that Reese’s brown eyes were all but riveted to the blonde. Turning his back ever so slightly toward her, Shaw lowered both his head and his voice as he asked, “Reese, you okay?”

All Reese could manage was a slightly wooden nod. His eyes never left the woman’s face.

Shaw heard his uncle clear his throat and realized the man was doing it to hide a laugh. Brian was laid-back, but ordinarily all business during working hours.

Just what the hell was going on here?

He noted that the woman looked a little concerned, rather than amused, by the obvious effect she was having on Shaw’s partner. Maybe she wasn’t as accustomed to men becoming tongue-tied, drooling and breathless around her as he’d thought.

“Would you like some water?”

Her voice was lyrical.

He’d half expected her to have a grating voice. It would have been nature’s way of balancing things out. Someone as beautiful as this woman couldn’t possibly have the voice of an angel. But she did. An angel who originated from somewhere in the deep South if his ear served him right. There was just the smallest hint of a Georgia lilt to her tone.

Or maybe he was just hallucinating. What the hell had gotten into him today?

When his partner made no response to her question, she pulled her lips back in a quick grin. Shaw had seen lighthouse beacons that possessed less wattage.

And then, as if by some miracle, Reese came back from the dead. “Are you—? Are you—?”

Shaw snorted in abject disgust. His partner, known for his interrogation skills, couldn’t even complete a simple four-word sentence.

The green-eyed goddess-on-earth apparently understood his garbled attempt at communication. She smiled again and said, “Yes, I am.”

Well, that cleared up nothing, Shaw thought, beginning to get annoyed.

He took police work very seriously. Every moment he was here, watching an episode of High School Confidential unfold was a moment he wasn’t sending the bad guys to jail.

Just what was it they were doing here? Shifting impatiently, Shaw looked to his uncle for a logical explanation.

“My nephew doesn’t get to the movies very much,” the chief told her.

What did going to the movies have to do with anything?

And then it hit him.

Shaw suddenly remembered where he’d seen the woman’s face before. Not in some covertly taken photograph of a drug lord with his high-priced mistress, but looking down at him from the giant screen of his local movie theater. Callie had dragged him there a little more than a month ago to view some romantic comedy whose name and plot escaped him at the moment.

Beside him Reese had returned from the land of the living zombies and rediscovered his tongue. His partner hit his shoulder with the back of his hand, as if that would make him return to his senses.