Kait lightly squeezed the other woman’s hand. It was all she had the strength for. “It’s okay. I was scared, too,” she admitted.
Amanda blinked back tears. “I guess Uncle Ron knew what he was doing when he gave you my mom’s name. It was like she was watching over both of us that way.”
With effort, Kait nodded. “Yes, she was. Are you going to go back home now?” she asked. After all, there was nothing to keep them here now that they had been reunited with their daughter.
“Not right away,” Derek told her. Reaching for her other hand, the corporal ever so slightly squeezed it in mute gratitude. Kait understood. “The corps’s given me two weeks off to be with Mandy and Meggie, now that she’s been found. And that chief of detectives that met us at the airport, he said we were welcome to spend Christmas with him and his family. He said that was where you’d be once they released you from here, so there’s no way we could refuse.”
Kait looked to Tom for an answer. Had she missed something? When had all this been decided? “I’m spending Christmas with your family?”
Tom could see what she was thinking. The case was solved, time for her to return to where she came from. Well, not if he could help it.
“Hey, you’re in no condition to fly,” he protested. “We had to pull strings to get you released to Brian.”
“Honey, why don’t we let cousin Kait rest?” Amanda suggested to her husband. “We can come by and see her later today.” As she herded her daughter and her husband out, Amanda turned her head and mouthed, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to Kait.
Tom waited until the threesome had left the room and closed the door behind them. Only then did he come forward and sit down on the chair beside Kait’s bed. He looked at her for a long moment.
“Cousin Kait, huh?” He already knew all about the connection. Brian had told him when he brought the family to the hospital, as he’d requested. When he’d initially made the suggestion, he’d thought it might help Kait to see the family being reunited in person. Now it was obviously more than just that. “You could have told me you were related to the victim.”
“I didn’t think you needed to know that,” she said vaguely. And it would have meant sharing more of herself than she’d wanted to in the beginning. As they became closer, the revelation had felt awkward, so she’d just let it go.
“You don’t get it yet, do you?” he asked her impatiently. “I need to know everything.”
“But why?” she asked. What he said to her made no sense. “The case is over. We found Megan, remember?”
“The case is over,” he echoed, putting emphasis where it belonged. “We’re not over.”
She searched his face, trying to grasp what he was saying. Afraid of getting it wrong. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tom blew out a breath, silently cautioning himself to move slower. He had one shot at making his case and he didn’t want to blow it. “What do you think it means?”
Oh, no, she wasn’t going to get sucked into some kind of psychological babble. “I asked you first. Don’t play games with me, Cavanaugh. I took a pruning shear for you.” That had sounded way better in her head than it did on her tongue, she thought.
Humoring Kait, he spelled it out for her. “It means that my new uncle offered you a job on our police force. It means I want to know everything about you,” he said pointedly, then underscored it again. “Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” he repeated emphatically.
A half smile curved her dry lips. “You mean like that my real name was Bob?”
Tom could only stare at her, stunned. “Bob?” he echoed in confused disbelief.
“Bob,” she affirmed. It was about the only time she ever remembered her grandmother explaining anything to her. “My grandmother named me after her boyfriend. When he rescued me from them, Ronald made sure that he changed my name for me. He named me after his late sister.” Her smile deepened as she remembered the man who had been so kind to her when he could have just walked away. “Years later, he told me that she’d died from a brain tumor a few months before he rescued me. He said if he was ever going to have a daughter, he would want to name her after his sister.”
Tom was still trying to understand why anyone in their right mind would name a little girl Bob. “Your name was actually Bob?”
She’d made a mistake, exposed too much. “Okay, maybe that was too much information,” she said, upbraiding herself.
“There’s no such thing,” Tom told her, his tone deadly serious. “And I meant what I said. I want to know everything about you, no matter how insignificant or trivial you might think it is.”
Was he conducting some kind of an investigation on her? Her head was beginning to ache. “Why?”
He looked straight into her eyes. “Why do you think?”
She blew out a breath, tired. “Why are you always answering questions with questions? Just tell me what you mean.”
“Okay,” he replied gamely. Here goes nothing. “I mean to convince you to stay here in Aurora. I mean to be part of every day of the rest of your life until one of us is dead. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Actually, no.” She paused for half a second, running her tongue along her dry lips. “Are you recruiting me for the police force or asking me to marry you?”
“Both,” he said simply. “But mainly the latter—when you’re ready,” he added quickly. “I don’t want to rush you. We’ll take it one day at a time and you’ll see how you feel about it down the road.” Waiting was going to kill him, but he didn’t want her to feel as if he was pressuring her to say yes. It wouldn’t count then. When she said yes to him, as he felt in his heart she eventually would, he wanted her to be healed, not vulnerable. He didn’t want her thinking someday that he’d taken advantage of the situation and rushed her into marrying him when she wasn’t thinking clearly.
She wasn’t imagining it. He was asking her to marry him. Her heart began to beat harder as she absorbed the idea. But she couldn’t just jump at the chance. If she seemed too willing, it would give him the upper hand and put her at a disadvantage. A lifetime of training was hard to turn her back on.
“So, just so I’m clear, this is your idea of a proposal?”
“This is my way of giving you fair warning that I mean to ask you to marry me sometime in the not-too-distant future. To ask you now, in this hospital room, while you’re still groggy from the surgery, wouldn’t seem right.” He took her hand in his. “I like what we have here and I’d like to see where it goes. I can’t do that if you go back to New Mexico.”
“Is that why you had your uncle offer me a job?” she wanted to know.
Tom laughed at the very thought. “Brian Cavanaugh is a kind man and a great chief of detectives, but no one ever makes him do what he doesn’t want to do. No, the job offer came from him. You impressed him.”
“How?” she asked incredulously. “With the skillful way I blocked a pair of pruning shears?”
He didn’t want her making light of what she’d done by tracking down the little girl—even if she was her niece. “With your police work, with your diligence and with your loyalty. You’re not a nine-to-five cop, you’re a twenty-four/seven law-enforcement officer. That means something to the chief,” he told her with feeling. “There’s a reason why the Aurora Police Department is ranked one of the finest in the country. The chief likes stocking it with the best of the best.” And that was clearly her. “So, what’s your answer?”
She looked at him for a long moment. Was he referring to the veiled marriage proposal, or just the job offer? “What was the question again?”
He smiled at her. She was trying to get him to back off. “For now, it’s will you stay in Aurora?” he answered, his eyes never leaving hers.
Her pulse, she found, was still beating somewhat erratically. “And for later?”
“Will be for later,” he replied after a beat.
Kait took a d
eep breath. “I guess I’ll stay,” she finally said. “Otherwise,” she added significantly, “I won’t find out about ‘later.’”
Tom laughed. “I had no idea that you had this streak of overwhelming curiosity.”
She smiled then, lighting up the room, as well as his world. “Neither did I until just now.”
A wave of emotion swept over him when he thought of how very close he’d come to almost losing her. He wanted to hold her to him, to hold on to Kait tightly and not let go, but he knew she was still too fragile for that. Still, there was this desire, this craving within him that grew larger by the minute. Any second now, it would reach proportions that would be out of control.
To forestall that, he asked, “Would you mind very much if I kissed you now?”
Her eyes all but laughed at him. “I’d mind very much if you didn’t,” she answered in a soft, sultry whisper that punched him right in his solar plexus.
“Can’t have that,” he murmured just before he framed Kait’s face and pressed his lips to hers.
He had no way of knowing that at that moment, her heart was rejoicing just as much as his.
Epilogue
“Are you tired?” Tom whispered the words against her ear, sending warm waves through her.
“My answer’s still the same,” Kait told him, referring to the fact that he’d already asked her that twice before and she’d said no each time.
After her release from the hospital, true to his word, Tom’s uncle Brian had insisted that she remain with them until she had completely recovered.
Consequently, she found herself in the thick of things as Brian and his wife, Lila, aided and abetted by Andrew and Rose, hosted the Christmas Day festivities. Something, she quickly discovered, was actually a two-day affair running from Christmas Eve morning until Christmas Day night. There was endless food, endless conversation and endless Cavanaughs as well as anyone who wanted to drop by for a minute or a day.
“How about some air, then?” Tom asked, nodding toward the patio.
She sensed his tension and wondered what he was up to. “Some air would be nice,” she allowed.
Since the operation was just a week behind her, Tom offered her his arm.
Taking it, she carefully rose to her feet. The last thing she wanted was to call attention to herself by being pitched facedown if her knees decided to buckle. She still wasn’t as strong as she would have liked.
The moment they were outside, he gently guided her to a chair, then dragged over another so that he could sit beside her.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked.
“What makes you think there’s something on my mind?” he asked her.
She smiled, hoping he wasn’t about to drop some bombshell on her she couldn’t handle. “Because I don’t think your objective was just securing cooler air.”
He paused a moment, pulling himself together. He’d faced down gunmen with cooler nerves than what he was experiencing right now.
All the arguments he’d given himself a week ago still held—but he had discovered that he possessed an impatient streak. One that was giving him no peace until he finally asked her the all-important question he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask for at least a month.
The month had morphed into three weeks. And then two and now here he was at one. It was as long as he could hold out.
“I know I said I wouldn’t ask for a while, but I can’t help it.” He looked at her intently. “I’m asking now. Will you?”
It took her a couple of seconds to put the pieces together. Boy, he really was bad at this, wasn’t he? Keeping a straight face, she asked, “By any chance, are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yes,” he answered guardedly. When he saw the amusement in her eyes, he protested, “Hey, I’ve never done this before. I’m winging it here.”
Yes, he was, she thought. But just this once, she needed the words. Needed them to convince herself that this wasn’t something, at bottom, that she was just conjuring up in her head. “You could try saying ‘Will you marry me?’ I’ve heard that generally works.”
Did that mean she was ready to say yes? Because God knew he was ready.
“Okay.” He took Kait’s hand in his. “Will you marry me?”
It was a very bare sentence. She needed to hear more. Needed him to say things that she would always remember. “Why?” she prodded.
He stared at her. Had he misread the signals? “What do you mean, why?”
Kait took a deep breath and then said, “Why do you want me to marry you?”
What did she mean, why? Why did she think? For the oldest reason in the world. “Damn it, because I love you,” he shouted. And then it all came pouring out. “Because when I heard you scream that day, I thought that crazy woman had killed you.” That had been, hands down, the worst moment of his entire life. “And I didn’t want to live anymore,” he admitted quietly.
For a second, overcome, Kait said nothing. And then, taking a breath to steady herself, she said, “Okay, then. I guess my answer’s yes.”
That wasn’t quite the response he was expecting. “You ‘guess’?”
Kait struggled to keep just a little of her protective barrier around her. She hated being completely vulnerable. “Hey, don’t push it, Cavanaugh. I’m new to this emotions stuff, remember? You’re going to have to be content with baby steps.”
He inclined his head, indicating that he was willing to go along with that, as long as he had some assurances. “Do any of these ‘baby steps’ eventually lead to you telling me you love me?”
Her eyes were smiling at him even though she was trying to look serious. “You play your cards right, and then yeah, they might.”
He was still holding her hand. “Could I have a preview?”
“Only if you kiss me,” she bargained.
“That could be arranged,” he replied, his mouth inches from hers.
Her heart began tap-dancing in her chest. “Okay, I love you. You can be a real pain in the butt sometimes, and you keep wheedling things out of me that I have no intentions of saying and God knows I should have my head examined but, yes, I love you.” Taking another breath, her eyes pinned him. “Satisfied?”
“Not yet, but I’ll get there.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Kait asked.
Tom gave up the act and grinned broadly. “Hell, I thought you’d never ask.”
And with that he drew even closer, dragging his chair up against hers. Their knees touched, and he framed her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips.
The sigh was trapped in her throat, but she did what she could to disguise it. “You can do better than that, Cavanaugh. I promise I won’t break.”
He smiled into her eyes. “And, as I recall, you’re the lady who never breaks a promise,” he whispered as he brought his lips down on hers.
This time, they both forgot all about being gentle.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8222-3
A CAVANAUGH CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2011 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 publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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** The Doctors Pulaski
† Kate’s Boys
† The Fortunes of Texas: Return to Red Rock
†† The Baby Chase
‡ Matchmaking Mamas
†† The Fortunes of Texas: Lost…and Found
‡‡ Forever, Texas
†† Montana Mavericks: The Texans Are Coming!
Table of Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
A Cavanaugh Christmas Page 17