“I grew up with a large family by modern standards, but the first time I attended one of Uncle Andrew’s little parties, I felt pretty stunned and not a little disoriented.”
“They should be wearing name tags,” he quipped. He heard her laugh and the sound just wound itself into his belly, causing strange things to happen in response. He was going to have to watch himself. If he was this way without having anything to drink, the toll would really be high once he started.
“That’s what I said the first time, too. Initially, it would really make things easier,” she agreed. “But I’ve gotten pretty good at learning names. Consider me your guide through the land of Cavanaugh—for today,” she told him.
He could have sworn that her eyes were shining as she spoke to him.
It amazed him how easily Valri slipped her arm through his, as if they had been in this sort of an easygoing relationship for a long time instead of being partnered because of the job and together for only a couple of weeks.
“You wait here,” Valri requested. “I’ll go get us a couple of beers.”
“Forgive me if my etiquette is a little rusty. I don’t get much of a chance to socialize lately, but shouldn’t I be the one getting a beer for you?”
“I don’t stand on ceremony, you know that. Besides,” she said just before she left, “if I leave you here in the center of this throng, chances are I’ll find you here—as long as you don’t wander off.”
“I’ll be right here,” he assured her as he watched Valri walk away.
“So how’s it going?” a deep male voice behind him asked not thirty seconds later.
The question was directed at him, Alex realized when he turned around.
Brian Cavanaugh looked distinguished, but light-years away from the man who had the fate of the world on his shoulders. The man was nursing a beer, but his attention was unwaveringly aimed at him, to the exclusion of everyone else there.
“We’ve hit a stalemate in the investigation,” Alex replied, being honest.
“You’ll work through it,” Brian replied as if he had the utmost faith in him as well as in his grandniece. “But I wasn’t asking you about that. I was asking about the two of you working together. How’s that going? Any major problems?”
“Well, she’s really stubborn,” Alex felt obligated to mention.
Brian laughed. “That’s a Cavanaugh thing, I’m afraid. And it’s twice as pronounced in the Cavanaugh women as it is in the Cavanaugh men. But, properly channeled, it can work to your advantage,” he told the younger man with a wink.
The chief had to be pulling his leg, Alex thought. Right?
As if reading his mind, Brian put his free arm around his back and said, “Relax, boy. This is a party. My father has found someone who hasn’t heard all his stories yet and will actually listen to him tell them. In my book, that alone is a reason for celebration. That she’s willing to marry him as well is a huge bonus.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve just got enough time to get a drink. The ceremony’s going to start in a few minutes.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Andrew has everything timed down to the minute. He always has. I suppose that there’s no other way to run things with a family that’s this big.”
As if on cue, Valri returned, offering Alex his choice of beers. After he picked one, Valri took a long, healthy drink of hers, then lowered the bottle.
“Looks like we made it just in time,” she said, slanting a quick glance in his direction. “Let’s go pick out a good place to stand,” she coaxed. “They’re holding the wedding outside,” she explained. “It’s the only place that could accommodate everyone. Otherwise, someone would get left out.”
He could see that. What astonished him, once he was outside, was that they all fit out here. At first glance, he would have said that it was impossible, dispite the size of the yard. This was one huge group. But then he recalled what the chief had said about Cavanaughs all being stubborn.
“All these people...” Alex looked around at the people gathered together. More kept arriving. It was, in a word, overwhelming. “Are they really your family?”
“Every last one of them—and some friends thrown in for good measure,” she reminded him. “Every Cavanaugh who isn’t married or spoken for was allowed to bring a friend,” she explained. “And of course there are a few friends here, but a lot of the people Shamus once knew have either moved away, or moved on,” she said significantly, preferring the euphemism to the cold hard facts.
“And there also wasn’t time to notify everyone, considering that the groom only gave us four days’ notice. A lot of people, retired or not, can’t just rearrange their lives and hop a plane or drive like crazy to get here. If Shamus and Lucy were doing this in Florida, there wouldn’t be nearly this many people attending. But then, if this was Florida, he would never have met Lucy because she lived here, with her granddaughter and great-granddaughter.”
He wasn’t following her. “Why would this be taking place in Florida?”
“That’s where Shamus went to live when he first retired. But after the active life he’d led—being a police chief before Andrew took on the role—being retired with an endless amount of time on his hands drove him crazy. So one night he just walked out the front door of the retirement home and kept on going. He eventually flagged down a car that took him to the bus station. From there he just kept connecting with different buses until he finally arrived in Southern California and came back here.”
“That takes guts,” Alex said with admiration. “The whole lot of them, they’re crusty,” he assessed.
There was pride in her smile. “That they are,” she agreed. “Every last one of them. Every last one of us,” she corrected.
Drawing him into the backyard as far as she could, Valri left him standing there as she scouted out a place that suited her purposes. It had a clear view of the happy couple as well as allowed them to see other couples who had come to attend the wedding.
Satisfied, Valri went to get Alex. “I found a perfect place,” she told him. Taking his hand, she quickly retraced her steps in order to claim the spot before someone else took it.
She got back just in time. One of her cousins looked to be headed for the exact same spot. But since she and Brody had reached it first, her cousin fell back and searched for another spot.
Safe. Valri let go of the breath she’d been holding the entire time. From here, they could see the bride’s entire march down the aisle as well as watch the vows being exchanged.
“This is good,” she pronounced.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed.
Glancing at him, she noticed that he didn’t appear to be referring to the spot she’d selected for them. Instead, he was looking directly at her.
A warmth spread through her a beat before the wedding march began playing.
Focus, Val, focus, she ordered herself. This was no time to allow herself to drift inward. This was a very special occasion and it deserved her full attention. It wasn’t every day that she got to witness a storybook beginning for a couple as seasoned in years as her great-granduncle Shamus and Lucy, a great-grandmother.
“Who’s the little girl?” Alex asked, whispering the question in her ear.
Another warm shiver shimmied up and down her spine, spreading a blanket of heat everywhere. “That’s Lucy’s great-granddaughter and my brother’s future stepdaughter.”
“God, you really can’t tell the players without a scorecard, can you?” Alex murmured.
She knew just how he felt. She’d been part of this extended family for over a year now and she was just beginning to have confidence in her ability to tell everyone apart. “Don’t worry, it takes time, but it’ll come easier with each encounter.”
“You say that as if that’s going to be a regular thing,” he observed.
She spared
him a grin before turning back to watch the bride walking down the aisle on her brother Duncan’s arm. “They have a lot of weddings and birthday parties,” she told him just as Lucy, dressed in a long cream-colored lacy wedding gown, stopped before the priest waiting for them at the altar that had been lovingly constructed by some of the handier Cavanaughs.
Shamus, Valri observed, was positively beaming when his bride came to stand by him.
“I guess it’s never too late to find love,” she heard Alex comment.
“I guess not,” she whispered back.
And then everyone fell silent as Shamus and Lucy, looking into each other’s eyes, took the vows that would forever bind them to one another.
Chapter 15
“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Alex said when, hours later, they finally left the reception and Valri was driving him back to his apartment. A bright full moon illuminated their way.
“Admit what?” Valri asked, curious.
“That you Cavanaughs really do know how to throw one hell of a party.”
Although, looking back now, he had to admit that he resisted it, he had felt welcomed right from the start. More important than that, he hadn’t felt like the outsider. A sense of belonging just naturally materialized out of nowhere, easily slipping over him without his even taking note of it. Apparently, the Cavanaughs had that effect on people.
“Is that your offhanded way of saying that you had a good time?” Valri asked, trying to coax the words out of him.
Alex laughed to himself. Some things were harder to admit because he thought if he said anything, he’d forfeit the very thing he was praising. Superstition had been a way of life in his family before he was old enough to realize what a big role it played in that world.
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
This was getting good, Valri thought, really pleased on behalf of her family...and maybe a little for herself.
“And you’re glad I made you go to the wedding?”
“‘Glad’ is stretching it a little,” Alex hedged. He noticed the look she shot him, as if she could see right into his mind and knew what he was thinking. “Okay, okay, yes, I’m glad. Satisfied?”
Valri grinned. “I’m getting there.”
She made a right at the end of the block, then an immediate sharp left to enter his apartment complex. The path to his ground-floor apartment was a winding one. Guest parking proved to be rather full and it took her a few minutes to find a space. She squeezed her small, reliable two-door between a pickup that was so new it still didn’t have license plates and a gold Cadillac Escalade SUV with a dimpled bumper that had not originally come with the vehicle.
“Well, here you are, safe and sound, back in your own lair,” she announced, turning off her engine.
“Door-to-door service, it doesn’t get any better than that,” Alex quipped. He opened the passenger door and was about to get out when he noticed that she hadn’t opened her door yet.
Even though he knew it would be best if he just wrapped up the night right here, right now, and let her go home, Alex heard himself asking, “Would you like to come in for a little while?”
“What, you haven’t had more than your fill of Cavanaughs?” she deadpanned. A second later, the corners of her mouth curved in amusement.
“Oddly enough, no, I haven’t.”
“Well, who could possibly resist a line like that?” she asked. “Not me.”
Opening the door on her side, Valri got out. Pressing the button on her key, she sent both car locks into hiding at the same time.
Alex waited until she was beside him before he led the way to his apartment. As she matched him step for step, all he could think of was that she seemed petite and graceful. No one looking at her would have ever suspected she was proficient enough in martial arts to send the average man falling to his knees in an instant, most likely whimpering.
This woman would never allow herself to be a damsel in distress, he mused. Any fantasies he might have evolved in his head would have to remain just that: fantasies.
“Are all the Cavanaugh parties like that?” he asked. When she raised a quizzical eyebrow, obviously waiting for a clearer question, he finally said, “So...enthusiastic,” for lack of a better descriptive word to fit the behavior he’d witnessed.
She nodded. “More or less, yes. At least, the ones I’ve attended were like that. Sometimes the group is a little smaller, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a larger one than the one that was there today. Just about everyone showed up to see the chief of Ds’ father get married.”
“What do you think the odds are that there were any cops left patrolling Aurora?” he joked.
“Pretty good, actually. Four or five cops at least,” she estimated with a straight face.
He fished his key out of his pocket and put it into the lock.
“I’ve got some beer and a couple of bottles of root beer in the refrigerator if you like,” he offered her. Opening his door, he stepped to one side, his indication clear.
“What else do you have?” Valri asked, walking into his apartment in front of him.
She heard the door close behind them. Why was that sound so sensual, so compelling? She turned to face him and just like that, she felt her pulse rate increasing. It was as if everything within her had been waiting just for this moment.
The perfect storm.
“What I have is a really strong desire to do this,” Alex answered, his voice almost whisper quiet.
The next moment, he had framed her face with his hands and kissed her.
He was as surprised as she probably was by the amount of passion that suddenly surfaced.
It infused itself into what, at its inception, was supposed to have been a simple kiss. A kiss whose life expectancy should have been as quick as a heartbeat. Instead, it wasn’t quick, it was beating hard, like a drumroll that refused to end.
Her mouth tasted sweeter than he’d ever thought anything could. Sweeter and intoxicatingly addicting.
That part he hadn’t counted on. Hadn’t thought through.
Hadn’t thought possible.
Like the classic love song said, a kiss was just a kiss—but not in this case. In this case, a kiss—their kiss—didn’t feel like just a kiss.
It felt like a beginning.
A beginning that he desperately wanted to see through to the end. But despite what he wanted, Alex knew he couldn’t follow this to its conclusion, for a number of reasons. The most glaring of which was that they were partners and they were detectives.
“Oh wow,” Alex murmured when he finally forced himself to end the kiss and back away.
“My feelings exactly.” She looked at him for a long moment. The warm glow within her grew. “I had no idea that was choice number three right after the beer and root beer. If I had, I might have stopped by here sooner,” she told Alex.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Funny, I could have sworn that you did.” Valri made no attempt to move away.
This wasn’t easy for him, but he forced the words out. “I think you’d better go before we wind up doing something we’ll regret.”
Her eyes were smiling at him as she said, “Unless you’re planning on committing us to participate in some awful reality program that involves taking on and wrestling a bunch of seminaked, scruffy people on an island, regret is not on the agenda.”
Didn’t she understand he was trying to get her to leave for her own good? He certainly wasn’t doing this for himself.
Alex tried again, telling her honestly, “Look, I want to kiss you again.”
“Okay.” Valri laced her arms around his neck. “I’m fine with that.”
His body was heating at a prodigious rate. With more willpower than he usually needed to summon, he removed
Valri’s arms from across his shoulders. Holding on to her hands, he told her honestly, “But if I do, if I kiss you, it’s not going to stop there.”
“So far I’m not hearing a problem,” she told him, her voice low and sexy. The very sound of it was swiftly undoing him.
He tried again, doing his best to make Valri understand why this couldn’t be allowed to happen between them.
“Look, we’re partners. If we cross the line tonight, we’re going to have to tell Latimore and he’ll assign us to different partners. And I don’t want a different partner,” he stressed. “I want you.”
He had no idea how much that meant to her. Considering the way he had looked at her when they first met and the chief had paired them up, Valri felt as if she had just succeeded in getting the brass ring.
“It’s none of Latimore’s business what we’re doing here tonight—or any other night,” Valri stressed. “The only reason to stop is if we don’t want this to happen. And I don’t know about you, Brody, but I certainly vote yes.”
He wasn’t doing this for himself. He was doing it for her, for her safety.
“You still don’t understand, do you? If this happens tonight, it’ll change everything.” He looked deep into her eyes, searching for a glimmer of understanding. “It’ll change the way we operate.”
Her brow furrowed slightly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain that to me because I’m not following you.”
“If my feelings about you change, if I’m worried about your safety while we’re pursuing someone, that’ll take away my edge. And I won’t be able to do my job as well as I should.”
“Does that mean you don’t normally concern yourself about your partner’s safety?” Valri challenged.
“Yes, of course I do.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “You’re twisting things.”
“No,” she contradicted. “I’m clarifying things. As partners, we have each other’s back.” Her arms slipped back up around his neck. “We’re there for each other no matter what.” She tried to put it into perspective for him. “If, instead of who I am, I was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound guy nicknamed Moose, you’d still have my back, still come to my rescue if I was in danger, wouldn’t you?”
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