They had worked well together, but only in the way that two cogs located on the same machine worked well. They had never socialized after hours—her choice—and they didn’t even know any personal details about one another—also her choice. Mathias had tried—he had pictures of his wife and kids on his desk and on occasion would tell her about something he and his family had done over the weekend—but Scottie had zealously kept her private life just that.
Private.
Part of the reason for her secrecy was that she didn’t want anyone to find out about Ethan. He was not only her half brother, at one point she had also been his legal guardian. Her gut instincts had her hiding their connection—just in case.
And now “just in case” had happened—maybe.
For now, it proved to her that she’d been right about deciding to keep her private life under wraps. If her hunch was right, and Ethan was involved in what was now going on, there’d be no way that she would be allowed to work on the break-ins that had suddenly begun to plague the good citizens living in some of the more upscale neighborhoods of Aurora.
If anyone knew about Ethan and the nefarious life he had supposedly left behind, she would be barred from doing any sort of investigation that could clear his name—if Ethan was part of this. It was a phrase she kept hanging on to. She still had no actual proof that he was involved.
But then there was her gut, which compelled her to move forward. Always forward for him—just in case.
* * *
Newly seated, Bryce rose again to get a better look at the woman taking long, measured steps as she crossed the squad room. Just the faintest of hip movement marked every step she took.
He had trouble drawing his eyes away.
His first thought was that she was a hell of what his grandfather would have referred to as “a looker.” His second was that she was one of the city’s residents coming in to file a complaint involving goods stolen during the execution of some sort of a robbery.
But then he took a second look at the box in her hands, a far smaller one than Phelps had used to carry out his possessions, but still a box. That caused Bryce to reassess his initial take.
As he watched the leggy blonde walk in his direction, Bryce was vaguely aware that he wasn’t the only one assessing the woman. Small wonder. The statuesque blonde had a no-nonsense gait that captured a man’s attention from the very first moment she entered his line of sight. Slender, she was wearing a straight, light gray skirt that stopped a few inches above her knee, making her look as if she was all leg.
And what legs! he caught himself thinking. They were the kind of legs that walked right into a man’s dreams and had him fantasizing all sorts of things he had no business fantasizing about—especially if it turned out that there was some sort of a working relationship that had to happen.
Snapping out of his momentary reverie, Bryce crossed over to the newcomer as he summoned his most inviting smile.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
The low voice he heard in response sounded as if it had been wrapped in honey and dipped in warm whiskey before being poured over a glass of ice.
“With what?”
The woman’s response caught him off guard. Bryce heard himself say the first two things that came into his head. “With the box you’re holding. With finding whoever you’re looking for. Anything,” he concluded, leaving the offer open-ended.
“The box isn’t heavy,” she replied, tightening her hold on the box with its meager contents—just a few basic manuals she’d found useful during the execution of her job. “And I’m not looking for a ‘who,’ I’m looking for a desk.”
The grin was instantaneous, widening his mouth to reveal two rows of snowstorm-white teeth. “Fortunately the one next to mine just happens to be empty,” Bryce told her, pivoting on the ball of his foot and doing a 180 so that he was once again facing the direction he had come from.
“Fortunately,” Scottie echoed, her emotionless tone giving no indication she thought it was anything of the kind.
Since he had pointed to the newly vacated desk, Scottie walked toward it. Bryce was right behind her. He took the opportunity to drink in every nuance of her body from that vantage point before hurrying to catch up so that he could at least be at her side when she set her things down.
Which he was.
“I guess you’re taking Detective Phelps’s place,” Bryce said as she put the small box on the desk.
Ordinarily, Bryce didn’t have to search for an icebreaker or an opening line. In his experience, women, even those who were as easy on the eyes as this one was, didn’t need much encouragement when it came to making conversation. They were usually all too eager to do three-quarters of the talking, if not more.
But this one was different. She didn’t seem inclined to talk, which in itself was unusual. Unlike a couple of his brothers, Bryce had never fancied himself to be the strong, silent type. Besides, he’d found that the more someone talked, the more they wound up revealing about themselves. He had never been one who cared for surprises.
He liked knowing things right from the start, liked having things all laid out in front of him, nice and visible.
The blonde at Phelps’s desk obviously didn’t subscribe to that philosophy. At least, it didn’t seem that way.
“Apparently,” the leggy blonde said as she almost bonelessly slid into Phelps’s chair.
Having gotten involved in observing what was nothing short of poetry in motion, Bryce blinked then narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at the newcomer.
“Excuse me?”
Scottie recreated the last two bits of dialogue. “You said it looked like I was taking Phelps’s place. I said ‘apparently.’ There,” she announced in a tone that was nothing short of dismissive. “I think that we’re all caught up.”
Bryce pulled over his own chair, positioning it so that it was inches away from facing hers, and then straddled it. He crossed his arms over the top of the creased black padding as he looked at her. His sharp green eyes all but bored right into her, giving the impression that he could glimpse everything clear down to the bone, every thought, every fear, everything.
“All caught up?” Bryce echoed with just the slightest bit of mockery in his voice. “No, I don’t think so. Not by a long shot.” And then his easygoing manner returned as he asked, “Don’t you want to know my name?”
Soft, expressive blue eyes rose to look into his. “Bryce Cavanaugh,” she replied.
Bryce’s amused grin widened. So she’d done her homework. But why? Was this woman his new partner? And how did everyone but him know that he was getting a new partner?
“Okay, so you know my name,” Bryce conceded. “Don’t you want to know anything else?”
The same slightly disinterested tone she’d used before now accompanied the single word that emerged next from her lips.
“No.”
Undaunted, Bryce informed her, “Well, I want to know some things.” When his seatmate raised her eyes to his again, giving him the impression that she was waiting for his question, he asked it. “Just who the hell are you?”
“Detective Alexandra Scott.” She stopped short of telling him that most people wound up calling her Scottie. He’d find his way to that soon enough—and if he didn’t, that was okay, too. Her priority had always been solving cases, not nicknames.
“Where did you come from?” Bryce questioned, his eyes once again washing over her. Who was this woman and had she been around all this time without him seeing her? He really needed to get out more. “It’s too early for Christmas, so I know it wasn’t a sled with eight tiny reindeer that brought you here. Besides,” he continued as if he was really being serious, “I don’t think I was that good a boy this year to merit someone like you under my Christmas tree.”
Scottie blew out
a breath. If she didn’t give him an answer and set him straight, this one looked as if he could go on talking nonsense like this indefinitely. There’d been a number of Cavanaughs in Homicide Division, as well, so she was well acquainted with the way they behaved.
She supposed this was what came of having a huge family to fall back on. People like that could afford to wisecrack and act as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
It was different for her. All there was in her world were cares. Big cares. She’d never had anyone to fall back on. Her father had died before she was eight and her mother, it had soon became apparent, hadn’t been able to keep it together for more than a few days at a time. She wound up mothering her mother as well as Ethan, who was a product of one of her mother’s one-night stands.
Things had never gone smoothly, but they had gone well enough for a while. But then, in a bid for “uniqueness,” Ethan had begun to act out, hanging around with this one small group until he’d gotten in trouble and gotten caught.
It was easy to see that the path he was on had only one final destination. Temporarily putting her own life on hold, she’d sued to become her brother’s guardian, citing that her alcoholic, pill-popping mother was unfit. Shortly after she had, her mother had overdosed and died. That had been over seven years ago.
Scottie had refused to let herself cry. She’d just pushed on, holding down two part-time jobs, going to school online and trying to make a home for herself and Ethan. For a while, things were going all right. Ethan behaved and she wound up joining the Aurora police force.
And then Ethan had fallen back on his old ways. She’d tracked him down, dragged him back and, over the course of one very long weekend during which she’d locked herself up with Ethan, she’d managed to eventually get through to him.
He’d been out of trouble, holding down a job for close to five years.
Until now. She needed to find him before it was too late.
“I just transferred from the Homicide Division,” she heard herself telling the inquisitive detective. She knew she needed to answer just enough of his questions to not arouse any undue suspicions as to her real motives for the transfer.
“By choice?” he asked.
Why was he asking her that? Did he think she had an ulterior motive for getting into his department? “Yes.”
Bryce’s expression was completely unreadable. “Whose?”
She looked at him quizzically for a moment before saying, “Mine.”
Bryce nodded. “I can’t say I blame you. It can get to you, looking at dead bodies all the time. Even one can be too many for some people.”
“Thank you for your understanding,” Scottie said crisply, hoping that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
Bryce made no effort to vacate his chair or move it back where it belonged. “The seat’s still warm.”
Scottie blinked, totally lost. “What?”
“From my last partner. He just now literally got up and walked out the door a couple minutes ago.” Bryce nodded toward the doorway. “I think you even might have passed each other. Anyway,” Bryce said, shifting to another topic, “I’m surprised they found a substitute so soon.”
“I’m not a substitute, I’m a transfer,” Scottie corrected. When she’d put in for the transfer, no one had said anything about a position being vacated. But given the current string of break-ins, she’d just assumed that the department would be open to getting extra help.
Bryce misread her defensive tone. “I didn’t mean to make that sound belittling.”
Whether she liked it or not, if she was going to get along with this man, she had to get a grip. Learn the ropes. So she forced herself to flash a half-apologetic smile in his general direction.
“Sorry, it’s been a rough morning,” she told him vaguely.
Bryce was nothing if not a sympathetic ear. His sisters had taught him well. “Care to share?” he asked.
She’d grown up bottling up every single emotion she’d ever experienced. She’d done her best over the years to be Ethan’s pillar. But no one had ever been hers. There was no way she was about to start now.
“No.”
For some reason he hadn’t expected her to say anything else. Bryce suppressed a laugh. Instead he said, “Scottie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” paraphrasing the closing line in one of his favorite old movies, Casablanca.
“If you say so,” Scottie replied dismissively. All she wanted to do was to settle in and get down to work.
Chapter 2
She’d never heard any talk that one of the innumerable Cavanaughs to be found within the police department was a little lacking in the cerebral area. But then, Scottie assumed that wasn’t exactly a topic that anyone would bring up if they could help it. Over the years the Cavanaughs had become the very lifeblood of the police department and since the chief of detectives was a Cavanaugh—an exceptionally fair, evenhanded man, she’d heard—it seemed only prudent to not muddy the waters if it could possibly be avoided.
Still, in her opinion, the detective whose desk was butted up against hers seemed far too prone to just smile for no particular reason, like some sort of happy idiot.
She supposed he could be on the level.
What was it like, she wondered, just to be happy for no reason at all?
Was it even possible?
Great, only five minutes into her transfer and she was already waxing philosophical, Scottie upbraided herself. If she wasn’t careful, she was in real danger of turning into one of those people she had always disliked and thought of as useless. People who lived to contemplate absolutely nothing of consequence and went on about it ad infinitum.
Quickly putting away the few things she had brought with her from her old desk, Scottie was acutely aware of the fact that Bryce Cavanaugh was still hovering over her like a drone trying to decide just where to finally strike.
Scottie shut her middle drawer and focused her attention on the handsome, annoying man looming over her.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked in a crisp, distant voice.
Bryce’s smile was nothing if not affable. “No, I kind of thought it might be the other way around.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t need any help,” she informed him.
“I was just volunteering to take you to Lieutenant Handel and introduce you.” For just a fleeting second he thought he saw a silent query in the blonde’s laser blue eyes. “You know, the guy who barks out the orders and sends us out on our assignments. It’s usually protocol to report to him first thing when you join his squad.”
Damn, she’d forgotten all about that. She hated slipping up like this. She was usually so detail-oriented. But she’d been so consumed with trying to locate Ethan and head him off—if this really was Ethan’s work—as well as getting transferred to Robbery that she’d forgotten all about the final steps involved in a department transfer.
Scottie took a deep breath, pulling herself together as subtly as possible.
“Right,” she lied, “I was just getting to that. I didn’t want to just leave my things all over the place when I went to check in with the commanding officer.”
She rose and so did Bryce.
His attention entirely on his new partner, Bryce pushed his chair back toward his desk without sparing it a single glance. It still came to rest in the right place. “Let’s go,” he said.
“I don’t need an escort.” She thought she’d already made that clear. “Just point out his office.” Although she actually had a fairly good idea where to find the squad leader.
Everyone was out in the open. As with the Homicide Division, the person in charge occupied a glass office located against the wall farthest from the squad room’s entrance. Originality was not exactly the department�
�s strong suit.
“I was taught it wasn’t polite to point,” he told her, humor glinting his green eyes.
He’d almost be cute if he wasn’t so damn annoying, Scottie thought. But he was annoying and, besides, she wasn’t in the market for cute. She was in the market to either put her mind at ease about Ethan or, barring that, to clear Ethan’s name and extricate him, if possible, from any kind of mess he had allowed himself to get mixed up in. “Cute” had no place in that.
Bryce’s smile widened. “Humor me. You’ll find I can be a very useful guy,” he added, hoping that was the end of the discussion.
Scottie had learned to work alone. A partner, especially one who apparently fancied himself as God’s gift to womankind as this one so obviously did, would only get in her way in more ways than she could count. But she didn’t want to commemorate her first day in the department by butting heads with one of the Cavanaughs—especially since it looked as if the man was going to be her partner.
Could it get any worse? Scottie asked herself.
The question no sooner occurred to her than the answer came to her. It could be a lot worse—if Ethan was actually involved in these break-ins.
She stifled a shiver, trying not to go there mentally.
“Lead the way, Useful Guy,” she told Bryce, making no attempt to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
This is going to get interesting, Bryce thought, amused while he did exactly as she requested.
Since the door to the tiny room was open, Bryce paused to knock on the office door frame then stuck his head into the lieutenant’s space. “You got a minute, Loo?” he asked.
“Not since I signed on to take over this department,” the older man lamented.
Pausing and saving the screen he was working on, Lieutenant Mike Handel, father of three and twenty-one-year veteran with the department, turned his chair fifteen degrees to the left and looked at the two occupants standing in his cubbyhole of an office.
“Yes?”
“Phelps just left,” Bryce informed his superior. Then, gesturing toward the woman beside him, he said, “And this appears to be his replacement.”
Cavanaugh on Call Page 2