Cavanaugh’s Woman

by Marie Ferrarella

  “She said goodbye.”

  Prepared to hear more, Shaw was surprised by the economy of words. It proved his point, that this was just an interlude for the actress and that he was right when he felt he couldn’t make anything of it. Being right didn’t make him happy.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, what did you expect her to say?” From Reese’s tone it was clear to Shaw that his partner had taken sides and it wasn’t with him. “That’s all you said and that wasn’t even in person.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Reese lost his patience. “I want you to stop being an idiot, that’s what I want. A gorgeous woman like that doesn’t come along every day.”

  Well, at least they were agreed on that. “No, she doesn’t.” Shaw set his mouth grimly. “And now she’s back where she belongs.” He could feel Reese’s eyes as he stared at him.

  “How do you know where she belongs?”

  What, did Reese need a road map? It was as plain as the nose on his face. “She’s an actress.”

  “So she belongs in Hollywood?” Reese hooted. “You never heard of airplanes? People commute all the time. And not all the so-called ‘stars’ live within walking distance of the studio, buddy. Los Angeles isn’t exactly at the end of the known world. You might think about paying her a visit sometime.”

  Yeah, right, Shaw thought. Like some starstruck groupie who was fixated on her. “What, go stand in front of her studio in hopes she’d turn up?”

  Reese shook his head in complete amazement. “You know, for a smart man, you have absolutely no imagination.”

  Shaw glanced at him as he came to a stop at a light. Reese pulled out his wallet, took a piece of paper out of it and then, leaning over, tucked that into the top pocket of Shaw’s jacket.

  The light turned green. Shaw didn’t have time to fish out the paper and look at it. “What’s that?”

  “Her address and phone number.”

  “She gave it to you?” Why would she give it to Reese and not him? But then, he hadn’t asked for it, Shaw reminded himself. Knowing Reese, his partner had probably broadly hinted.

  Reese nodded. “Said if I was ever in the area, to look her up.”

  Annoyed, Shaw pulled out the paper and held it out to his partner. “So, then, this is yours.”

  Reese pushed his hand away. “Damn it, Shaw, don’t be so obtuse. Moira meant that information for you, not me. Except you weren’t there to give it to, like you should have been.”

  For the time being, Shaw replaced the paper in his pocket. But there was no sense in keeping it. It wasn’t as if he was going to act on the information there. He didn’t belong in L.A. any more than she belonged in Aurora. It was just something he was going to have to come to terms with—if everybody else would let him. “We’re from two different worlds, Reese.”

  “That’s a crock.” He looked at him sharply, but Reese remained unfazed. “You’re both earthlings. I figure that’s a good start.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Reese sighed, temporarily giving up. “Never figured you to be a dumb man, Shaw.”

  Shaw said nothing.

  But he left the paper in his pocket.

  “What’s this?”

  Shaw looked at the small envelope his father handed him. It had been two weeks since Moira and the production company had left Aurora. The excitement of having a major film crew in their midst was just beginning to dissipate around the city, but Shaw found that his own restlessness was increasing instead of lessening. The only thing that was lessening these days was his patience. With himself and with others.

  In an effort to steer his life back onto familiar grounds, he’d stopped by his father’s house to spend a little time with the family. But they only succeeded in irritating him, the way everything and everyone had ever since she’d left.

  The house had all but cleared out right after dinner and he’d gone out on the patio to get some air and maybe some perspective. All he found was air.

  When his father came out to join him, Shaw searched his mind for a scrap of conversation and came up empty. So he’d stood, facing the back of the yard, and let his father take the lead.

  Andrew surprised him by placing the small envelope into his hand.

  “An open-end round-trip ticket,” Andrew told him.

  Shaw didn’t open the envelope. “To where?” he asked suspiciously.

  “L.A.,” his father replied matter-of-factly. “Where you go from there once the plane lands is your own business.”

  He knew where this was leading. He held the envelope out to his father, but Andrew made no effort to take it back. “I’m not going to see her.”

  Andrew nodded. “Fair enough.” He sat down at the table, motioning for Shaw to join him. After a beat, his son did. “But I think you should know that the same people who chipped in for this ticket took an oath to kill you if you didn’t use it.” Andrew grinned when his son looked at him. “That’s even coming from Callie who’s always been in your corner.”

  Shaw turned the envelope around in his hand. “Kill me, huh?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  Shaw sighed, then rose to his feet as he pocketed the ticket. “Maybe I’d better think about it, then.”

  “Maybe.” Andrew watched his oldest as he headed for the patio door. “I’d think fast if I were you.”

  Shaw stopped and looked at him. “Why?”

  Andrew took a long sip of his lemonade, then said, “The ticket’s for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Shaw echoed incredulously. That wasn’t enough time to get things squared away. “I haven’t cleared—”

  Andrew knew what his son was going to say before the words were out of his mouth. He’d gone to Shaw’s superior and put in for some vacation time for his son. “Already taken care of.”

  Shaw laughed as he shook his head. He might have known. “You don’t leave much to chance, do you?”

  “Never get ahead that way.” He grinned. “Tell her hi for all of us.”

  Shaw had his doubts about the venture. After all, he hadn’t even stopped by to tell her goodbye. He was acutely aware that they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. “She might not want to see me.”

  Andrew met his son’s eyes. “You’ll never find out standing here, will you?”

  “Guess not.” Opening the sliding glass door, Shaw went inside.

  Andrew silently toasted him with his lemonade glass. “Smart boy.”

  Moira let herself into the house, flipping on the light switch beside the security keypad.

  Tired, it took her a minute to remember the code and re-arm it. Tossing her key on the side table, she shed her purse and stepped out of her shoes as she made her way to the living room sofa. She fell into it, wilting, trying to gather enough energy together to make it up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She felt beyond drained.

  It was late. She’d remained on the set today longer than usual, running lines for the next day with Carrie.

  Thoughts of her sister made her smile. At least things were going well there. Carrie had really come into her own these past couple of weeks. After a few days here, she’d insisted on moving out and getting her own apartment. It was time, Carrie had told her, trying to assuage her big-sister concerns, to start standing on her own two feet again. She’d even taken to mentoring Amy, who showed a great deal of promise now that there were people taking an interest in her as a human being.

  The part of Moira that wasn’t bent on mothering every creature that breathed, especially her own blood, was extremely proud of Carrie.

  Moira moodily dragged a hand through her hair. She wished she could be that resilient.

  It felt as if the spring that governed her ability to bounce back had rusted in place. Temporarily, she insisted silently as she debated just sacking out on the sofa instead of making the long trip up to her room.

  For now, she was trying to fill up every waking moment in her life with work
or something connected to work. If she had no time to think, she couldn’t hurt, right?

  It was a good theory, but the hurt came anyway, when she least expected it. Like some giant, macabre jack-in-the-box clown, leaping up at her and taking her breath away. Stripping a little more of her heart.

  Moira frowned in disgust. She’d never, ever thought she could fall in love so fast, so hard and be so wrong about it.

  But she’d obviously been wrong about Shaw Cavanaugh because if she hadn’t been, he would have come to her that last day. He would have tried to make some kind of arrangements to see her, to at least stay in touch. Reese had found the time; why hadn’t Shaw, instead of just letting her go like that?

  It’d been miserably long two weeks and there hadn’t been a phone call, a letter, a carrier pigeon with a note strapped to its leg, nothing. Not even so much as a telltale hang-up on her machine. She’d given her numbers to Reese and she was positive that the man had understood that she’d meant them for Shaw. She would have bet anything that Reese had given Shaw the number to her cell and her house. If she wasn’t hearing from Shaw it was because he didn’t want to call her.

  Didn’t want to see her.

  Didn’t want her.

  Eventually, she told herself, closing her eyes to keep the tears from coming again, that was going to sink in. But not now.

  Moira opened her eyes and sighed. She couldn’t go on moping like this, like one half of some tragic star-crossed lovers’ duo. It had to stop, here and now. Before she lost any more weight and became a walking advertisement for matches.

  What she needed, she decided, was a long, hot soothing bath. And a sandwich.

  The doorbell rang just as she’d finally mustered enough oomph to dig herself out of the soft, enfolding leather of her sofa and get to her feet.

  It was almost eleven. Nobody ever called or visited her around this time when she was filming. Something had to be wrong. Thinking of all sorts of scenarios, none of them good, she was at the door in a second, adrenaline making short work of her lack of energy. “Who is it?”

  “Open the door, Moira. It’s me.”

  With adrenaline rushing through her, Moira managed to stand absolutely still. Wishful thinking was playing tricks on her mind. On her ears. “Shaw?” she uttered uncertainly.

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t remember the code to disarm the alarm. Didn’t remember disarming it. Somehow, her fingers followed the pattern they had to hit to keep the siren from going off even as she was yanking on the handle, opening the door.

  She stared at him in complete silence, unable to believe he wasn’t some figment of her imagination. She’d spent two weeks seeing him everywhere. Her mind had finally gone into overdrive.

  Moira was afraid of being disappointed. Again. “What are you doing here?” She waited for him to disappear, to turn into thin air. His molecules didn’t rearrange. He was still there.

  She wasn’t stepping back, wasn’t letting him in. After arriving at LAX, he’d spent the better part of the day gathering his nerve together. It had taken him this long to finally come to her house.

  Was this a mistake? Had he blown it?

  Fear galvanized his spine. He wasn’t leaving until he made this right. “A simple ‘Hello, good to see you’ would be nice.”

  “Hello, good to see you,” she parroted, still absolutely stunned, still expecting him to vanish. But just in case he was real, she stepped back, opening the door wider. “What are you doing here?” she repeated.

  He crossed the threshold. Expecting to see opulence, he saw a tastefully decorated living room instead. This could have been anyone’s house.

  It was her house and every nerve ending in his body made him aware of that.

  “Seems my family thinks I need to see you.” He turned around to face her as she closed the door. “Said they’d be forced to kill me if I didn’t.”

  For the first time since before she’d left Aurora, she felt a smile entering her being. “And why would they do that?”

  “Because, according to them, I’ve been a pain in the butt to live with.”

  She had a feeling that it had been more strongly voiced than that. “Oh?”

  He felt irritated. Irritated that he was here, irritated that his emotions wouldn’t allow him just to back away and be a man. Irritated that he needed her more than he needed air. And every ounce of irritation was evident in his voice.

  “Yes, ‘oh.’ Look, I know this doesn’t have a chance in hell of working out—”

  Oh, but it does. And you took the first step. You’re here. “And why is that?”

  He blew out a breath. Was she going to make him draw her a picture? “Because you’re a movie star.”

  Moira cocked her head as if she was fascinated by his reasoning. “And you’re prejudiced?”

  He couldn’t begin to compete, to give her the kind of lifestyle that she was accustomed to. “No, it’s just that you’re used to better things—”

  Shaking her head, she cut him off. “You know, if you’ve come all this way to try to convince me that you don’t want to see me, you could have saved yourself the airfare.”

  “No, that’s just it. I know all the reasons against it, but I still want to see you.”

  He saw her grinning at him. That grin that promised to undo him and bring him to his knees. “Well, then, I’d say you were going about making your case very badly.”

  He’d be the first one to agree about that. Talking had never been his best form of communication. “What should I say?”

  She laced her fingers through his. “You could start by telling me how you feel.”

  “Like a damn fool.”

  Moira laughed. At least he was honest. “Something a little more romantic than that.”

  His tone softened as he caressed her cheek. “A damn fool who’s in love with you.”

  Wonderful things were coming in to displace the sadness she’d been forced to live with these past two weeks. “Better.”

  What the hell, he might as well make a clean sweep of it and tell her everything. “And since you’ve been gone, I can’t seem to concentrate.”

  She drew close to him, drawn by the look in his eyes. “Keep going.”

  He wanted her. Not just for now, but forever. Although this second would be nice, too. “And you’ll probably tell me I’m crazy—”

  She quickly shook her head, stopping him. “You’re veering off the track again.”

  He went for broke, because he couldn’t stand tiptoeing around it anymore. If she turned him down, he’d take it like a man and leave.

  The hell he would, he realized, looking into her eyes. He was going to wage a campaign, a war, until she gave in. And took him as her willing prisoner.

  “Would you tell me I was completely insane if I told you that I wanted to marry you?”

  “No.”

  The word stood alone, without any embellishments. She was paying him back, he thought. “Is that an answer to my proposal?”

  “You haven’t proposed yet,” she replied simply, struggling to keep her emotions in check when all she wanted to do was throw her arms around his neck and scream, “Yes.” “That’s an answer to your question about whether or not I thought you were insane.” And then she grinned so broadly, she was sure her face was going to crack. “You know, for a man of few words, you’re really, really not using them very well.”

  He slipped his arms around her. The look in her eyes told him he had nothing to fear anymore. “Which ones should I use?”

  “Guess.”

  He said the ones that he’d been carrying around in his heart since she’d left. “Will you marry me?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  He couldn’t carry off the deadpan. She laughed at the attempt. “No, my answer is yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  And then, because he’d been raised to be the cautious one, he had to give her a way out. “But there’s so much to work out.”<
br />
  She knew that. She also knew that they had the most important thing down pat. They loved each other and he’d come to tell her that.

  “And we will,” she promised. “One detail at a time. Everything’s possible with love.” Suddenly, she felt lighter than air, even as her body was heating. She rose up on her toes, her body swaying into his. “Let’s start out with the honeymoon.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “See, I knew we were of like minds. Everything else is just secondary.”

  And as he kissed her, Shaw knew she was right.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7039-2

  CAVANAUGH’S WOMAN

  Copyright © 2004 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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  *Unflashed series