Cavanaugh Judgment

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Something on your mind, Judge?” she asked mildly, filling a second pot with water and placing it on the front burner. A sealed box of angel hair pasta lay on the counter beside the stove burners.

  He took a breath, as if silently saying now or never. “What are my chances of getting a furlong?”

  She went on working, even as she raised her eyes to his face. She couldn’t gauge what he was thinking. “From work or from me?”

  He never hesitated. But he did, she thought, smile just the smallest bit. What was that all about? “The latter.”

  Dream on, Judge. It’s just not going to happen.

  “About a million to one.” Greer raised her eyes to his just for a fleeting moment. “Possibly even greater than that.”

  It was no more than he apparently expected. “That’s what I thought,” he replied with a nod. “I’ll just tell them no.”

  Now he had her curious. Greer adjusted the temperature under the pot. “Tell who no?” she wanted to know.

  Blake hesitated for a moment, debating just answering her question with a careless shrug as he left the room. But he knew her rather well by now. Greer wouldn’t stop until she found out what he was referring to.

  So he told her and saved them both a lot of needless interaction. “Aurora Memorial Hospital is having one of their fundraisers. They’re trying to raise enough money to build a new leukemia wing.”

  “Worthy cause,” she commented. Greer’s voice was low, but there was no mistaking the genuineness of her feelings.

  That surprised him. He thought the police force was only into pushing their own charities to the exclusion of all else. Apparently there were exceptions.

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “They asked me if I would say a few words to jump-start the donations, get them flowing.”

  She was still waiting for him to come to the heart of his dilemma. When he didn’t, she prodded him. “So far, I don’t see a problem.”

  Blake looked at her, his eyes meeting hers. “You, Detective, you’re the problem.”

  In the middle of purloining a shrimp out of the bowl to sneak a taste, Alexander sprang to her defense. “Hey, go easy on her, Blake.”

  Greer held up her hand for a moment, stilling her silver-haired protector. “That’s okay, Gunny. My fault. I did ask.”

  The water began to boil and she slid out half the spaghetti in the box. The next moment, she’d removed the pot’s lid, broke the spaghetti in half and rained it into the pot. She did the same with the second half.

  Only then did she glance at Kincannon over her shoulder. “You’re afraid I’ll embarrass you?” she asked in a mild tone, as if they were merely discussing the weather.

  It wasn’t her but the situation that embarrassed him. “Most judges don’t have bodyguards.”

  “Most judges didn’t receive a threat on their lives and their family’s lives via their personal laptop,” she pointed out. Greer dusted her hands on the makeshift apron she’d tied on.

  “If they do have bodyguards, those bodyguards look like bodyguards.” And that, he concluded, made his argument for him.

  Stirring the spaghetti, Greer turned her attention back to the shrimp. The judge’s father had already disposed of four and was working on a fifth. Melting butter and garlic in the frying pan, she tossed in the shrimp that had escaped Alexander’s questing fingers and began to stir.

  “I could ask my brother to go with you,” she speculated, “although he probably doesn’t look burly enough to suit your purposes, either.” Chewing on her lower lip, she considered the situation. “Or, I could just go disguised,” she told him brightly.

  “You mean as one of the hostesses serving drinks or appetizers?” He supposed that might work.

  He was in no way prepared for what she was about to say next.

  “No, as your date.”

  He looked at her, the words not registering. “Excuse me?”

  Turning down the heat, Greer rested the stirring spoon on a plate since there apparently was no spoon rest. “I’m assuming that invitees are allowed to bring along a guest. Am I wrong?”

  Hope had sprung eternal—for exactly three seconds before it had sunk to an ignoble death. “No, you’re not wrong.”

  To her it was the perfect solution. “Okay, then it’s all settled. You get to go to the fundraiser. Nobody has to know that I’m guarding you.” The spaghetti was ready. She turned off the heat and began to look for a strainer. “I’ll know.”

  Instead of allowing herself to get deeper into a discussion where she apparently had the opposing view, Greer merely smiled.

  “That, Judge, is the whole point. Knowing your back is covered so that you can relax.”

  A quick search through the cabinets told her that there was no colander. These people really didn’t do any cooking at home, did they? she thought.

  “Having you around has the exact opposite effect.”

  She put her seemingly futile search on hold and turned around to look at Kincannon. “Did you just give me a compliment, Judge?”

  He had, but he hadn’t meant to. “I’ll be in my office,” he told her abruptly, turning on his heel. “Tell me when dinner’s ready.”

  Taking two towels—they didn’t seem to have pot-holders, either—she picked up the pot with the spaghetti and slid the lid back only a fraction in order to drain out the water. Even so, she never missed a step and answered, “Will do, Your Honor.”

  The amusement in her voice followed him all the way down the hall.

  Blake straightened his bowtie, looking at the reflection in his wardrobe mirror to get it right.

  He had his doubts about this, about attending the fundraiser at all with Munro and his henchmen still on the loose out there. Fairly confident that nothing would happen to him in a ballroom full of people, there was still a very small part of him that worried. Not for himself, but for any innocent bystander who might get hurt if Munro did materialize to make an attempt on his life.

  And as for having to go with a bodyguard, that still irritated him. He had no desire to have others think he was being coddled. It was bad enough that the people at the courthouse knew the details. Word had spread with incredible speed within the judicial community, both about Munro’s escape and about the threat that the drug dealer had sent to his laptop. It didn’t exactly take a genius to put two and two together and figure out what Detective O’Brien was doing, hanging around in his courtroom day after day.

  Or what she was doing, going to this fundraiser as his “date.”

  Blake was really leaning toward calling the chairwoman of the gala, making his apologies and canceling his appearance when he came down the stairs.

  Greer had gotten downstairs ahead of him. He could hear her talking to his father. His0 father had just said something to make her laugh and the sound seemed to almost undulate toward him like the movements of a seductive belly dancer.

  He banished the image from his mind.

  This was a bad idea, he decided, going with her under this pretext.

  He was going to tell her that he wasn’t feeling well. She couldn’t try to argue him out of that, whereupon it was more than an even bet that if he told her he’d just decided not to go, she’d handcuff him to the interior of the sedan and drive to the hotel where they were holding the fundraiser.

  Sick it was, he decided. He raised his voice as he approached the living room. “Detective, I’ve thought it over and—”

  That was when it happened. That was the exact moment that he was hit by a Mack truck.

  Or at least that was the way it felt to him. The sight of Greer completely knocked the wind out of him.

  With her light blond hair curled and loose around her shoulders, she was wearing a strapless ice-blue gown, the hem just whispering along the floor as she turned away from his father and toward him. The top part—the bodice he thought he’d heard his wife once tell him it was called—seemed to be twinkling. He realized that there were hundreds of sequins responsible for
that, for catching the light and flashing it back at him like so many tiny, flirtatious stars.

  The rest of her gown, staying as close to her torso as he found himself wishing that he could, hugged her curves. It was only when she walked that he realized there was a slit in the front of her gown that went clear up to her thigh, exposing a near perfect expanse of leg. There was a sudden, almost uncontrollable itch in his fingers. He wanted to touch her.

  He felt as if he was coming unglued.

  The sensuous—it couldn’t be called anything else and still be accurate—smile that greeted him made his insides spasm and tighten as if he’d suddenly received a powerful blow to his stomach.

  Greer’s eyes swept over him as if she was taking every inch of his six-foot-two-inch frame into consideration. “You clean up nicely, Judge.”

  “You, too,” he heard someone with a deep voice murmuring. It was only after several moments that he realized that the words had come from him.

  The smile she gave him in response stole his breath away. Again.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Alexander seemed amused by the exchange he was witnessing. Or maybe it was just the mesmerized look on his son’s face that tickled him.

  “You two just going to stand there, gawking at each other, or are you actually going to go to this begging fest?”

  “Fundraiser, Dad,” Blake corrected him, coming to. “It’s a fundraiser.”

  The snort from Alexander told him that the former gunnery sergeant felt he knew better. “Hey, a rose by any other name…you know.”

  “Give it a rest, Dad,” Blake said, trying to bank down the edge in his voice.

  The doorbell rang before Alexander could fire back at his son.

  Swinging around, Greer instantly tensed. Her hand flew to the pistol that was holstered high on her inner thigh.

  The retrieval had attracted the undivided attention of both men.

  “Damn, but you are a beautiful sight, Detective O’Brien,” Alexander murmured under his breath, his eyes all but glued to the length of her exposed leg. “And I should be twenty years younger.”

  If she heard the senior Kincannon’s declaration, she gave no indication. Her attention was completely focused on the front door and whoever was standing on the doorstep. Her partner was coming to stay with Blake’s father while the judge and she attended the fundraiser, but that didn’t mean that he was the one standing on the other side of the door right now. It could just as easily be one of Munro’s people, ringing the bell to throw her off her guard and gain admittance.

  Holding her weapon with both hands and aiming it at the door, Greer approached it slowly. When she was less than five feet away, she called out, “Who is it?”

  “The Big Bad Wolf,” the deep male voice belonging to the man standing behind the door told her. “Now open up the damn door or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your door down.”

  “House,” she said, relaxing. Lowering her weapon, Greer holstered it again. This time she was very aware that she had an audience. “Or else I’ll blow your house down,” she corrected her partner as she unlocked the door and opened it. “At least get it right if you’re going to quote fairy tales to me.”

  “Sorry.” The apology echoed with sarcasm as Jeff walked in. “I promise to do better next time.” Getting his first glimpse of her, her partner stopped in his tracks. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was staring at her and that he was impressed by what he saw. A low whistle of deep appreciation escaped his lips. “Especially if you promise to wear that dress to work when you finally come back to the office.”

  Greer laughed, shaking her head. “In your dreams, Carson.”

  That’s where she’d be tonight, Blake thought, realizing that his self-imposed celibacy was disintegrating right before his eyes.

  Detective Greer O’Brien was going to be in his dreams.

  Looking just like that.

  Chapter 11

  Given the present circumstances, Blake hadn’t expected to enjoy himself at the fundraiser.

  But he did.

  The evening actually went far better than he thought it would. Because of her.

  After the first hour or so, he even felt himself beginning to relax. The initial tension he’d experienced when he’d arrived left his shoulders.

  But even as that happened, a different sort of tension whispered through him, one he had a hard time defining. He had ceased to be concerned about someone pegging Greer for what she was, a law enforcement agent charged with keeping him out of harm’s way—a fact that had originally threatened his manhood.

  One look at the woman beside him in her present outfit and law enforcement was definitely the last description that came to anyone’s mind. He was even less concerned that somehow one of the food servers that were mingling unobtrusively with the hospital foundation’s invited guests would suddenly pull out a gun and either shoot him or take him prisoner. Those kinds of things took place in movies and in the procedurals that were currently littering the TV airwaves, not in real life. He was fairly certain that Munro had probably done the smart thing and fled the country.

  What he was tense about, he realized as he accepted his second scotch on the rocks from the bartender, was the way he felt himself reacting to the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, hermetically sealed to his side as he interacted with various people who were in attendance tonight.

  The only time he and Greer were separated, and not by all that much distance, was when he took the podium and gave his short address to the other guests. His speech was about the good work that the hospital did as it continued to maintain its high standard of excellence, year after year.

  This was the hospital where, he recalled for the crowd’s benefit, he’d woken up to discover that he could no longer check the box marked “married” on any form. Where he was told that his wife was dead. He knew, even before anyone said anything, that the E.R. team had done everything humanly in their power to bring his wife around. But Margaret had died on that stretch of road where the drunk driver had hit them and just kept going.

  He asked the audience to dig deep into their pockets so that Aurora Memorial could always keep their doors opened and could continue to be on the cutting edge of all the modern advancements that the medical world had to offer.

  When he stepped away from the podium, applause ringing in his ears, he crossed back to the bar and ordered another scotch and soda.

  Greer shadowed his every move.

  “Easy, Judge,” she whispered in his ear, keeping her voice low so that no one could overhear. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was embarrass him. “That’s your third one.”

  Her breath along his neck created a piercing, seductive warmth that went right through him. It took iron will for Blake not to shiver in response.

  Not to kiss her.

  “Counting, Greer?” He’d almost slipped and called her “Detective.” Not something one called their date unless they were locked in a bedroom, role playing, the judge mused.

  “Just looking out for you,” she said with a smile. “I surmise that you want to maintain the proper, dignified front in public.”

  Blake deliberately took a long sip from the drink the bartender had passed to him to show Greer that he was his own person and if he set the glass down—which he did—it was by his own choice, not because she’d subtly suggested that he do it.

  Turning to face her, he was struck again by how beautiful she looked. And by how attracted to her he was. Since they were in a crowded ballroom, he decided he was safe.

  “Do you like dancing, Greer?”

  The smile that curved her lips looked incredibly sensual and seductive. He felt himself responding to a degree he had no longer thought possible. “In general or specifically?”

  Her question amused him. Maybe he had consumed a bit much too quickly, he decided.

  The next moment he dismissed the thought. What he was feeling, Blake told himself, was th
e effect of being here with all those traumatic memories. Not to mention the effect of being here with this woman. The combination was troubling and he’d resorted to what he used to do in college: soak whatever was bothering him in alcohol.

  Unconsciously, he pushed the glass on the bar even farther away. “Both,” he told her.

  “Yes—to both,” Greer replied, her eyes meeting his.

  He felt something undulate in his stomach. Ignoring it, Blake took her hand and wove his way to the space within the ballroom that had been set aside as a dance floor.

  Reaching it, he turned around and took one of her hands, tucking it in his and holding it against his chest while he slipped his other hand around her waist. He caught himself thinking that the woman felt smaller than the image that she projected. Her waist bordered on being tiny.

  The tempo was soft, slow, a melodic old show tune from the forties, and they swayed in time to the melody. Her head was on his shoulder and Blake found himself inhaling the scent that drifted to him from her hair. Something sweet and yet arousing. He could feel his gut tightening again along with a muted anticipation awakening within his body. He tried to bank it down, but he wasn’t quite fast enough.

  Greer tilted back her head to look at his face. “You dance well.”

  “I’m a bit rusty,” he allowed. “I haven’t danced since—I haven’t danced,” he repeated, abruptly terminating the sentence.

  She had a feeling he was going to say he hadn’t danced since the last time he’d done it with his wife. Greer had no desire to dig up old wounds so she didn’t press for him to continue.

  Instead, she nodded amiably. “Some things you don’t forget no matter how much time passes. Like riding a bicycle, or dancing. Or making love.”

  And if she were tortured from now until the apocalypse, she wouldn’t have been able to say where that last statement had come from or how it had found its way to her lips. All she could do was pretend she wasn’t as stunned by it as he appeared to be.

  In an effort to divert his attention, she just continued talking. “Do you like Cole Porter?”