Cavanaugh Judgment

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was Blake. He sounded as if he was close by. There was no other gunman she realized, cursing herself.

  The next moment, Blake walked into the bedroom. And stopped dead.

  She’d been played, Greer thought, furious. The second she’d realized that, she knew exactly what Munro’s next move was going to be. To kill Blake.

  There were two ways to go. She could either dive for her weapon or throw herself over Blake and take the bullet she knew with certainty was coming. There was no time to dive for the gun and get Munro.

  Greer did the only thing she could, she threw her body in front of Blake, at the same time crying, “My thigh,” to him and praying he understood.

  Everything happened in a blur.

  By throwing herself on Blake, Greer managed to get him out of the line of fire.

  But not without a price.

  Munro’s shot went into her shoulder, even as Blake, grabbing her, tried to twist her away and push her beneath him.

  As she went down, Greer felt Blake’s hands grope under her skirt and knew he’d understood. He’d secured her smaller, secondary weapon, pulling it free of its holster. From the floor, he shot straight up, getting off a shot that miraculously went straight into Munro’s neck.

  Blood spurted as the latter tried to shriek. The sound came out a guttural gurgle. Trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands, Munro sank down to his knees, then fell over.

  Groggy, light-headed, Greer crawled over to the fallen drug dealer, putting her own hands over the hole in his neck. She needed to stem the flow before he bled out. Right now, it seemed next to impossible.

  “911,” she cried out to Blake, pressing the heel of her hand against the hole. “Call 911.”

  Blake was already on his cell phone, giving the pertinent information to the dispatcher on the other end of the line. Finished, he dropped his cell phone on the bed and focused his attention on Greer, not the man most likely dying in his bedroom.

  That was when he saw the blood all along her shoulder and arm. “You’re bleeding,” he cried, horrified.

  “I am?” She was still feeling numb, detached from her own body. Disoriented, Greer looked down at her torso. He was right, she thought. That had to be her blood, not Munro’s. Taking a deep breath, she could now feel her insides beginning to shake. She didn’t have time for this.

  Her eyes swept over Blake. No blood. Good. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “I’m fine,” he snapped. Blake was angry at himself for not coming upstairs sooner. Angrier still when he thought that he might have lost her altogether. He wanted to hold Greer but he was afraid to touch her, afraid that he would only make things worse and hurt her. “Damn it, Greer, when are you going to learn you’re not a human shield?”

  “Easy. When you stop having people shoot at you.” It took effort to talk. Her strength seemed to be deserting her at an alarming rate.

  Was it her imagination, or was that the sound of sirens in the background?

  “Do you think maybe you could take over?” she asked Blake, laboring over each word. “I’m not sure I can press down hard enough.”

  He looked down at the man who for almost the past four weeks had been such a threat to him. He didn’t look so foreboding now. Eddie Munro’s eyes were staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Blake bent down and felt for a pulse. There was none.

  “I don’t think any amount of pressure is going to help, Greer,” he told her gently. “Munro’s dead.” Blake took another look at her shoulder. It appeared worse than he’d first thought. Blood was oozing down her arm. “You’re the one who needs to have pressure applied to her wound.”

  As if in denial of his assessment, Greer rose shakily to her feet.

  “No, I’m fine,” she protested, but her voice sounded reedy and thin to her ear.

  That was when the light-headedness really caught up to her. She was vaguely aware of people coming into the room as the room began to spin. And then, abruptly, the people seemed to disappear, fading off into nothingness.

  The fire in her shoulder overwhelmed her at the same time the rest of the room vanished.

  When Greer regained consciousness, for a moment she had no recollection of what had happened, no idea what day it was or where she was. The scene around her came into focus by degrees.

  She was aware of motion, of a faintly antiseptic smell and of someone holding her hand tightly. Greer had the faint sense that if whoever it was let go, she would wind up floating away.

  Opening her eyes, she saw that Blake was sitting beside her. He was the one holding her hand so tightly.

  Someone she didn’t recognize was next to him. It took her another couple of seconds to realize that the man was a paramedic.

  What had happened? How had she gotten here?

  “Welcome back,” Blake said, relief and emotion drenching every syllable.

  She raised her head. The effort caused a herd of buffalo to pound their hooves across her forehead. She dropped her head back down. The swaying motion was making her nauseous. “Am I in an ambulance?”

  “Yes,” Blake answered.

  She didn’t belong in an ambulance. She had a report to write up. “Why?”

  “Because the hospital is too far away for me to run there with you in my arms,” Blake informed her simply.

  “I don’t need a hospital,” Greer protested. She tried to get up again only to have him push her back down. It didn’t require much effort on his part and that really upset her.

  “You need a keeper,” Blake told her, “but a hospital’ll do for now.”

  “You’re very lucky, Detective,” the paramedic chimed in. “A little bit to the left and it would have gone through your heart. And you would have been on your way to the coroner instead.”

  “Lucky,” Greer murmured. The buffalo herd was fading, but her head was beginning to spin big-time.

  She was going to pass out again, she thought.

  Greer tightened her grasp on Blake’s hand, or at least tried to. She felt weaker than a day-old kitten. “Don’t go anywhere,” she whispered to Blake.

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” he assured her with barely harnessed feeling.

  She only heard the first word.

  “They want you to stay overnight to be observed,” Blake told her as she struggled to get dressed. He was torn between helping her and forcing her to remain. From where he stood, it would take very little strength for the latter.

  It was several hours later. The E.R. physician had removed the bullet, cleaned out her wound and bandaged it. And while she was waiting for all that to happen, in between the tests they’d forced her to take, she’d told Blake about what Munro had said to her when they were alone. That he was the one behind the car accident that had killed his wife.

  The news had stunned him into silence for a few moments. But then, to her amazement, Blake seemed to take it in stride and said the debt had been paid. Munro was dead.

  “I really think you should listen and stay overnight,” he pressed. He had come very close to losing her tonight. It brought home to him just how much he’d come to care for this woman fate had brought into his life for a second time.

  “I don’t want to be observed,” Greer insisted. “I’m fine, except for the hole in my shoulder.”

  “And the blood loss,” Blake patiently pointed out.

  “Being manufactured and replaced even as we speak,” she assured him cheerfully.

  She looked down at the pantyhose in her hand. There was no way she was going to be able to get them on. With a half shrug, she stuffed them into the purse that was resting on the bed.

  Blake pulled the purse away from her. “Damn it, woman, are you always going to be this stubborn?”

  The answer required no thought. “Pretty much. But you don’t have to worry about that.” It was an effort to sound cheerful, but she’d already promised herself that when this moment came, she wasn’t going to give in to emotion, wasn’t going to wish that they had longer
. It was what it was and now it was time to move on. For both of them. “With Munro dead, looks like you’re about to get your life back.”

  “Yeah,” Blake agreed, his voice flat. He blew out a breath. Now or never. “What if I told you I don’t want it back?”

  She stopped struggling with the buttons on her shirt. “I’m not following you. You liked being threatened?”

  “I’ve discovered that I like the side effects of being threatened.” She was still looking at him as if he was delivering a lecture in a foreign language. Frustrated, Blake blew out another breath. “Damn it, Greer, do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “That might be nice,” she responded. “My brain’s a little fuzzy right now. I’m liable to think the wrong thing.”

  She was doing this on purpose, he thought. “This doesn’t come easy for me.”

  “Someone once told me that nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Or maybe that was on the inside of a fortune cookie, I’m not sure.” She ran a hand across her forehead. She was still a little light-headed, this time from the painkillers they’d give her while working on her shoulder. “It’s all kind of muddled.”

  “Okay, I’ll spell it out.” If he had to, so be it. “But before I do, you have to promise me that you’re going to stop throwing yourself on top of me.”

  Her grin was wicked. “I thought you liked that part.”

  That wasn’t it and she knew it. “Not when there’s gunfire involved.”

  He seemed to be missing a very salient point. “If I hadn’t thrown myself in front of you, Munro would have killed you—and you wouldn’t have been able to get my backup weapon,” she pointed out. “Nice shot, by the way.” She stopped struggling with her clothes and paused to look at him. “You didn’t tell me you knew your way around firearms.”

  He would have thought that was a given, considering his background. “Knowing my way around guns is part of having a father who spent his life as a marine. If you want your dad to pay attention to you, you pay attention to what he pays attention to.” Not to mention that, for the first time in his life, he was grateful for the career his father had chosen.

  “And you’re changing the subject,” Blake accused. If he was going to say this, he needed to say it now, before his courage flagged. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but please just shut up and listen.” His hand on her good arm, he forced her to sit down again. “I don’t want my old life back,” he repeated. “I want the new one, the one that I’ve been living with you.”

  She raised her eyes to his face but said nothing.

  The silence got to be too much for him. Why wasn’t she saying anything? Was he wrong? He’d felt sure that she felt about him the way he did about her, but now—“Say something.”

  “You told me to shut up and listen,” she reminded him innocently.

  “Now I’m telling you to talk.”

  She didn’t want to get swept away, didn’t want to risk her heart. “You want to keep on seeing me?”

  “In a word, yes. But I want to do more than that.”

  “More than see me,” she repeated. “You want to touch me?” she asked, humor curving her mouth.

  “I want to marry you.”

  She wasn’t prepared for that.

  The air rushed out of her lungs. It took Greer more than a few seconds to recover and pull herself together. Her first reaction was to want to throw her arms around his neck and cry, “Yes,” but she knew better. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t believe him. Couldn’t let herself get carried away.

  “You don’t mean that,” she told him quietly.

  “Yes, I do,” he insisted. He’d never meant anything more in his life. Especially now after what she’d told him about Margaret. Life changed in a heartbeat. He wanted his heart beating next to hers for as long as they both had.

  Greer shook her head. “That’s just the adrenaline talking,” she insisted, hating every word she was uttering. “We’ve just gone through a life-and-death situation. Our whole relationship is based on a life-and-death scenario. You’re not up to making any rational decisions right now.”

  The hell he wasn’t. “I know what I feel, Greer,” he told her firmly. “I’m in love with you.”

  But Greer refused to be swayed. “No, you know what you think you feel. In a week, when you’re back in your courtroom, going about your daily routine, you won’t feel the way you do right now.”

  Blake turned the tables on her. “And what is it that you feel?” He waited, knowing that her answer was the crucial one. That his whole fate hung in the balance. If she told him she didn’t love him, it would change everything. Not the way he felt about her, but it would change the scheme of the future he was envisioning.

  That wasn’t the point, Greer thought. “What I feel doesn’t matter, Blake.”

  He took her hand, forcing her to look into his eyes. “It does to me.”

  She loved him. It had hit her like a ton of bricks when she thought Munro was going to kill him. She was willing to die in his place, not because it was her job, but because she loved him and wanted him to live no matter what.

  He was still waiting, she thought. Waiting for her to tell him how she felt. “I can’t tell you.”

  Blake didn’t understand. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll just use it against my argument.” She watched as the smile unfurled on his lips a fraction at a time until it seemed to take over his entire face. “Don’t grin at me like that.”

  “Why not?” He slipped his arm around her and drew her closer to him. “You all but admitted that you love me.”

  “We’re not talking about how I feel about you, we’re talking about you.”

  “We’re talking about us,” he corrected. “And you’re wrong, this isn’t adrenaline, or something that’s just part of a temporary rush. I’ve been in love before, Greer. I know exactly what it feels like. It feels good. It feels right. The only rush I get is when you’re in my arms, when I’m kissing you, when I’m making love with you. No guns are involved then. Now, once and for all, do you or don’t you love me?” he pressed.

  He had her back to the wall. There was no way she could lie.

  “I love you,” she admitted. But as he moved to kiss her, she put her hand on his chest, holding him in place. “I’d still rather you took time to let the situation cool off.”

  “I can if you want me to,” he agreed. “But the feeling will still be the same.” He took her free hand in both of his. “None of us know how much time we have. Today is all there might be. I don’t want to waste a single minute away from you. I don’t want to put my life on hold anymore. I don’t want to get myself lost in my work.” The way he had when Margaret died. “The only ‘getting lost’ I want to do is with you. Now, we can wait if you want to—because I sure as hell don’t—or you can give me your answer now and we can go home and start planning the rest of our life together. The choice is yours.”

  She wasn’t that sure about that. “And if I say wait?”

  He sighed. “Then I’ll wait. Not patiently,” he promised, kissing first her lips, then her forehead, then the hollow of her throat. “But I’ll wait.”

  He knew it made her crazy when he littered her skin with small, tantalizing kisses like that, she thought. Despite everything she’d been through tonight, her pulse was racing again. The man had some kind of magic power over her, there was no other way to describe it.

  “You don’t play fair,” she groaned, feeling herself begin to melt.

  He laughed, kissing the side of her neck. “Playing fair wasn’t part of the initial deal.”

  She was breathing hard and definitely not thinking clearly. But she was rejoicing. Every single inch of her was rejoicing.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “How’s that again?”

  “Yes,” she repeated with effort, “I’ll marry you.”

  He laughed as triumph soared through him. “That’s all I wanted to hear.” He got off the bed, still hold
ing her hand. “Let’s go home.”

  “In a second.” Standing up next to him, Greer wrapped her good arm around his neck, leaned against him and sealed the bargain with a heated kiss that promised to go on for a very long time.

  Which was just fine with both of them.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5669-3

  CAVANAUGH JUDGMENT

  Copyright © 2010 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

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  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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  * Cavanaugh Justice

  * Cavanaugh Justice

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  ** Capturing the Crown

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  ‡The Doctors Pulaski

  ‡The Doctors Pulaski

  ‡‡Mission: Impassioned

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  * Cavanaugh Justice