The Strong Silent Type

by Marie Ferrarella

  She’d come on to him, she realized. Oh, God, how had that happened? What was she acting on? Did she really feel that attracted to him? No, it was the medication—that’s what it was—taking away the restraints, the walls. Her judgment. Her mind fuzzy, she searched for something plausible to use as an excuse. “I kiss, Hawk. I kiss a lot. Don’t look so uneasy. A kiss isn’t always a prelude to sex—”

  “I wasn’t uneasy,” he snapped. The next moment, he got himself under control. It was a lie. He was uneasy and he had no idea why he was uneasy, why his nerves felt as if they were being pulled apart, which just made the situation that much more irritating. “And before you and I have sex, hell will be selling overcoats.”

  “Charmingly put,” she said. He probably had no idea that if she hadn’t had a healthy self-esteem, that would have gone a long way toward destroying it. “Have I told you how great you are for my ego?”

  Hawk snorted. She was the last person who needed to be treated with verbal kid gloves. “You don’t need me for your ego. You’ve got other guys for that, hanging around like mindless flies.”

  She shook her head, then regretted it. The inside of the car spun a little. “Honey, pure honey on that tongue of yours.” And then she smiled. Well, well, well, he was aware of other men looking at her. Interesting. “So you do notice things sometimes.”

  “I’m a detective. I’m supposed to notice things.”

  “You don’t notice the women drooling after you.”

  There she went, exaggerating again. “Nobody’s drooling,” he heard himself snap.

  Damn it, Cavanaugh was doing it to him again, making him lose his cool, his control. How did she manage to do that when he usually could keep such tight rein on what was happening inside of him? And why did he have to be partnered with her in the first place?

  He realized that she still hadn’t answered his question to his satisfaction. “Why did you kiss me?”

  His profile was rigid. It was the kind of profile, she caught herself thinking, that could have easily been chiseled in rock. No soft edges, no curves, just planes and angles. A born tough guy. “Just the facts, ma’am,’ right?”

  “What?”

  “Joe Friday. Dragnet,” she said.

  She could see that the names of the program and its chief character meant nothing to Hawk. The man needed color in his life. Broad strokes. She had a feeling his life was done in fine-point pencil.

  He sure didn’t kiss that way, a small voice from the inside of her ebbed delirium whispered.

  Teri made the only assumption she could. “I take it you weren’t raised on police dramas the way I was.”

  A great many of the programs had come via cable channels that featured old series from bygone eras. She could remember watching them, sitting on the floor in front of her father’s chair. Once in a while, when police work allowed, he was even in the chair, explaining things to her. Her desire to be a police detective had come just as much from those programs as it had from wanting to emulate her father, to give her something in common with him.

  No, he thought, he wasn’t raised on watching police dramas, he lived police dramas. He’d lost count the number of times the police had come knocking on his parents’ door. A good many times they’d been arrested. He’d watched it all from the closet where his mother made him hide so that social services wouldn’t come to take him away. The way they had the day his parents were murdered.

  He shook his mind free of the memories and shot Teri a look. “You’re changing the subject, Cavanaugh. Again.”

  “No, I’m embellishing on the subject,” she corrected. “Otherwise, everyone talks like you.”

  At least then, people would get to the point once in a while. “Not a bad thing.”

  Now they were on a topic near and dear to her heart. With only two thirds of her mental firing pins in order, she warmed up to the subject. “It is for communication. Nuances are what tell us things about people.”

  “Maybe I don’t want people knowing anything about me.”

  “Sorry, Hawk. This is the Internet age. If you can’t get information about someone one way, you can get it another. In the end, there is no mystery.” He had a very odd look on his face. “Except maybe for what you’re thinking about right now.”

  Finally, they’d reached her housing development. He’d begun to feel as if it was an endless journey and he was stuck making it with her droning on in his ear. Hawk spared her a look as he drove through the entrance. “You’re better off not knowing what I’m thinking now.”

  She was suddenly beginning to feel very, very tired. That, she assumed, was undoubtedly the effects of the medication she’d been injected with. She had to admit she liked the high she’d had just moments ago. Liked, too, the sensation that had permeated her body when she’d kissed him.

  Liked it a lot.

  Liked it better than matching wits with him.

  Okay, it was time to stop yanking his chain. “I kissed you to say thank you. It really is as simple as that,” Teri told him.

  Stirring him up was not a way to say thank you, he thought. “A handshake would have done.” And left him a great deal less unsettled, he added silently.

  She smiled. It hit him right between the eyes. “Not this time.”

  “Say thank you for what?”

  He didn’t even realize what he’d done, did he? That was so typical of him. When it came to complexity, it only involved him. The rest of the world he seemed to view in terms of black and white. She wondered which side he placed her on.

  “You stayed with me at the hospital, when I knew you would have rather hit the street again.” Because she’d asked him to, he had stayed even while the emergency room physician had removed the bullet fragment from her side and had stitched her up. She’d held his hand throughout the whole ordeal, and at times she could feel the probing scalpel, feel the needle despite the injections she’d been given to mute the pain. Hawk had never once given any indication that she’d channeled the pain and squeezed his hand far too hard.

  Hawk dismissed her gratitude as unnecessary. “You had a vise lock on my hand. I figured if I made any sudden moves, you would have ripped out my shoulder.”

  “Not hardly.”

  Something inside of her wanted to kiss him again. Even as the last effects of the painkiller were fading. But because there was no medication to blame it on, she banked the urge down.

  It took her a moment to realize that the car had stopped moving.

  “We’re here,” Hawk told her when she made no move to unbuckle her belt and open the door. Why wasn’t she getting out? Was she weak? He knew she should have stayed in the hospital overnight for observation. The woman didn’t have the sense of a three-minute-old butterfly.

  She took a breath, bracing herself, hoping she wouldn’t embarrass herself when she tried to get out. “Yeah, we are.”

  He needed to get back. He was primary on this investigation and that meant not letting the lead fall into a subordinate’s hands.

  But he never liked leaving anything half done. That included shepherding a wounded partner home. “You want me to come inside with you?”

  She was embarrassing herself and she hadn’t even taken a step out of the car yet. She didn’t like appearing like a weakling. “No, I’ll be all right.” She looked at him significantly. “You’ve done enough penance for one day.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it penance,” he muttered, then allowed a slight smile to take possession of his mouth when she looked at him in abject surprise. “But close.”

  He watched her begin to unbuckle her seat belt, then saw the way she winced. Her wound had to be hurting her like hell. The painkiller must be wearing off by now.

  “That’s going to be tender for a while,” he told her. Moving her hands out of the way, Hawk un-buckled her seat belt for her.

  As his hands brushed against hers, her eyes met his. “What would you know about tender?”

  It was a loaded question and she
knew it, but maybe because, for a fleeting second, she’d come face-to-face with her own mortality, she was feeling a little more reckless today than was her norm.

  “I’ve caught a couple of bullets,” he answered.

  She knew about that, that he’d caught one to the shoulder in his rookie year and another just above his heart a couple of years ago. In both cases, he’d been lucky. Nothing vital had been injured.

  But that wasn’t what she meant. “I wasn’t talking about body pain.”

  The late-afternoon March sun filled the interior of the Crown Victoria, making it warmer than the temperature right outside the windows. Sunbeams got tangled in her hair.

  Hawk looked at her for a long moment. Something tightened in the middle of his gut, fueled by the sharp urge that kept insistently reappearing each time he banked it down.

  He pushed it away again.

  They were partners and while he didn’t exactly relish their partnership, he had to admit Cavanaugh was a good cop—good at her job and honest. That counted for a lot. He didn’t really like having to work with anyone, but he supposed she was better than most.

  Kissing her, making the first move himself this time, would place everything they had so far into severe jeopardy.

  “Guess I don’t know anything at all about it,” he finally said.

  Yeah, he did, but she’d let him have the lie if it made him feel better. This was something she wasn’t up to exploring right now. Not when her brain felt like warm Swiss cheese.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Turning away from him, she started to get out.

  He had a feeling if he let her out of the car on her own, she was going to fall flat on her face. Stifling a sigh, Hawk opened the door on his side, got out and rounded the hood. By the time she’d swung out her legs, he was there, waiting to take her arm.

  “I’m not an invalid, Hawk.”

  If she meant to make him back away, she was going to have to do better than that. He held on to her arm, choreographing her steps to the house. “You pushed me out of the way and got shot yourself, then refused to stay overnight in the hospital, signing out against the doctor’s orders. I think the I word we’re looking for here is idiot, not invalid.”

  She was beginning to get a handle on him. He became gruffer whenever he did a good deed and seemed to be approaching decent human behavior. She held on to him a little more than she was happy about, trying to placate her self-disgust by reminding herself that she was still pumped full of medication, even if she didn’t feel it in a good way anymore.

  “Good thing you didn’t become a doctor. Your bedside manner is really lousy.”

  He brought her to the door, trusting that she would rather go inside on her own power. Besides, he had no desire to run into any of the other Cavanaughs and be detained for questioning. Relating what happened was up to her. He disengaged himself from her. “Then I’d better get going.”

  But as he turned to walk away, she called after him. “Hawk?”

  “What?” Impatience hummed around the single word.

  “Thanks again.”

  He paused, then nodded. If not for her quick action, their positions might have been reversed right now. He wasn’t about to forget that soon. “Yeah, me, too.”

  Turning away, Teri smiled as she let herself into the house. With an annoyingly wobbly, uncertain gait, she headed straight for the stairs and to her room. Any excess strength she had faded the moment she saw her bed. Falling onto it, she was out within three minutes.

  It didn’t even occur to her until later that day that she hadn’t seen her father’s white car parked in the driveway.

  The last person he expected to see walking into the office the following morning came breezing in a few minutes before nine. Hawk put down the statements he’d taken from the victim late yesterday afternoon. Frowning, he was on his feet in less time than it took her to cross the threshold.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Ah, she thought, the dulcet sounds of harmonious camaraderie.

  “I work here, remember?” Teri looked to the far end where her desk was butted up against his. “Or did you give my desk away already?”

  Why did he expect normal behavior from someone who wasn’t normal? “You were shot. You’re supposed to take a few days off to rest.”

  Masking the toll the effort took, she moved past Hawk at a good clip. Her side was hurting today worse than it had yesterday, but she needed to get her mind off the pain and do something other than watch television. Tomorrow, she promised herself, would be better. All she had to do was get past today.

  “It’s a cinch you’ve never been to my house. You can’t rest when you have a fifty-five-year-old man fussing over you.” Reaching her desk, she deliberately didn’t sink down in her chair. She refused to display any signs of weakness in front of Hawk. He’d only use it against her. “This morning, he was coming up with alternate law enforcement careers that would keep me behind a desk.”

  “What were they?”

  He sounded far too interested and she knew he wasn’t thinking of himself. She waved away his question. “Never mind. I love what I do and I’m here.” She nodded as Mulrooney got up from his chair and crossed to her.

  “Welcome back.” He gave her a bear hug. “You okay to be here?”

  “Never better.” She managed to get the remark out without gritting her teeth together. She looked from one man to the other. “Did we get anything out of those guys we caught yesterday?”

  Disgust covered Dan Mulrooney’s broad, florid face. “They clammed up and demanded to talk to a lawyer.”

  She made the natural assumption. “Public defender?” The men looked like two-bit thugs.

  “No, some pricey guy.” She could see that Mulrooney had been as surprised by the piece of information as she was. “Your cousin Janelle was by. Said she’d heard of him.”

  “Where do two-bit burglars get the money for a pricey lawyer?” Teri wanted to know.

  It was a rhetorical question. She didn’t expect to get an answer. But Hawk had been chewing on the same question all evening. “Maybe they’re not working alone but for someone.”

  She caught his wavelength and was off and running, charging her words with all the enthusiasm he lacked. “Someone who can afford it.” Her eyes were positively glowing. She loved when one thing hooked up to another. “Someone big.” She grinned at Hawk. “You know, you don’t talk much, but when you do, it’s worth listening to.”

  “Unlike some people,” he said under his breath. He was angry about her being back so soon. Angry that she was risking her health. And angry that what she did got under his skin the way it did.

  She was back, Teri thought, finally lowering herself into her chair.

  And it felt good.

  Chapter Five

  T eri stopped dead.

  Behind her, the ladies’ room door she’d just come through lightly tapped her as it swung back into place, nudging her out of her trance. Feeling a little woozy, she’d gone in for a couple of minutes respite without several sets of male eyes watching her, most notably Hawk’s. She’d had the feeling all day that he’d been waiting for her to pass out, or visibly droop.

  Which was a great incentive to keep pushing.

  But she hadn’t expected to be waylaid by the sudden appearance of her father walking along on what she deemed now to be her turf.

  “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she crossed to him. Granted, this whole building had once been her father’s domain and she knew he had to miss being here, had to miss being the chief of what had become a damn fine police force. But the first reason that occurred to her for his presence had nothing to do with his having a bout of nostalgia, or meeting up with old friends. It was far more personal than that. And very typical. Since Rose Cavanaugh had disappeared out of their lives, he had transformed from a parent to both mother and father to all of them.

  “You’re not checkin
g up on me, are you?”

  So engrossed in thought, Andrew had all but walked into his daughter. If anything, he knew he had to look more surprised to see her than she him.

  Forcing a smile to his lips, he shook his head. “Hell, no. I know better than that.” And then he deadpanned with a wink. “I’ve got my spies doing that for me.”

  With her father, it wasn’t always easy to know when he was kidding. And she wouldn’t put it past him to have one of his old friends look in on her and then call in with a report. He was like that, letting them independently go their own way and fly high. All the while he secretly held up a net to catch them in case they should fall.

  She scrutinized his face. At least the worried frown wasn’t there anymore, the way it had been yesterday when her father had come home to find her there ahead of him. He’d tried every argument in the book to get her to take a sick day today and rest, but the more he pushed, the more she’d dug in. She supposed that maybe she did possess a little of that superhero complex that Hawk had accused her of having, but that wasn’t anything she was willing to own up to out loud.

  She hooked her arm through her father’s, taking comfort in his strength. Not a day went by when she wasn’t proud to be Andrew Cavanaugh’s daughter.

  “So, what does bring you here?” she asked cheerfully. “Catching up on stories with the guys?”

  He didn’t like lying, especially to his children, but agreeing to the scenario Teri had just provided him with was a lot easier than going into an explanation of what he was really doing here. He’d come to bring to the crime lab the spoon he’d lifted from the diner. He wanted the head tech to match the fingerprints on it against the prints he knew had to be all over the well-worn, much-read copy of Rose’s favorite book, Gone with the Wind. How many times had he teased her that she cared more for Rhett Butler than she did for him? Her answer had always been the same. That until the day that Rhett did come along, he’d do just fine.

  The argument the day she had driven out of his life was that he was afraid that “Rhett” had come—in the guise of his brother Mike. It had been a stupid, stupid argument, and one of the very few times he’d allowed jealousy to get the better of him. And he’d been paying for that stupidity for the past fifteen years of his life.