Hot and Irresistible (8 page)

What to do? Cleveland or Bebe? He couldn’t have both. He could walk away from Bebe or he could walk away from this case, forget the whole damn thing. He had vacation time coming, just let this blow over. But could he turn his back on someone breaking the law? And not just any law but the sort that sent Sly to the grave? The day Sly died, Donovan swore he’d make damn sure this didn’t happen to another great guy, another friend, another partner. Walking away was not making amends. Then again, Sly was the one telling Donovan to take the girl. “Well, fuck.” This is what happened when you listened to a…ghost.

Well, dang, this was rock star parking for a change, Bebe thought as she pulled right up in front of her little brick apartment row house. Least something had gone right, because Prissy’s spell on nonfraternization sure didn’t. They only thing that saved Bebe’s ass…literally…was McCabe confessing his plan of connecting Ray Cleveland to the morgue murder. Did Boston boy expect her to help him find evidence against Cleveland because he was a good kisser?
Sweet thing
…she wanted to tell McCabe…
nobody’s that good
.

Bebe killed the engine, locked the PT, then stepped onto the stoop. No kitty at the window? No kitties meowing pitifully by the door as if she’d been gone a month and they were all a breath away from starving to death? Cats were drama queens in fur coats. They probably got into the catnip. Kitty pot, kept them happy for hours. Bebe unlocked her door and stepped inside, the streetlight illuminating the hallway, broken glass crunching under her shoes. She reached for the hall lamp, except it wasn’t on the table but on the floor broken. Catnip didn’t do this. Nor had cats torn the stuffing out of her sofa and chair, ripped her picture of Robert E. Lee off the wall, turned drawers upside down.

Bebe pulled her weapon. The cats! What if the asshole who did this to her apartment did something to them? Keeping the lights off so as not to be an easy target, she hunkered down. No one behind the upended davenport or in the hall. Her bedroom? Clear. If you didn’t count the clothes on the floor, bed torn apart, and closet contents scattered everywhere. Another crunching footstep sounded from the living room. She edged around the corner and spied the silhouette of a man, gun drawn, flattened against the wall. She jumped up, aimed, yelling, “Police. Drop your weapon,” just as Donovan did the very same thing with his weapon pointed at her. Face-to-face, gun to gun.

“Shit!”

“It’s me, McCabe.”

“Like I said…shit.” She holstered her gun.

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but in Savannah cops aren’t loved by one and all.” She headed for the kitchen, the French doors already open. Kicking aside pots, pans, strewn cereal, and a brand-new package of Oreos on the floor, she made it to the light switch, then turned on the can opener, the hum filling the apartment.

“What the hell are you doing?” Donovan asked, framed in the doorway, hands in pockets looking perfectly at ease in her mess making her wonder about his housekeeping skills.

“Herding cats. And here’s Mr. Gatsby right now,” she said, the calico slinking around Donovan’s ankles. “And Carraway and Miss Daisy.” Bebe let out a big breath as the trio entered. “All present and accounted for, thank God…and I mean that,” she said casting her eyes skyward. In unison the fur balls leaped onto the counter for the can opener, except for Daisy, who only made it halfway and fell backward. Donovan sprang to life, doing the quick save and snagged Daisy midair.

“Guess this one needs jumping lessons.”

“There’s blood on your hand. Did you get cut on the glass in the hallway?”

“Not me.” Donovan held up the cat. “It’s on her paw and she’s holding it sort of funny, not that I’m any kind of a cat—” Bebe grabbed Daisy as Donovan finished, “expert. There’s blood on the back leg and it’s…dripping. Got a towel?”

“They hurt my cat,” Bebe hissed, anger nearly frying her hair. “Why hurt my cat? It’s a cat, not the goddamn FBI for chrissake! I’m going to kill the no-good mother-fucking bastard who—”

“See, now that’s how you’re supposed to handle Dara.” He passed Bebe a towel. “Let’s get the cat to the vet. I’ll drive.”

Her gaze met his eyes dark with concern. He…cared about a cat he never met till now. “I just called you shit.”

He grinned and the dizzies intensified. “I’ve been called worse.” He put his hand on her back and she instantly felt better. “Let’s go.”

She stopped in the hallway. “I can manage. You don’t have to do this.”

“We have a bleeding cat; we’ll argue later.” He hustled her out the door, then snapped up copies of
Southern Living
and
Police Digest
and dropped them over the broken glass. “No more cut cats.”

“You double-parked the Jeep?” she said as she got in, Daisy meowing and hissing like something from Animal Planet.

“I spotted your car, and your door was wide open. No lights on. Not a good sign.”

Bebe pulled off her sweater, leaving her in her camisole. She wrapped the sweater around Daisy to try and calm her down. Right now it would take a tranquilizing dart. “The Barkley Animal Clinic’s over on Abercorn,” she said as Donovan fired up the Jeep.

“Barkley?” That got a chuckle. “You got to be kidding.” He cast Bebe a quick look. “Nice duds.”

“Kmart special. Just drive, okay. And the vet’s name is Rex Barkley and rumor has it he’s a werewolf. He’s some hunk of a guy and everyone knows werewolves are incredible lovers. Nice combo, least the women around here think so. Bet you don’t get stories like that in Boston.”

“We have the Sox; that trumps werewolves.”

“In your dreams, Yankee boy. There’s the place,” she said pointing to a white clapboard building up ahead while Daisy squirmed and hissed. Donovan pulled into the parking lot between the clinic and the Garden Tea Room.

“We have an injured cat here,” ordered Donovan in his best cop voice, which propelled everyone at the clinic into immediate action. And two hours later, Bebe, Donovan, and one cat in a purple leg cast that covered down to her paw stood in the hallway of the apartment with two other cats meowing and playing rub-the-ankles.

Donovan set the broken lamp back on top; the thing had missing glass and was listing to one side, but it still worked. He draped his arm around Bebe. “Well, kid, somebody was looking for something. This is not just a pissed-off ransacking job for the hell of it.”

“How can you tell?”

“No spray paint maligning your parentage or your sweet little body parts. Always signs of a breaking-and-entering job being personal.” He took an upset drawer from the floor and dumped the rest of the stuff on the floor. “Use this as a bed for our patient. You check if the cats have food and water; I’ll clean up the glass. We’ll deal with the rest of this mess tomorrow.”

“Really, you don’t have to stay.”

He ran his hand through his disheveled black hair. He looked tired to the bone, and she knew she looked worse. “In case you didn’t get the message, someone wants what you have, whatever that may be. And I’m guessing they didn’t find it and they want it bad enough to come back here again. We’re partners, remember.”

Donovan righted the davenport; it landed on its feet with a solid thud. “I’ll take the couch, you take the bedroom.” She put Daisy in the drawer, then went into the kitchen and filled the water and food bowls. When she got back to the living room, Donovan was lying on the davenport, eyes closed, shoes off. “Go to sleep, Bebe. See you in the morning.”

She studied her little apartment and all her earthly possessions that weren’t that much except they were hers. This apartment was the one place she felt secure, at home because it was…home. And now…She felt so cold. Violated. “This is house rape. You know how many times I consoled victims who had their place broken into by telling them to get a security system and they’d feel safe again. I was an idiot. What a bunch of crap. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe here again and I’m a cop. Do you really think they’ll be back?”

Donovan opened one eye and this time his smile was menacing and a little scary without a hint of charm anywhere. “Damn, I hope it’s tonight. Got any idea what they’re looking for?”

“I’m a cop in a small city; I make squat, so we can rule out chunks of cash.” Bebe sat down next to Daisy all scrunched up in the drawer. From the floor Bebe snagged the tartan plaid Christmas tablecloth she’d bought at a flea market but never used and snuggled it around the cat. Gatsby plopped on Donovan’s chest, Carraway on his crotch and Bebe suddenly wanted to be a cat. Damn Prissy’s spells. “Everything I own is secondhand. I even get my clothes at a thrift store.”

“Except for the Kmart camisole.”

“After my IRA, Roth, mutual funds, and savings bonds, there’s not much left for shopping.”

“I sense some security issues.”

“Security fetish.” She gathered up the brown throw that had been draped across the davenport. Wrapping it around her bare shoulders, she leaned back against the upturned chair. “There’s nothing here worth taking. No antiques, no jewelry. Dara never gave me anything except grief.”

“You said you changed your name and I wondered about Fitzgerald. And you took on Daisy and Carraway and Gatsby. You’re the loner who never fit in.”

“Except Gatsby was rich. I still can’t imagine why someone would break in here.”

“What about the cases you’re working on? Do you keep notes, files? A computer?”

“Computer’s at the station. I have notes on the morgue murder. I’ve been working on it whenever I get a chance, but no one’s interested except…” Her eyes met Donovan’s across the dark room.

“Ray Cleveland?”

“I was thinking
you
,” she said softly.

“Now that I’m trying to tie Cleveland to the murder. Yeah, you’re right those notes would come in handy. And I did get here right after you did.” He yawned and snuggled into the davenport. Now Bebe wanted to be the davenport. She was going to beat Prissy over the head with that darn spell book. “It would have been easy enough for me to raid your apartment looking for a notebook, then when you drove up sneak out the back and come in the front. Act as if it were the first time I was here. It fits pretty damn good.”

“On second thought, it doesn’t fit at all.” She closed her eyes and yawned. “If you’d been the son of a bitch who’d hurt the fur balls, they wouldn’t be stretched out on top of you now. Being mean to animals is not much different than being mean to kids, the sign of a sick, sick person. But why
did
you show up here?”

“I’m thinking of taking a vacation…to Savannah. I wanted you to know and see what you thought about the idea of me getting off the case, letting someone else go after Cleveland. Any suggestions?”

Of all the things Donovan could have said, never in a million years would she have expected him to say that. Her breathing kicked up a notch, and she wasn’t half as tired as she was a minute ago. “Well, Savannah’s a great place for a vacation. In fact long vacations here are best, so you can really get to know the restaurants and people, and I think the people would like to get to know you.”

“And maybe you can take time off, too.” His eyes were still closed, but he smiled, his face relaxed, even happy. She’d never seen him that way since he got here. He was always focused and on the job, doing the right thing, asking the right questions. Donovan McCabe was always the cop…till right now. Her heart skipped around in her chest. He was taking this vacation for her, at least part of it, and no guy had ever done something like this for her before. Heck, she was impressed if a guy picked up the tab for a beer on a date. She had some pretty rotten dates, but this was not one of them. This was an exceptional man doing something exceptional for her that had possibilities of growing into
them
. How did this happen? How’d she get so lucky?

At the moment she had two choices—one that kept her where she was, sleeping against the back of a toppled chair, the other was not to stay here and it had nothing to do with going into her bedroom. She could take a chance. She stood.

Donovan cranked open one eye. “Going to bed?”

“I think so.” She took the cats from Donovan and put them in the drawer beside Daisy, then took the throw from her shoulders and draped it over him. “Spring evenings can get kind of chilly in Savannah.” She kicked off her shoes and put her gun and badge under the chair, where she noticed his were stashed. Picking up a corner of the blanket, she sat on the edge of the cushion.

“Yeah, chilly.” He kept his eyes on her and his went from brown to black. He scooted over, putting his back against the back, his front to her, then she crawled in beside him. Her legs snuggled next to his and she bunched her arms up tight against her chest because holding on to Donovan seemed kind of forward. Duh, like crawling into bed with him wasn’t forward? She hesitantly slid her arm around his middle. He had a nice middle, all tight and strong and no flab anywhere. Donovan McCabe was all man, she never doubted that for a minute.

“Don’t want to fall off the couch?”

Her nose touched the tip of his, his eyes soft and accepting. “Thanks for all that you did tonight. I’m not used to the help.”