Internal Affair (18 page)

“But he had you.” Her observation caught him by surprise, but as he started to demur, Maggi said, “Anyone can see how he feels about you. Personally, I think you worked miracles with him.” She kept an eye on the kitchen doorway, waiting for Patrick to return. She didn’t want him to hear her talking to his uncle about him. “When I first met him, I wouldn’t have guessed that he had any family ties at all.”

“He runs deeper than most people know,” Andrew told her.

Just then, she saw Patrick working his way toward them. He held a drink in each hand. He’d not only topped off her glass, but gotten a new one of his own as well. “I think I see my drink coming.”

One of the things Andrew attributed his longevity to was his keen sense of survival. “I’d better slip away before he thinks we’re conspiring against him.” He smiled at her. “Nice talking to you.”

By the time she said, “Same here,” Andrew had already disappeared into the crowd.

But not soon enough for Patrick to miss his presence. He handed Maggi her glass. “What were you and Uncle Andrew talking about?”

She surprised herself with how easily she could slip into a lie.

“My dad.” Maggi consoled herself with the fact that she hadn’t told him a complete lie. Andrew
had
mentioned her father. “The two of them worked together a time or two.”

Patrick groaned.

She didn’t think what she’d said merited that kind of response. “What’s wrong?”

“Cousins, six o’clock. A whole flock of them.”

Before she knew it, Patrick took her hand and ushered her toward the patio door and the yard that lay beyond. But their path of escape was cut off. Too many bodies in the way to reach the exit in time.

His cousins descended on him before he ever had a chance.

Left with no choice, Patrick surrendered. He introduced her to his uncle Andrew’s daughters, Callie, Teri and Rayne and braced himself.

The next five hours slipped by faster than she thought possible. And then she was saying good-night, promising to return some other day as Patrick all but hurried her into his car.

She didn’t stop smiling all the way to her house, but she had to admit, when they arrived there, she half expected Patrick to stop his car only long enough for her to get out. When he cut off the engine and walked her to her door, she knew she believed in the miracle of Christmas.

Maggi took out her key. “I had a wonderful time, Cavanaugh. Thanks for inviting me.”

“You already said that,” he reminded her. “In the car.”

The man did not take thanks graciously, she thought. “Maybe it bears repeating.”

There was a leaf in her hair. She’d brushed against a tree branch getting into his car. Patrick removed it, his fingers touching her hair. Needs rose a little higher. “And maybe you’re just nervous.”

Breathe, Mag, breathe.
“What would I have to be nervous about?”

He nodded at the door behind her. He noticed she wasn’t opening it. “Maybe you’re afraid I’ll ask myself in.”

“And maybe I’m afraid you won’t,” she countered.

Somehow his hands found themselves around her waist. Even through the coat, she felt small. “Anybody ever tell you you’re pushy?”

“I get that all the time.” She took a breath.
Mistake number five hundred and twelve.
“So, would you like to come in?”

Yes,
his brain responded. Which was exactly why he tried to refuse. “It’s late. I’d better not.”

He was wavering, she could see it. He was as uncertain about all this as she was. Two people in a boat made out of paper, approaching the rapids. She turned her face up to his. “Whatever you say.”

He started to leave, he really did. His foot was poised to pivot away from her and take the first step that would lead him from the apartment door to his car.

But somehow, he couldn’t push off. Not when the moonlight was glistening along her lips. Not when every fiber of his being wanted him to kiss her.

“How come you don’t have any mistletoe?”

She blinked. Had she heard him right? “What?”

“In your doorway. You have the door gift-wrapped with a wreath smack in the middle, but you don’t have any mistletoe.”

“I thought it might be overkill.” She raised herself up ever so slightly, bringing her mouth even closer. Tantalizing him. “But if you’d like, you could pretend there’s a mistletoe hanging right there.” She pointed overhead.

He never took his eyes off her. “Works for me.”

The next moment, he’d enveloped her in an embrace that shut out the world and opened the door to a far more intimate, dangerous place.

Chapter 18

A
s he assaulted her senses with openmouthed kisses, Patrick took the key from her. Though it felt as if his hands never left her body, somehow he managed to open her front door.

The instant he did, he moved them inside, away from prying eyes. She heard the door shut, felt the warm flare of intimacy taking hold.

The whole room was spinning as if she’d consumed more than her share of alcohol instead of the very little that she had. Maggi drew her head back, dragging in the air she so badly needed.

Something was happening here, she thought. Something very special. She didn’t want to name it.

Maggi draped her arms around his neck. “Smooth,” she commented, as her eyes indicated the door.

He turned on the light. He wanted to see her, all of her.

The soft nap of the velvet aroused him as it moved against his palms.

“Necessary.” Where was the zipper on this thing? He couldn’t find one. “You don’t want to be arrested on Christmas Eve for indecent exposure.”

Unable to hold back, Maggi rained kisses on his face, his throat. The eagerness built. Her heart started to hammer faster again. “Am I going to be indecently exposed?”

“Just as fast as I can figure out how to get this dress off you,” he breathed.

Maggi took a step back. She smiled up into his eyes as she reached behind her neck and undid three tiny hooks that held her gown close to her. The two ends parted, sighing as they slid from her shoulders.

Patrick felt his body tighten like a string being drawn across the bridge of a violin. He tugged on the fabric still hugging her waist. The top of her dress sagged the rest of the way down to her hips. He placed his hands over them, bringing Maggi closer to him as his mouth covered hers.

The velvet moved from her hips and sank to the floor. When he finally looked at her an eon later, she stood before him wearing only her heels and a small gold locket around her neck.

Perfect.

Swallowing did nothing to alleviate the dryness in his mouth.

“Nothing indecent about this,” he murmured.

The look in his eyes made her feel beautiful. And so eager she could barely stand it. Her hands flew as she unbuttoned, unzipped and pulled, bringing him to the same stage of undress as her within several hard heartbeats.

The rest became a blur of pleasuring, of reexploring and reclaiming. It was both familiar and new. And very, very special.

Trembling, she cleaved her body to his. Soft against hard. Desire spiked through her like an erratic pulse. She was certain he was going to take her right there, before the darkened Christmas tree. Heat traveling through her at lightning speed, she reached for him.

He chose that moment to sweep her from the floor and pick her up in his arms. His voice was low, raspy. “Your bedroom.”

She wasn’t even sure if she’d heard him. There was this rushing noise in her ears again and all she wanted was to make love with him right here, right now.

“What?”

“Your bedroom, woman,” he growled. He didn’t want to take her a second time on the floor, as if he was some kind of animal that couldn’t contain himself. The least he could do was offer her the nicety of a bed. “Where is it?”

“Where I left it.” For just a beat, her mind went blank. “Back there.” She pointed vaguely to the rear, then framed his face with her hands as she kissed him hard, excitement racing through her at speeds so great Maggi didn’t think she would ever catch her breath again.

As she felt him cross the threshold, she remembered the state in which she’d left the room. There were clothes all over the bed and draped on the chairs.

“It’s messy,” she warned.

“It’s about to get messier.”

Without looking, he used his elbow to clear away a space as he laid her down. The next second, he was there beside her, his body twining with hers.

She had no time to protest. Patrick’s mouth was over hers, his hands sweeping along her body, making it hum songs she never thought it knew.

Clothes tumbled to the floor as she and Patrick twisted and turned, finding new places along each other’s bodies, finding new highs.

She wanted this to go on forever. No tomorrows, no yesterdays; they were both framed in lies. All she wanted was now. Forever now.

Now was pure.

She tightened around him when he entered her, lifting her hips from the bed, losing herself entirely in the act. Praying that he would remember this moment when the rest happened.

“You keep looking at your watch, Mag-pie. You still have something in the oven?”

Preoccupied, Maggie had entered the kitchen to get a bottle of cider from the refrigerator. A few feet away was a long dining room table, formally set. Twelve close friends, both her father’s and hers, milled around, catching up and waiting for dinner to be served.

But Patrick wasn’t among them.

He’s not coming. What did you expect? Flowers? Christmas presents? Snap out of it, Mag. You’re a modern woman, not some Victorian wuss.

Her hormones were all over the board today. She felt like crying, like laughing. Like running to the window to watch for him. Like throwing up because she was so nervous.

All morning, she’d been completely out of synch. She chalked it up to rushing around so much. But she’d wanted everything to be perfect.

As if it mattered. The people out there didn’t care. They were her friends.

And he was…

He was a definite unknown in all this.

Patrick had left her apartment shortly before two, despite the fact that she’d harbored the secret hope he would spend the night. But that would have meant waking up next to her on Christmas morning. Too much commitment on his part, she supposed.

Apparently so was showing up for Christmas dinner.

She turned around, sparkling cider bottle in hand. She wasn’t about to lie to her father, even if she couldn’t tell him the full story.

“No, Dad, I thought maybe my partner and his sister would show up.” She closed the door. “I invited them over.”

Matthew quietly studied his daughter as she spoke. “So you’re getting along with him, this new partner of yours?”

She thought of last night. Of the way Cavanaugh had made her body sing. “Yes, Dad, I’m getting along with him.”

Matthew’s eyes never left his daughter’s face. Something in her voice gave him pause. “But it’s complicated, isn’t it?”

She sighed, shaking her head, an amused smile on her lips. “Once in a while I wish you were a little less intuitive.”

The microwave oven bell went off. Since he was closer, he opened the door and looked in. The rolls were ready. “I have to be. You never tell me anything. When you were a girl, you had all those girlie secrets of yours and I wasn’t allowed in. Now that you’re on the force, it’s even worse.”

She brushed a kiss across his cheek impulsively. She was more grateful for his existence in her life than she could ever put into words. “You know I can’t talk about a case.”

“I thought we were talking about your partner—” Matthew’s eyebrows drew together. The light came on. “He’s your case? You’re working with Mike Cavanaugh’s kid, aren’t you?”

“You know I am.”

She looked at her watch again. Cavanaugh was more than half an hour late. Something told her he wasn’t going to show up no matter how long she held dinner. Maybe last night had scared him off. God knows the teeth-jarring intensity of making love with him scared the hell out of her. Even so, she had to resist the temptation to call him and demand to know why he was standing her up. If she did that, he’d have an inkling that having him over for dinner meant something more to her than another place setting at the table. The less she gave away, the better.

A little late for that, wouldn’t you say, Mag?

She bet the bastard hadn’t even told his sister she’d invited them.

Suddenly she squared her shoulders. She had guests who were waiting and a turkey to carve. “C’mon, Dad, it’s time to eat. I’m not about to keep everyone else waiting for one rude man.”

But as she began to walk out of the kitchen, Matthew drew her aside for one last father-daughter moment. “Men are funny, Mag-pie. Sometimes, when they stumble onto a good thing, instead of embracing it, they run.”

Maggi raised her chin. “You don’t need to make excuses for him.”

“No—” he squeezed her hand “—but maybe you do.”

“If you’re bucking for Father of the Year, you’ve already got the award. Now get out there and start getting our guests seated—” she set the bottle of cider down on the sideboard “—while I go and bring in the turkey. Remember, Captain Reynolds sits as far away from me as possible. His teeth blind me when he smiles.”

“Not a problem.” He stopped only long enough to kiss the top of her head. “Attagirl, Maggi. You do me proud. But then, you always did.”

She thought she’d gotten proper control over her emotions. That idea went out the window the second she saw him walking into the squad room. She had to struggle with the very strong urge to throw something heavy at him.

Bastard.

She took a deep breath. What the hell was the matter with her? She felt like some kind of Ping-Pong ball being lobbed back and forth over the net in a championship tournament.

It wasn’t easy, but she managed to compose herself by the time he reached her desk. “Did you have a nice Christmas?”

He’d dreaded this ever since he’d gotten up this morning. Yesterday, he’d behaved like the kind of man he’d always despised. He’d acted like a coward. Instead of coming over to her house, or at least calling with some kind of half-assed excuse, he’d ignored the situation entirely in hopes it would go away.

Like it could.

“It was okay.” Patrick felt as if he stared down at a bomb he didn’t know how to defuse. Because he didn’t. Women were a complete unknown to him. Being close to Patience hadn’t educated him in the slightest. But then, Patience had never stirred these kinds of emotions within him.

“I went to my uncle’s,” he began, then stopped abruptly, frustrated. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tried to render an excuse. “Look, I know I should have called—”

“There was so much noise, I probably wouldn’t have heard anyway.” She shrugged carelessly. “Hey, no big deal. I thought it might be nice, that’s all. But you don’t owe me an explanation.”
Yes, you do, and you’re doing a damn poor job of it.
“I told you once there’re no strings and I meant it.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” He lowered his voice, not wanting anyone else to hear. “It’s just that something’s going on here, between us,” he clarified when she looked at him in surprise, “something I can’t begin to figure out.”

Ditto.
“Not everything can be reduced to a black-and-white equation you can plot out with graph paper, Cavanaugh. Some things just
are,
” she emphasized. And then, because she wasn’t up to dealing with her own feelings, she changed the subject to something they could both work with. “I’ve been doing a little more thinking about this thing concerning your ex-partner.” There was still no word about the man who had supposedly shot him, and she had an uneasy feeling there wouldn’t be. Dugan was still missing. “The bullet they dug out of his body, they logged that in as evidence, didn’t they?”

“Sure. But they already know it belonged to Dugan’s gun.” Relieved to put the awkward situation on hold for the time being, he gratefully sank his teeth into the tidbit she offered up. “Why, what are you getting at?”

Maybe something, maybe nothing, she thought. “I’m just fishing. Follow me for a second,” she urged. “Maybe the bullet didn’t really come from Dugan’s gun. Maybe someone else shot Ramirez and Dugan was ‘persuaded’ to take the fall for someone else. Someone higher up.”

If that was true, Patrick thought, the very foundations of the department would come crumbling down. “Who?”

“That part I don’t know yet.” She smiled ruefully at him. “I guess being around you has gotten me slightly paranoid.”

“Paranoid is better than oblivious.” He sat down in the chair beside her desk, glad to be working. Glad not to let his thoughts drift too far into uncharted waters. Facing down an unknown enemy was a lot easier than dealing with unknown emotions. “I’ve tried talking to some of the other people who were there that day, as well as his old partner, Foster, and either no one else knows anything—”

She ended the sentence for him. “Or they’re not saying anything.”

“Exactly.”

The day was slow. Maybe because of the season, Death had called a holiday and there were no new homicides on the board. It gave most of the detectives who hadn’t taken the day off to be with their families time to play catch-up with their paperwork. No one would notice if they were missing for a while.

Maggi leaned forward. “What do you say we get on down to the evidence room and see what we can find?”

He’d been toying with the same idea, but he wanted to go alone. And after dark. “The sergeant there isn’t just going to let us waltz in there.”

Maggi rose from the desk. “You let me handle Sergeant Warren.”

He followed her out of the squad room. “You know him?”

The man had been at her table yesterday. “According to my father, he was the man who held the camera when my parents gave me my first bath.”

Patrick shook his head as they entered the stairwell that led down to the basement and the evidence room. “You’re just one surprise after another, aren’t you?”

“Keeps life interesting.”

That was one way to put it, Patrick thought.

Sergeant Philip Warren was a corpulent man with a booming laugh, very little hair and six months to go before retirement. When he saw Maggi and her partner walking toward him, he set aside the copy of
Fish and Stream
and greeted them heartily. Visitors were scarce down in the bowels of the evidence room and Sergeant Warren liked to talk.

He winked broadly at Maggi. “Hey, long time no see. What’s it been? Twenty, twenty-one hours?” he joked. “Great meal, Maggi, thanks again for having me over.”

She smiled warmly. “Just a simple turkey dinner, Sergeant. This is my partner, Patrick Cavanaugh. He would have been there yesterday—” she couldn’t help giving him one zinger “—but he was detained.”