Cavanaugh Rules (32 page)

It all came back to her. The fear, the fire and everything that had come before.

“Not necessarily,” Kansas told him. He looked at her quizzically. “I took pictures.” She touched her pocket to reassure herself that the camera she’d used was still there. It was. “You find him, Ethan, we can convict him. He won’t burn anything down anymore.” Her voice cracked as it swelled in intensity.

He began to nod his head in agreement, but then he shook it instead. “Never mind about Bonner. I don’t care about Bonner.” Everything she’d just put him through—the concern, the fear, the horror when he first heard her scream and realized that she was inside the burning garage and he couldn’t find a way to get in—came back to him in spades. He could have lost her.

“What the hell were you thinking, coming out here in the middle of the night, poking around an insane man’s garage?”

Her throat felt exceedingly dry, but she had to answer him, had to make him understand. “That he had to be stopped. That you couldn’t do this because the evidence wouldn’t be admissible, but I could because I wasn’t bound by the same rules as you were.” She stopped for breath. Each word was an effort to get out. Her lungs ached.

He looked at her incredulously, still wanting to shake her even as he wanted to kiss her. “And getting killed never entered you head?”

She smiled that smile of hers, the one that always made him feel as if his kneecaps were made of liquid gelatin. “You know me. I don’t think that far ahead.”

Meaning she gave no thought to her own safety. He thought of the first night he met her. She’d run into a burning building to rescue children.

Ethan shook his head. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

The kneecap-melting smile turned sexy. “That, Detective, is entirely up to you.”

He already had a solution. One he’d been contemplating for the last week. “I suppose I could always put you in protective custody—for the rest of your life.”

Had to be the smoke. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. “And just how long do you figure that’ll be?”

He took her hand in his, still reassuring himself that she was alive, that he’d gotten to her in time. “Well, if I make sure to watch your every move, maybe the next fifty years.”

Okay, it wasn’t getting any clearer. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“The way your mind works, I never know,” he admitted. “What is it you think I’m saying?” When she shook her head, unwilling or unable to elaborate, Ethan decided it was time to finally go the whole nine yards and put his feeling into words.

“Okay, maybe I’m not being very clear,” he admitted. Leaning in closer so that only she could hear, he said, “I’m asking you to marry me.”

A whole host of emotions charged through her like patrons in a theater where someone had just yelled “Fire!” Joy was prominently featured among the emotions, but joy was capped off by fear. Fear because she’d thought herself safe and happy once before, only to watch her world crumble to nothing right in front of her eyes.

She never wanted to be in that position again. “How about we move in together for a while and see how that goes?”

That wasn’t the answer he was hoping for. “You don’t want to marry me?”

Her first reaction was to shrug away his words, but she owed it to him to be honest more than she owed it to herself to protect herself. “I don’t want another broken heart.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he told her with feeling. “You have my word.” He held her hand between both of his. “Do you trust me?”

She thought of how he came riding to her rescue—literally. A weak smile curved her mouth. “I guess if I can’t trust the word of the man who just messed up the car he loves to save my life, who can I trust? You really sacrificed your car for me,” she marveled.

“It doesn’t kiss as well as you do,” he told her with a straight face.

“Lucky for me.”

“Hey, O’Brien.” Ortiz stuck his head in, then saw that Kansas was conscious. “How you feeling?” he asked her.

“Like a truck ran over me, but I’ll live,” she answered.

The detective grinned and nodded his approval. “Good.” Then he got back to what he wanted to say to Ethan. “We caught him,” he announced triumphantly. “Dispatch just called to say that Bonner was picked up at the Amtrak station, trying to buy a ticket to Sedona. Seems that the machine rejected his credit card.” He was looking directly at Ethan when he said the last part.

By the look on Ethan’s face, Kansas knew he had to have something to do with the credit card being rejected. “Just how long was I out?”

Ortiz withdrew and Ethan turned his attention back to her. “Long enough for me to get really worried.”

“You were worried about me?” She couldn’t remember the last time anyone cared enough to be worried about her. It was a good feeling.

This was going to take some time, he thought. But that was all right. He had time. Plenty of time. As long as he could spend it with her. “I tend to worry about the people I love.”

She struggled to sit up, leaning on her elbows. “Wait, say that again.”

“Which part?” he asked innocently. “ ‘I tend’?”

“No, the other part.”

“ ‘...to worry about’?”

She had enough leverage available to be able to hit his arm. “The last part.”

“Oh, you mean ‘love’?” he asked, watching her face.

“The people I love,” she repeated, her teeth gritted together.

“Oh?” He looked at her as if this were all new to him. “And who are these people that you love?”

Why was he toying with her? “Not me. You!” she cried, exasperated.

“You love me?” Ethan asked, looking at her in surprise and amazement.

“Of course I love you—I mean—” And then it hit her. “Wait, you tricked me.”

He saw no point in carrying on the little performance any longer. His grin went from ear to ear. “Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

She was feeling better.
Much
better. “Oh, just shut up and kiss me.”

This he could do. Easily. Taking hold of her shoulders to steady her, he said, “Your wish is my command.”

And it was.

Epilogue

A
ndrew Cavanaugh’s house was teeming with family members. All his family members. The former chief of police hadn’t merely extended an invitation this time, as was his habit—he had
instructed
everyone to come, telling them to do whatever they had to in order to change their schedule and make themselves available for a family gathering.

When his oldest son had pressed him why it was so important to have everyone there, Andrew had said that he would understand when the time came.

“Anyone know what this is about?” Patrick Cavanaugh asked, scanning the faces of his cousins, or as many as he could see from his position in his uncle’s expanded family room. There seemed to be family as far as the eye could see, spilling into the kitchen and parts beyond.

Callie, standing closest to her cousin, shook her head. “Not a clue.”

Rayne moved closer to her oldest sister, not an easy feat these days given her condition. Rayne was carrying twins whom she referred to as miniature gypsies, given their continuous restless state.

“Maybe he’s decided, since there’re so many of us, that we’re forming our own country and seceding from the union,” she quipped. Rayne laced her fingers through her husband’s as she added, “You never know with Dad.”

Kansas looked at Ethan and briefly entertained the idea—knowing that the Cavanaugh patriarch celebrated each family occasion with a party—that this might be because she and Ethan were engaged. So far, it was a secret. Or was it?

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” she whispered to Ethan.

Ethan shook his head, but the same thought had crossed his mind, as well. If not for the way the “invitation” had been worded, he wouldn’t have ruled out the possibility.

“From what I hear,” he whispered back, “there’s never a need to tell the man anything. He always just seems to know things.”

They heard Brian laugh and realized that the chief of detectives had somehow gotten directly behind them. “Despite the rumors, my older brother’s not a psychic,” Brian told them, highly amused.

This was the first opportunity Kansas had had to see the man since Bonner’s capture. In all the ensuing action, she hadn’t had a chance to tell him how grateful she was that he had come to her aid. Rescuing obviously ran in the family, she mused.

Turning around to face Brian, Kansas said, “I really want to thank you, Chief, for putting in a good word for me with the Crime Scene Investigation unit.”

“All I was doing was rubber-stamping a very good idea,” he told her, brushing off her thanks.

Brian had been instrumental in bringing up her name to the head of the unit. He’d done it to save her the discomfort of going back to the firehouse and trying to work with people who regarded her with hostility because she’d turned in one of their own.

Seeing her smile of relief was payment enough for him. “Thank
you
for agreeing to join the CSI unit. They’re damn lucky to have you,” he told her with feeling. “Hopefully, you’ll decide to stay with the department after Captain Lawrence comes to his senses and asks you to reconsider your resignation.”

Kansas shook her head. She sincerely doubted that Captain Lawrence would ever want her back. He all but came out and said so, commenting that he felt she would be “happier someplace else.” And he was right. She felt she’d finally found a home. In more ways than one.

“You have nothing to worry about there.” Things had gotten very uncomfortable for her within the firehouse after Bonner was caught and arraigned. Everyone agreed that Bonner should be held accountable for what he’d done, but the bad taste the whole case had generated wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. And it was primarily focused on her.

Transferring to another fire station wouldn’t help. Her “reputation” would only follow her. She would always be the outsider, the investigator who turned on her own. She’d had no choice but to resign. The moment she had, like an answer to a prayer, Brian Cavanaugh had come to her with an offer from the Crime Scene Investigation unit. The division welcomed her with open arms.

“Good. I know I speak for all the divisions when I say that we look forward to working with you on a regular basis.”

About to add something further, Brian fell silent as he saw his older brother walk into the center of the room. He, along with Lila and Rose, were the only other people who knew what was going on—if he didn’t count the eight people waiting to walk into the room.

This, Brian thought, was going to knock everyone’s proverbial socks off.

“Everybody, if I could have your attention,” Andrew requested, raising his deep baritone voice so that he could be heard above the din of other conversations. Silence swiftly ensued as all eyes turned toward him.

“What’s with the melodrama, Dad?” Rayne, his youngest and a card-carrying rebel until very recently, wanted to know, putting the question to him that was on everyone else’s mind.

“No melodrama,” Andrew assured her. “I just wanted all of you to hear this at the same time so I wouldn’t wind up having to repeat myself several dozen times. And so no one could complain that they were the last to know.” He was looking directly at Rayne as he said it.

“Repeat what several dozen times?” Zack called out from the far end of the room.

Andrew paused for a moment, then, taking a breath, began. “First of all, I think you should all know that your grandparents had four sons, not three.”

“Four?” Teri, Andrew’s middle daughter, echoed, stunned. “Where’s the fourth one?”

“Let him talk,” Janelle counseled.

“Good question,” Andrew allowed. “The son your grandparents had after Mike and before Brian only lived for nine months. Your grandmother woke up one morning to find that he had died in his sleep. What you also don’t know,” he continued, raising his voice again as snatches of disbelief were voiced throughout the room, “was that, for weeks after she first came home from the hospital, your grandmother kept insisting that they had switched babies on her. That Sean—that was the baby’s name—wasn’t
her
Sean. Nobody really paid attention to her, thinking she was just imagining things.” He paused again to let his words sink in before he came to the most incredible portion. At times, he still didn’t feel as if it was real.

“Recently, people—like your uncle Brian—have been coming up to me, asking me why I was ignoring them when they encountered me on the street. Other than thinking maybe I had an early onset of dementia—”

“Never happen,” Rose told him fiercely, threading her arm around her husband’s waist.

Andrew grinned down at the wife he’d gone to hell and back to find, bringing her home after everyone had assumed she was dead. “Anyway,” he told the others after planting a kiss on his wife’s forehead, “I started my own investigation into this so-called doppelgänger people were seeing. Long story short—”

“Too late,” Brian deadpanned.

Andrew ignored his brother. “It turns out that your grandmother was right, which will teach the male segment of this family never to doubt their women’s instincts. I won’t bore you with details—”

“Also too late,” Brian commented loud enough for everyone to hear.

Andrew slanted his brother a patient, tolerant glance. “Right now, I would like to introduce you to the end result of my investigation. Everyone, I’d like for you to meet your uncle Sean—oddly enough that’s what the people who raised him called him, too—and his seven kids...your cousins.”

The silence within the family room was deafening as eight more people walked into the room. Each and every one of them blended in perfectly with the people who were already there.

It would have been difficult to tell them apart.

“We really
could
start our own country,” Ethan murmured, remembering what Rayne had said earlier.

“I don’t know about our own country,” Kansas whispered in his ear, deciding that the time was right to tell him, “but we have gotten started on a family.”

He looked at her sharply. “Are you—?”

She grinned broadly at him. “I am.”

He couldn’t begin to describe the joy he was experiencing. “
Now
will you marry me?”

Her eyes sparkled. “You bet I will.”

If she was going to say anything else, it would have to wait. Because Ethan scooped her into his arms and kissed her. And he intended to go on kissing her for a very long time to come.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of
Mercenary's Perfect Mission
by Carla Cassidy!