How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Words rose to her lips that would only fan the flames and turn this into a full-fledged raging forest fire. She practiced restraint—although it was far from easy. She settled for sarcasm.

“No need to go to that expense. Just use your words, Durant. Do you want to move?”

“No,” he bit off. “I don’t want to move.”

There was nothing to be gained by echoing his sentiment and saying she didn’t want to move, either. One of them had to and, apparently, at least for now, she had been awarded the role of the flexible one.

“Okay,” she agreed gamely. “Then I’ll be the one to move.”

Kane wanted to say no to that as well, but he knew he couldn’t, not without consequences. When the chief of ds said he wanted him to give the partnership two months, the man meant two months. So, for now, he was forced to go along with this most unlikely, not to mention unsuitable, coupling.

“See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” she asked, employing a cheerfulness she definitely wasn’t feeling. Just for good measure she decided to add, “Wait and see, we’ll have you talking in full sentences in no time.”

Kane’s eyes narrowed as he momentarily glared at her just as the elevator doors opened again, this time on their floor. Kane got out. She was quick to follow him.

“Although,” she continued as if they were actually carrying on a conversation instead of what was mostly a monologue on her part, “there is something to be said for silence, too,” she admitted, carefully avoiding getting on the wrong side of Kane’s dark expression.

She was bending over backward. This was not going to be easy. But then, her late mother had told her more than once that she had the ability to get along with the devil.

The devil, Kelly silently contemplated, turning the thought over in her mind. That definitely would go a very long way toward describing her new partner’s disposition.

Who would have ever thought that the devil was this handsome?

A small smile played along her lips. Who’d known her mother had had the ability to look into the future?

Now all she had to do was prove the rest of her mother’s statement right.

Chapter 2

“Good, you’re back.”

The abrupt greeting came from Captain Lawrence Collins, a ruddy-faced man of medium height who was currently in charge of the robbery division. He’d come out of his office the instant that Kane and Kelly had walked into the squad room.

Kane glanced at the stocky man with his fading red hair, but said nothing in response to his greeting. Clearly, he was waiting for the man to continue.

However, it wasn’t in Kelly’s nature to just sit back and wait when she could just as easily jump into the middle of whatever was going on.

So she did.

“Did you want to speak to us, Captain?” she asked, more than eager to sink her teeth into a case. Her last case had been closed right after Amos’s retirement party and she was itching to get involved in something that could, just possibly, bring her and the sphinx she was assigned to a little closer together.

Probably not, but a girl could dream, Kelly thought whimsically.

“Want to? No,” Collins retorted. The bags under his eyes, Kelly noticed, seemed extra deep today. “What I want is to find some way to retire and enjoy myself the way I’m sure Barkley’s doing right now.” The captain sighed, acting more put-upon than weary. “But that’s not going to happen for another ten years, so in the meantime I get to hand out assignments to hotshots and hope for the best.”

Collins hesitated for a moment. He looked tempted to hand the piece of paper he was holding to her, but after several seconds of what appeared to be deliberation, he turned over the paper where he had jotted down all the pertinent information that had come in and handed it to her new partner.

Just as well, Kelly thought. Durant most definitely had a chip on those big broad shoulders of his, and if the captain had singled her out to take lead on this new case, Durant probably would have felt slighted. He had, after all, been with the department longer than she had. And if it appeared that Collins favored her over Mr. Congeniality, she had a feeling the end result would be less than pleasant.

This way was better for both of them.

“Looks like you two just caught your first case together,” Collins told the pair. “Make me proud,” he added as he nodded at the paper he’d just given Kane. He began to walk away, then stopped in his tracks for a few seconds. “Oh, and, Durant?”

After reading the address written on the white notepaper, Kane looked up and waited for the captain to continue.

“See if you can hold on to this partner for longer than a month, okay? The paperwork that’s generated every time you break up with your partner is hell,” Collins complained as he made his way back to his office.

This time Kane’s eyes slid over the woman who had hurried to catch up to him and was currently standing less than an inch away.

“I’ll do my best,” Kane murmured more or less to himself.

“Do better than that.” Collins apparently had heard Kane’s comment despite the growing distance between them as he walked back to his glass-enclosed office.

To Kelly’s momentary surprise, Kane turned around and walked out of the office again. She found herself hurrying again just not to lose sight of him.

The sooner they got to the location the captain had handed over to Kane, the sooner they could start working on the case.

“Is that your personal best?” Kelly asked him as they went out again.

“Is what my personal best?” Kane asked brusquely. What the hell was she talking about? The woman apparently could jump from topic to topic faster than a frog touching down on a pond filled with burning lily pads.

“A month. With a partner,” Kelly added as clarification since Durant wasn’t answering her and gave no indication he planned to. Not if that disinterested look he’d just sent her way was any indication. “Is that the life expectancy of a partnership with you?” she asked.

Kane shrugged, apparently totally uninterested in her choice of topics or her edification as to his professional habits.

“Give or take,” he finally replied vaguely, aware of the way she was watching him, waiting for an answer. “I don’t keep track,” he added with an air of finality that was meant to close the subject once and for all.

Or so he had naively thought.

Kelly nodded. “Fair enough,” she told him. Then she explained, “I just wanted to know what I was up against, that’s all.”

His eyebrows drew together in an outward sign of confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kane asked.

She gave him a roundabout explanation. “I’m planning to look at this partnership as a challenge. If I can hang on beyond a certain point, say longer than your longest-lasting partner, then it’s okay. I made it. You know, kind of like staying on a bucking bronco for eight seconds.”

If the woman wanted a challenge, he had one for her. He’d challenge her to make sense out of the gibberish she had just spouted. Instead, though, he settled for a throwaway line that he assumed would tell her just how disinterested he was in anything she had to say beyond whatever pertained to the case they were about to investigate.

“Whatever floats your boat,” Kane muttered dismissively.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they got back on the elevator.

“To the scene of the robbery,” he told her matter-of-factly.

If he was trying to rankle her or get her to lose her temper, Kelly thought, it was going to take more than that. Having grown up with four brothers, not to mention two sisters, she had learned how to survive under adverse conditions.

“Which is...?” she asked him patiently.

He seemed deliberately to wait several minutes before saying, “Quail Hill.”

Kelly whistled, impressed. For the most part, the citizens of Aurora were middle-class and upper middle-class. But Quail Hill was where the beautiful people with deep pockets lived.

After reaching the first floor, the elevator came to a stop and opened its doors. The moment they stepped out, Kane resumed his quickened pace, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t like the idea of being coupled with her. He was putting distance between them as quickly as he possibly could. She was welcome to keep up—if she could.

Too bad, Durant, but I don’t like this any better than you do, she thought, once again lengthening her stride.

“Well, if I was a thief, that’s where I’d go to pull off a heist,” she said, addressing Kane’s back. “The really filthy rich part of town.”

Kane merely grunted in response as he came to a stop before a dark sedan. He hit the release button on his key, opening all four doors simultaneously.

Kelly looked at his vehicle in surprise. He seemed to take it for granted that she was just going to let him take over every little aspect of their partnership.

“That’s it?” she questioned. “No discussion about which car we’re using and who’s driving?”

Rather than answer her, Kane opened the driver’s side door and got in behind the steering wheel.

“I guess not,” Kelly concluded, answering her own question.

Opening the passenger side, she slid in. The moment she inserted the metal tongue into the slot of her seat belt, Kane took off. Kelly felt the jolt. The sedan was instantly hugging the road, doing the speed limit—and just beyond.

Kelly gave it to the count of ten in her head, allowing her new partner to gather his thoughts together before he said something.

Anything.

When there was only silence riding along in the car with them, Kelly decided that the man she’d been assigned to was comfortable with this level of silence.

She, however, was not.

“You know, you’re going to have to talk to me sometime,” Kelly pointed out patiently. There was no point in raising her voice or losing her temper. That wasn’t the way to go with this man.

Kane continued looking straight ahead as he drove onto one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

“Why?” His voice was steely, his interest in the conversation barely engaged.

Exasperation hovered around the edges of her voice, but Kelly managed to keep it in check.

“Because that’s what partners do. They talk. They share and somewhere in between the small talk and the theory spinning, they solve crimes.”

“If you say so,” Kane responded in quite possibly the most disinterested, distant voice she had ever heard. “But it’s cliché.”

She wasn’t trying to be original, just to make a point. There was nothing wrong with using a cliché if it applied to the situation—and this, in her opinion, did.

“I’ve got another one for you,” she told Kane, her stubborn streak rearing its head. “Ever hear the old saying, ‘Two heads are better than one’?”

“You planning on growing another head, Cavanaugh?” he asked.

If he meant to get her annoyed with that, he was going to be disappointed, she thought.

“Was that a joke, Durant? Could it be that you actually have a sense of humor buried beneath that muscle-bound, hulking exterior?” she asked, feigning shock as she splayed her hand across her chest.

He merely slanted a dismissive look her way before returning his gaze to the road.

Taking a deep breath, Kelly decided she had nothing to lose by taking this new partner of hers to task about his attitude when it came to her. “Look, Durant, I don’t know what your problem is—”

He pointed up to the rearview mirror. “Mirror’s right there,” he said, his meaning clear.

Kelly dug in. “Subtle. Wrong, but subtle. I’m not your problem, Durant,” she told him. “I’m not the one who’s had six partners bail on her since joining the force.”

“Five,” he corrected, looking, in her estimation, completely unfazed.

“I’m not convinced that it was getting shot that made that partner of yours to decide to take a different career path, but if it makes you happy to believe that, fine,” she said. “The count is back down to five.”

It was obvious that she was deliberately humoring him, the way an indulgent parent humored a child. He didn’t like it.

“What would make me happy,” he told her, feeling his jaw clench as he spoke, “is if you said goodbye.”

Okay, maybe it was time to take this head-on, Kelly thought. Sidestepping and humoring this man weren’t getting her anywhere.

“What is it that you think you’ve got against me?” she asked. “You hardly know me.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way,” Kane told her in no uncertain terms. “Having a partner—any partner—just gets in my way,” Kane said in a no-nonsense voice. “I don’t have time to watch your back.”

Rather than get angry—or throw her hands up and just give up—Kelly tried another approach. It was obvious the man was keeping something buried. Something that had caused him to become soured on life as well as the world.

She aimed to find out what that was.

“And you don’t have time to have your own back watched?” Kelly asked.

He laughed shortly. There was absolutely no humor in the sound. “No offense, but if I were in trouble, knowing you were out there with a gun wouldn’t exactly reinforce my feeling of well-being,” he told her.

Kelly stared at his rigid profile. It looked as if his whole body was clenched, not just his jaw. Did the man even know how to relax? Or was he just perpetually angry at the world?

Why?

She had nothing to lose by asking. Heaven knew she wasn’t sacrificing any rapport she might have built up with Durant. There certainly wasn’t any to be had.

“Were you always like this?” she asked. “Or did something happen to turn you into this distrusting outsider?”

That was the deal breaker. If she didn’t put in for a transfer, then he would—the moment they got back to the precinct, Kane promised himself. “And just about the very last thing I need or want is a partner who fancies herself a shrink.”

“Not a shrink,” Kelly contradicted. “An observer. Someone to talk to when things get to be too difficult for you.”

It seemed as if he was missing every single light, Kane thought, gripping the steering wheel harder. Missing the intersection lights just made his disposition that much more surly.

“What if you’re what’s too difficult for me?” he asked.

She smiled, the expression filtering into her eyes, making them all but shine with warmth.

Now why the hell had that thought even crossed his mind, Kane upbraided himself.

“We can talk about that, too,” Kelly told him.

The look he shot her was not the sort that cemented partnerships. “Got an answer for everything, is that it?” he asked sarcastically.

“Pretty much,” she said, giving no indication that his attitude was getting to her.

Something—or someone, she decided—had done a number on this new partner of hers, very effectively destroying his ability to relate to anyone. To risk relating to anyone, she amended.

Either that or he was just an ornery SOB and there really was no reaching him.

The moment she started to consider the second possibility, Kelly quickly dismissed it. Nobody on earth would want to be the way Durant was on any kind of a regular basis, Kelly thought. Something had to have happened to him to make him like this.

But what?

And how did she find out? Heaven knew she couldn’t approach him outright about that. At least, not without proper prep work first.

She made up her mind to do some digging into her new partner’s past and see if she could answer any of the questions that were popping up rather insistently in her brain.

Kelly began planning her strategy and who she would talk to first about Durant. A number of possibilities occurred to her, along with another thought. She was going to make Kane Durant her private rehabilitation project.

Lost in thought and making extensive plans, she didn’t immediately become aware that Durant had stopped driving.

After parking his sedan at the curb, he got out and then spared her a glance. Against his better nature, he prodded her.

“Coming?” he asked her. “Or are you waiting for a private, hand-carved invitation?”

Kelly didn’t lie as a rule. But she saw no shame in shading the truth sometimes, especially when she was dealing with someone such as Kane Durant, a man who probably had last smiled on the day he’d been brought home from the hospital.

Possibly not even then.

“Just gathering my thoughts together,” she told Kane cheerfully. She did, however, avoid his eyes when she said it. That, and she devoted an extra drop of care to getting out of his sedan on the passenger side.

“Well, that certainly doesn’t require a long time,” Kane commented under his breath.

She ignored the obvious meaning behind his comment—that her thoughts were woefully few. “No, not at this time,” she easily agreed.

She could see that her noncombative answer surprised him.

Brace yourself, Durant. There’s more where that came from, she promised silently. I intend to kill you with kindness. It’s probably the only way to win you over.

Or so she hoped.

A patrol car was parked at the end of the long, winding driveway. The vehicle looked sadly out of place beside the two other cars that were there. One was a late-model Mercedes and the other was a Lexus that was so new it didn’t have plates on yet.

Both cars had been vandalized. Their windows were smashed and huge red letters scarred the body of each vehicle.

“Looks like someone was taking out some really dark personal issues on the cars,” she commented. “Maybe they were using the cars as proxies for the people the perp or perps really wanted to harm.”

Very quietly, Kane slowly circled the two cars, taking in every inch of the destruction that had occurred here, so close to home. At first glance, it seemed like a case of determined vandalism. But there might be something that they were missing, he thought.

That was why the department had such a highly developed crime scene investigation unit. “Ask CSI to pass on their findings to me—to us,” he corrected himself, although not overly cheerfully, “once they’re finished examining the cars,” he instructed.

Kelly nodded her head. “Consider it done,” she replied.

Kane glanced at her and appeared on the verge of responding. Then he obviously thought better of it and merely shrugged his shoulders.

Taking in everything about his surroundings, Kane continued walking to the building’s ornate, massive front door.

The door was wide-open. A patrolman could be seen just inside the foyer. He seemed to be on guard. Against what was still unclear.

The foyer, a veritable shrine to all things marble, contained uncommonly high vaulted ceilings. It clearly gave the impression of wealth as well as wide-open spaces.

“God, I’d hate to have to pay the heating bill on this place,” she murmured as they walked in.

Kelly hardly knew where to look first. She was accustomed to nice houses, but this was a whole new frontier. She was impressed but determined not to sound like some highly impressionable schoolgirl.

“What do you think it runs them?” she asked in idle curiosity. “The heating bill,” she repeated so Durant knew what she was talking about.

For a moment, she’d forgotten who she was paired up with. The question was something she would have asked Amos. The latter would have speculated about the price and offered a decent guess. That was what she had loved about Amos. She could engage him in any sort of topic and he would always try to keep the conversation going.

This new partner didn’t even indicate that he had heard her question.

She glanced around and took in the security system keypad that was mounted right inside the door. “Looks sophisticated,” she commented.

“Also useless if it didn’t alert the home owners that an intruder or intruders were coming in,” Kane pronounced rather dismissively.

She was about to say something along the lines of “He speaks” but immediately dismissed the urge. She wanted to encourage Durant to share his thoughts with her. If she said anything remotely mocking or derogatory, she knew it would only make matters that much worse.

And completely blow any chance of a decent partnership right out of the water.

She also had a feeling that at this stage of their nonrelationship, kidding him was not the way to go. Instead, she played her role as the faithful sidekick and asked innocently, “Think it might be an inside job? You know, maybe someone who had a hand in installing the security system?”

“Too soon to think anything,” he told her as he continued moving around the foyer, taking in as many details as he could before going to speak to the home owners. Both were badly shaken, according to the initial report that had come in from the patrolman who had been the first on the scene.

The home owners were not difficult to locate. Kane followed the sound of raised voices and crying into the next room.

Chapter 3

The woman’s back was to the doorway, so she didn’t seem to be aware that anyone else had entered her home—and her living room—until she heard an unfamiliar, deep male voice say, “Excuse me.”

No doubt surprised and frightened, Judith Osborn jumped and stifled a scream as she swung around toward the sound of the voice she heard, apparently much to her husband’s disgust, if the expression on his face was any indication.

“Damn it, Judith, get hold of yourself. They’re obviously with the police.” Randolph Osborn’s small, deep-set brown eyes shifted back and forth between the two strangers who had entered his home, as if he was assessing them. “You are with the police, right?”

Kane took out his wallet and badge at the same time that she did. Kelly let him do the introductions as she continued to study the pair. The wife’s nerves seemed to be very close to the surface, while her husband just looked angry. Very angry.

“Detectives Durant and Cavanaugh,” Kane told the robbery victims. Closing his wallet, he returned it to his jacket pocket. “Are either of you hurt?” he asked even as he did a quick visual check.

Neither seemed to be bleeding, which was a positive sign.

Osborn fisted his hands and then relaxed them again. His frown—as well as his annoyance—appeared to be deepening. “I think I lost all feeling in my hands and my back’s killing me.”

“We can call the paramedics if you like,” Kelly offered sympathetically. Her focus was more on Mrs. Osborn than on the woman’s husband. The latter had an irritating manner about him, which might or might not have been due to finding himself the victim of a robbery. Kelly had a feeling it went far deeper than that. “They can take you to the hospital to be checked out.”

Osborn looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind to make such a plebeian suggestion.

“What? Checked out by butchers? No, thanks. I have my own top-rated specialist on retainer.” Wearing a robe over his pajamas, Osborn began to head for the nearest extension. “I’d like to call him now if you’re finished here.”

He was summarily dismissing them.

Kelly could see that Kane didn’t like the man’s superior attitude any more than she did.

“As a matter of fact,” Kane told the home invasion victim, “we’re not finished.” He put his hand down on the landline Osborn was about to dial. “We have a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

“What more do you want from us?” Mrs. Osborn asked, an edge of hysteria rising in her voice. “We’ve already told that...that beat cop standing outside what happened. What else is there?” she demanded again, her voice breaking.

Judith Osborn ran her hand along her throat, as if she was protecting herself from some sort of invisible noose hanging around her neck. That was when Kane noticed the ligature marks around Judith’s wrist. Picking up the hand closest to him, he examined it more closely.