Mission: Cavanaugh Baby

This was growing more and more unbelievable to him. Was this petite fireball really serious?

“So now we’re dealing with a dog’s feelings?” he asked sarcastically.

Instead of answering the detective’s question, Ashley had one of her own to ask him. “Don’t you have some suspect to harass, or some clues to follow up on? I wouldn’t want to take you away from your important work, Detective.”

“Right now, the best clues might very well be on that ill-tempered dog you’re holding on to,” he informed her glibly. And then he became serious. “Why don’t you drop off the mutt in the lab downstairs, and then I’ll take your official statement?”

She had no intention of complying since she’d already decided on another path. “Number one, Albert’s not a mutt, he’s a Jack Russell terrier.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged it off. To him, dogs came in just three varieties. Small dogs, medium dogs and large dogs.

“Number two, I have an alternate suggestion for you. How about I take Albert to the lab, have them do their tests and then, when they’re finished with him, I’ll come back and talk to you afterward.”

“Are you just trying to be difficult?” he asked.

The way she saw it, she was doing her best to be cooperative. “I promised Albert that I wouldn’t leave him alone at the lab.” And then she smiled innocently at Shane. “Making things difficult for you is just an added bonus.”

“You promised Albert,” he repeated incredulously, fairly certain—although, given who he was dealing with, he wasn’t positive—that she had to be kidding.

“Yes. And I don’t want him not to trust me,” she told him. She could tell by his expression what Cavanaugh thought of that, but then, the detective really wasn’t her first concern. The traumatized dog was. “If I break my word, Albert will just become that much harder to deal with.”

He stared at her, stunned. “Do you actually believe what you are saying?”

So now he was accusing her of making things up as she went along? “Of course I do,” she answered firmly. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because,” he responded, “for one thing, you make that mutt sound as if he had more intelligence than the average person.”

“I told you, he’s not a mutt,” she informed him tersely. “He’s a Jack Russell terrier, and as for having more intelligence than the average person, he probably does.” She punctuated her statement with a toss of her head. This man obviously knew nothing about dogs. “Jack Russell terriers are extremely intelligent canines. They’re also rather temperamental—” she shot Shane an accusing look “—also like some people I know.”

Shane let her walk to the building entrance ahead of him, then reached around her to hold the door open for her. He saw the suspicious look that immediately crossed her face.

The woman probably thought he was trying to make a move on her.

“Don’t worry, I’m just holding the door open for you, Officer St. James, nothing else. Speaking of being trusting, you’re not, are you?” Shane asked, his eyes meeting hers.

Ashley met his scrutinizing glance head-on just before she walked into the main lobby. “No, I’m not.”

He took a guess at the most logical reason she’d be distrusting. “What happened, you found out your boyfriend was cheating on you?”

There was no way she was about to let him know a single personal thing about her life. “I just haven’t found people in general to be trustworthy,” she replied coolly. “That’s why I like animals better. They don’t lie.”

There was something about the way she said it that caught Shane’s attention. He found his curiosity aroused. “Who lied to you, St. James?”

Her eyes narrowed. He could tell that it took everything she had not to tell him to butt out, that her personal life was none of his business. Instead, she apparently decided to play along. “Do you want that chronologically, alphabetically or arranged by height?”

He assumed she was just exaggerating, but there was no way he was going to accuse her of that. “Ouch, that many?”

“That many,” she confirmed, her expression remaining impassive.

Ignoring the detective, Ashley was about to sweep past the front desk and head directly to the elevator.

“Hold on a minute,” the sergeant manning the front desk called out. He looked uncertainly at the terrier in her arms and directed his question to Ashley. “Shouldn’t you be using the rear entrance, heading toward Animal Control with that mutt?” He nodded his head toward the terrier.

She could actually feel Cavanaugh’s grin as the sergeant referred to Albert as a mutt, just as he had. She ignored him.

At the sound of the new voice, the terrier became agitated and began to bark again.

“Shh, it’s okay, Albert,” she whispered softly to the dog before answering the sergeant. “I’m supposed to take him down to the crime lab.”

Shane intervened. “It’s okay, Murphy, she’s with me.”

She looked at Shane, surprised by his statement. “No, I’m not,” she contradicted.

“I’m taking you to the crime lab,” Shane informed her. “So that makes you with me.”

“I can find it on my own,” she retorted. “So that makes me with me.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then took a guess. “Ever been there before?”

She didn’t see what that had to do with it. It was just another department in the building. “No, but—”

“I have,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ll be your guide.”

Exactly how incompetent did he think she was? “It’s in the basement,” she pointed out, “not somewhere in the Northwest Territory, Sacagawea. I think I can find where I’m supposed to go.”

Shane laughed, as if that was a common mistake almost everyone made. “Trust me, it’s better with a guide,” he told her, taking hold of Ashley’s arm. The moment he did, the dog began to growl. Rather than pull back his hand, Shane just scowled at the animal. “You want to call him off?” It was more of a command than a question.

Which was exactly why Ashley bristled at his tone. “I think it might just be simpler for him if you let go of my arm.”

For a moment Shane debated standing his ground, but it hardly seemed worth it. So after a beat—just not to seem as if he was jumping through hoops—he removed his hand from her arm. “Have it your way.”

He found the half smile that rose to her lips irritating and yet oddly intriguing at the same time. Intriguing even though he’d made a silent promise to himself that he wasn’t going to even remotely approach this no-man’s land for a very long time to come.

Not until after he’d fully recovered from what Kitty had done, and most likely, not even then.

The way he saw it, one sliced-up ego was enough for any man to deal with in one lifetime.

Granted, he’d never had to go through something like this before, but when it happened, it had caught him so completely off balance, it had taken not just his very breath away, it had also taken away a great deal of his inner confidence.

“Thanks for your ‘permission,’ Detective,” Ashley retorted icily, “but I really don’t need it.”

He wasn’t put off by her tone. Instead he looked at her very closely and asked, “Exactly what do you need, Officer?”

She raised her chin, and Shane caught himself thinking that it made one hell of a tempting target. A target that was almost too tempting to resist.

“Space,” she informed him.

“Then you’re out of luck at the moment,” he informed her. “You won’t find overly much of that downstairs,” he answered. “In fact, it’s more like one great big maze until you get used to it.”

“And you’re used to it.” It wasn’t a question; it was an assumption since he was offering to play the big safari guide. She couldn’t see him making the offer if he had a tendency to get lost.

“Yeah.”

The elevator finally arrived, and Ashley walked in first. He was right behind her.

Because of her upbringing—or more accurately, the lack of it, Ashley had learned to pick her battles. Otherwise, life became one huge battleground and after a while, she lost her perspective. That guaranteed her to be the major loser in any confrontation.

“Okay,” she said as she pressed the button on the bottom. The doors closed, and the elevator began to go down.

“Okay what?” he challenged, waiting for her to be flippant or perhaps even painfully specific. He was beginning to learn that she wasn’t as easily readable as he’d initially thought.

Rather than give him any kind of an answer he could understand, Ashley lifted one shoulder in a half shrug and said, “Just okay.”

By the time she said that, the elevator had made the short trip from the first floor down to the basement. The silvery doors slid open. Eager to put any distance she could between them, Ashley hurried through the doors before they were even completely parted.

She looked around the immediate area. She hated to admit it, but Cavanaugh was right. It did look like a maze down here. A narrow maze that offered her two directions to go. Which way did she go? Neither wall was labeled to make it easy for anyone not intimately familiar with the lab’s layout.

She looked at Shane, waiting for the detective to come through and tell her where the lab she needed to go to with Albert was located. After all, wasn’t that the whole reason he’d said he was accompanying her to begin with?

Guessing what was going on in her head right now, Shane savored the moment. “Don’t know which direction to take, do you?”

Wiping the smirk off a detective’s face wouldn’t be a good career move at this point of her life, Ashley thought darkly. Unlike the fine young detective, she didn’t have a family name to fall back on or a well-placed superior to take up her side.

But God, removing that smirk from his lips would feel good.

Nevertheless, mindful of the consequences, she restrained herself and answered, “Eventually, there has to be a sign, but in the interest of not wasting your precious time watching me try to find it, why don’t you just tell me which way to go?”

For two cents, he might, Shane couldn’t help thinking. But that wasn’t going to move this case along an inch—although it undoubtedly would be very soul-satisfying.

Nevertheless, when he pointed in response to her question, it was to the right. He wasn’t about to plant a red herring or to play a practical joke on this less than jovial woman.

“That way.”

Her “Thank you” in response was so cold, he thought he was in danger of getting frostbite despite the fact that it was just September, and they were in the middle of a Santa Ana condition. The devil winds were blowing in hot and merciless from the desert.

He kept a smile plastered on his lips as he replied, “Don’t mention it.”

Don’t worry, I don’t intend to do it more than once, she silently told him, keeping her arms wrapped around the terrier to afford the animal as much of a feeling of security as she could.

Too bad the terrier couldn’t return the favor, she thought. She was definitely out of her element down here.

“Turn there,” Shane instructed. “To your left,” he added when she all but missed the small door that was on that side.

Grudgingly following his instruction, Ashley walked into the lab.

Unlike the corridor she’d just been down, the large rectangular room, outfitted with a myriad of strange-looking equipment and devices, was extremely well lit. All shadows had been summarily banished from this part of the basement.

Hearing a commotion behind her, the young woman in the lab coat turned from a mysterious machine she’d just inserted a test tube into.

Her serious expression instantly melted when she saw Shane. “Hi, Shane, what brings you here to my part of the world?” Her glance took in the dog as well as the young woman holding the animal. “And you brought me a visitor. Two,” she amended, looking at the terrier. Her eyes rose to meet the woman’s. “Hi, I’m Destiny Richardson,” she said, introducing herself.

Of course you are, Ashley thought, offering a perfunctory smile.

It figured that he would have a girlfriend named Destiny, she couldn’t help thinking as she watched the two of them interact. The lab technician probably fit right in with girls who had names like Bambi and Tiffany. Ashley was willing to bet those belonged to two more of his girlfriends.

“Ashley St. James,” Ashley told the lab technician in response.

“And your friend?” Destiny asked, removing one latex glove to pet the terrier the officer was holding.

To Ashley’s surprise, the terrier didn’t instantly begin barking. Instead he allowed himself to be petted by this woman. He even seemed to like it, she realized. The woman went up several notches in her estimation. Maybe she wasn’t just a bimbo after all.

“Albert,” Ashley replied, then commented, “He seems to like you.”

“Everyone likes Destiny,” Shane interjected.

Destiny laughed softly. “That’s only because I’m a lot happier these days than I used to be,” she told Ashley modestly.

Next the woman would be batting her eyes at Cavanaugh and saying he was the reason behind the changes in her life, Ashley guessed.

It took everything she had not to just roll her eyes—or get nauseous. Had he come down here to guide her the way he’d claimed, or to flaunt one of his girlfriends at her?

As if she cared, Ashley thought.

“Maybe I should come back later?” she suggested. “Give you and...Destiny, is it—?” she asked, pretending not to have noted the technician’s name “—a little alone time together.”

Destiny looked at her, clearly more confused than Shane appeared.

“Why would we need any alone time together?” she questioned.

Shane was the one who answered her rather than the woman who’d initially made the offer. “I think that’s the officer’s quaint way of saying she thinks we’re in a relationship.”

Ashley scowled at Cavanaugh for the cavalier way he’d just volunteered her guess. He really did tick her off, and if anything, his good looks just seemed to intensify her annoyance.

But that slipped into the background the next moment when the sound of the lab technician’s laughter told Ashley that maybe she’d made a mistake.

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