Internal Affair

Praise for

Marie Ferrarella

MAC’S BEDSIDE MANNER

“…the saucy quips will draw a laugh, and the chemistry will make you shiver. Marie Ferrarella does it again!”

—Romantic Times

IN GRAYWOLF’S HANDS

“Great romance, excellent plot, grabs you from page one.”

—Affaire de Coeur

A HUSBAND WAITING TO HAPPEN

“Ms. Ferrarella warms our hearts with her charming characters and delicious interplay.”

—Romantic Times

A MATCH FOR MORGAN

“Ms. Ferrarella creates fiery, strong-willed characters, an intense conflict and an absorbing premise no reader could possibly resist.”

—Romantic Times

IN THE FAMILY WAY

“Once again Ms. Ferrarella demonstrates a mastery of the storytelling art as she creates charming characters, witty dialogue and an emotional storyline that will tug at your heartstrings.”

—Romantic Times

ONCE A FATHER

“…the pleasure of this journey is in the getting there. Reading about warm, caring people and watching relationships mature under stessful situations is a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. As usual, Ferrarella’s dialogue is in voice, crisp, and moves the story along without ever bogging down in the emotional angst each brings to the relationship. Once a Father is a hearty recommend for a skilled writer.”

—The Romance Reader

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my newest series and the newest family that has captured my heart. The Cavanaughs are everything we would love families to be: supportive, loyal, noble in a human way, teasingly loving and, as an added bonus, each better looking than the last.

Patrick Cavanaugh is an offshoot of the main branch, a Cavanaugh cousin who has benefited from his association with the family patriarch and former police chief, Andrew. Patrick has his dark secrets, but his past has never gotten in the way of his being an honest cop. However, even the most honorable of people can be held suspect when it’s guilt by association, and Patrick’s former partner was found to have dirty hands. It’s up to Maggi McKenna, posing as his new partner, to prove Patrick guilty or innocent, not an easy task when the subject is a loner who is basically noncommunicative. The task gets even more difficult when Maggi finds herself becoming more and more attracted to him.

I hope you find these two as interesting as I did and that you’ll come back for a prolonged visit with each of the Cavanaughs as they tell their own story. As always, thank you for reading, and I wish you love.

Internal Affair

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This RITA® Award-winning author has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To the brave men and women

who put their lives on the line for us every day.

Thank you.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 1

“No!”

Every fiber of his muscular body tense and alert, Patrick Cavanaugh bolted upright in his bed, ready to fight, to protect. As adrenaline coursed through his veins, it took several moments before he realized he’d been dreaming. And it was the dream that plagued him. The one that he’d been having night after night for the past month. Ever since Ramirez had been shot right before his eyes. And killed.

Ramirez had been one step away from him.

One step away from being saved by him.

Awake now, Patrick shivered. His bedroom was cold. December in Aurora, California, tended to be bitterly cold at times. Because the dream had been so vivid, because he’d relived every second of it, his upper torso was covered with sweat, cooling him even more.

Getting back to sleep was impossible. Not now. Habit had him reaching for the pack of cigarettes on his nightstand. The pack of cigarettes that was no longer there. Not wanting anything to have a hold over him, he’d quit smoking the week after they had put Eduardo Ramirez into the ground. Twenty-two days and counting.

He sat for a moment, dragging his hand through his hair, trying to focus on the day before him. Dark thoughts hovered around him like the ghosts of years past, searching for a chink, a break in the armor he kept tightly wrapped around himself. Waiting to get to him.

Every man had his demons, he told himself. His were no bigger, no smaller than most.

It didn’t help.

Patrick swallowed a halfhearted curse. He wondered what it felt like to wake up with a smile on his face, the way he knew his sister Patience did.

No use in going there, he thought. It wasn’t anything he was about to find out. He’d always been the somber one in the family. Not without cause. Patience was the mystery, he’d decided long ago. Happy despite everything. Despite the home life they’d had growing up.

Any happiness that existed in their lives had come by way of his uncles Andrew and Brian and their families. It certainly hadn’t come via his own, at least, not from his parents, Mike and Diane.

Patience was another story. She was the reason he’d plumbed the depths of his soul and discovered that he was a protector and capable of feeling an emotion other than anger. He had to, for Patience’s sake.

Patrick narrowed his eyes, looking at the blue digital numbers. Six-thirty.

Time to get up, anyway, he thought. Time to get ready to serve and protect.

As he rose from his rumpled double bed, the sheet tangled around his leg and then fell to the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up. His whole bed looked like the scene of a battle.

And had been. Because last night, as he had almost every night since his partner’s death, he’d fought the good fight. He’d led Ramirez and the other detectives and patrolmen into the crack house. Except that somehow, Ramirez had gotten in front of him just as shots were fired and all hell broke loose.

And he’d been too late to save Ramirez.

Again.

Don’t go there, Patrick ordered himself coldly. He muttered another curse as he walked into the tiny adjacent bathroom, naked as the day he was born. He couldn’t afford to think about Ramirez, couldn’t afford to allow himself to dwell in the land of “what ifs.” The guilt was still too raw, weighed too much. Dwelling on the pain left him winded and bleeding inside.

It was the beginning of a new week and he needed to be sharp. To survive the way others before him hadn’t survived. He owed it to the department, but mostly to Patience. They had uncles and cousins, but he was the only immediate family she had. If he let this consume him, likely as not, he’d get himself killed. Leaving her alone.

Wasn’t gonna happen. Yet.

Blowing out a deep breath, Patrick wrapped his anger around himself and stepped into the shower.

The shower handle was poised on cold. He pulled it and let the water hit him full blast. Jolting him into Monday.

“New assignment, Mag?”

Depositing the frying pan into the dishwasher, she picked up the breakfast she’d prepared and placed it in front of her father. She’d been too preoccupied to hear his question. “What?”

Matthew McKenna pushed forward his coffee cup. An independent man, he lived alone now and liked his space. He liked it even more when his only daughter, his only child, dropped by before beginning her mornings. It wasn’t something he took for granted. “Today, don’t you start your new assignment?”

“Yes. Right.”

The words came out like staccato gunfire. Mary Margaret McKenna—Maggi to those she considered part of her inner circle, or 3M to those who enjoyed honing in on her no-nonsense nature—poured coffee into her father’s cup. She was bracing herself for the morning and the change of venue she was about to face.

She supposed that was why she’d stopped by this morning to make breakfast for her father. To touch base with what she considered to be her true self. Before she left that behind. Belatedly, she offered her father a smile along with cream for his coffee.

She was what she was because of her father. And because of him, in an indirect way, she had chosen the less-traveled path within her career. Patrolman Matthew McKenna had been one of Aurora’s finest until a bullet had ended his career less than six months ago. The bullet had come from one of his own men. One of those awful things that happened in the heat of battle when shots went wild. The other policeman was found dead, a victim of one of the so-called suspects’ deadly aim, or dumb luck, take your pick. But it was the service revolver in his hand that had fired the bullet which had found its way into Matthew’s hip and left him with a slight limp. And a new appreciation for life.

She had been living in San Francisco when she’d gotten the call about her father. Without any hesitation, Maggi had handed in her resignation and come home to Aurora, to stand vigil over her father in the hospital and then nurse him back to health. When she was satisfied that he was on the mend, she put in for a job on the Aurora police force. It took little to work her way up. And when a position in Internal Affairs opened up, she applied for it.

The thought of spying on her fellow police officers bothered her. The thought of rogue police officers, giving the force a bad name, bothered her more. She took the position, signing on to work undercover. She still grappled with her own decision. It was a dirty job, she’d tell herself. But someone had to do it. For now, that someone was her.

Matthew sighed, looking at her over the rim of his cup. “You know, Mag, this isn’t the kind of life your mother and I envisioned for you, dodging bullets and bad guys.”

She finished her breakfast in three bites—toast, consumed mostly on her feet. Impatience danced through her, as it always did at the start of a new assignment. She thought of it as stage fright. A little always made you perform better.

“We all make our own way in the world, remember?” Maggie dusted off her fingers over the sink. “That was what you taught me.”

Matthew shook his head. “I also taught you that there was no shame in taking the easy way, as long as it wasn’t against the law.”

Maggie laughed, partially to set him at ease. He worried too much. Just as much as she had when he had been the one to walk out the door wearing a badge. “Where’s the fun in that?”

His expression was serious. “You think it’s fun, my sitting here, wondering if you’re going to walk in through that door again?”

Maggie refused to be drawn into a serious discussion. Not this morning. The seriousness of her work was bad enough. She needed an outlet, a haven where she could laugh, where she could put down her sword and shield and just be herself.

So instead, she winked at him. “I could move back up to San Francisco, take that burden away from you.” Her grin widened as unspoken love entered her eyes. “You’re old enough to live on your own now.”

She’d moved back home to take care of him. And once he was on his feet, with the aid of a quad cane he hated, Maggi knew it was time for her to leave. But one thing after another seemed to get in the way and she remained, telling herself that she’d look for an apartment over the weekend. She’d finally moved out less than three weeks ago. But this still felt like home. She had a feeling it always would.

The somber expression refused to be teased away. “You know what I mean, Mary Margaret.”

“Oh-uh, two names. Serious stuff.” Inwardly she gritted her teeth together. She’d always hated her full name. Hearing it reminded her of eight years of dour-faced nuns looking down at her disapprovingly because she hadn’t lived up to their expectations. All except for Sister Michael. Sister Michael had tried to encourage her to let her “better side out.” She suspected that Sister Michael had probably been as much of a hellion in her day as she was accused of being in hers.

She’d turned to Sister Michael when her mother had died and she felt she couldn’t cry in front of her father. Couldn’t cry because she was all that was keeping him together.

She crossed to him now and placed her arm around his shoulders. “Dad, you know damn well that you’re my hero and I was honor-bound to grow up just like you.”

The sigh was liberally laced with guilt. “I should have married Edna,” he lamented. “She would have found a way to shave those rough edges off you.”

“No, Edna would have turned out to be the reason I ran away from home.”

Edna Grady was the woman his father had dated when she was fifteen. The widow had her cap set on marriage and would have stopped at nothing to arrive at that destination. She had a host of ideas about what their life was going to be like after the ceremony. It hadn’t included having a stepdaughter under her roof. That was when her father had balked, terminating their relationship. Maggi had been eternally grateful when he had.

Maggi paused to kiss the top of her father’s snow-white head, her heart swelling with love. He really was her rock, her pillar. “You did just fine raising me, Dad. You gave me all the right values. I’m just making sure they’re in play, that’s all. And that everyone else shares them.”

While he applauded the principle, he didn’t like the thought of his daughter risking her life every day. He vividly realized what his wife must have gone through all those years they were married and he was on the force.

He looked at her, disgruntled. “If I hadn’t been shot, you would have been married by now.”

“Divorced,” she corrected, “I would have been divorced by now.”

She firmly believed that. Maggi thought of Taylor Ramsford, the up-and-coming lawyer she’d met while working on the vice squad. He’d dazzled her with his wit, his charm, and they’d gotten engaged. But Taylor, it turned out, was not nearly the man she’d thought he was. Beneath the appealing exterior, there was nothing but a man who wanted to get ahead. A man centered on his own goals and nothing more. Marrying her had just been another goal. When she’d told him she was going home for an indefinite period of time to care for her father, he wouldn’t stand for it.

“Your place is with me,” he’d told her.

She’d known then that her place was anywhere but with him.

She gave her father a quick hug. “You know you’re the only man for me.”

He patted her hand affectionately. The day she was born, his partner had expressed his regret that his wife hadn’t given birth to a son. Maggi was worth a hundred sons to him, and he told her so.

“Not that I’m not flattered, Mag, but I’m not going to live forever.”

“Sure you are.” She walked over to pick up her service revolver and holster from the bookcase in the family room where she’d left it. “And I don’t need a man to survive. No woman this day and age does.” She spared him a tolerant glance. “Catch up to the times, Dad.”

He thought of his late wife. Maggi looked just like Annie had at her age. She’d had a way of making him feel that the sun rose and set around him without sacrificing a shred of her own independence. She’d been a rare woman. As was his daughter. He hoped to God that she’d find a man worthy of her someday.

“’Fraid it’s too late. No new tricks for me. I’m the old-fashioned type, no changing that.”

“Don’t change a hair for me,” she teased. Glancing at her watch, she knew she had to hit the road or risk getting stuck in ungodly traffic. She strapped on her holster, taking care to position the revolver to minimize the bulge it created. It was wreaking havoc on the linings of her jackets. “I’ve gotta go, Dad. Have a good day.”

He nodded. It was time he got to work as well. To pass the time while he’d been convalescing, he’d taken to writing down some of his more interesting cases. Now he was at it in earnest, looking to crack the publishing world with a fictionalized novel.

Matthew rose from the table, walking Maggi to the front door. “Would I be threatening some chain of command if I told you to have the same?”

Have a good day. That wasn’t possible, she thought. Her new assignment was taking her back undercover. Not to any seedy streets where the enemy was clearly defined the way her old job had been, but into the bowels of the homicide and burglary division of the Aurora force. She felt this was more dangerous. Because there were reputations at stake, and desperate people with a great deal to lose did desperate things when their backs were up against the wall.

Was Detective Patrick Cavanaugh a desperate man? Was that what had led him to betray the oath he’d taken the day he’d been sworn into the department? Had it been desperation or greed that had made him turn his back on his promise to serve and protect and made him serve only himself, protect only his own back?

Not your concern, Mag, she told herself. She wasn’t judge and jury, she was only the investigator. Her job was to gather all the information she could and let someone else make the proper determination.

If that meant putting herself in front of a charging bull, well, she’d known this wasn’t going to be a picnic when she’d signed on to help rid the force of dirty cops.

She frowned, thinking of what her superior had told her about Cavanaugh. The detective had a list of honors a mile long and he was braver than the day was long, but he was as hard as titanium to crack. And as friendly as a shark coming off a month-long hunger strike. The dark-haired, scowling detective went through partners the way most people went through paper towels. The only one who had managed to survive had been Eduardo Ramirez. Until the day he was shot. Ramirez had managed to last two years with Cavanaugh. According to what she’d read in his file, that was quite a record.

Detective First Class Patrick Cavanaugh was the product of a long blue line. His late father had been a cop, one of his uncles had been the chief of police and he was the nephew of the current chief of detectives. Not to mention that he had over half a dozen cousins on the force at the present time. Possibly covering his back. In any case, she knew extreme caution was going to have to be exercised. There could be a lot of toes involved.

She was Daniel, entering the lion’s den, and all the lions were related.

But then, she’d always loved a challenge.

Maggi flashed a smile at her father, meant to put him at ease. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He watched as she slipped on her jacket, watched the weapon disappear beneath the navy blue fabric. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She winked and kissed his cheek before leaving. “Count on it.”

He did.

The call had reached him before he ever made it to the precinct. An overly curious jogger had seen something glistening in the river, catching the first rays of the dull morning sun. It turned out to be the sunroof of a sports car. An all but submerged sports car. He’d called in his find immediately.

A BMW sports car had gone over the railing and found its final resting place in the dark waters below. Patrick told dispatch he was on it and changed his direction, driving toward the river.

Even before he’d closed his cell phone, he’d been struck by the similarity of the case. Fifteen years ago, his aunt Rose’s car was discovered nose down in the very same river. All the Cavanaughs had gathered at Uncle Andrew’s house, trying to comfort his uncle and the others—Shaw, Callie, the twins—Clay and Teri—and Rayne. It was the only time he had seen his uncle come close to breaking down. Aunt Rose’s body wasn’t inside the car when it was fished out. Or in the river when they dragged it. Uncle Andrew refused to believe that she was dead, even when his father told him to move on with his life.

Patrick had been in the room when his father had said that to Andrew. They didn’t realize he was there at first, but he was, just shy of the doorway. There was something there between the two men, something he hadn’t seen before or since, something they never allowed to come out, except for that one time. His uncle came close to striking his father, then held himself in check at the last minute.

But then, his father had a way of getting under people’s skins and rubbing them raw. It was what held him back. And turned him into a bitter drunk in his off hours. He never showed up for work under the influence, but the minute he was off duty, he went straight for a bottle. It was as if he was trying to drown something inside him that refused to die.

The tension between his father and his uncle that day had been so thick they might have come to blows if Uncle Andrew hadn’t seen him standing there just then. The next minute, Uncle Andrew left, saying he wanted to go to the river to see what he could do to help find her. Uncle Brian went with him.

Eventually, everyone stopped believing that she was still alive, but he knew that Uncle Andrew never gave up hope. His uncle still believed his wife was alive, even to this day.

Hope was a strange thing, Patrick mused as he turned down the winding highway that fed on to the road by the river. It kept some people going, against all odds. He thought of his mother. Hope tortured others needlessly. His mother had stayed with his father until the day he died, hoping he would change. His father never had.

Patrick blocked the thoughts from his mind. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. It was time for him to be a detective.

When he arrived at the site, there were ten or so curious passersby milling around the area, craning their necks for a view. They were held back by three patrolman who had been summoned to the scene. A bright yellow tape stretched across the area close to the retrieved vehicle, proclaiming it a crime scene.

He was really getting to hate the color yellow.

Exiting his car, Patrick nodded absently at the patrolmen and strode toward the recently fished out sports car. Except for a smashed left front light, the car seemed none the worse for wear. The driver’s side door was hanging open, allowing him a view of the young woman inside. She was stretched out across her seat, her body tilted toward the passenger side. She was twenty, maybe twenty-one and had been very pretty before the water had stolen her last breath and filled her lungs, sealing the look of panic on her face.

He judged the woman in the trim navy suit bending over her to be a little older, though he wasn’t sure by just how much. He didn’t recognize her. Someone new in the coroner’s office, he imagined. She looked a little young to be a doctor.

Or maybe he was just feeling old.

Patrick took a step back, partially turning toward the nearest patrolman. “Who’s that?”

The officer glanced over his shoulder. “Detective McKenna. Says she’s with you.”

Irritation was close to the surface this morning. Okay, who the hell was playing games and why? “Nobody’s with me,” Patrick retorted tersely.

He thought he heard the patrolman mutter, “You said it, I didn’t,” but his attention was focused on the blonde kneeling beside the vehicle.

Crossing to her quickly, he wasted no time with preambles and niceties. He didn’t like having his crime scene interfered with. “I thought I was assigned to this case.”