She dreamt of him that night.

Not of Brian, but of her late husband. The dream was so real, so frightening she could feel herself breaking out into a cold sweat. It was only after a few moments had passed that she realised there was no one standing over her, that the heavy breathing she heard was her own.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in the room with her.

Turning on the lamp beside her bed didn’t reveal anyone standing in the shadows, or taking shelter behind her drapes.

She was alone.

And maybe going a little crazy.

Lila took a long breath, trying to steady her nerves. She was about to turn off the light again when the phone rang. Lila yanked the receiver. “Look, you sick, perverted scum, you keep this up and I’m going to track you down and trust me, you really don’t want me to do that.”

“Oh, I don’t know, it sounds promising,” the deep male voice on the other end said.

Lila was stunned. And relieved. He was the man she wanted to hear from. “Brian…”

Marie Ferrarella, this USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over one hundred and fifty novels, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

Cavanaugh Heat

By

Marie Ferrarella

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Audrey, who gives me unconditional love and a

reason to vacuum every day.

Chapter 1

The abrupt ring of the telephone didn’t wake her.

Despite the fact that she’d gone to bed more than an hour ago, she was still awake. Tense.

Waiting.

Waiting to have the last fragments of serenity wrenched from her. Again. It had been happening more and more frequently. The middle-of-the-night phone calls shattering her peace of mind.

She supposed that she could have closed off the landline, muting the ringer so that when the call came, it wouldn’t register, wouldn’t cause her heart to race.

But she couldn’t shut the phone. She didn’t have that luxury because if one of her children called, if she shut off the phone, she wouldn’t be able to take the call. She didn’t want to worry them, making them wonder why she wasn’t home at this hour or wasn’t answering her phone.

Or they could need her. All four of them, Zack, Taylor, Riley and even Frank, were on the force as she had been.

As their late father had been.

She would never be able to forgive herself if she missed a life-and-death call just because some phantom nutcase seemed bent on spooking her.

Sitting up, Lila McIntyre turned on the lamp and squinted at the light’s harsh intrusion. Over in the corner, Duchess, her ten-year-old German shepherd, picked up her head as if to ask, “What’s wrong?”

“Go back to sleep,” she told the dog, but Duchess kept on eyeing the ringing phone. And wouldn’t stop until she answered it.

Edgy, Lila felt like throwing the phone across the room instead of picking up the receiver. With effort, she made herself calm down. Whoever was on the other end of the line wanted her to lose control. If she gave in to a fit of temper, she’d be playing into his hands, doing exactly what he wanted her to do.

Lila looked at the phone’s LCD screen. All it told her was that the incoming call was “out-of-area.” No number, no hint.

Whoever it was was playing mind games, she thought. But why? Nothing came to her.

Maybe it was just a nut job, pure and simple. It was the most plausible explanation, but her intuition told her no.

Drawing in a long breath, Lila snatched up the receiver and pressed it to her ear. The very act made her shiver.

“Hello?” she snapped. It wasn’t a greeting, but a demand. A demand for a reply.

There was no answer on the other end of the line. Only the faint sound of someone breathing. Someone listening to the sound of her voice while keeping his own a secret.

What do you want from me? she asked silently.

Out loud, she did her best to sound bored. “You know, this isn’t funny anymore. I can have this traced and when I find out who you are, there are going to be consequences. Consequences you’re not going to like.” Lila looked down and saw that she had dug her nails into the comforter, gathering it into a wad. She released it—but wasn’t able to do the same with the tension that rode roughshod over her. “So why don’t you do yourself a favor and stop acting like an eight-year-old?”

There was no response, just another soft breath drawn in and exhaled. And then came a “click” in her ear. The caller was gone.

Lila sat there, holding the receiver, annoyed with herself. Annoyed because she was allowing this jerk to get to her.

“If you’d like to place a call…”

Lila jumped as the metallic female voice instructed her to dial again. With a muffled curse, she threw the receiver into the cradle. The recording was abruptly silenced.

Her hand shook as she dragged it through tousled honey-blond hair.

It was the twenty-first call.

By definition, a peace officer should like peace. Despite the fact that he had risen up through the ranks and was now the chief of detectives, a position he had held for quite some time, Brian Cavanaugh still considered himself a peace officer.

A peace officer who hated peace and quiet.

Oh, he didn’t hate it on the streets of Aurora, a city that he and rather a large portion of his family patrolled and thought of as their own. The peace on the streets was something he took exceptional pride in. Maintaining it was what he was all about—professionally. The peace and quiet he hated was the type that assaulted him when he first opened his eyes in the morning. The kind that slapped him across the face when he walked through the front door of his house every evening.

Not all that long ago, that same house rang with the sounds of voices, as likely as not raised either in laughter or in frustrated fits of temper that dissolved as quickly as they materialized. The voices of his wife and his children, three boys and a girl.

An amused smile curved his mouth. He could just hear their response to that. They wouldn’t have taken kindly to being referred to as children. They saw themselves as—and were—adults. Three men and a woman—all of whom would always be his children long after they traded in their service revolvers and law books for canes.

Troy, Jared, Dax and Janelle were all married now and Susan, his wife, had died by her own hand several years ago. Leaving him with a whole lot of empty space. What had once been a home had become a house where he laundered his clothes, slept and, on occasion, ate.

Most of the time, though, he took his meals either at his desk or at Andrew’s, his older brother’s house. Andrew was a veritable Houdini when it came to pulling food out of the air. No matter how many faces popped up at the extended table that Andrew had had specially made, a table that could sit twenty-six, Andrew always seemed to have enough food to feed everyone. And there was always enough left over for seconds and possibly thirds.

Andrew’s hospitality was legendary and family was all important to him.

It was all important to all of them, Brian thought now as he closed a folder on his desk. He’d just never realized how much it meant to him until he’d walked down the aisle and given Janelle away, then returned home after the reception.

And woken up the following morning to absolutely nothing. No noise, no sounds of a door being opened and shut, nothing. Nothing but all-enshrouding peace and quiet.

And damn, but he hated it.

“Don’t you ever go home anymore?”

The soft query caught him off guard. He hadn’t been looking toward the entrance to his office. Instead his attention had been fixed on the portal that led him to the past. Remembering times when his life was so full he hadn’t had two seconds to rub together. That was when his kids were younger, all still living at home, and Susan—well, there was no getting away from it. Susan had been waning, even then.

It had been a draining juggling act, working on the force and standing guard on the home front, making sure that no one suspected the deep bouts of depression that Susan battled. He thought it would be detrimental for his children to know the depths to which their mother could sink. He was fairly certain he was successful in his efforts, that no one suspected how bad Susan was.

No one except for him and Andrew, who always seemed to know everything. And, of course, Susan, who, when she managed to rise above the leaden blanket that would eventually smother her, would look at him with those brown eyes of hers and silently ask, “Why?”

He had no answer. No one did. No one knew why she would periodically drift away mentally. Her returns grew fewer and fewer as well as shorter and shorter. Until one day she was gone altogether, body and mind. That was the day she committed suicide, leaving a note that said she was sorry, but she couldn’t help herself.

It was a sense of family that kept him going then. That and his duty to the city where he and his brothers, and then his children, nieces and nephews were born. The city that they now served.

Seeing the slim, blond-haired woman in the doorway took him back, as well. Back to the days when he was a homicide detective. And Lila McIntyre was his partner.

“Damn best partner anyone had ever had,” he’d told her more than once.

And he’d meant it.

A multitude of emotions tangoed through his mind, dominated by the almost sickening fear he’d felt that night he’d had Lila’s blood seeping through the spaces between his fingers as he pressed down for all he was worth on the hole a bullet had torn in her side.

“Nothing to go home for anymore,” he answered simply. Brian placed the folder in his top drawer, then shut it. “My family’s grown and off making families of their own. Just the four walls and me now.”

Lila came a little closer, smiling that smile he’d once been able to read so well. The bittersweet one that used to make him ache inside for reasons he would never allow himself to dwell on.

“You need a dog,” she told him. “Duchess was a great help after…” Her voice trailed off, the smile intensified. “After,” Lila repeated with a sigh, making no effort to finish the thought.

They both knew what she was not saying. After Ben had been killed. That had been over three years ago. Ben McIntyre had been another detective on the force. Unlike either of them, he had worked in the vice squad. Ben had been a victim of a drug bust gone bad or his own greed, depending on who you spoke to.

It was the latter theory that had been shadowing Lila and her four children these last few years. Causing them grief. But Ben was gone either way and she had managed to soldier on, continuing to work at the precinct, her head always held high.

He’d always thought of her as a magnificent woman.

He’d always thought of her, even when he shouldn’t have.

Brian looked at her now, thinking that Lila bore no visible scars of what she’d gone through. She still looked exactly like the young woman he’d been paired up with almost fourteen years ago. He couldn’t help comparing her to Susan, to how differently the two women bore up to things.

Lila’s life had been hard—few thought she would survive the wound that took her away from active duty—and yet here she was, still young and vibrant. In comparison, Susan had had almost everything she wanted and yet somehow that had never been enough. His wife had allowed life to leave ravaging marks on her until she finally just faded from existence.

Not fair, he upbraided himself. Susan was your wife, where’s your loyalty?

He had no answer to his own silent question. What he did have was a fair amount of guilt for even allowing his thoughts to succumb to this contest of mentally weighing and measuring between the two women.

There was no point to this. The past was gone and nothing could ever change that.

Brian focused his attention on the here and now. On the woman standing near his desk. Everyone else from the day shift had long since gone home. The Lila he remembered never did anything without a reason. Their paths, whether by design or by happenstance, hadn’t crossed for a long time. Why now? What was she doing here when by all rights she should have been home?

“So what brings you here?” Brian asked, doing his best to bank down the awkwardness that came from losing touch with an old friend.

“Same old Brian.” Her smile lost some of its bitter-sweetness, replaced by a broad ribbon of amusement. “Nice to know that some things don’t change. You always did get right to the point.”

He laughed. He’d never been very good at small talk. As he recalled, neither had she. “Must have been the company I kept.” He looked at her for a long moment. Something was bothering her. Did it have to do with one of her kids? “You were never known for beating around the bush, either.”

Lila inclined her head, honey-blond bangs falling into her blue eyes. She moved them impatiently out of the way.

“Touché.” She glanced at the chair that stood before his desk and nodded toward it. “May I sit?”

He gestured for her to do just that. “You don’t have to ask. We are friends, remember?”

In a fluid motion, Lila slid onto the chair. Her figure was still fighting trim even though she spent her days behind a desk now. From a distance, she could have been mistaken for one of her daughters. All four of the McIntyre offspring were here, on the force, all bravely ignoring the hail of insinuations and slurs regarding their father’s character until it had finally run its course.

Though he’d never really liked Ben McIntyre, he had come to the man’s posthumous defense. There was not enough proof to convict Ben or Dean Walker, his dead partner, of the whispered accusations. Brian was a firm believer in the “innocent until proven guilty” aspect of the law no matter what his personal feelings might be. Shortly before Ben’s death, the man had accused him of sleeping with Lila.

Susan had voiced the same accusations, but in Susan’s case, her insecurities and demons put words into her mouth. In Ben’s case, it was just unfounded jealousy. Even so, Brian wouldn’t allow that to dictate his feelings about Ben’s complicity in the missing drug money. Just because Ben was a poor excuse for a human being didn’t mean he was a dirty cop, as well. And thus far, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him or absolve him.

“Yes, we are,” Lila was saying. “Friends.”

Banking down a sigh, Lila raised her eyes to his. She had no idea where to start, how to phrase this without sounding like some old woman who habitually checked beneath her bed each night for intruders before going to sleep.

She knotted her fingers together in her lap, searching for the right words.

Brian frowned slightly. Her body language spoke of feelings that seemed the total antithesis of the woman he’d once known. Known her as well as he’d known himself.

“Are you nervous, Lila?”

Even as he asked, it seemed impossible. One of the first things he’d ever taken her to task for was that she didn’t have the good sense to be afraid. She was fearless—and this tended to get rookies commendations…and killed.

Denial instantly sprang to Lila’s lips. But this wasn’t something to lie about. Especially not to Brian. Not to her old partner.

She looked down at her knotted hands, then raised her eyes to his again.

“Yes,” she answered, her voice so soft it almost disappeared into the atmosphere without leaving behind a sound.

Concerned, he leaned forward, the very movement creating an intimate space between them. For more than six years, they had had each other’s backs, gone into dangerous situations without knowing if either one of them would make it back alive. There was a time when there was no one he trusted more than Lila. They’d been so in-tuned to one another, they literally ended each other’s sentences.

The look in her eyes took him back to those days. But there was something else, as well. Fear? What in God’s name could have been responsible for that?

“This is me, Lila. Brian. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Lila lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, then let it drop. She valued his opinion of her. “I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot.”

“You’re a lot of things, Lila, but you’re not now, nor have you ever been, an idiot.”

There was gratitude in her eyes when she smiled this time.

“Don’t be that hasty to absolve me, Brian.” She took a breath, then shook her head. She shouldn’t have come. She was being a coward. There was no point in burdening him with this nonsense—and it was nonsense. Just crank calls, nothing more.

“No, never mind. You’re busy and I’m letting my imagination run away with me.” But as she started to get up, Brian caught her wrist, preventing her from making a quick getaway.

For a single moment the gentle pressure of his fingers against her skin generated a warmth that shot out in both directions from the point of contact. Her thoughts scattered even as she became acutely aware of how long it had been since there had been a strong man in her life. She was proud of her sons, fine officers both, but it wasn’t the same thing as having a man to respect, to turn to, on a regular basis.

A man to be partners with in life.

Oh God, she thought, she was being overwrought. She needed to pull herself together. The sleepless nights were getting to her.

“You never had an imagination,” he pointed out with a grin.

When he grinned like that, it took her back. Back to when they’d first met during a briefing session, her detective shield still warm from being issued. He was the veteran detective who balked at having such a “newbie” to work with. He was polite and respectful, but there was no actual on-the-job respect given her—until she’d earned it. Which she did, but it hadn’t been easy.

And all the while, after putting in all those hours on the job, she would come home to Ben’s unflattering implications that she was sharing more than just a working relationship with Brian. She put up with it as long as she could, assuring Ben that he was imagining things. Until the day she’d lashed out at him. Lashed out because, secretly, she had harbored thoughts about Brian, thoughts that could never go anywhere, could never see the light of day because they were both married and between them there were eight innocent kids to think of.

“We’ll debate that some other time,” she told him.

She was conscious of forcing a spasmodic smile to her lips. One look at Brian’s face told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. Okay, she was here, she might as well spit this out. He’d probably say something like it was nothing to worry about and she would be on her way.

Lila sat down again, perching on the edge of her seat. “I’ve been getting calls.”

She captured his interest immediately. Lila wasn’t the kind to spook. “What kind of calls?”

Lila watched his face for the first sign of annoyance or disappointment. Or was it already too late for that? “The hang-up kind.”

His face appeared unreadable to her as he asked, “How often?”

She wasn’t going to bore him with numbers, even though she had counted. It might make him think she was obsessing over nothing. “Often.”

His eyes never left her face. “When did the calls start?”

She thought for a minute. “About five, six weeks ago. Always late at night,” she added before he could ask. Why did things that happened in the night always seem so much more threatening? What was it about the lack of sunlight that made almost the simplest of things so unnerving?

“Some pervert?” Brian suggested.

“Possibly,” Lila allowed, but he could tell by her tone that she didn’t believe it. “There’s no heavy breathing or anything. Just silence. But I know someone’s there.”

“Have you thought of changing your phone number?”

He saw her unconsciously square her shoulders. That was the Lila he knew, he thought, pleased to see her emerge. “That would be running.”

“And you don’t run.” It wasn’t a question. He knew that from experience.

“No, I don’t.” Lila frowned. “Look, it’s my house. This—this person is invading it and I don’t know why.”

He asked the next logical question. “Have you told your kids about these phone calls?”

Her back was ramrod-straight, like a cadet coming to attention. “No. And you won’t, either.” Realizing that sounded as if she was ordering him around, Lila sighed and leaned back. She gave her own interpretation to his question. “You’re right. I’m making too big a deal out of this. It probably is some pervert. Just because he doesn’t breathe like someone who’s just run across the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon doesn’t immediately exonerate him from being a weirdo.” She was on her feet again. “Sorry I bothered you.”

This time Brian stood up and moved in front of her, blocking her exit. “Is this a private conversation, or can anyone get in?”

Instead of laughing at the familiar assessment of her rapid-fire way of talking, for the first time since he’d known her, Lila McIntyre seemed flustered.

Chapter 2

“It’s all that emptiness,” Lila finally said after a long pause.

He’d been waiting for a response, but this didn’t seem to connect with anything. Brian resisted the urge to put his arm around her waist and guide her back to the chair she’d just vacated. Lila always balked at being controlled, at least when they had been partnered together.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

Brian probably thought she sounded scattered, she thought. Hell, there were times when she felt scattered. Lila did her best to explain.

“The house is empty. Except for Duchess,” she qualified. But although she loved the animal dearly, it just wasn’t the same as having someone around to talk to, someone’s presence to feel. She missed that, missed it something awful. People always talked about getting their lives back once their children moved out. But it just didn’t seem like a fair trade-off to her. Having her kids around was her life. “The kids are on their own.” She tried to make light of it. “Doesn’t bother me so much during the day, but in the middle of the night…” Her voice trailed off as she shrugged.

She was trying to dismiss it. But he wasn’t buying it. Lila wasn’t the kind of woman to be afraid of things that went bump in the night. “You don’t imagine the phone ringing.”

Her eyes met his. “No,” she replied quietly, “I don’t.”

“Then someone is calling you.” Maybe she’d be more inclined to talk about it away from here, where everything felt so official. “Listen, do you want to get a cup of coffee?”

The question caught her by surprise. Eight years ago she would have merely nodded her head. Back then, grabbing a cup of coffee with Brian was as natural as breathing. But in the last eight years, by her own design, their paths had not crossed with any regularity. She felt a bit awkward just coming to him like this. It was as if she were trying to open up a part of her past that was supposed to have remained closed.

So instead of saying yes, she tried to demur. “You don’t have to go out of your way.”

Brian wasn’t about to take no for an answer. As he’d told her a few minutes ago, there was nothing waiting for him at home and she made him curious. He’d always felt protective toward her, even though he knew there was a time when she would have skinned him alive if he would have voiced that out loud.

“I’m on my feet anyway, might as well walk toward the door.” He did just that as he spoke. Placing his hand on the doorknob, he waited for her to follow. “The coffee shop isn’t that far off.”

Her mouth quirked as fragments of memories swirled through her head. “Neither is O’Malley’s.”

O’Malley’s was where most of the detectives and uniforms at the station went to unwind and wash away some of the stench generated by the things they were forced to deal with. They did it so that they wouldn’t bring the job home with them.

Brian inclined his head and grinned. It had been a while since he’d been to the watering hole. “Even better.”

At that hour of the evening, O’Malley’s was fairly unpopulated. One shift was gone and the next had not gotten off work yet. Only those from the previous shift, who had no one to go home to, could be found nursing a beer or trying to beat the odds at a game of pool. For them, O’Malley’s was like a second home. At times, even better than the first.

Despite the lack of patrons and the dim lighting, Lila felt there was a cheerfulness about O’Malley’s. When she walked through the door, the bar seemed like an old friend who was happy to see her.

It had been a long while since she’d been here. The last time was when some of her friends had held an impromptu party, welcoming her back to the force. Against Ben’s wishes, she’d gone back to work five years ago, when Frank graduated high school. But the focus of their lives, hers and her friends, was different now. She spent her day behind a desk, fighting a paper war while the people she’d known ever since her academy days were still on the streets in one capacity or another, either as uniformed patrol or detectives. They no longer had that much in common. But she’d kept her rank even though the work she did now didn’t require the experience of a seasoned detective. At times she couldn’t help wondering if pity had played any part in her retaining her rank.

“Still looks the same,” Lila observed, more to herself than to the man beside her.

“That’s why Shawn keeps the lights down low.” As with the face of an old friend, Brian was so familiar with the place that, even after long absences, when he walked in, he really didn’t see it. “Table or bar?” he asked, shutting the door behind them.

“Table.”

“Table it is.”

His hand to the small of her back, Brian steered his ex-partner toward a booth near the back of the room. He sensed she wanted privacy. Otherwise, she would have opted for a stool at the bar, the way she used to do when they frequented the place together.

“Beer?” he asked her as she slid into the booth.

Nodding, Lila slipped her purse from her shoulder. “Sounds good.”

He caught himself watching as she took her seat. The woman still had the shapeliest legs he’d ever seen.

“Be right back,” he promised.

She watched Brian as he walked over to the bar and placed their order with the man who methodically passed a cloth over one glass and then another. The glasses were lined up like crystal soldiers before him along the bar. He had a few more pounds on him than she remembered, but Lila recognized him immediately. Shawn O’Malley. His hair had some gray in it now, but he still looked powerful enough to take on any three rowdy customers with ease. An ex-cop, he retired early when a bullet sealed itself into his hip, defying excision. O’Malley’s was his pride and joy, and he ruled the place like a benevolent king. He decided when someone had had enough. And everyone knew better than to argue with him.

Looking in her direction in response to something Brian said to him, Shawn raised one beefy hand in greeting, smiling his crooked smile at her. For just a second Lila felt as if no time at all had passed. In that second, the years melted away and she was a rookie again, a rookie eager to prove her worth and make the world a better, safer place because she was in it.

Where had the time gone? How could she possibly have gone from her twenties to her forties so damn fast? She didn’t feel any older, she just was.

Shawn filled first one mug, then another, placing them on the bar. White foam topped off each serving, standing at attention even as he picked up one in each hand.

“Hi, stranger,” Shawn called, rounding the bar and heading in her direction. His gait was just a bit lopsided in deference to the wound that had brought him to this place.

Brian walked beside the bartender. Reaching the booth, he slid in, taking the seat opposite her. Shawn placed the two mugs of beer on the table. He flashed her another wide smile as he presented her with her beer. “So where’ve you been keeping yourself all this time?”

She’d always liked talking to Shawn. He was like a cuddly bear. “I’ve been working at the precinct. Desk job,” she added, watching his expression. She knew the man had no use for desk jobs. They’d offered him one after he’d been wounded and he had turned them down flat.

But Shawn merely nodded his shaggy head. “Can’t hold that against you. Come by more often. We’ve missed that smile of yours.” Straightening, he wiped his hands and winked as he nodded toward the mug in front of her. “It’s on the house. Yours,” he emphasized, then turned toward Brian. “Not yours. Your puss I get enough of.”

Brian laughed. “If I’d have known that, I would have played more hard to get,” he said before he took a sip of his beer.

“I’ll leave you two to talk over old times. You get tired of Mr. Authority here—” Shawn jerked a thumb at Brian “—you know where to find me.” The bartender began walking away and then he stopped. “Oh.” He said the word as if a thought had suddenly found him. Or an afterthought. “I was sorry to hear about Ben.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what Shawn was sorry about hearing, that Ben was a suspect in the drug cartel debacle or that he had died much too soon. But that stirred up old wounds and she was in no frame of mind for that tonight. So she merely nodded.

“Thanks.”

To curtail further conversation on that topic, Lila raised the mug to her lips and took a long sip of the bitter brew. The bartender crossed back to the bar and returned to polishing his glasses.

She was tense, Brian thought. He could see it in the corners of her mouth, in the slight furrow of the brow beneath her wispy bangs.

“You don’t come by here anymore?” Brian asked mildly.

“I feel out of place. These are all real cops, out there fighting the good fight.”

He knew there was more to it than that. There were people who thought that Ben had been turned, that he was a dirty cop who paid the ultimate penalty. By not coming here, Lila was avoiding those people. But they were in the minority, she had to know that. And even so, she wasn’t to blame for what her husband had done. And neither were her kids.

Brian thought of pointing that out, then decided that he didn’t want to open any wounds. Not until she indicated that she was ready for that.

“Those also serve who push paper around,” he quipped. “Besides,” he went on, growing serious, “you did more than your part. A little more to the right and you wouldn’t be here right now.”

A cold shiver slithered down her spine the way it always did whenever she thought of that incident. Brian referred to the bullet that had ended her active career. How like him to take himself out of the equation when it came to taking credit.

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” she corrected. “You’re the one who saved my life, Brian.” Her eyes shifted to the hands that were wrapped around his beer mug. A fond smile played on her lips. “You and those big hands of yours.”

Brian glanced down at them as if he’d just now noticed that they were a part of him. The incident vividly came back to him. He’d never been so scared before in his life. Without any effort at all, he could almost feel her warm blood pouring out of the hole, the hole he frantically pressed his fingers against. Waiting for the paramedics to arrive had been the longest ten minutes of his life.

“Susan used to say they were too big, too clumsy.”

“Susan never appreciated what she had.” Before the words were out, Lila regretted them. It wasn’t her place to criticize the man’s wife, especially now that she was gone. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Because she killed herself?” There, he thought, he laid it out in the open. Now they could get past it. “We all have our demons.”

“Amen to that,” she said softly.

She kept glancing around, he noticed. As if she expected someone to turn up. Someone she knew. Was she worried that one of her sons or daughters would walk in and see her? What difference would it make?

Very carefully, Brian took the mug of beer from her and placed it off to the side on the table, then took her hands in his. Her expression never changed, but he could feel her tensing.

“There’s nobody here who knows you. Except Shawn, and he always had a soft spot for you. Not Ben,” he allowed truthfully, “but you.”

He didn’t add that the reason for that didn’t have anything to do with the rumors about Ben selling out. It was because both he and Shawn, as well as a few others, were privy to the fact that Ben had stepped out on Lila more than once. Handsome to a fault, Ben McIntyre took advantage of the fact that he attracted women like a rock star attracted adoring fans.

Realizing that he was still holding her hands, Brian released them. Questions kept cropping up in his head, so many questions. He didn’t even know where to start. But he knew he needed to put her at ease if he hoped to get any answers. For the moment, he pushed aside the reason she’d sought him out. There was time enough for that later. Brian already knew what he was going to do about her problem.

Leaning over the table, his eyes on hers, he asked in the friendliest voice he could generate, “So how have you been?”

Lonely. “Busy,” she told him out loud. “I actually do like the work, although not as much as being out in the field,” she qualified honestly. “Wayne Langtree’s wife just had a baby and he took off some time to be with his new family, so we’re pretty swamped.”

Brian smiled to himself as he shook his head in wonder. “Maternity leave for men. Who would have thought it? There’s a whole new world out there now, Lila. It was a hell of a lot different when we first came on the job.” For one thing, he thought, there hadn’t been all that many women in uniform, much less carrying a detective’s shield. Lila had a lot to be proud of. “The world is really changing, Lila.” He thought of all the bureaucracy that had come into existence, bureaucracy that at times got in the way of honest cops doing their jobs. He shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

That made two of them, Lila thought. “Some things don’t change,” she reminded him. She saw him raise an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. “There are still bad guys out there for you to catch.”

“Not me,” he said, and she was certain she heard more than a slight note of regret.

The same sort of regret she felt, watching her children suit up for work while she went in to spend her days behind a desk. What she did was necessary, but there was nothing like the rush that came from knowing you’d saved someone’s life or that you’d stopped a murderer from killing again.

“That’s for the others to do.” His eyes met hers. He could see his former partner in there. The one he’d shared so many thoughts with. “You know, sometimes I really miss the old days.”

Something almost electrical zipped through her.

Lila cleared her throat, looking away. Who would have thought, after all this time, that she would still feel this pull, this magnetism dancing between them? This “thing” that went beyond the friendship she and he had forged over the six-year course of their working relationship?

After everything that she had been through, it was still there, still alive.

Maybe for you, but what about him?

She wasn’t prepared to find out.

“Me, too,” she agreed. Did he suspect? Did part of him know how she’d once felt about him? How she probably still felt about him? Banking down her thoughts, she took refuge in her children. It was a safe move. “I miss having the kids all living at home—I even miss the arguments.”

“Not sure I’d go that far.” Brian laughed. “But I do miss the sound of someone breathing in the house besides me.”

About to take another sip of her beer, she stopped and nodded vigorously. “Oh God, yes. Of course the dog’s there, but it’s not the same thing. I love her dearly, but she just doesn’t hold her own in a conversation.” Brian laughed. She’d forgotten how much she liked the sound of his laughter. It was warm and rich and deep. And disarming. She heard herself saying, “You know what’s the worst? When I wake up from a nightmare and still think they’re living at home. When the realization sinks in that they’re not, it’s just awful.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He paused for a moment, debating whether or not to ask and if she’d considered it prying. He assuaged his conscience by telling himself that friends didn’t pry, they expressed concern. “You have nightmares?”

Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. He was going to think she’d become a drama queen. Like his wife. Too late now, she thought. He was obviously waiting for her to elaborate.

“Sometimes,” she finally admitted.

“About anything in particular?”

Yes, about Ben. About the way he looked when he washed up on shore. But out loud, she said, “About that night.” It wasn’t a lie. Sometimes she had nightmares about that. But not nearly as often as the other. “It never quite leaves me.”

Life had changed quickly after that night. They had never really had a chance to talk about it. Ben was always standing guard, limiting his access to Lila. And then she’d left the force and he’d gone on to become the chief of detectives. And a widower.

“Maybe you should have gone to the department shrink,” he suggested tactfully, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but maybe it was something she needed to hear. He saw her closing up before his eyes.

“Ben didn’t have any use for shrinks.”

Husband or not, Brian never got the sense that the man had her best interests at heart. “Ben wasn’t the one who got shot.”

“No, not then,” she said softly.

Damn, he’d walked right into that one with his size-twelve feet. How could he have not remembered? There’d been a bullet to the head at close range. “I’m sorry. That just came out. I didn’t mean—”

She didn’t want him feeling guilty. Not when he’d always been there for her. “I know you didn’t.”

She was right not to tell him about the other nightmares. The ones about Ben being shot, about his being beaten and tortured and clubbed in the face. His teeth were all destroyed in an obvious ploy to hide his identity on the off chance that his body would wash up on shore. Which it had.

Lila could shut it down during the day, but at night, it was a different story. Asleep, she envisioned all of it on a recurring basis.

That, too, made her hate going to sleep in the empty house.

Brian could almost see her pulling away. He knew her well enough, even now, to pick up on the signs. Maybe it was time to revert back to why she’d sought him out. “About this not-so-heavy breather of yours—”

Lila waved her hand, dismissing the topic. “Forget it.”

“No,” he replied in the soft, no-nonsense voice that his detectives had learned could not be opposed. “I won’t. It was important enough for you to break your self-imposed exile and come look me up.”

Because it was more than a little true, she took exception to his words. “There was no self-imposed exile.”

“Then why have you been avoiding me all this time?”

Shrugging, she went for the obvious. “We work on different floors.”

“But not different countries,” he pointed out. “Last time I looked, the station had elevators and a phone system. I know, I used both.” When he heard she was back and then again when Ben had been murdered, he’d tried to get in touch with her. To no avail. “And every time I tried to get in contact with you, you were either dashing off somewhere or your machine would pick up. Eventually, even someone as thick-headed as me takes the hint.”

“There were no hints,” she insisted, feeling guilty about having treated him that way. Feeling guiltier

about lying now. “I was just busy.”

“Twenty-four, seven?”

She was in too deep to abandon the lie now. “Twenty-five, eight,” Lila countered. What good would it do either of them for him to know that she hadn’t been up to facing him, not up to having to defend her husband to someone who’d once been her best friend?

Would all that ever be completely behind her? Would she ever be able to be as open with Brian as she once had been? God, she hoped so.

“I’m not as fast as I used to be,” she told him.

One eyebrow rose in a silent, skeptical declaration. “Ha. That’ll be the day. There is no slowing you down.”

He made her laugh. He always made her laugh, she recalled. Even when things at home were unbearable, she could always count on Brian to divert her for a little while, to come through and make things seem better.

She looked at him now and wondered if she could still count on him. Or if, ultimately, time had changed that, too.

Chapter 3

The next words out of his mouth told her that her faith had not been misplaced.

“I’m going to have a tap put on your phone,” Brian told her. “See if we can find out who this night caller of yours is and ‘politely’ suggest he get his entertainment some other way—or face prosecution.”

She didn’t want it to come to that. She just wanted it to stop. More than likely, it was someone who thought she was somehow involved in the mess that had ended Ben’s life. So many rumors abounded around that time. Some had her killing Ben herself and using the drug cartel scandal as cover. Others thought she was as deeply involved as they said Ben was, taking money from the drug dealers to look the other way. There were as many different rumors as days of the week. She learned not to pay attention to any of them and waited for the air to clear. And eventually it did. But some rumors died harder than others.

She wondered if Brian had been tempted to believe any of them. But this wasn’t the time to ask. So she nodded in response to his offer.

“I’d appreciate it.” And then she hesitated. “Brian, you won’t…”

“Tell anyone?” he guessed. “I’ll have to tell the guy running the tap, but I’ll swear him to secrecy,” he quipped. “I’d offer to blindfold him if you like, but then he might not do the best job.”

Brian smiled at her understandingly. He could only guess at what she’d gone through. If she hadn’t been so damn stubborn, he might have been able to help long before this. But then, he supposed, she wouldn’t have been Lila. Independent as hell.

“It’ll be off the record,” he assured her. He saw a hint of skepticism in her eyes. “You don’t put in as much time on the force as I have without gathering a few favors to call in.”

He liked the way relief softened her expression. “I really appreciate this, Brian,” she repeated. “I know you probably think I’m overreacting.”

“Lila, when we were partners, I learned to respect your gut instincts. You never overreacted then and you’re probably not overreacting now.”

She caught the one word he had glossed over. “‘Probably.’”

Brian smiled. The wording was a result of on-the-job indoctrination. “Being the chief of d’s has taught me to be cautious.”

Brian set down his mug, finished with his beer, but she was still nursing hers. “Well, I’m glad something finally did. For a man with four kids, you were always a little reckless,” she remembered, then took another long swig of the amber brew.

As he recalled their partnership, Lila was always the one to rush in where angels feared to go, not him. “Look who’s talking.”

She had the good grace not to argue. “Maybe you have a point.”

Folding his hands before him, he watched her for a long moment. Humor faded in the face of more serious memories. “If you’d been a little less gung ho, I would have been the one who caught the bullet that night. And a lot of things might have been different.” For one thing, she would have continued on the job and he would have refused to retire, the way Ben had made her do. They would have continued working together and she would have never withdrawn from him.

Lila could almost hear what he was thinking. No point in going there, that path led nowhere. So she did her best to lighten the moment. “Yeah, you would have been dead because blood makes me squeamish. I could have never done what you did, put my hand over the hole to try to get it to stop bleeding.”

Brian knew better. Knew that when they were partnered, she had always been there for him. That she had his back no matter what.

“Somehow, I don’t think so.” He paused for a moment, debating whether to take on more serious subjects. There was so much to talk about. So much to try to catch up on. Even after their partnership had terminated, even after she clearly began to avoid him—because of Ben, he’d like to believe—he’d thought about her. Thought about her a lot if he were being honest with himself. He’d wondered what she was doing, how she was getting along and if he should take it upon himself to barrage into her self-imposed solitude.

He never did. Maybe he should have. Because God knew he’d missed her.

Impulse, something he rarely experienced and even more rarely gave in to, had him asking, “Listen, would you like to have dinner sometime?”

Lila’s mouth curved slowly, like a flower responding to the first rays of the summer sun. “Sometime,” she echoed.

Heartened, Brian pressed on. “How about tomorrow night?”

She blinked. “‘Sometime’ came fast.”

He spread his hands, taking care not to knock over the empty mug. “Hey, if this business has taught me nothing else, it’s that you never know how much time you have left—” he eyed her intently “—and personally, I think that I’ve lost too much time with my best friend already.”

Best friend. He probably had no idea how comforting that sounded to her. Or how much she had missed him, Lila thought.

“Me, too,” she agreed softly. And then, because she thought that maybe she’d admitted too much, she focused on what he’d said about the capricious nature of the kind of life police officers led. “When the kids all opted to go into the force, I was both so proud and so scared. A big part of me just wanted them to be safe. To sit in cubicles where nothing more serious than a paper cut threatened them.”

“You sit in a cubicle,” he reminded her, humor framing his mouth. “How do you like it?”

Lila laughed. Checkmate—or was it touché? she wondered. In any case, he had her. “I hate it.”

He nodded, knowing that she did. He couldn’t help wondering why, after Ben had died and the man’s hold over her went with him, she hadn’t asked to be put back in the field in some capacity.

“Wouldn’t wish an existence they’d hate on your kids, would you?”

“No.” Which was why she’d never told even her daughters, Riley and Taylor, how she felt about their choice of a vocation. “But I still get knots in my stomach at times, worrying.”

“All parents worry—if they’re worth their salt.” It was a given. He worried about all of his kids, even Janelle, who was an assistant to the D.A. All of them dealt with the criminal element every day. There was nothing reassuring about that. But some things were just out of his hands.

However, the direction of the conversation was not and he got it back on track. “So, what’s your answer?”

Lila raised her eyes to his quizzically. Something quivered in his gut. “My answer?”

She did innocent well, Brian thought, amused. “I wasn’t distracted by the sidebar, Lila. Dinner? Tomorrow?”

Lila moved the mug aside. She’d had enough beer. Taking in a breath, she let it out slowly, as if by doing so it somehow signaled the beginning of a new journey. One that promised to be far more pleasant than the one she’d just been on.

“Dinner. Tomorrow,” she echoed, confirming the engagement.

Something like the burst of sunshine went off in his chest. He didn’t try to explore the reasons behind it. “Great. I’ll pick you up at your place. Seven o’clock all right?”

Now that she was living alone, dinner no longer had a set time. It was dictated by the contents of her refrigerator and her desire to nibble.

“Seven o’clock is fine,” she assured him. Warmth spread through her as she felt him looking at her. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle this, so she pushed it aside for the time being. Glancing at her watch, she realized that a lot more time had gone by than she’d thought. “I’d better get going.” She flashed him a grateful smile. “I’ve kept you long enough.”

He began to protest that it hadn’t been nearly long enough, then thought better of it. She was still skittish, even though that was difficult to reconcile with the Lila he knew. So instead, he rose from the booth, signaling that he was ready to go, too.

As Lila slid out, he leaned over to quietly tell her, “The tap will be put in place tomorrow morning. I’ll send Manny Lopez over.” The senior computer tech was both exceptionally competent and quiet. “What time do you leave for work?”

The precinct was only ten minutes away, but she liked getting in early. “Seven-thirty.”

“Manny will be there at seven.” It was before his shift, but he knew he could prevail on the man to come in early. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Are you sure he won’t mind putting in the extra time?”

Manny, a widower, had a daughter who had been caught shoplifting last year. Brian had made the charges go away, keeping them off the police blotter in exchange for Rachel “volunteering” for community service and counseling.

Nodding, she preceded Brian as they made their way to the door.

“Come back soon,” Shawn called after them.

Brian glanced over his shoulder toward the bartender. “Count on it.”

“I’m talking to the cute blonde, not you, Cavanaugh,” Shawn responded.

Lila laughed and raised her hand above her head to wave goodbye.

“You have an admirer,” Brian told her as they walked out.

“Shawn was always a good guy.” She turned around at the entrance. The night air was chilly. The temperature had dropped drastically since they’d gone inside. Lila turned up her collar, wrapping her arms around herself. “So are you, Brian.”

Then why had she avoided him? But he knew better than to ask the question this early in their reconnection. If he did, she might find a reason to cancel tomorrow night. And he was really looking forward to tomorrow night.

“Hang on to that thought,” he told her as they walked back to the precinct parking lot.

He was whistling when he got home twenty minutes later. Even walking into the dark house didn’t bother him the way it usually did.

Ordinarily, the darkness and silence assaulted him the second he pushed open the front door. But not tonight. Tonight, this was the house where a lot of living had gone on, where four babies had grown up to be upstanding adults.

And where, tonight, he felt like a kid again.

Though Brian had never looked toward each birthday with increasing dread, he could feel his usual zest for life waning these last few months.

Maybe it was because everyone in his family had now paired off. That didn’t just include his own kids but Andrew’s and Mike’s, as well. Eleven members in all, every one of them married and in the family way—or getting there. Even Andrew, who had been on his own for so many years, was now reunited with the wife only he had actually believed was still alive.

Rose Cavanaugh had disappeared one morning after an argument with her husband. All the evidence had pointed to her death, not the least of which was the fact that her car was discovered in the river. Her body wasn’t found, but it could have easily been swept out to sea, and that was what everyone believed.

Everyone but Andrew.

He never gave up hope, and over the years, every spare moment he had found him poring over one dead end after another, until he finally found her. But even that hadn’t been a total success. Rose had been working at a diner upstate and was a victim of amnesia. She had no recollection of the husband and children she’d left behind.

Undaunted, Andrew displayed ultimate patience and somehow got her to come around, to remember.

So there they all were, paired up and happy while he pretended it didn’t matter to him that he was always stag at the endless family functions.

Well, tomorrow night he wasn’t going to go stag. Tomorrow he was going out with Lila.

“Don’t go getting ahead of yourself,” he murmured to himself. Methodically, he removed his jacket and then his holster with the service revolver. The former he slung across the back of a chair, but he placed the latter on the third shelf of his bookcase, the way he had been doing for the past twenty-some-odd years. “It’s just dinner, just catching up on old times.”

And maybe, finally, making a few new ones, he added silently.

“You talking to yourself now?”

Reaching for his gun, Brian swung around toward the sound of the voice, the weapon aimed and ready to fire. Andrew was standing in the doorway, looking more amused than angry or distressed.

“Easy, Quick Draw.” Andrew raised one hand in mock surrender.

Putting the safety back on, Brian returned the gun to its holster. “How did you get in here?”

“The front door was open.” Andrew nodded in the general direction of the door. “You forgot to lock it.” He crossed over toward Brian. “Not like you to be absentminded.” He considered his assessment for a second. “’Course, not like you to be talking to yourself, either. Hope you don’t do that down at the precinct. Wouldn’t want people to start talking, saying that my little brother is going crazy. Might not reflect well on the rest of the family. Or the police force for that matter, having a chief of d’s who talks to himself.”

He couldn’t care less what people at the station gossiped about. People always found something to talk about. All he cared about was what his family thought of him—and what he thought of himself. “Why don’t you let me worry about what people say about me?”

To his surprise, Andrew shook his head. “Can’t. I’m the patriarch of the family, remember? That’s what patriarchs do, they worry about the family’s reputation.”

Brian didn’t have any experience with so-called patriarchs, but he knew Andrew and what was important to his older brother. It wasn’t necessarily reputation, but seeing to it that everyone was fed. Well fed. “And cook.”

“If they’re exceptional,” Andrew deadpanned. “And speaking of food,” he continued, “that leads me to what I’m doing here.”

Brian crossed his arms before him, his affection for his brother more than slightly apparent. “I figured you’d get around to it, sooner or later.”

“I’ve come to take you to dinner.”

He’d wondered when Andrew would finally swoop down on him. It was very important to his older brother to have family members turn up at his table on at least a semi-regular basis and he’d been absent of late.

Still, he couldn’t resist giving Andrew a hard time. “I don’t remember you asking.”

Andrew looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “It’s a standing invitation. That means I don’t have to ask.”

Brian parried to Andrew’s thrust. “That also means if I don’t show up, no one’s nose is supposed to be bent out of joint.”

“Yours might be if you give me a hard time,” Andrew informed him. “Rose told me not to come home without you.”

Brian knew better. Although he and his sister-in-law got along very well, it was Andrew who insisted on meal attendance, Andrew who found any kind of an excuse to throw an immense family party. Andrew who insisted that the family that ate together, stayed together.

“Or what,” Brian asked, amused, “she’ll give you a time-out?”

Andrew ignored the question, getting down instead to the reason he’d come to fetch his brother. “You haven’t been around for a couple of weeks.”

He knew families who only saw one another over the holidays, if then. But to Andrew, that was unthinkable, and now that he reflected on it, Brian had to admit that he was grateful that he was a part of this family rather than the other kind.

But he did enjoy giving Andrew a hard time. “Maybe I’m on a diet.”

Andrew never missed a beat. “I’ve got carrots sticks. You can gnaw on a few while the rest of us eat.” Looking around the house, Andrew frowned. “You spend too much time alone.”

Amen to that. But he wasn’t about to make noises like a grieving woman after the last of her children had moved out. It just wasn’t manly. “Ever think I might want to be alone?”

Andrew shook his head. “No. You’re too much like me. Let’s face it, we’re family men, not lone wolves.”

The description struck a chord. “Like Mike?” Brian asked.

Their middle brother, killed on the job years ago, had been the different one, the one who had been out of step with the rest of them. A policeman, as well, he spent his life living in the shadow of both his older brother and his younger one, never finding a place for himself other than in a bottle. And never learning to appreciate the two young souls he’d help bring into the world. Andrew’d had more to do with raising Patience and Patrick even when Mike was alive than Mike did.

“Mike couldn’t help being what he was.”

There, they had a difference of opinion. Andrew was being too lax. “Everyone can help being what they are. You can’t help being tall, or right-handed, but you can do something about what you feel inside.”

“Fascinating,” Andrew declared with feeling as he slipped his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you elaborate on that, say, over dinner? Really,” he added seriously, “I hate thinking of you rattling around in this place night after night, standing over the sink or sitting in front of the TV, eating out of a can—”

“Take-out,” Brian corrected. “I eat take-out food.”

Andrew shuddered. “Even worse.” He played his ace card. “I’ve got a pot roast waiting. It’s got your name on it.”

Brian laughed. “You know, the sad thing is, I don’t doubt that. I can just see you carving my name into it.”

“Why would I bother to lie, especially since I outrank you?”

“You can’t outrank me. You’re the ‘former’ police chief, remember? You retired.”

Andrew hit the back of Brian’s head with the flat of his hand, as if to knock some sense into him. “I’m talking about in the family hierarchy.”

Brian rubbed the back of his head more for show than out of any sense of injury. “You always did have a way with words.”

“And pot roast.”

“And pot roast,” Andrew agreed, following his brother out the door.

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