A Cavanaugh Christmas (14 page)

“So you go because you like to eat?”

There was a sarcastic note in Kait’s voice, but he could tell she didn’t believe the excuse he’d just uttered for a minute. Which meant, at bottom, that she gave him credit for not being shallow—whether she knew it or not.

“I go because I like keeping an open mind. This, as it turns out, is my father’s family and so, now it’s mine, as well. Up until a few months ago, I knew them as ‘the Cavanaughs,’ good people, great cops. It’s interesting getting to know them on a more personal level, as my cousins, uncles and aunts.” He glanced in her direction. “In my position, you wouldn’t?”

Her shoulders stiffened in a defensive move he was becoming pretty familiar with. “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

Tom deliberately kept his tone mild, upbeat. “Gee, I thought we were just talking in general.” And then he grew a little more serious. “I’m not asking probing questions, Kait. I’m just asking general questions. It’s called conversation. What are you afraid I might find out about you?”

“I am not afraid,” she said sharply. “I am
never
afraid.”

“Okay.” He stretched out the word as if it had twice as many syllables. “So, you think the sun’s going to rise again tomorrow?”

She stared at him. “What?”

“I’m looking for nice, safe topics that don’t rub you the wrong way. I figure it’s okay to talk about the sun. It can be the moon if you’d rather talk about that.” He gestured toward the hills in the background as he drove by them. “Or coyotes.” A few of the creatures had been known to turn up in the residential area on occasion, foraging for food.

The absurdity of what he had just said made Kait laugh. And relent.

“Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe I’m being a little up-tight.”

“Nah,” Tom dismissed.

She continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “It’s just that I’m not used to having to make any conversation at all. Like I told you when we first started, I don’t usually work with a partner.”

“Maybe you should. They say that a little verbal give-and-take is healthy for you. Keeps you on your toes, keeps your brain thinking and the juices flowing.”

She took the last part of what he said to be criticism of her lone-wolf approach to her work. “My juices are flowing just fine, thank you.”

He spared her a long glance as they stood idling at a red light. The corners of his mouth curved. “Won’t get an argument out of me.”

Why that comment, as well as the sensual look in his eyes, would cause a flash of warmth to pass over her, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer. But there was no denying that she felt warmer. So much so that she unbuttoned her jacket.

“By the way,” he continued as they drove the last leg of the trip, “the chief was serious when he extended that invitation to you to come to his party.”

She was about to shrug it off, then realized what Tom was saying to her by repeating the former police chief’s impromptu invitation. “Do you want me to go with you?”

Put that way, he knew she’d turn it down. “You make it sound as if I want you to hold my hand at the get-together. What I want—and what the chief wants—is for you to go for you,” he told her. “Like I said, I think it might do you some good to get out and socialize. And if nothing else, the Cavanaughs know how to have a good time.”

This was uncharted territory for her. It had to stop here, before it was too late. Before she was no longer in control of the situation—the way she was afraid might happen.

“Look, let’s get something straight. I came here to keep a promise. I want to find a little girl and catch a predator. I didn’t come out here looking to fill my dance card.”

Tom nodded, humoring her. “Dancing isn’t required. Just as long as you show up at his party.”

Okay, this really had gone too far. She looked at Tom incredulously. “Because if I don’t, what? He’ll miss me?” she asked sarcastically. “Hell, the man won’t even know I’m not there.”

Now there she was wrong. “Trust me, from what I’ve heard about Andrew Cavanaugh, he’ll know. Not only that, but it’s highly likely he might turn up at your doorstep the next day, asking why you decided not to come.”

“It’s your doorstep,” she pointed out stubbornly, clinging to semantics.

He didn’t bother pointing out that she was nitpicking. “Makes it that much worse.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And how is that?” she asked.

Without her realizing it, they’d arrived at the house.

Tom stopped the car, parking it in the driveway beside hers. The contrast was hard to miss. Her vehicle was over ten years old and still bore the dust of the highways between New Mexico and Northern California that she’d taken to get here. His vehicle was close to pristine.

Unbuckling his seat belt, he looked at her. “It means I’m responsible for you in a way and I should have found a way to get you to come.”

Okay, now that had gone over the edge. After getting out of the car, Kait slammed the door on her side. Hard. Frustrated by her inability to make headway in the abduction case, she needed an object to take it out on. His words had waved a red flag right in front of her.

“No one’s responsible for me,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “And that includes you, so if you know what’s good for you, Detective, you’ll get that through your head.”

If she was hoping to bait him and draw him into an argument, he would disappoint her. Once out of the vehicle, he locked it automatically as he asked, “Don’t you ever get lonely in that world you’ve barricaded yourself inside of?”

She’d watched him disarm the security system once and had retained the sequence he’d used. She used it now and stormed into the house ahead of him. The moment he followed, she whirled around, her eyes flashing.

“Stop trying to analyze me!” she shouted. “Just leave me alone!”

And that, too, was another part of the problem, he thought. “I think you’ve been left alone too much,” he countered.

She threw up her hands. “I don’t care what you think!” Sucking in a breath to steady herself, she found it wasn’t working. Neither was staying under the same roof with this man who made her feel so tense, so edgy. And so very, very angry beyond all reason. “This was a dumb idea,” she announced. With that, she headed back for the front door.

Anticipating what she’d do next, Tom moved fast and reached the door before she did. He placed himself in front of it.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Where I should have gone the first night I got to Aurora. To find a hotel. Thank you for your hospitality,” she retorted grudgingly as an afterthought. “Now get the hell out of my way.”

He stood his ground and continued to block the door. “I don’t want you out on the road like this.”

“You don’t seem to understand you don’t have a say in this. You don’t have a say in any of it!” Kait shouted.

She stuck her chin out, daring him to contradict her. Her eyes were blazing and she was breathing hard, as if she’d just run a record-breaking mile instead of just moving a few feet. Furious when he wouldn’t step aside, Kait grabbed him by his arms, intending to physically shove him aside.

That was the last thing she remembered clearly because instead of shoving him, she found herself somehow entangled with him. His hands were on her waist and somewhere in the back of her head. She knew he meant to hold her in place, to stop her from leaving.

What it all boiled down to be was the classic case of the immovable object meeting the irresistible force. She didn’t know which of them was which. All she knew was that she didn’t wind up shoving him aside and he didn’t quite succeed in holding her in place.

What happened was, like similar poles of a magnet, they were suddenly, inexplicably, pulled together, her body fitting up against his as if they were actually two halves of the same whole.

The moment they came together, the heat sizzled through her, setting every inch of her body, inside and out, on fire.

Stunned, Kait stared up at him, words evaporating from not just her lips but from her brain, as well. The look in his eyes told her that he was pretty much experiencing the same thing.

Either that, or he knew how to mimic the reaction to perfection.

The very next instant, it no longer mattered if she could talk or think clearly enough to form words. Because she wouldn’t have been able to say any of them.

Her mouth was pressed urgently against his.

Whether she had moved to kiss him, or he had moved to kiss her, was unknown and completely irrelevant. What
was
relevant was that they were sealed within this kiss, standing in an inferno that gave every indication of burning them both up to a crisp before the night got too much older.

She’d been angry before, hurt before, lost before. But she had never,
ever
felt like this before, never reacted like this before. Any other time, with any other man, she would have shoved him away, sending him sprawling after separating the two of them with a well-aimed, painful thrust to his manhood with her knee.

But the truth of it was—a truth that shook her down to her very core—that she didn’t
want
to be separated from him. Didn’t want him to draw his lips—or his body—away from hers.

She wanted to kiss him and
be
kissed by him.

And more than that.

She desperately wanted more than that.

She still wasn’t thinking, wasn’t upbraiding herself or even wondering what the hell had come over her. She was just acting—and reacting. Because while the kiss deepened to the point that it had utterly swallowed her up, sending her into a world where nothing else existed outside of the fiery pit she was standing in, she was vaguely aware that her hands, acting independently of any actual thought process, were all but ripping the clothes right off Tom’s body.

And he was doing the same to her.

Except he was more gentle about it, not ripping anything but tugging it away, sliding it off, opening buttons, slipping down zippers.

And touching.

Touching her flesh, exploring her body, curving his fingertips along her skin as if she was a book written in braille and he was just learning how to read.

Excitement pulsed through her.

Every pass of his hand increased the fire in her veins. She had passed the point of sanity and was now, she knew, genuinely certifiable.

There was no other explanation for why she was reacting this way, why this incredibly intense hunger had risen within her out of nowhere. And now this same hunger was bent on consuming him, on having him take her and thus creating, she knew with confidence, that earthquake within her that promised to completely rock the foundations of her world.

Tom had no idea what had come over him.

One minute all he was trying to do was to keep her from running off into the night half-cocked, a car accident looking to happen, and the next minute…

The next minute he found himself acting out the fantasy that had been echoing in his brain from the first moment he laid eyes on the redhead with the improbable name and the killer curves.

But, attracted or not—and he was, to a degree that utterly defied description—he’d never behaved like a knuckle-dragging caveman with any woman. He’d been raised to respect women, to watch carefully for signals that told him whether or not there was any interest in a fleeting meeting of the minds and bodies. When there was—when it was mutual—there was no question that it was always enjoyable.

But one thing never changed. He had always been in control, always been able to think coherently. He’d never felt anything that had driven him to the brink of mindlessness—and beyond.

That one thing that never changed had changed now. All of this was happening in a steam roomlike haze. Any thoughts he had were scrambled and reduced to single words, as if he was a toddler just learning his way around voicing his feelings.

Except that nothing in his vocabulary could begin to describe or express what was going on inside him right then. He hadn’t the words for it because he’d never had this feeling before. He was vaguely aware that he should step back, should ask her if she was all right with this, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t ask, couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t stop.

He wanted to pleasure her, make certain that she received as well as gave, but she sapped away all of his energy, reducing him to a palpitating mass of jelly.

The hot, erotic dance that had sprung up so spontaneously culminated in his joining together with her, filling her in fact much the way she filled him in spirit.

They were both scrambling up the side of the volcano, bent on reaching the top before it was too late.

And then it was happening.

The eruption came, sending him hurdling toward the sky. From the way she’d cried out as she arched beneath him, her fingertips digging into his back, he knew that he’d taken her with him.

Satisfaction spread out like sunbeams inside him and he did his best to hold on to them just as he held on to her, pulling Kait tightly against him.

He could feel her heart pounding against his until the rhythm became one.

Just as they had become one.

The scent of her hair filled his head, and he clung to it.

Just as he continued to hold on as tightly as he could to the sensation—and to her—for as long as he could, loath to let either go even though he knew that he’d have to.

Eventually.

But not yet.

Not yet.

Chapter 11

“A
re you all right?”

She was lying on the oversize sofa, naked, next to a man she’d known for only a few days. There was no graceful way out of this, Kait thought. For now, she didn’t upbraid herself for getting into this position in the first place. That would come later, after she was dressed and somewhere else.

The only thing she could do now was reach for her customary blasé attitude and cloak herself in it as best she could. “Is that your way of asking, ‘How was I?’?”

Tom shifted a fraction of an inch so that he could prop himself up on his elbow and look at her. Given the lack of space and that he was on the outside, barely balancing his body on the sofa’s edge, it was a tricky maneuver, but he managed.