A Cavanaugh Christmas (2 page)

Blissfully ignorant of all this, Tom’s father had gone on to grow up the youngest in a family of two brothers and two sisters, married Theresa O’Brien, had seven children with her and had lived a good, full life. By an odd twist of fate, he’d gone on to join the forensic lab in a nearby city.

With that in the background, Tom had been rather surprised to hear—right after the bombshell hit—his father confess that he’d always felt as if he was standing outside the family circle. That, try as he might, he just didn’t feel part of the family in the true, one hundred percent way that he longed to, despite the fact that everyone had always been nothing but kind to him.

Unable to pinpoint why, he’d always felt, for lack of a better word, “different.” Once he found out that he was actually a Cavanaugh and not a Cavelli, he understood why. It all began to make sense to him.

Something within him had been calling out to the parents who had actually given him life. Calling out to the people through whose veins ran the same blood as his. Once the mystery was unraveled, Sean no longer felt like a duck out of water.

Still, to say that the news ushered in an emotional upheaval within his tight-knit family was putting it mildly. Be that as it may, Tom had prided himself on being able to roll with the punches, no matter which direction they came from.

But he
did
have trouble with, though he did his best to keep his reaction under wraps, being viewed differently by the people who worked alongside of him. Some of them just
assumed
he would change because of the very nature of his connection to the family that some viewed as police department royalty.

That really bothered him.

Tom knew that, for the most part, LaGuardia was kidding. But even so, he also suspected that there was just the tiniest kernel of truth in what the older man had just said. Angelo, as well as several others in the department,
did
perceive him to be a “crown prince” of sorts because not only was the chief of detectives a Cavanaugh—Brian—but the former chief of police—Andrew—was a Cavanaugh, as well.

And that didn’t even
begin
to take into account the rest of the clan which was so prominently present on the police force. It was a standing joke that the Cavanaughs needed only a few more members in order to form their own country.

Now he was part of that, part of
them
—whether he chose to be or not.

Oh, there was no pressure—neither Brian nor Andrew were known for being the sort to apply undue pressure to get their own way. But pressure or not, that didn’t change the reality of things. He’d thought of himself as a Cavelli from the first moment he realized that people had last names—and now he was a Cavanaugh, whether he acknowledged the fact by embracing the new last name or not.

Blood was blood.

A German shepherd was still a German shepherd even though his owner might proclaim him to be an Irish wolfhound. Like it or not, the Cavanaughs were perceived differently. And Tom didn’t want to be treated differently. He’d worked too hard for that.

“So what’s the second thing you’re bemoaning?” Tom asked again since LaGuardia had deliberately left him hanging—and waiting impatiently. The man might be bursting with information, but he still liked to be coaxed to reveal it. Tom knew he’d have no peace until he obliged and played along with the game.

“And now
that
walks into your life,” Angelo said, clearly envious as he gestured toward the tall, leggy redhead who had just crossed the threshold and entered the squad room.

It was all Tom could do to keep his mouth from dropping open. Looking at the woman was like seeing the sunrise for the very first time. Hard to put into words, but definitely affecting.

Tom silently reminded himself to breathe.

The woman moved with precision, as if each step had been measured out and allowed only so much distance to be used before the next step began.

Poetry embodied in a physical form,
Tom caught himself thinking as he struggled to maintain a poker face.

Tom shifted his chair a little to get a better view. No doubt about it, the woman was exceedingly beautiful. She was also as serious looking as a judge rendering the date of a convicted killer’s execution.

“From where I’m sitting,” he observed, his voice deceptively mild, “she’s walking into the squad room, not my life.”

LaGuardia ignored the protest. “But she
is
heading for you.”

Tom shifted his chair back to look at his partner, sitting at the desk next to his. “And you know this how?” he challenged.

Wide, sloping shoulders rose and fell in a careless fashion. “I keep my ear to the ground.”

“That explains why you’re so hunched over all the time,” Tom quipped. But LaGuardia appeared to be adamant, so he asked, “Seriously, why would you think—”

“Overheard her talking to the old man,” Angelo confessed, lowering his voice as if to keep this source between the two of them. “This one doesn’t beat around the bush.” There was admiration in his voice as he watched the woman make her way across the wide room littered with desks and personnel. “She went straight to the top to get her information.”

Tom wondered exactly what information his partner was referring to. First things first, though. LaGuardia had a tendency to be vague at times. “She talked to Lt. Chambers?” he asked, referring to their direct superior in the division.

“Nope, to your new guardian angel—the chief of Ds himself,” LaGuardia added when Tom focused his intense blue eyes on him, silently telling his partner to get to the point.

“And she asked for me?” There was a hint of mocking in Tom’s question. He didn’t know who the woman was and he sincerely doubted if she knew him, so there was no way she would be asking for him. This had to be LaGuardia’s lame idea of a joke.

No doubt irritated by the mocking note in his partner’s voice, LaGuardia said peevishly, “When she talked to your new uncle, she asked for the person with the best track record for finding missing children.”

“Best” in this case was still not good enough in Tom’s opinion. “Best” to him would have meant that he located the children every time one was reported missing or kidnapped instead of only seventy percent, which was where his record stood at the moment.

According to the law of averages, that was something to be proud of, his father had told him. But he had no patience—or the time—for pride. There’d be time enough for pride when every child’s file that came across his desk was marked “closed” and it had been resolved with a happy ending.

And a happy ending occurred only when the child was found.

Alive.

Tom’s doubts as to the veracity of LaGuardia’s claim began to dissipate as the tall, willowy redhead drew closer. Apparently the woman
was
heading straight for his desk.

It crossed his mind that this could still be either LaGuardia’s idea of a joke, or someone else’s. Someone who wanted to pull his leg. If so, whoever was orchestrating this had to have a black sense of humor. There was nothing remotely amusing about the set of circumstances that would bring a woman to him, seeking his professional help. Had he not been as content and well adjusted as he was, Tom was fairly certain that his job, particularly the failures that went hand in hand with the caseload, would have haunted him beyond the point of human tolerance.

He wasn’t sure how others survived within this particular environment, but as for him, for the most part, he focused on the successes. Focused on them to almost the exclusion of all else because he knew he had to keep a good, optimistic frame of mind in order to keep on doing what he was doing. And he had to keep going because there were children who needed someone to find them, to bring them home and to punish the person or persons who were responsible for having taken them away in the first place.

For a moment, his thought froze in place as he watched the woman coming closer, a lyrical song in heels that were far from sensible. It struck him that, despite her austere expression, this woman cared about appearances. At least her own.

She was a long way from home.

The thought came out of nowhere, in response to nothing in particular. But it was true. And it was for the first time.

In this day and age of facilitated travel, Detective Kaitlyn Two Feathers, of the Taos, New Mexico, Police Department, had never been outside of New Mexico, scarcely out of Taos, actually.

At least, not to her knowledge.

She’d been in her maternal grandmother’s care the first four years of her life until the state, alerted by an anonymous “good citizen,” had become aware of what was happening and had ultimately taken her away. Grandmothers weren’t supposed to try to sell their unmarried daughter’s child, even if that daughter was serving twenty to life for second-degree murder of said child’s father.

It was quite possible that, in her grandmother’s efforts to sell her—the woman and her boyfriend needed money to support their ever-growing dependence on drugs—she might have been taken across a state line or two. But since she had no extensive recollection of that time, it didn’t count.

Wanderlust hadn’t brought her to Aurora, a city in Northern California, but a promise. A promise she had given to a distraught mother who had begged her to bring back her baby. That the woman also happened to be her cousin just made the promise much more urgent and personal. It was a promise she had every intention of keeping, even if it wound up taking her to hell and back.

So far, though, it had only taken her to Aurora, California. She’d come as fast as she could, and with any luck she would still be in time to save Megan Willows before the four-year-old was completely swallowed up without a trace.

She’d promised to reunite mother and child by Christmas, and that meant within two weeks, leaving her with little time. She didn’t plan on wasting any of it.

As she drew closer—close enough for Tom to become aware of a fresh, herbal scent—her brilliant blue eyes swept over the nameplates on both desks. The perusal brought a slight reproving frown of confusion on the woman’s full lips.

“I’m looking for Detective Thomas Cavanaugh,” she said in a voice that reminded a man of golden whiskey being poured into glass used only for very, very special occasions. “Do either of you know where I might be able to find him?”

The question was directed at both men as she studied each, one at a time.

“Right there,” Angelo volunteered, pointing to his partner.

Tom noticed that LaGuardia pressed his lips together—probably to keep from literally drooling as he gaped at the woman.

For good measure, Kait looked down again at the nameplate on the man’s desk. This time, there was displeasure in her frown. The nameplate didn’t read Cavanaugh, it read Cavelli.

Kait didn’t appreciate being jerked around. She’d had more than her share of that for a good part of her life. As first a police officer, then as the youngest officer to make detective, she’d had to prove herself over and over again. It got to be almost a daily event for the first year and a half, until the men she worked with began to take her seriously. Began to see that she intended to stay whether they approved of her or not.

Eventually, they had come around. Not all of them, but enough. Enough to make her life just the slightest bit easier if she chose to take that route.

For her part, Kait wanted no favors. She just wanted not to be harassed so that she could do her job the way she was meant to. Eventually, by the very nature of her dedication and her character, she won the respect she wanted.

But she took none of it for granted, knowing that each day would have challenges. Challenges she intended to meet and win.

“Your nameplate says Thomas Cavelli,” she pointed out, nodding at it.

“Yeah, it does,” Tom acknowledged.

His eyes drifted over the length of her. She was lean, but no pushover. He’d bet a large sum of money that beneath that fitted gray jacket and straight skirt was a muscular body. She didn’t do it to look good, he decided. She did it to be fit. To be ready.

But ready for what?

And what was a woman who looked like that doing here? She certainly wasn’t someone who’d recently had a child go missing. She bore none of the telltale signs of a woman who’d been suddenly stamped with tragedy. Nor did she appear distraught and holding it together for the sake of the child who had been lost or abducted.

She smelled of something fresh and herbal, not of rampant fear.

So who was she and why had the chief of detectives sent her here—if he actually had?

Tom cast a skeptical side glance at his partner. But LaGuardia struggled not to visibly salivate as he hung on every syllable that passed over the woman’s perfectly shaped lips. If Angelo had put the mystery woman up to this, he would have taken more of a backseat to what was being played out before him.

“So which is it?” Kait asked. A hint of impatience wove through her voice. “Cavanaugh or Cavelli?”

It occurred to her that no matter which name it wound up being, someone as handsome as this man was undoubtedly far too consumed with his own appearance to be very good at anything else. He was probably someone’s son and had risen through the ranks because of that rather than any actual merit.

“That is the question,” Tom responded, the corners of his mouth curving ever so slightly.

And that, indeed, was the question. The question each of them had to tackle on their own. He and his siblings each had to make up their minds how to handle this new earthquake in their lives. Did they continue life beneath the moniker they’d always responded to? Did they stay Cavellis? Or did they switch over to the new name which, according to sworn testimony from the hospital administrator, was the right one?

Cavelli or Cavanaugh, which would it be?

Obviously, the chief of detectives had already made up his own mind about the matter.

“That’s a boring story for a rainy afternoon over a bracing glass of bourbon,” Tom told her easily, his eyes never leaving her face. “The more important one is what brought you here?”