Cavanaugh's Bodyguard (17 page)

The next moment, he had her in his arms and was abandoning any thought of reining in his feelings. They had this moment and he intended to enjoy it—enjoy her—with every fiber of his being.

Who knew what tomorrow might bring?

Amid the passion and the ardor, the sound of first one cell phone ringing, then two, took a little time to penetrate.

Bridget wanted nothing more than to ignore it and just absorb the wild feelings shooting through her. But she knew she couldn’t pretend her phone wasn’t ringing. She was a detective with the Aurora Police Department and that meant that unless she was lying on a table in the operating room and was actively under the knife, she was expected to be on call anytime, anyplace. No matter what.

As was Josh.

Drawing her head back, she looked up at him. His phone was ringing as well.

Resigned, she reluctantly reached for her cell phone. It took her a moment to focus—and then she realized what the call had to be about.

Oh God, please not again.

“Cavanaugh,” she declared grimly a second after she unlocked her phone. Her voice blended with Josh’s as he announced, “Youngblood.”

They were both on the phone and both looking at each other, dreading confirmation that the Lady Killer had struck again.

“He’s out of control,” the voice on the other end—Langford—told her. Frustration echoed in his deep voice. “The Lady Killer just killed victim number three and it’s not even the tenth yet.”

“Where?” she asked, sitting up and dragging her hand through her hair. As the detective on the other end of the line spoke, she scanned the room, trying to locate the rest of her clothes. Listening to Langford she was also attempting to make out what Josh was saying at the same time.

He wasn’t saying much, but his face had grown grim. “Be right there,” he told the detective who’d called him. “No, I’ve already left the chief’s party,” he replied to Kennedy’s question just before he shut his phone and terminated the call.

There was no reason to state the obvious. The Lady Killer had upped his ante and was on a spree.

“At this rate, he’s going to double the number of his total kills by the time he gets to the end of the month,” Josh said grimly, standing up.

Bridget suddenly found herself caught in two very different worlds. In one, she was the consummate detective, her mind on the case, in a hurry to get herself together so she could get to the scene of the crime as quickly as possible.

In the other world, she was a woman who’d just been utterly blown away by her partner and was, even now, while in the midst of a tragedy, utterly captivated by Josh. The latter had just stood up, as unencumbered by clothing as the day he was born and completely unselfconscious about the figure he cast.

He had one hell of a magnificent, taut body, she couldn’t help admiring. Even her fingertips were tingling.

“Maybe you should get dressed a little faster,” she suggested, her throat feeling just the slightest bit tight.

Picking up his clothes from the floor, Josh looked at her quizzically. “Why?”

“Just do it,” she snapped, turning her back on him and marching off to her bedroom.

She didn’t see Josh grinning at her.

If she was going to be up all night—and this had all the earmarks of an all-nighter—she might as well be comfortable. Going to her closet, she pulled out a pair of jeans and a pale blue turtleneck sweater. She moved quickly, got dressed and hurried out, a pair of boots in her hand.

Almost dressed, Josh was buttoning up his shirt. She sat on the edge of the sofa, pulling on her boots. He gave her a quick once-over.

“Oddly enough, you look just as sexy in that as in the dress you had on tonight. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that I know what you look like naked,” he added with a smoldering, lethal grin.

Glorious as it had been, it was a mistake and she knew it. Most workplace affairs fizzled out quickly, leaving behind a residue of awkwardness if not worse. If that happened, ultimately they would wind up getting different partners, which was a shame because whatever else went on between them, she and Josh worked extremely well together.

“I’d rather you kept that to yourself,” Bridget told him.

Finished buttoning, he tucked in his shirt and then held up his hands.

“No problem,” he said. “I wasn’t exactly planning on posting it on YouTube.”

He was staring at her, she noted. Again. Braced for some kind of punch line or snappy comment at her expense, she told herself she might as well get it over with. “Okay, what?”

“Nothing,” he answered noncommittally. “It’s just that you think you know a person after interacting with them on a daily basis for over three years and yet there always seems to be some kind of surprise just underneath the surface.”

She had always liked surprises. “I would think that’s a good thing.”

“Didn’t say it wasn’t,” he replied in his laid-back manner. The same sort of pseudo-country-boy manner that drove her crazy.

Their phones rang again and they exchanged looks. Bridget had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Oh God, don’t tell me there’s another one besides the one they just called about,” she groaned. That seemed incredibly macabre, even for the Lady Killer.

“Only one way to find out,” Josh said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Youngblood.” She could have sworn she saw him square his shoulders and snap to attention a beat before he said, “Yes, Chief. No, I wasn’t asleep yet.”

Her phone began ringing. Why was the chief of detectives calling him, she wondered even as she opened her own phone. This seemed a little beneath the man’s level of operation.

“Cavanaugh.”

“So, I’m glad to hear you’re finally using it,” the deep male voice on the other end told her with resonant approval.

“Chief?” she asked uncertainly, looking at Josh. Why was the man they’d left at the party calling both of them on a conference call? Was the man checking on them for some reason?

Had he suspected the way the evening had gone and called to confirm?

Brian Cavanaugh didn’t strike her as the type to pass judgment on the personal lives of his people, but then, she wouldn’t have guessed that Josh was as good as he was—or as thoughtful—either. Her ability to read people had been temporarily suspended.

“Yes, it’s me, Bridget. I’ve got you both on conference call,” Brian told the duo. “Thought it might save a little time that way. I take it the two of you are in the same area.”

She took a breath, then said, “Yes, sir,” wondering if this was just an innocent question on the chief’s part or if, as she feared, the man was putting two and two together. And if he did, would there be a reprimand along with some sort of consequences?

“Okay, then I’ll expect to see you both here ASAP. We need to put an end to this.
Now
,” Brian emphasized grimly.

“If the chief’s involved,” Josh said to her as she terminated the call and closed her cell phone, “that means he’s getting a lot of pressure to make an arrest and have a suspect arraigned for this killing spree.”

She nodded in agreement. “Certainly looks that way. The chief of D’s considers Aurora his city to personally protect.” Bridget sighed, shaking her head. “Now all we need is a suspect to arrest,” she muttered as they dressed and went over to the front door.

“Yeah,” he agreed, setting his jaw grimly. “That would be rather nice, wouldn’t it? Well, maybe this time the son of a bitch made a mistake and we can finally latch onto something. C’mon, let’s go,” he urged, leading the way out.

Locking her door, Bridget hurried to the waiting vehicle.

Chapter 13

S
he could hear herself breathe.

Josh wasn’t saying anything. He hadn’t said a single word to her since they’d gotten into the car. It wasn’t like him.

One of them had to bring it up before it became the elephant riding in the unmarked car, taking up all the available space, sucking up all the oxygen and growing at a prodigious rate.

If he wasn’t going to do it, it was up to her.

“So, what was that back at my place?” Bridget finally asked without any sort of preamble. The silence had gotten just too overbearing and unwieldy for her to tolerate.

“Pretty terrific, I thought,” Josh answered with feeling. Sparing her a quick look, he added, “You were good, too.”

His breezy tone, as well as the way he’d phrased his answer, told her all she needed to know about how he regarded what had happened between them.

She should have known, Bridget chided herself. What had she expected, anyway? That one encounter with her and he’d magically transform into someone who’d hang around longer than the life expectancy of a fruit fly?

“So, it was just a hookup,” she concluded quietly, setting her jaw hard.

It was on the tip of Josh’s tongue to confirm her assumption. To say something light and flippant, the way he always did, and to act as if, now that they were back in their clothes, it was just business as usual between them.

But it
wasn’t
business as usual. What had happened between Bridget and him earlier had been different.
Really
different. And he knew damn well that he stood the chance of losing something exceedingly special if he fell back on his usual carefree, man-about-town act.

Taking a breath, Josh stepped out on the ledge and then dove off.

“Actually, no, it wasn’t ‘just a hookup’ and I think you already know that,” he added quietly.

No, she didn’t. If she was being honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she’d hoped, but she really
hadn’t
known. Not when it came to Josh, who went through women the way her mother used to go through tissues while watching
An Affair to Remember
for the umpteenth time.

A warm sunspot opened up inside of her. She did her best not to grin like an idiot. “So, what do you want to do?” she asked Josh.

“Truthfully?” He really had only one thought in his head. “Make love to you until I literally come apart at the seams.”

It was a real struggle to keep her grin from surfacing. She knew if she came across as eager in any manner, shape or form, Josh would be gone so fast he would make the Road Runner look slow.

So, putting herself in Josh’s shoes, she said, “As enticing as that sounds, why don’t we take it one step at a time?”

In every other case, that would have worked fine for him. The suggestion would have been right up his alley. It didn’t nail down anything, didn’t promise anything. No strings, no commitments, which was just the way he liked it.

The operative word here, he realized, was liked. As in past tense.

He had never felt uncertain before, never been in this position before. The emotional uneasiness, even if he didn’t show it, was a new sensation for him and he didn’t much like it.

But to say so would be to lose face. Moreover, it would tell Bridget that when it came to this—whatever “this” that was between them was—she was in the driver’s seat and his pride wouldn’t allow that.

So instead, he said, “Works for me,” and then turned his attention back to what had called them out in the first place. The Lady Killer and his gruesome, growing body count.

“What the hell are we going to do to stop this son of a bitch?” he wondered out loud.

“Until we have a suspect in our sights, nothing,” she answered, every bit as frustrated as he was. Maybe even more so.

“And once we have a suspect?” he asked. Her tone of voice seemed to indicate that she had a plan in mind after that and he was curious to hear what she was thinking.

He wasn’t wrong. “Then we set a trap for him and bring him down.”

He couldn’t have said exactly why, but there was something about the sound of that that made him uneasy. “What kind of a trap?”

“The simple kind,” she answered. “The psychopath obviously likes redheads. If we know who he is, we give him what he likes. I can become a redhead in twenty minutes.”

Josh scowled. That was an utterly stupid plan. What the hell was she thinking? “You can become dead in less than that,” he snapped.

She looked at him, stunned. He’d never yelled at her before. Never yelled at all to her recollection. “Why, Youngblood, is that concern I hear in your voice?” she teased.

Yes, it was concern. Even if they hadn’t just shared an incredible interlude together, she would still be his partner, his friend, and there was no way he was going to let her dangle herself like live bait in front of the cold-blooded shark that was out there.

But again, to tell her that would be leaving too much of himself exposed and vulnerable. He fell back on a standard excuse. “You die, I have to fill out a mountain of paperwork, explaining to HR why I wasn’t there to save you.”

“The best way around that,” she told him cheerfully as they got closer to the scene of the crime, “is for you to be there like the cavalry, lurking in the shadows.” She gazed at his profile. “You’re good at lurking, aren’t you?”

“Never tried it,” he told her seriously. He had already dismissed her suggestion as ridiculous.

“‘Lurking’ is a little like hiding,” she told him, “except more obvious.”

Josh didn’t want to continue going down this path, or having this discussion. And he definitely did
not
want to contemplate the thought of Bridget risking her life by putting it into the hands of some unpredictable, homicidal maniac.

“Moot point,” he said, calling an end to the banter. “We don’t have a suspect.”

“Yet,” Bridget deliberately underscored. “We don’t have a suspect
yet
.”

He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “You really are a Pollyanna, aren’t you?”

As for him, he wasn’t nearly as optimistic as his partner was. Granted the police department’s record for arrests here in Aurora was better than most, but in general, a lot of killers—serial killers included—were just never caught and brought to justice. He didn’t like thinking that way, but it was the simple truth and he couldn’t help wondering if the same thing would happen here.

Ordinarily, Bridget bristled at being labeled a Pollyanna, but not this time. And not by him. “Well, after last night, as far as I’m concerned, hell has frozen over and the devils are ice-skating, so anything’s possible.”