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  He opened the passenger door and unceremoniously deposited her back into the vehicle. Before Janelle could yelp in protest again, he secured her seat belt around her, brushing against her thighs in the process, then slammed the door. He swiftly rounded the hood and was in the driver’s seat before she had a chance to unbuckle her seat belt and make a break for it.

  The man was incredibly fast for someone his size, she thought grudgingly.

  Sawyer hit the power-lock keypad on his side of the car, locking all four doors at once. Then he pressed down the bypass button, rendering the lock on her side useless. She was locked in.

  “This is kidnapping, Boone!” Janelle shouted in frustration.

  He checked to see that the key was still in the ignition. It was. With a snap of his wrist, he turned it. Janelle drowned out the sound of the engine coming to life, threatening him.

  “You can bring me up on charges later,” he replied mildly.

  She blew out a long, angry breath. If he was counting on her easygoing nature, he’d miscalculated. “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have the full power of your daddy behind you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Janelle stiffen. After backing out of the parking space, he drove toward the exit at the end of the lot. Before turning onto the street, he took the opportunity to glance in her direction. The blood had drained out of her face. “You’re pale. What did I say?”

  She stared straight ahead, afraid she was going to cry. Damn it, she didn’t want to cry in front of this man. He’d probably think it was because of something he’d said.

  “Nothing.”

  The hell it was nothing. He respected boundaries, but not when they crossed over into his territory. And as long as this woman was his responsibility, she was his territory.

  He tried again. “Look, I’ve only been on this assignment a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t take long for me to get a handle on some things. You’re a talker. If you don’t talk, you’ll explode.”

  Guiding the car into the flow of traffic, he waited for her to start.

  Instead, she stubbornly dug her heels in. “So?”

  “So talk,” he ordered impatiently. “Blood’s hard to wash out of the upholstery. If anything happens to you, any one of a number of people will be after my head,” he reminded her. “Your brothers, your cousins, your father, not to mention the ex-chief of police.”

  Her family.

  Her once and past family, she thought sarcastically.

  Damn it, she would have given anything if Marco Wayne and his damn son hadn’t come into her life.

  Careful, that’s your father and brother you’re denouncing. Half brother, she amended angrily. Two people who had just robbed her of her happiness and her peace of mind. She hoped they’d both rot in hell.

  Janelle continued staring straight ahead, willing her tears back into her ducts. “You’ve got nothing to worry about from them,” she assured Sawyer between clenched teeth.

  Sawyer sincerely doubted if he’d ever heard as much hurt packed into a voice as he did right at this minute. She didn’t strike him as the hysterical type, or a person given to making dramatic scenes. Yet she seemed to be on the verge of falling apart. Vulnerable and defensive all at the same time.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because you don’t,” she retorted, crossing her arms before her chest.

  Sawyer glanced at her again just as headlights from an oncoming car intruded into the interior of the one he was driving. Illuminating the woman beside him. Her breathing was shallow, her face pale. Again, Janelle seemed on the edge of some sort of anxiety attack.

  Sympathy stirred within him. But sympathy wasn’t the way to get anything out of her. He instinctively sensed that. “What the hell did your father say to you back there?”

  She wouldn’t have told him. Of all the people she knew, she would have been more inclined to tell one of the criminals she’d prosecuted than this man. But she felt completely lost, completely directionless and so completely abandoned. She needed to make contact, to grab a lifeline and pull herself out of the mire before she went down for the third time.

  Sawyer held out a lifeline.

  And suddenly, the words just came tumbling out. Along with the tears she would have rather died than shed. “That he wasn’t my father.”

  Sawyer had had no idea what to expect, but this sure wasn’t it. “What?” he demanded.

  Janelle had taken a drink, but the glass had been still half-full when she’d suddenly bolted from the restaurant, so she couldn’t be drunk. If she wasn’t drunk, what the hell was she talking about? Had she had an argument with the chief? Was she one of those females who flew off the handle when she didn’t get her way?

  He waited for an explanation.

  Janelle dragged a hand through her hair, wishing she could somehow erase this day. To pluck out everything that was wrong and make it the way it was before.

  Not going to happen. Ever.

  She wanted to be alone.

  “Look,” Janelle began impatiently, “why don’t you drive to your place?”

  The suggestion caught him completely off guard. Was she propositioning him? Under normal circumstances, if she hadn’t been an assignment, if they had just come across one another in that restaurant they’d just vacated, he might have actually been tempted. Something about the woman cut through the barricades he’d thrown up around himself. Something basic that spoke to him.

  But she was what she was and right now, he was trying to treat her with kid gloves. Which meant that if this was a proposition, he had to turn her down.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “That way you can go home and I’ll take the car the rest of the way to my place.” Each word was an effort.

  Sawyer dismissed her suggestion. “My place is not on the way to your place.”

  “I don’t care.” Why was he giving her grief? She just wanted to be rid of him. To go home, throw herself on her bed and cry her heart out. Then maybe it wouldn’t ache so much. “I’m not trying to save on gasoline right now.”

  “I’m taking you home.” His tone was firm. There was no arguing the point.

  Home.

  Where was home? Home had always been a state of mind for her, more people than place. Although, if she’d really been pressed to cite where her home was, she would have pointed to the sprawling house where she had grown up. Grown up feeling secure believing she knew who she was and what her place in the universe was.

  Idiot, she thought and sighed listlessly. “Yeah, whatever.” The next moment, Sawyer was pulling the car over to the side of the road. Now what? She glared at him. “What are you doing?”

  He shut off the ignition and turned to look at her. “We’re not going any farther until you tell me what’s going on.”

  What did he want from her? Blood?

  Now there was an ironic thought, she silently jeered. The blood she’d assumed she had running through her veins, she didn’t. All those years she’d kept seeing similarities between herself and her father, her cousins, all of it was just a big joke. There were no similarities. Because she wasn’t a Cavanaugh.

  “I already told you,” she insisted, annoyed. “You know as much as I do.”

  He didn’t budge. “I don’t think so. You’re going to pieces on me and you’re not the type to do that.”

  Her temper snapped. “How the hell do you know what my ‘type’ is? How do you know anything about me when I don’t know anything about me.”

  “Did someone slip you something?” he asked. “I was watching you the whole time, but if a waiter wanted to put something in your drink—”

  “Nobody put anything in my drink. My father—” Janelle stopped abruptly the second the word was out of her mouth. He wasn’t her father, not anymore. She tried again. “The chief of detectives just pulled the plug on my world, that’s all.” She spread her hands wide, as if to display something. “This is me when everything goe
s down the drain.”

  He still wasn’t following her. Crack lawyer or not, she just wasn’t making any sense. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

  She was suddenly very tired. Of everything. “Why do I have to start at the beginning?” she demanded hotly.

  “Because I can’t help you unless I understand what’s going on.”

  “And why would you want to help me?”

  “Because I have a merit badge to flesh out,” he snapped. “Stop asking stupid questions and just get on with it. Now why are you acting like a chicken with her head cut off?”

  Janelle pressed her hand to her chest at the same time that she pressed her lips together. The latter was to keep her voice from cracking. “It’s not my head, it’s my heart.”

  “Your heart?” His brow furrowed. “What’s the matter with your heart?”

  “It’s been cut out.”

  Leaning back, he blew out a breath. For a talkative woman, she rationed out information as if there were a famine underway. “What did you mean when you said that the chief isn’t your father?”

  She pressed her lips together again. Taking a breath, she let it out slowly before she trusted her voice. “He’s not.”

  How was that possible? Everyone knew the chief of detectives had a daughter and that daughter was currently sitting beside him in the car. “But I thought—”

  Janelle laughed, cutting him off. The hollow sound echoed through the interior of the car, mocking her. “That makes two of us.”

  “You’re not getting out of the car until you start making sense,” he warned her. “Now what the hell did the chief tell you back there that has you acting like some kind of crazy loon?”

  She raised her chin, as if gravity could keep the tears from coming. “He told me that Marco Wayne is my father.”

  Thunderstruck, Sawyer could only stare at her. “What?”

  His expression mirrored what she felt inside, Janelle thought. Except that he was far more in control. She felt as if she were harboring the aftermath of a hurricane inside her chest.

  “Exactly.” She took a deep breath. What did it matter if this man knew? Everyone would know eventually. This kind of thing didn’t stay hidden forever once the lid was removed. Or blown sky-high.

  “Apparently my father—the man I thought was my father,” she amended as Sawyer’s frown deepened, “my mother and Marco Wayne were all from the same neighborhood. Wayne had a ‘thing’ for my mother. Seems he kept on having this ‘thing’ even though he was married and so was she. I’m told that the chief and my mother had their share of problems and Marco took advantage of some downtime in their marriage.

  “To put it quite simply, he and my mother had an affair.” She spread her hands wide, the smile on her lips taut, painful and utterly without mirth. “And I was the result.”

  Sawyer took it all in. He’d heard worse. A hell of a lot worse. But this obviously upset her, so he tried to be sympathetic. “And you didn’t know?”

  “Do I act like I knew?”

  “No, you act like somebody just set fire to your whole world.”

  That was exactly the way she felt. As if everything had just gone up in flames before her very eyes. Janelle laughed softly to herself, although there was no humor in the situation or in the sound of her laughter. As far as she was concerned, there was no humor in anything anymore.

  And then her curiosity rallied, getting the better of her. She looked at him, wondering if he was just giving her lip service, or if there was more to it. “You sound as if you know what that’s like.”

  Sawyer watched her for a long moment, then turned back toward the windshield. The taillights of passing cars gleamed like jewels in the night, winking at him, then going dormant.

  “Yeah, I know what it’s like.” And wish to God I didn’t.

  Something in his voice got to her. Still, she didn’t think he was above using a ploy.

  “How?” she asked. “How could you possibly know what it’s like suddenly not to be who you thought you were?”

  “I don’t,” he agreed, his voice flat. “But I do know what it’s like to have your whole world incinerate right before your eyes.”

  This was something he didn’t talk about. Not ever. Back in Los Angeles, the men he’d worked with knew what had happened only because of the incident report. Because of the crime stats.

  The first officers on the scene had known that the twisted, broken body riddled with bullets they’d discovered in the car was his fiancée, Allison. Until some wild-eyed kid, out for revenge, had picked just that minute to drive by and spray the air with bullets.

  Cutting short the life of the sweetest person he had ever known.

  “Go on,” she urged, daring Sawyer to find a way to equate his pain to hers.

  Sawyer heard the challenge in her voice, but it didn’t work on him. He wasn’t the type that needed a challenge, or felt triumphant when he won, which was often. Winning was just something that he did as a matter of course. And yet he would only get through to her by showing her how she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t the only one life had kicked square in the face with a cleated combat boot.

  “My fiancée was killed in a drive-by shooting.”

  She stared at him. Hearing the words but not quite absorbing them. “You were engaged?”

  “Yeah.” For all of three weeks. Happiest three weeks of his life. The only happy three weeks of his life, he amended. “She was a lawyer. Like you,” he added, his tone ironic. “Except she represented the other side. Legal aide was her passion, her cause. Like her father.” And if it hadn’t been for that old man instilling all that in her from the time she could walk, Allison would still be alive today. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  For the first time, Janelle connected the sadness she’d seen in his eyes to an event. Despite the ache in her chest, she felt her sympathy being aroused. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Sawyer said nothing more than that. The subject was closed and he wasn’t about to revisit it. After a beat, he turned the key to the right and started up the car again. “You never had a clue about your…the truth?”

  Janelle didn’t have to review her life; she knew it by heart. There’d never been anything to indicate that she was anyone other than Brian Cavanaugh’s daughter. She’d never been treated any differently.

  She shook her head. “None.”

  Sawyer went to the next piece of the puzzle. “When Marco Wayne called you that first day in your office, did he—”

  “No. He didn’t hint at anything. I was just asking my father—the chief,” she amended. God, this was going to be hard for her. “For advice. I told him that Wayne called, which was when he said he wanted to see me outside the office because he had something to tell me. I never dreamed…” Her voice trailed off. Clearing her throat, she continued. “He said he thought I should take myself off the case because if the defense ever got wind of this…” Again, her voice trailed off and she laughed softly to herself. “I thought he was talking about the phone call.”

  “But the chief never mentioned anything about you not being his daughter before?” Sawyer pressed. “Never hinted at it?”

  “No,” she cried. This had come out of the blue, hitting her right between the eyes.

  “How did he treat you?”

  “What do you mean, how did he treat me?” she asked sharply.

  He made a quick left just as the light began to turn red. “When you were growing up under his roof, how did the chief treat you? Did he ignore you, yell at you, make you into his whipping post—”

  Janelle took offense for the man she had loved from the first breath she ever took. “No, he did not make me his whipping post.”

  Sawyer continued his line of questioning as if he didn’t hear the annoyance in her voice. “Did you feel he loved you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, which made everything that much more painful.

  He nodded, taking it all in. “So, w
hat’s your problem?” he asked.

  “My problem is that he lied to me.”

  “No,” Sawyer corrected, “he didn’t tell you. That’s different.”

  “That’s what he said.” Maybe it was a male thing. “But the truth was buried.”

  Sawyer approached it from the other side. “Ever think that maybe he didn’t like to think about the truth?” This time, rather than pressing down on the accelerator, he came to a stop at the light. “That he loved you despite everything? Takes a big man to do that. To treat you like his own flesh and blood when you weren’t. I’d stop feeling sorry for myself if I were you and count my blessings.”

  He thought of his own childhood. He’d essentially grown up without parents. Without love. “Not all of us have fathers who act as if they give a rat’s behind about our welfare. Even if we do happen to share the same DNA code.”

  She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, drying the tears. Though she was angry at Sawyer’s intrusive questions, she was even more angry that she had fallen apart in front of him. And angriest of all because, underneath the hurt, she knew he was right. It still hurt with the searing pain of a new wound, and only time would make that go away. And only time would help her come to terms with who she was in the scheme of things.

  Would Brian Cavanaugh even want her around now that she knew? Now that the secret was finally out?

  She glanced at the rocklike profile of the man to her left. He was abrupt, brash and direct. And for some reason, she couldn’t fault him for it. But that didn’t mean she had to like the way he went about things. “Anyone ever tell you that you belong in the diplomatic corps?”

  “There’s been talk,” he told her with a completely straight face as he turned her car into her apartment complex.

  It started to rain.

  Chapter 10

  By the time they reached her door, they were close to drenched. The sky had just opened up and poured.

  As she raced for her door and shelter, Janelle couldn’t help thinking that this rain was a metaphor for her life. The forecast had made no mention of rain and the sky had been clear all day.