Cavanaugh Standoff Read online

  Andrew looked pleased. “Just proves that she has excellent police instincts.” Then he laughed. “But any home invader who comes in here would only do so if he had an extremely strong death wish.”

  Rose elaborated on her husband’s statement. “At any given moment of the day, there’re usually at least a few members of the police force here either having something to eat or kicking back and blowing off steam.” She turned toward her husband. “I honestly don’t know what it’s like to have more than a few minutes alone with this man,” Rose told them.

  Andrew tucked his arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “She’s exaggerating.”

  “Well, maybe just a little,” Rose agreed affectionately, smiling at Ronan and the young woman who had come with him.

  Sierra realized she could linger indefinitely, just saying goodbye. It was really time to go. Now.

  “Again, thank you,” Sierra said.

  “Good night,” Ronan told the couple. “It’s getting late and we’ve got to get going.” He exchanged glances with Sierra. “I almost forgot that tomorrow’s a school day.”

  Tucked against her husband, Rose called after them, “Come back soon.”

  “You know, I’m beginning to understand why the world is such a hard, angry place,” Sierra said as they walked out of the house.

  He eyed her quizzically. “What?”

  “Well, it looks like all the available niceness in the world got used up by your family,” she deadpanned. “At least, it seems that way.”

  Ronan laughed, pleased by the compliment. “Yeah, they’re a nice bunch I guess.”

  “If you have to guess,” she told him, “I’d say that you’ve been pretty spoiled. They’re an incredible crowd. And they all get along. That isn’t as commonplace as you might think.”

  “Well, they’re not saints,” he told her. “But they’re always on their best behavior whenever they come here. Nobody wants to miss out on Uncle Andrew’s cooking.”

  It was late and the streets were rather dark. His car looked as if it was parked farther away than he remembered. “You want to stay here while I get the car and bring it back?”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Well, you’ve got to be tired,” Ronan told her. They’d been there close to eleven hours.

  “No more than you,” she pointed out.

  He indicated her footwear. “Yes, but I’m not in high heels.”

  He watched her eyes light up in the moonlight as she grinned. “I’d pay to see that.”

  “Save your money, it’s never happening,” he assured her. Well, he’d tried to do the right thing but she apparently was determined not to have any of it. “You want to walk? Okay, we’ll walk,” he told her.

  It amazed him that Sierra kept pace with him all the way. “You really are stubborn, aren’t you?” he declared as they finally reached his car.

  Sierra turned her face toward him. There was a look in her eyes that completely captivated him. So much so that thoughts kept insisting on popping up in his mind, thoughts that promised to mess everything up in his orderly world.

  “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” she promised, getting into the car.

  He felt his breath catch in his throat and he couldn’t even explain why. Upbraiding himself, he got into the car on the driver’s side.

  “That sounds like you’re putting a curse on me,” he quipped.

  Maybe she’d come on a little strong. He’d been really nice today and she wanted him to know that she was grateful.

  “After the great time I had today, O’Bannon? I wouldn’t dream of it. Thanks for inviting me,” she said with sincerity.

  He avoided looking at her as he started the car. “I didn’t invite you,” he mumbled. “That was all Uncle Andrew’s doing.”

  She knew better, no matter how much he tried to disguise it. “But if you hadn’t passed the invitation along, I wouldn’t have been any the wiser.” She looked at his profile as he put the car in Drive. His face was rigid. “Why is it so hard for you to accept a simple thank-you?”

  “It’s not,” he retorted.

  Had she felt like challenging Ronan, she would have responded with a dry laugh. But she wanted this evening to end on a good note and that meant not saying anything that would accidentally—or on purpose—pull him into any sort of a confrontation. It was very easy to do that. It was harder not to.

  She picked the harder of the two.

  So all she said was, “Good,” and hoped that would be an end to it. Then, to ensure that, Sierra changed the direction of the conversation and said cheerfully, “Your mother’s just as nice as my father said she was. And also feisty.”

  From where he stood, his mother had been rather laidback. “You could see that?” he questioned, rather mystified.

  “Oh, absolutely,” she told him. “I can tell by the way she holds herself. Proud, but ready for anything. But then, she’d have to be, raising five kids on her own the way she did.”

  He hadn’t told her that and decided she must have heard it from her father. But one crucial element had been left out of the story.

  “Well, she wasn’t exactly alone. My uncles were always there for her. Sometimes,” he said with a laugh that had a lot of memories behind it, “they were a little too much there for her. I can tell you that none of them was happy when she became an ambulance driver less than a year after my father died. They thought it was too much for her, too dangerous.” He laughed again, recalling his mother’s reaction. “They tended to be overly protective and she’d have none of it.”

  “Like I said,” Sierra told him, “your mother is a really feisty little lady.”

  He didn’t know why it should make such a difference, but her approval of his mother pleased him.

  * * *

  THE CONVERSATION CONTINUED nonstop and, before she realized it, Ronan was pulling into her driveway. That was when she realized she didn’t want the conversation—or the evening—to end.

  “Could I interest you in a cup of coffee?” she asked, then added, “Or something stronger?”

  Serving him something to drink wasn’t what she could interest him in. That was why he told himself he should just pass on her offer, mumble a polite good-night and pull out of her driveway like a band of demons was on his tail.

  So when he heard himself answering, “Sure,” for a second he was certain he was hearing things.

  “Great,” she responded, getting out of the car and walking up to her door. “So what’ll it be, coffee or something stronger?” Sierra asked since he hadn’t stated a preference beyond saying “sure.”

  They were at her door and she was taking out her key. Looking back, Ronan decided that was when he had officially lost his mind because he told her, “Something stronger.”

  “Okay.” Unlocking the door, she turned around to face him.

  And that was the exact moment that something inside her melted.

  Quickly.

  “How strong?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he framed her face with his hands and brought his lips down to hers.

  He tried to tell himself that he did that to scare her away. To make her say a quick “Good night” and shut the door really fast, leaving him standing on her doorstep and her safely inside her house.

  He never counted on not succeeding in scaring her away. And he definitely did not count on Sierra kissing him back.

  Most of all, he hadn’t counted on having that kiss wake something dormant in his memory banks.

  He’d done this before.

  With her.

  Startled, the fragment of a memory eating away at him, Ronan pulled back. “I didn’t mean to...” His voice trailed off.

  Sierra pus
hed open the unlocked door and drew him inside, then closed the door behind him. She flipped the light switch on the wall.

  She sensed there was something bothering him. “It was getting chilly outside,” she told him. “If you want to talk some more, I thought we’d be more comfortable inside than out.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, trying to summon the memory. “I’ve kissed you before, haven’t I?” he asked.

  She thought of lying, of telling him he was imagining things, but if he did eventually put the pieces together, how would she explain lying to him? He’d think that she’d been repulsed by the experience and the exact opposite was true.

  “Yes,” she answered quietly.

  Things were still cloudy, refusing to take shape. But it was getting there. “When?”

  She searched his face for a sign he was putting her on. He wasn’t.

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “It’s coming back in jumbled pieces,” he admitted, “But, no, not really.”

  She told him the events slowly, watching his face to see if something struck a chord. “The night you invited me to Malone’s for a drink and then had a little more to drink than I think you realized. I drove you home.”

  He nodded, remembering the night but not the kiss. “Right, and then you stayed up with me all night.”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. He was coming up empty. Why wasn’t it coming back to him? “I still don’t—when did I kiss you?”

  “When I tried to get you out of my car. You turned in your seat, but instead of getting out you pulled me onto your lap and then—” she took a breath “—you kissed me.”

  With the suddenness of a hot Santa Ana wind, it came back to him.

  All of it.

  His eyes widened at he looked at her. “I called you Wendy,” he realized.

  Sierra nodded her head. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate but he had no others.

  She smiled at him. “There’s nothing to apologize for. It was a really good kiss.”

  How could she say that? He’d forced himself on her and then added insult to injury by calling her by another woman’s name.

  “You’re being too nice about this.”

  “If you’re looking to do penance,” she said flippantly, “I could beat you, but it’s going to have to be with a flyswatter. My cat-o’-nine-tails is at the cleaner’s.”

  He laughed then, really laughed. Laughed at the absurdity of her suggestion and at the situation in general.

  He laughed so hard, purging all the negative feelings he’d been carrying around for so long, that his laughter was contagious. Sierra began to laugh with him.

  And somewhere along the line, when the laughter finally faded away, it created a void that needed to be filled by something else.

  It was.

  This time the kiss was urgent and mutual, pulling them together as if there had never been any choice in the matter.

  This time he kissed her not because she reminded him of someone but because she was someone.

  And Sierra kissed him because she’d been wanting to kiss him since he’d pulled her onto his lap and opened up an entirely new world for her, a world of desires and passions she’d never experienced before.

  A world that seductively beckoned to her now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It astonished her how he could make her head spin. Up until now, Sierra had thought descriptions like that were only myths.

  But here she was, experiencing it.

  With every kiss, all she wanted was more. She’d had no idea, until this very moment, just how much she wanted this.

  How much she wanted him.

  It was a struggle not to tear at Ronan’s clothes and her own so that they could be free to explore each other’s bodies. But as his kisses deepened, as his mouth began to trail along her cheek, her neck, the hollow of her throat, the urgency within her grew to almost overwhelming proportions and she could barely contain herself.

  And then he stopped.

  Just as the frenzy promised to overtake her, Ronan stopped and drew back from her.

  It took Sierra more than a second to get her bearings in order to keep from uttering a guttural cry of protest and locate the right words.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Had Ronan suddenly felt a pang of guilt over becoming intimate with her—because that was where this was hopefully leading—since she wasn’t Wendy?

  “I don’t want to force you,” he told her, despite the desire she saw in his eyes.

  Was that it? Was his sense of honor holding him back? “Last I noticed,” she whispered, “you weren’t holding a gun to my head.”

  But he still held back, afraid he was pushing too hard. “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Just enough to be sociable, not enough to lose control.” She smiled up at him then began unbuttoning the first two buttons of his shirt. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” she assured him. “But if you’re the one having second thoughts...”

  That was all the reassurance he needed. “I’m not thinking at all,” Ronan told her, bringing his mouth back to hers.

  She nodded. “Handsome and stupid, just the way I like ’em,” she deadpanned as she threaded her arms around Ronan’s neck and allowed herself to get lost in yet another mind-boggling, bone-melting kiss.

  Conversation stopped then. They found an entirely different way to communicate. They did it by touch, by feel, by going back to the very basic levels that had always existed between a man and a woman.

  As she unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and pushed it back from his broad shoulders and down his arms, she felt the zipper at the back of her dress being tugged, moving ever lower.

  Her dress fell away from her body and gracefully floated to the floor, creating a light green cloud at her feet.

  Sierra was vaguely aware of stepping out of it and kicking the material away. She was otherwise occupied, undoing his gray slacks by guiding the zipper down and thrilling to the hardness she felt beneath her fingertips, testifying just how much he wanted her.

  They found their way to the sectional as articles of clothing continued to leave them until they were both nude, both focused on only one thing.

  Having each other.

  With the barriers stripped away, Sierra thought she had only moments to wait before the final act began.

  But she was wrong.

  Ronan had other ideas. He surprised her by making love to every part of her first. By taking, caressing, and familiarizing himself with every single inch of her.

  With his hands.

  With his tongue.

  Her heart was racing as he anointed every part of her, swiftly turning her into a wanton, crazed being feeling explosions erupt throughout her whole body. Her very breath became labored when he forged a moist, hot trail down to her very core.

  Sierra clawed at the cushion beneath her as he drove her up and over into a shuddering climax that had her crying out his name in utter surprise and pleasure.

  Limp, she fell back against the cushions, too exhausted to say a word, trying very hard to rally a small semblance of strength.

  And then she felt his body slide along hers until his eyes were level with hers.

  He was directly over her.

  Her heart was pounding so hard, she was sure it was going to break her ribs.

  It didn’t.

  Gathering whatever strength she could muster, Sierra pulled his head down and sealed her mouth to his as she arched her body beneath him.

  The next moment she felt him enter her. They had become one.

  The rest was pure instinct.

  They moved in s
yncopated rhythm, going faster and faster until they reached the final plateau and the wild, exhilarating explosion they were both seeking came, wrapping itself around them as they claimed it.

  The euphoria in its wake was exquisite and she would have given anything to have it last.

  But even as it rocked their very foundations, it had already begun to fade, decreasing in magnitude and scope until it wasn’t there at all anymore.

  She waited for the sadness that was so much a part of this act.

  It didn’t come.

  She felt Ronan collapse against her. The next second, he’d pivoted onto his elbows, shifting his body as he slid his weight over to the side.

  She expected him to either fall asleep right then and there, or to get up, grab his clothes and vanish into the night.

  Ronan did neither.

  For the second time that evening, he managed to surprise her. He slipped his arm beneath her and drew her closer to him.

  “And that,” he murmured teasingly against her hair, “temporarily concludes our exercise portion of the program.”

  “Temporarily?” Puzzled, amused, Sierra raised herself up on her elbow to look at him. “There’s more?” she asked in disbelief.

  The smile began in his eyes and filtered across his face. “Just let me get my strength up. Give me five minutes and then we’ll see about ‘more’ if you’re interested.”

  “‘Interested’?” she echoed. “I’d be flabbergasted. Aren’t you exhausted?” she asked.

  He slowly traced his fingertip along her lips, down her chin and along her throat, creating ripples of heat and desire all through her again. Just like the first time. “Are you?”

  Just his light, teasing touch had begun to stir everything up again, making her body feel as if it was humming to a tune she could feel in her soul rather than hear in her head.

  “Not quite as exhausted as I was a moment ago,” she admitted, surprising herself this time. And then she grew very serious as she studied his face. “Are we going to be all right?”

  “Explain ‘all right,’” he said.

  This was awkward for her, but it would be even more awkward to deal with tomorrow. She needed to be prepared, to know where things stood. “Tomorrow morning, when we go back to the precinct and start hunting for that serial killer, is what just happened here going to be a problem for us?”