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  “We’ll be in touch,” Parnell called after her as she and Sawyer left the room.

  “I’m sure you will be, Mr. Parnell,” she said under her breath.

  It wasn’t until she and Sawyer were outside the building and Janelle had taken in a deep breath that she finally looked at the man who had been at her side the whole time, as silent as a grave. Despite that, she had to admit that she had been glad that she hadn’t been alone in that room.

  “Well, you certainly didn’t say a word the whole time.” He was never very chatty, but he’d always said something.

  “No need to. You were doing just fine on your own.” A corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. “I was just the shadow on the wall.”

  Janelle came to a stop by her car and turned around. “You would never be just a shadow on the wall,” she contradicted. “You’re much too dynamic for that.”

  Amusement highlighted his features, softening them. “Is that a compliment?”

  She hadn’t intended to make a big deal out of it, just an observation. And, okay, a compliment she grudgingly admitted. “What, it’s been so long since you heard one you don’t know a compliment when you get one?” She took a breath, then said, “Yes, that was a compliment.”

  The amusement didn’t dissipate as he continued to regard her closer than she felt comfortable. He seemed to be in her space without actually physically occupying it. “I just didn’t think you were wired that way.”

  “What way?”

  He leaned a hip against her car. “To give a man his due.”

  She did too give a man his due. She just didn’t believe in going overboard. The male ego, in her opinion, tended to overinflate at times. “There are nine men in my family. I choose my moments.” She glanced at her watch. “Technically, I’m off the clock.”

  He nodded. It was after five. “I was never on. Vacation,” he reminded her.

  Suddenly, with the burden of the Wayne problem behind her, she needed to know things. “So, what now?”

  “Dinner?” Sawyer suggested. His voice was casual. The complete antithesis of how he felt inside. “There’s this little steak house at the edge of town that serves the best steaks at a decent price—”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean ‘what now?’” Where did that leave them? The personal them that had emerged out of the professional them. “I don’t need anyone watching my back anymore. The Wayne case is over.”

  He crossed his arms before him and began to speak, then stopped, waiting for an approaching policeman to pass them before continuing. “Are we having ‘the talk,’ Cavanaugh?”

  She stiffened immediately, regretting what she’d just said. “The talk?”

  His expression gave nothing away and added to her sense of discomfort. She’d crawled out on a limb and found herself alone out there.

  “Yeah,” he said, “the one where the woman wants to know where the relationship is going.”

  More than anything else, Janelle hated stereotyping. Hated being seen in such narrow parameters. “Never mind,” she told him. All she wanted to do now was just go home. Alone. “I never said anything. The steak house sounds pretty good, but—”

  “Because if we are—having the talk,” he clarified when she glared at him, “then I’d have to say that it’s going to go wherever you want it to go.”

  That stopped her in her tracks mentally if not physically. She hadn’t expected him to say that and was afraid that she was still misunderstanding him.

  “What?”

  “You been listening to loud music and blowing out your eardrums?” His sober expression hid the uncertainty he was experiencing. “I said—”

  “I heard what you said,” she interrupted, irritated. What did he want from her? Was he setting her up? Getting her to make an admission so that he could have the last laugh at her expense? Damn it, ever since she’d found out about her roots, she’d lost her confidence in her ability to make the right call. To be right. “I just don’t understand what you mean by it.”

  He studied her for a moment before asking, “What part confused you?”

  Okay, he wanted to be a smart-ass, she’d treat him like one. “The part where you said the relationship was going to go wherever I wanted it to go. First of all, I wasn’t aware that we even had a relationship—”

  “You always cure your hiccups by making love with whoever you’re with?”

  She ignored the interruption and kept going. “And second, you’re not going to place the burden of this on me and then just pretend to be the innocent bystander here.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Burden?”

  “Okay,” she bit off grudgingly, “poor choice of word. You like responsibility better?”

  The wind ruffled the stray strands that had worked their way loose from the confining pins she’d fastened in her hair. He was tempted to pull them out and then move his fingers through her hair.

  “I’d like it better if you took that chip off your shoulder,” he told her.

  Janelle closed her mouth, her retort dying with the action. He was right. She was acting as if she had a chip on her shoulder. But that was the fear talking. The fear that she was in the presence of something rare and that she would somehow ruin it, scare it away, before she ever had a chance to cultivate it.

  “Okay,” she agreed quietly, conceding his point.

  “And,” he continued in the same tone, “took the clothes off your body.”

  A giddiness worked its way to the surface as her mood instantly lightened. Janelle almost laughed out loud. “Here?”

  Very slowly, he glided his fingertips along her face, pushing one small strand of hair out of her eyes. “Preferably your place or my place, but here if you really feel you can’t wait to jump my bones.”

  The breath she drew felt short. But she managed to look nonchalant. Just barely. “I think I can contain myself.”

  His eyes held hers. “You’re sure?”

  She didn’t like him having the upper hand. Because he did. “I’m sure.”

  “Because,” Sawyer continued as if she hadn’t answered him, “I’m finding I’m having trouble containing myself.” He looked at her pointedly, admitting things he knew he should have kept to himself. “That’s never happened before.”

  Sawyer wasn’t the type to string a woman along, or feed her lines, Janelle thought. Instinctively, she knew that about him. The man didn’t like lies. Which meant he was telling her the truth. She could feel her pulse accelerating again.

  “No?”

  He was leaving himself open, Sawyer thought. Vulnerable. He was asking for trouble. And pain. And yet, he couldn’t just turn away. It was too late for that. Coming back and finding Mariel pointing a gun at Janelle had showed him that.

  “No.”

  Janelle inclined her head. “I guess I’m honored then.”

  “You certainly are something,” he said almost under his breath. Just then, as if to cool a mood that was swiftly heating up, her cell phone rang. Mentally, Janelle cursed it, and Sawyer dropped his hand. “Maybe you’d better get that,” he suggested.

  Suppressing her impatience, Janelle pulled the small cell phone out of her purse. It took everything she had not to snap out her name. “Cavanaugh.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was no preamble. There didn’t have to be. She immediately knew who the deep voice belonged to, even though she’d never given her number to the man on the other end of her phone.

  It astounded her that he could have found out so quickly what was going on. But then, people in his line of work had to be quick. Their lives often depended on it.

  Janelle chose her words carefully. “You kept out of my mother’s life. Consider us even.”

  “You want it that way?” Wayne asked.

  The unspoken part of her statement asked for him to stay out of her life as well. “I think it would be best.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. For a moment, Janelle thought Wayne would give her an a
rgument, try to convince her that they should keep in touch now that there was no longer a secret between them.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Wayne finally said. “Take care of yourself, kid. And tell Brian he did a good job.”

  “I’ll pass that along,” she assured him. The next second, the dial tone hummed softly in her ear. With a shake of her head, she slipped the phone back into her purse.

  Sawyer peered at her face. “Wayne?” he guessed.

  “Boy, nothing gets past you,” she said with a short laugh, but for once she hadn’t meant the remark sarcastically. “Wayne,” she confirmed, looking at Sawyer. The nerves were back in full regalia. She liked it better when she just thought of the man as an annoying inconvenience rather than someone whose presence in her world had come to mean so much. It was easier the other way. “So, where were we?”

  He traced a tendril along her temple. “You were just about to get naked.”

  It took effort to control the shiver that danced up and down her spine at the image of the two of them that suggestion evoked. She did her best to sound flippant. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Not even if I bribe you with dinner?” he asked.

  “You might stand a better chance that way,” Janelle allowed. And then the humor temporarily left her eyes. “Sawyer—”

  Her tone of voice had him feeling leery. He tried, for once, not to expect the worst. “Yeah?”

  She faced him squarely, even though the subject made her uncomfortable. “I don’t do this kind of thing normally.”

  “Eat dinner?” he asked innocently.

  “You know what I mean,” she retorted impatiently. Then her voice lowered. “Sleep around casually.”

  Humor glinted in his eyes. “I wasn’t aware that naked was considered formal.”

  Embarrassed, angry, she was sorry she’d said anything. “If this is going to be a joke—” Janelle tried to yank open the driver’s side door only to have him push it shut again.

  “It’s because there’s this river rushing over me and I’m trying to tread water here as fast as I can.” He put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “I was in love once, with Allison, and when she died, it was like having all my guts ripped out. It just about killed me. I don’t want to be in love again.”

  “No one’s telling you to be in love,” she retorted defensively.

  He shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? Nobody can tell you to be in love, you either are, or you’re not.”

  “Okay.” Janelle drew the word out slowly as she tried to absorb what he was attempting to get across.

  His hands moved from her shoulders to head, cupping her face. “And I am.”

  “With me?” she whispered.

  Nervous impatience shot through him. “No, with A.D.A. Woods. Of course with you. Now, I don’t know where this is going to take us—”

  “Sawyer,” Janelle tried to cut in, but Sawyer just continued talking.

  “—and I’ll probably screw up—”

  “Sawyer—”

  “—but, then, maybe—”

  “Sawyer.”

  He stopped abruptly. Why wasn’t she letting him finish? “What?”

  She slipped her arms around his neck, bringing her body tantalizingly close to his. “I love you, too. Now shut up and take me to your place so that I can get naked without drawing a crowd.”

  He grinned. “A crowd, huh? Think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you?”

  Janelle looked up at him, her eyes serious. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, pulling her even more closely to him, “I do.” He kissed her. Slowly. Tenderly. Then raised his head and repeated the last two words he’d said. “I do.”

  There was mischief in her eyes. Mischief and such a wave of excitement it almost overwhelmed her. “Careful where you say those words,” she advised.

  “Just practicing.”

  Janelle stared, dumbfounded. But before she could ask him if he meant what she thought he meant, Sawyer was kissing her again. And stealing the very breath away from her.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5967-0

  CAVANAUGH WATCH

  Copyright © 2006 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella

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