Cavanaugh Strong Read online

  Once upon a time when she’d still been innocent and naive, Noelle thought, that very same grin would have gotten to her at the speed of light. But after having had her heart broken into countless pieces—so many that she thought it could never be reconstructed to function properly again—and broken not once, but twice, she knew better than to even think about attempting to go that treacherous route again. That route was for others who were either more naive or stronger than her to pursue. She had her daughter, her grandmother and her career, and as far as she was now concerned, that was more than enough to fill her world and her time.

  “So, how’s everything on the home front?” Duncan asked her, changing the subject after several minutes of silence had gone by.

  “Peaceful,” she answered, then spared him a glance. “Which is more than I can say for here, thanks to present company,” she added pointedly.

  “Yeah, the squad room is kind of noisy,” Duncan agreed, looking around the area while feigning obliviousness to her actual meaning.

  He wasn’t fooling her. Cavanaugh knew exactly what she was talking about, Noelle thought.

  “Now might be a very good time to catch up on all those reports that have been piling up,” Noelle mentioned.

  Duncan rolled his eyes, but he didn’t bother commenting on her suggestion. Though he loved his job, loved the idea of carrying on in the family business that was, above all, to serve and protect the people who lived in the same city that he did, documenting that service was a chore that came in only slightly ahead of voluntarily walking into a dentist’s office and requesting a root canal be done—for no apparent reason.

  Duncan worked his way back to his initial impression of her entrance—and the reason for his previous inquiry. “You were frowning when you came into the squad room just now,” he told her.

  Noelle deliberately avoided making any eye contact. “Must have been your imagination.”

  Duncan dropped his playful tone and became serious. “No, and it wasn’t my poor vision, either, if that’s what you’re going to suggest next. You definitely looked like you were disturbed about something just now. Anything I can do?” he offered.

  He really was persistent, she’d give him that. She knew that most partners tended to share everything, their histories, their feelings. But that was eventually, and she didn’t feel that she was there yet.

  For that matter, since she was determined to hold parts of herself in seclusion, she might never be in a place where sharing felt comfortable to her. To share was to be vulnerable.

  “How about ten seconds of silence?” she asked in response to his offer.

  Duncan seemed to seriously consider her request. But his answer, delivered without a smile, still gave him away. “I can do five.”

  Noelle sighed. If only. Out loud she said, “I’ll take what I can get.”

  True to his word, Duncan gave her exactly five seconds, glancing at the second hand on his analog watch, a watch his father had given to him when he’d graduated high school. His father had told him that it had belonged to his father and he thought it only fitting that he pass it on.

  Ordinarily, Duncan had a fondness for the latest electronic gadgets, but there was something about connecting with his past—a past that had suddenly mushroomed in size around a year ago when he, his siblings and his cousins had discovered that they were part of an already large branch of the Cavanaugh family—that gave him a deep sense of stability as well as intensifying his sense of history.

  Counting the seconds now, Duncan looked up at her when the last second faded. “Time’s up,” he announced.

  “How about five more?”

  “Maybe later,” he answered, then gave her his terms. “After you tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Her eyes locked with his. “You mean other than a partner who won’t retreat back into his space and let me work on my reports?”

  Duncan inclined his head. “Other than that,” he allowed, then reiterated his observation. “You were definitely frowning and you looked preoccupied.” He dropped all hint of a bantering tone. “C’mon, give. What’s up with you?”

  Noelle blew out a breath. “Lucy was pretty upset this morning.”

  Lucy. L before M. The alphabetic device was how he remembered who was who. It had taken him a month to get the names straight and stop confusing her grandmother with her daughter.

  “Did you find out why?” he asked her.

  Noelle nodded. “Henry died.”

  “Henry.” Duncan repeated the name, waiting for some sort of identification to follow it. When his partner wasn’t as quick as he felt was prudent, he prodded her a little. “Is that her dog? Or a pet goldfish? Some character on the soap opera that she watches? Or...?”

  His voice drifted off as he waited for his partner to set the record straight.

  Noelle took offense for her grandmother at the way Duncan had just casually attempted to pigeonhole a woman she had always felt completely defied any ordinary typecasting. Lucy was and always had been one of a kind.

  “She doesn’t have a dog or a pet goldfish and the only way that Lucy would wind up watching one of those soap operas would be if someone tied her up in a chair and taped her eyes opened. She absolutely hates soap operas,” Noelle declared with feeling.

  “My mistake. So just who is—or was—Henry?” Duncan asked. “Her boyfriend?” he suddenly guessed.

  “Her friend,” Noelle countered with emphasis. “According to Lucy, she and Henry had been friends since they were both kids.”

  Duncan whistled. “Wow, that’s a lot of years,” he estimated.

  “How would you know?” Noelle challenged. “You never met my grandmother.”

  “Just a calculated guess,” he answered, backing off. “So what happened? Did he have a heart attack while they were out, or...?”

  Noelle pushed the keyboard back on her desk. So much for catching up. She wasn’t going to have any peace until Cavanaugh had the whole story. She had to remember to practice her poker face more often when she was around him.

  “They have a standing ‘date’ every other Thursday— Not like that,” she interjected, noting the triumphant look on her partner’s face. “They just go out to eat. Anyway, she picks him up every other Thursday to get him out of that depressing senior retirement home he’s living in.” Since she was stuck telling him this story, she decided to throw in a couple of more details. “Lucy says that ever since Henry moved in there, he’s been behaving like a broken man who was just marking time before he died.”

  Duncan inclined his head. He could see that happening. “Well, technically, we’re all just marking time.”

  Noelle frowned. That was not what she wanted to hear. “I’d prefer you keeping your cheery comments to yourself, Cavanaugh,” she told him. “Now, do you want me to tell you about this or not?”

  He gestured grandly for her to continue with her narrative. “Go ahead.”

  Noelle banked down her impatience, deciding that Cavanaugh wasn’t being deliberately annoying, it just seemed to be something that came naturally to him.

  “Anyway, when she got there yesterday and knocked on his door, he didn’t answer. After a few minutes, she gave up being polite and just walked in.” She could just see her grandmother sailing full steam ahead into the room—and then stopping dead in her tracks once she realized what had happened. Her heart ached for Lucy. “She found him lying on his bed, dead. He was cold,” she added, “so he’d probably died a few hours before she got there.”

  “Had he been ill?” The way Cavanaugh asked the question told her that his interest was clearly piqued. Boredom was really doing a number on the man, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “No, actually rather amazingly, Henry was in excellent health, especially when you consider that when he’d moved to the retirement home, it was be
cause he’d had surgery and wasn’t doing all that well on his own. According to Lucy, his recovery progressed rather slowly. Certainly slower than he was happy about. At the time, he’d needed help doing almost everything. It had to be hard for a proud man like him. But Lucy said he did get better eventually.”

  “If that’s the case, why did he stay at the home?” Duncan asked. “Why didn’t he just go back to living in his house?”

  “Because it was too late,” she answered. “Henry had to sell his house in order to afford living at the retirement home.” Her dismissive laugh was totally devoid of any humor. “Those little cramped rooms don’t come cheap,” she added.

  The details surrounding going to live in a retirement home were something he knew nothing about. As far as he could tell, all the older members of his family were still going strong, including Shamus, the family patriarch who had been instrumental in bringing the two factions of the family together.

  “How old was he?” Duncan asked.

  “Seventy-nine.” She waited, expecting Duncan to make a crack about Henry having one foot in the grave or something equally as tasteless—after all, how could someone as vital looking as Duncan even understand what an older person felt? But her partner merely nodded, as if he were taking down information from a witness to a crime. Noelle was pleasantly surprised. Maybe he wasn’t so shallow after all.

  “So he’s a healthy seventy-nine-year-old who just suddenly expires.”

  “That about covers it all,” she agreed, nodding. She’d met Henry a couple of times and had liked the older gentleman, but she couldn’t begin to imagine how Lucy had to feel, losing someone who she’d known for so very long. “What makes it worse for Lucy is that she told me that this is the second person she knew who died in the last six months.”

  From his perspective, Duncan came to the only logical conclusion that he could. “Is she worried about being next?”

  “No!” Noelle cried sharply, then relented, softening her tone as she said, “Well, maybe. What she really is, I think, is lonely. Her circle of friends is growing smaller and I guess it’s making her rethink her life.”

  “Missed opportunities?” he guessed.

  But Noelle shook her head. “I don’t think so. Lucy never talks about things like opportunities she felt she missed out on. For the most part, she’s always been all about the moment, not the past. That was why seeing her like that this morning really kind of threw me.”

  He completely understood her reaction and it was rather reassuring to know that his partner actually was capable of these sorts of feelings. There were times, especially in the beginning, when he’d felt he’d been partnered with a robot or the latest version of someone’s rendering of artificial intelligence.

  “She’s your grandmother, right?” he asked. When Noelle nodded in response, he added, “And you said she raised you.”

  “She did.”

  Personally, Duncan couldn’t imagine what that had to have been like. Growing up, he’d had both parents around, not to mention the rest of the mob scene. He was one of seven brothers and sisters, so he’d never had even a moment when he had felt lonely—no matter how much he’d wanted to on more than a couple of occasions.

  Duncan got to the crux of his question. “Why do you call her Lucy?”

  “Because it’s her name,” Noelle replied with a straight face. “And because she wouldn’t have answered if I’d called her Grandma or Nana or any of those other traditional labels. She once told me that hearing them applied to her would make her feel old. Since she was my whole world—when she didn’t have to be—I would have agreed to anything she wanted from me.

  “Besides,” she went on to say, “it seemed pretty much like a reasonable request to me. Actually, at five, anything an adult asks you to do seems rather reasonable at the time. I never questioned her preference. To be honest, I was so happy to have someone who actually wanted to take care of me I would have called her anything she wanted me to call her.”

  Noelle saw the light that entered her partner’s deep green eyes and she quickly headed off what she assumed was his conclusion before he could allow it to grow and flourish.

  “My parents didn’t abuse me, if that’s what you’re thinking. They just really didn’t notice me very much at all. I was sheltered, fed, clothed and taken in for the necessary shots that eliminated a bunch of childhood diseases—”

  Duncan refrained from saying that the same was usually done for a household pet dog. He had no desire to open up any of his partner’s old wounds on the outside chance that they might have actually healed. Instead, he said, “But Lucy took more than just a passing interest in you.”

  Noelle smiled and he noted, not for the first time, that it rather lit up the whole room.

  “Exactly,” she said. “So I want to be able to be there for her whenever I can.” She glanced over toward the small office where Jamieson, their supervisor, was sitting, apparently deeply engrossed in the telephone conversation he was having. “Think Jamieson would mind if I took a couple of hours personal time to attend the funeral with Lucy?” she asked.

  For the most part, the lieutenant was an easygoing man. He didn’t act as if he had something to prove; neither was he trying to make a reputation on the backs of his detectives.

  “I don’t see why he would. It’s not like we’re exactly drowning in work,” Duncan pointed out. And then he had another thought—because they weren’t drowning in work and because he wanted to meet this woman who preferred having her granddaughter call her by a nickname than the traditional title he personally thought of as endearing. “You want some company?”

  The idea seemed to catch Noelle completely off guard. She looked at him, somewhat confused. “You mean you?”

  Duncan laughed at the surprised expression on her face. “Well, I can’t very well offer up anyone else’s company to you, now can I? I mean, maybe I could—but I wouldn’t,” he added mischievously. “Yes, O’Banyon, I mean me.”

  So far the only time she had seen Cavanaugh after hours and out of the office was at Malone’s, a local bar that was frequented by members of the Aurora Police Department and that had only been a couple of times. Not to mention by accident because she hadn’t known he was going to be there. Up until now, they hadn’t made arrangements to meet anywhere that didn’t have to do directly with police work.

  Since he appeared to be serious—or as serious as he could get—Noelle considered his offer. Cavanaugh was a little unorthodox, but she figured that he meant well and besides, her grandmother responded well to good-looking men. Cavanaugh was nothing if not that.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not? If you’re there, it might help her keep her chin up.” And then she flashed her partner a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, what’s a partner for, right?” he said with an easy, sexy smile.

  She tried not to notice just how easily that smile seemed to slip under her skin and unsettle her just before she managed to shut it down.

  “Right,” she murmured, focusing on the gesture and not on the man. Her life was just about as complicated as she was willing for it to be. There was no room in it for anything extra.

  Certainly not for a cocky police detective with magnetic green eyes and a sexy swagger.

  Chapter 3

  “Are you sure that you’re up to this, Lucy?” Noelle asked her grandmother as they approached the cemetery that was on the far side of Aurora’s southern boundary three days later.

  It was midmorning on Monday. She’d dropped Melinda off at school and driven here for the funeral with Lucy. There was a small, nondenominational chapel on the premises for those who wanted some sort of a service before standing at the deceased’s grave site, but her grandmother had opted to bypass that.

  Henry never attended a service while he was alive. It’d seem strange having him there n
ow that he was dead, Lucy had reasoned.

  “Of course I’m up to this,” her grandmother now answered, shortly. “I’m the one who made all the arrangements. It’s not like I can call a time-out and put that minister on hold because I’m having heart flutters.”

  Noelle pulled her car up into the small, uneven parking lot that was in front of the cemetery. Turning off the car’s engine, she shifted in her seat to look at her grandmother, searching for any telltale signs that might indicate that Lucy was in any sort of physical distress.

  “Are you having heart flutters?” Noelle asked, concerned.

  “No, I am not having heart flutters,” Lucinda stated firmly. “Stop looking at me that way, Noely, I’m not some Dresden doll ready to break because you breathed on it. You ought to know that by now.” She pressed the release on her seat belt. “Now come on, let’s get this over with. Henry’s probably looking down right now, annoyed at all the fuss. He never did like making a big deal out of things.”

  Lucy wasn’t fooling her. She knew that her grandmother liked putting on a blustery front, but she was a softy underneath all that. “You sure you don’t want to take a minute to take a deep breath or anything?”

  “My breathing’s just fine, Noely,” Lucy assured her. “Besides, if we don’t show up soon, the minister’s going to think no one’s coming and he’ll just go and do whatever it is that ministers do when they’re not praying over people they didn’t know.”

  Noelle read between the lines. “Are you telling me that no one from the home is going to be coming?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. Those old biddies don’t like to be reminded that they might be next,” Lucy told her loftily.

  “How about Henry’s family?” Noelle asked, coming around to the passenger side of her car.

  As always, her grandmother had already opened the passenger door and gotten out. Lucy wasn’t looking for any assistance, but Noelle couldn’t help thinking that the woman suddenly appeared rather frail to her right now. But she knew better than to offer her grandmother her arm unless so requested. Lucy was extremely sensitive and proud that way.