Cavanaugh on Duty(28)

The last sentence, in his opinion, was unnecessary. What was necessary was a way of identifying everyone. “How the hell do you tell who’s who without some kind of a playbook or name-tag system?” he wanted to know, mystified as he looked around at all the different clusters of people scattered throughout the immediate area.

She laughed at the completely overwhelmed expression on Esteban’s face. She had a feeling that there wasn’t all that much that threw him for a loop, but her family obviously did.

“It does take a little time,” she admitted. “But it’s well worth the effort. I could see how it might be a little overwhelming for someone, though.” She decided to give him an example to work with. “Think of it as the first day of college. You don’t know anybody and it’s intimidating. But after a couple of weeks, you start making friends and it begins to all fall into place. Pretty soon, you’re in a comfortable niche.”

“I’m not interested in a comfortable niche or in making any friends,” he informed her in a clipped voice. “I’m just interested in doing my job.”

Kari abruptly stopped walking through the yard and looked at him as if she was certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Why wouldn’t you want to make friends? It’s very lonely without friends,” she said. Then, picking up on the signs, she said quietly to him, “But I think you already know that.”

“Hey, Steve—right?” Thomas, her oldest brother called out, waving at her partner to get his attention.

“Esteban,” Esteban corrected him. His name hadn’t been that important to him when he was younger. But it was now. Having lost everything else—his mother, his brother and, in part, his stepfather, since the man was now in prison serving twenty to life—his heritage was all that he had left, and Esteban was determined to hang on to it.

“Sorry. Esteban,” Thomas acknowledged with a cheerful nod. “Need an opinion here,” he told Kari’s partner. “Tell me if I’ve finally got this damn thing level, will you?” he asked.

With a shrug, Esteban did as he was asked and with that one single, small action, he wound up shedding the last residual traces of being an outsider. He was part of them now, part of the brotherhood that made up the family of cops, as tightly connected a family as any in the annals of history.

If, during the course of the rest of the day and the evening to follow, Esteban began to entertain ideas about pulling back, those notions were promptly smashed by one person or another.

Esteban found himself pulled into one conversation after another almost seamlessly. Each time he thought he was separating himself from one group, another group would snare him.

And, throughout it all, there was Kari. Kari, beside him at the wedding, quietly shedding tears of joy and getting his handkerchief damp. Kari, urging him to sample yet another dish of something he didn’t recognize and bringing him a gin and tonic rather than a glass of champagne—which he loathed—so he could properly toast the new bride and groom.

And Kari, who wound up coaxing him onto the dance floor.

It seemed as if it had been an eternity since he’d had an occasion to dance—or the desire to.

The first time she threaded her hand through his and began pulling him toward the temporary dance floor that two of her cousins had constructed less than twenty-four hours before the wedding, he had dragged his feet, resisting.

“I’ll step all over your feet,” he’d protested, falling back on the age-old excuse.

“I really doubt that,” she’d told him. Knowing she couldn’t say she had seen him on the dance floor back in high school—he’d already denied that he was that Steve Fernandez—she fell back on a small white lie. “You look like rhythm would come naturally to you.”

He’d laughed shortly at that. “I think you have entirely too much faith in this overblown image you’ve conjured up of me.”

Taking his left hand, Kari positioned it on her hip, then took his right hand in hers and drew him in closer to her.

A lot closer.

The air seemed to shift, bringing with it a wave of warmth that transcended anything the air-conditioning could negate—if there had been any out there, which there wasn’t.

“I think, Esteban,” she said, emphasizing his name, “you’re completely up to anything I come up with—and more.” Her eyes held his to make her point. “And you’re right, I do have great faith in you...but I believe that faith’s justified.”

“Based on what?” he wanted to know.

As far as he knew, he hadn’t done anything to prove himself to be an asset to her. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t even want to. But of late there had started to be this small, nagging desire inside him. He wasn’t even sure just what sort of desire was involved, just that it was there.

And it was growing.

“Gut instinct,” she told him cheerfully. “Something you’re born with if you’re a Cavanaugh.”

He pinned her with a look as their hips all but locked in syncopated rhythm. “But you were born a Cavelli,” he reminded her.

“That was a technicality that has since been smoothed out,” she told him, unfazed. “And, for the record, I was right.”

He felt as if they were in two different conversations—and he had lost track of hers. “Right about what?”

The tempo was slow. Her movements, slower. And sensual as hell. He was really doing his best not to notice, but it was like trying not to notice that he needed to breathe. It was damn impossible.

“About what I said when I dragged you out onto the dance floor earlier. I said you could dance and that’s exactly what you’re doing, you know. You’re dancing. Dancing so well, other couples are stopping just to watch,” she told him proudly.

That wasn’t the only thing he was doing, Esteban thought.

In addition to dancing, he was feeling. Without any conscious consent on his part, he could feel parts of him that had been placed in frozen suspended animation suddenly thawing out.

That wasn’t supposed to be happening.

He worked better the other way, when there was nothing distracting him, nothing to be aware of but the job and survival. Focusing on anything but bringing down the enemy just complicated things and got in the way of his functioning properly.

Got in the way of his being an asset to both the department and his partner.

He couldn’t allow this to continue. Or worse, to grow. It had been a great day, one to someday look back on fondly, but it was time to end it, while he could still find his way back to the barren land he’d occupied for almost the past four years.

“I don’t think this was such a good idea,” he told her, his comment encompassing not just his dancing with her but the entire outing, as well.

But Kari wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, wasn’t ready to allow her common sense to take over and dictate her actions. Because, like a good detective, she knew she was traversing through dangerous terrain. But right now she was enjoying herself more than she was worried about the consequences of her actions. More than she was worried about the Pandora’s box she’d just opened.

“I do,” she told him, her voice barely above a whisper as her words and her breath seemed to seep in through his shirt and echo against his skin.

He found himself fighting it again, fighting the urge to kiss her the way he had that first night in his apartment, when she’d come over bearing a bottle of bourbon and pulled out all the stops to sway him into becoming her partner.

He’d kissed her then, he’d told himself, to scare her off. But it had backfired on him, not only failing to frighten her off, but also succeeding in introducing fear back into his own life. Fear that he was, despite all his best efforts to the contrary, vulnerable beneath all those hard layers of his.

And she had made him that way.

Kari could literally feel it, feel the tug-of-war he was going through, feel it because it was the very same tug-of-war that she was going through, as well.

She knew, without being subjected to a lecture, that getting involved with your partner in anything but a professional way was not exactly the smartest move a detective could make. Having romantic feelings clouded judgment and took the edge off reaction time, made you slower, caused you to hesitate a microsecond—just long enough to get you killed.

She’d heard stories to that effect time and again and knew it was true.

Knew too that right now she just didn’t care. Because what was going on inside her had taken center stage and would continue to build steam until she experienced some form of release—and soon. And since she wasn’t planning on bungee jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge anytime within the next couple of days, that really left her only one viable way out.

She wanted to be with him.

Wanted to be with this man who pretended not to know her, pretended not to remember her for whatever reason that suited him.