Cavanaugh on Duty(38)
“The paramedic already looked at it,” Kari protested. “He put some disinfectant on it that hurt like hell and then bandaged it.”
The lieutenant looked unimpressed. “I’m not going to be the one to explain to the Chief of D’s why he’s short one niece.” His eyes shifted toward Esteban. “Take her. Now!” he underscored.
“You heard the man,” Esteban said, taking her by the arm and firmly guiding her to where they’d left their car at the curb what seemed like a hundred years ago.
“I’ve got a better way for you to ‘take’ me,” she said, echoing the lieutenant’s order and putting her own meaning to it.
“Later,” he promised her. “First we get that taken care of.”
“What if I say no?” she challenged.
He was prepared for that. “Then I’ll have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you there.”
A smile entered her eyes. “Can I opt for that?” she asked.
“Shut up and get in the car,” Esteban ordered gruffly.
“Make me,” she countered, curious to see just what he would do.
Rather than pick her up and put her in the car the way she expected him to, he framed her face with his hands and kissed her. Kissed her with all the unbridled emotions that were running rampant through him, all the fear he had dealt with in those split seconds when he’d seen the deranged serial killer put his knife to her throat.
Kissed her as if there was no tomorrow, only this moment, only now.
She went from solid to liquid in under forty seconds, her insides vibrating like a well-struck tuning fork.
When Esteban finally drew back, she all but collapsed into the car. Unable to stand, she definitely needed somewhere to sit.
“You fight dirty,” she accused.
“Only way I know how to fight,” he informed her.
His answer made her smile. “This is going to be a very interesting partnership.”
He spared her a long look before pulling away from the curb. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Which meant, she thought in sudden realization, that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to stay in her life.
* * *
Esteban reached inside the door to his apartment and turned on the light, then stood back to allow her to enter first.
Coming inside, Kari smiled. “It looks a lot better in the light. Dusty, but better.” She turned toward him. “I’m just curious, why did you bring me here?” she asked. “Why not to my place?”
“Because mine’s closer and I’m a man of my word.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I said I’d take you to bed, remember?”
Her mouth curved. “It was the only thing that kept me from running out of the E.R.”
Esteban smiled at her bravado as he drew her into his arms. “That and the fact that they took your clothes.”
Kari laughed. “If you think that stopped me from running out, then you don’t really know me at all.”
“Maybe,” he allowed for the sake of argument. “But I plan to.”
The next moment, he covered her lips with his own.
The kiss was long and deep and did a great deal to blot out everything else that had happened in the past twelve hours.
She sighed as she felt Estaban draw back for a moment. “More please,” Kari murmured.
“As you wish.”
But instead of kissing her again, Kari felt herself being lifted up off the floor and into his arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, surprised.
“Guess.”
The wicked look in his eyes made guessing completely unnecessary. Kari knew exactly what he was going to do. And she couldn’t wait for it to happen.
It was a good long, steamy hour and a half before any more words were exchanged between them.
Lying next to Esteban in his rumpled bed—a bed that had already been rumpled before they ever started making love—Kari turned her body into his and said, “I think you might just have stumbled across a new way of treating wounds.”
He did his best to look serious, but failed. The desire to grin was just too overpowering. “Good to know—for the next time.”
The next time.
She clung to that for a moment, savoring what it could—and should—mean before making herself ask, “Does that mean you’ve decided to stay on as my partner?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he replied softly—and then his grin gave him away. Shifting so that his body curved into hers, Esteban grew a little more serious. “I don’t know what it is about you, but for all your annoying little traits, you still made me think that maybe there’s some hope left for this world.”
Pleased beyond words at this change in him, for the sake of the game they were playing, Kari pretended to take offense. “What annoying little traits?”
“We’ll review them some other time. Right now, I’m more interested in going over your redeeming ones—the ones that redeemed me,” he added quietly.
That touched her heart more than she could possibly ever express. “Esteban? You think that the next time you go to see Miguel, I can come along?”
He realized that he’d like that, that he wanted his stepfather to meet this woman. But he still needed to know why she’d want to come with him.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to meet the man who had a hand in making you the person you are today.”
He felt his heart swell and cautioned himself to take it one step at a time. These emotions were new and he needed to work up his trust.
His bid for nonchalance failed, though, as he said, “Sure, why not?”
Still trying to be cool, she couldn’t help thinking fondly. Esteban’s answer made her smile. “You know I see great things for this partnership.”
Just before he kissed her again, he said, “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Kari would have grinned if she were able, but seeing as how her lips were definitely otherwise occupied, she didn’t.
There was time enough for grinning later.
Epilogue
It was another Cavanaugh wedding.
This time it was Kari’s sister, Kendra, marrying Matthew Callaghan, the detective whose mother had married Kari and Kendra’s father last month.
This, Esteban had said to Kari when she told him about the upcoming nuptials, put a whole new emphasis on the term family ties.
But another Cavanaugh wedding meant another pulling-out-all-the-stops celebration. And this time Esteban found himself really looking forward to attending rather than feeling it was just something he was forced to put up with.
“So, Detective Fernandez, are you enjoying yourself?” Kari asked after extricating Esteban from a small group of men comprised of two of her brothers as well as a couple of her cousins, one of whom was also Brenda’s husband, Dax.
Esteban looked at her appreciatively. The floor-length light blue gown she had on adhered to every curve and made him think of one of the goddesses straight out of Greek mythology. He couldn’t recall ever thinking of a bridesmaid’s dress as being sexy. But that was the word for this one.
And for her.
“I am now,” he confided.
“Good,” she said, taking him by the hand and drawing him onto the dance floor that had once more made its appearance in Andrew Cavanaugh’s spacious backyard. “Then dance with me.”
“Are bridesmaids allowed to dance with civilians?” Esteban murmured, taking her into his arms and swaying to the music. “Aren’t you supposed to be dancing with one of the guys standing up for your brother?” he asked. “The guy they paired you up with?”
He’d been surprised just how much it actually bothered him, seeing her walking down the flower-strewn aisle with another man at her side. It had set him thinking.
“Groomsmen,” she supplied the term for him. “They’re called groomsmen.”
“Yeah, those guys.” He deliberately pretended to play dumb, slowly leading up to his point. “Aren’t you just supposed to be dancing with one of them?”
She laughed, wondering if he was actually serious. But then, she gathered that there hadn’t exactly been many weddings in his world before he’d become her partner. Only funerals.
She winked at him. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“I don’t want you breaking any rules on my account,” he told her with a perfectly unreadable expression.
“That wouldn’t be because you don’t want to dance now, would it?” she asked him. Because, reluctant or not, the man was really a wonderful dancer. He had natural rhythm—unlike a couple of her brothers.
“Not want to dance?” he repeated incredulously. “What red-blooded American male wouldn’t jump at the chance to have an excuse for putting his hands on you in public?”