Cavanaugh Judgment
Read Cavanaugh Judgment Online
Authors: Marie Ferrarella
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary
“I know how to defend myself, Detective O’Brien,” he informed her tersely.
“Good, then this shouldn’t be a difficult assignment for me.”
Blake tried again. “My father was a marine.”
Greer forced a smile to her lips. “So you said.”
“The point of my reference is that he insisted on teaching me self-defense,” he told her.
“Well, unless he also taught you how to catch bullets with your bare hands, I’m afraid you still need me.”
“This whole situation is ridiculous,” he ground out.
She sighed. “Judge, I’ve been assigned to you, so you might as well make the best of it.” She added pointedly, “I promise to be as unobtrusive as possible. You’ll hardly notice I’m there.”
There was silence for a moment. Greer slanted a look in Kincannon’s direction and instantly became aware of his eyes moving over her slowly, as if to take the measure of every inch of her.
“Oh,” the judge replied huskily, “I sincerely doubt that….”
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to the
Cavanaugh Justice
series. This time around, we have Greer O’Brien’s story. Greer and her two brothers are the illegitimate offspring of the late Mike Cavanaugh, Andrew and Brian’s malcontented brother. Like her brothers, Greer thought that her father was a fallen hero, not a man who refused to live up to his responsibilities. Her mother’s deathbed confession has actually hit her hard. It makes her resolve never to lose her heart to a male of the species, because men disappoint the women who love them.
But this is before she is given an assignment she would rather pass on: being the bodyguard for Judge Blake Kincannon, whose life is threatened by an escaped drug dealer. She and Blake have a history. Despite this, the two become aware of the strong attraction humming between them, an attraction neither one can continue to deny.
I hope you like this latest installment in the Cavanaugh saga and as always, I thank you for reading my book. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.
Marie Ferrarella
MARIE FERRARELLA
Cavanaugh Judgment
Selected Books by Marie Ferrarella
Silhouette Romantic Suspense
*
In Broad Daylight
#1315
*
Alone in the Dark
#1327
*
Dangerous Disguise
#1339
**
The Heart of a Ruler
#1412
*
The Woman Who Wasn’t There
#1415
*
Cavanaugh Watch
#1431
‡
Her Lawman on Call
#1451
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Diagnosis: Danger
#1460
‡‡
My Spy
#1472
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Her Sworn Protector
#1491
*
Cavanaugh Heat
#1499
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A Doctor’s Secret
#1503
‡
Secret Agent Affair
#1511
*
Protecting His Witness
#1515
Colton’s Secret Service
#1528
The Heiress’s 2-Week Affair
#1556
*
Cavanaugh Pride
#1571
*
Becoming a Cavanaugh
#1575
The Agent’s Secret Baby
#1580
*
The Cavanaugh Code
#1587
*
In Bed with the Badge
#1596
*
Cavanaugh Justice
#1612
Silhouette Special Edition
§
Her Good Fortune
#1665
†
Because a Husband Is Forever
#1671
§§
The Measure of a Man
#1706
†
She’s Having a Baby
#1713
†
Her Special Charm
#1726
Husbands and Other Strangers
#1736
***
The Prodigal M.D. Returns
#1775
‡‡‡
Mother in Training
#1785
Romancing the Teacher
#1826
††
Remodeling the Bachelor
#1845
††
Taming the Playboy
#1856
††
Capturing the Millionaire
#1863
†††
Falling for the M.D.
#1873
§§§
Diamond in the Rough
#1910
§§§
The Bride with No Name
#1917
§§§
Mistletoe and Miracles #1941
§
Plain Jane and the Playboy
#1946
§§§
Travis’s Appeal
#1958
***
Loving the Right Brother
#1977
The 39-Year-Old Virgin
#1983
§§§
A Lawman for Christmas
#2006
‡‡‡‡
Prescription for Romance
#2017
§§§§
Doctoring the Single Dad
#2031
§§§§
Fixed Up with Mr. Right?
#2041
MARIE FERRARELLA
This
USA TODAY
bestselling and RITA
®
Award-winning author has written almost two hundred novels for Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her Web site at www.marieferrarella.com.
To
Lily Sterkel.
Welcome to the world,
little one.
Contents
Chapter 1
E
ddie Munro was the kind of man who reminded narcotics detective Greer O’Brien of the Aurora police department why she’d joined the force in the first place. To put low-life scum like him away.
The least acrimonious way to describe Munro was to say that he was a career criminal with a rap sheet that was longer than he was tall and, at five feet eleven inches, that was saying a great deal. There apparently was no hint of remorse in the man’s heart, no well-buried twinge of guilt associated with any of the victims who he had harmed during his ambitious climb up the drug-dealing ladder. He was, and always had been, the most important person in his universe.
Greer could tell that simply by looking into the drug dealer’s eyes. They were flat, cold and calculating, and could have just as easily belonged to a reptile as to a flesh and blood human being. She saw it now, in the courtroom, and she’d seen it then, when the sting she’d been part of had gone down, successfully snaring Munro in its net. They were dead eyes, silently telling her that this arrest was merely a temporary aberration, an obstacle to be surmounted.
He looked, she thought, as if he had some secret guarantee that he would be out again soon, pushing his people to hook naïve, thoughtless teenagers in search of diversion on drugs, eventually turning large numbers of them into wraithlike creatures willing to sell what was left of their souls for the next fix.
Greer could see that same look in Munro’s eyes now, as she looked at him across the marginally populated courtroom. He was sitting at the defense table, dressed in a suit his attorney was hoping would transform him from a minor kingpin in the organization into a respectable-looking member of society.
But nothing could transform his eyes. They were looking at her and there was murderous contempt in the brown orbs.
Contempt and more than a small amount of anger that he was being inconvenienced this way.
It made Greer long—just for the tiniest of seconds—for the days of vigilante justice that had thrived in the Wild West before law and order had prevailed. Because vigilante justice would have disposed of worthless creeps like Munro without so much as a fleeting second thought.
There were no second chances with vigilante justice.
But even as she thought it, Greer knew in her heart that if such a thing as vigilante justice was alive and well, she would have been part of the first line of defense against it. It was inherently in her blood to uphold the law.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t find this whole tedious “due process” of crossing
t
’s and dotting
i
’s trying, she thought irritably.
Because it wasn’t enough to catch vermin like Eddie Munro in the act and arrest him. He had to be convicted, as well—and that was always tricky. Despite the fact that the man was as guilty as sin, conviction was never a foregone conclusion, because there were lawyers involved. Lawyers who earned their fees—and possibly a rush, as well—by digging through technicalities, searching for that one little “something” that had been overlooked, some obscure loophole that would somehow serve to set the Eddie Munros of the world back on the street to prey on the defenseless.
The need to present the case against him and prosecute Munro to the full measure of the law was why she was here, sitting in a place she avoided like the plague whenever possible. More than half an hour ago she had solemnly sworn to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me, God.” She would have willingly sworn to almost anything if it meant locking away one more evil vulture for as long as legally possible.
It wasn’t that courtrooms—or testifying—made her nervous. What they did was make her angry. Angry because, like it or not, all the hard work that she and the men and women she worked with in the narcotics division could be thrown out on one of those aforementioned technicalities. One overzealous movement by a wet-behind-the-ears rookie cop could jeopardize months of hard work.
But she knew that this was part of the game, part of the system, and she was determined to do everything she could to put that soulless pseudo Drug Czar of Magnolia Avenue, as Munro liked to refer to himself, away. She would have preferred putting him away for good, but ultimately, she would take what she could get. Every day Munro wasn’t on the street was another day someone else potentially avoided becoming addicted.
Greer was well aware that every victory counted, no matter how small.
The sound of a door sighing closed registered and she glanced toward the back of the courtroom, just in time to see the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh, make his way down the far aisle and slip into one of the near-empty middle rows.
What was up?
Greer couldn’t help wondering if the well-respected chief was here because of the case in general, or because his daughter, Janelle Cavanaugh-Boone, was the assistant district attorney prosecuting this case.
Or if, by some remote chance, he was here to lend her his support. Brian Cavanaugh was, after all, her newfound uncle.
The thought would have coaxed an ironic smile to her lips if the overall situation hadn’t been so grave. And if she wasn’t currently on the stand, testifying and being relentlessly grilled by Munro’s defense attorney, Hayden Wells, an oily little man who, despite his posturing, was not all that good at his job.