Cavanaugh Judgment (13 page)

DeVry eyed the offering suspiciously, making no move to take it from her.

“Here what?” he wanted to know.

The officer was sitting in a chair that had an arm extension on it. She placed the half she’d offered him on the extension.

“I’d take it as a personal favor if you had this half. I hate wasting food and there’s just too much here for me to finish. Take it off my hands, Officer DeVry?”

With that, Greer turned on her heel and hurried over to the escalator before the bewildered officer could say anything.

She heard wrapping paper being quickly disposed of as the escalator took her up to the next floor. Greer smiled to herself.

Judge Kincannon’s courtroom was empty when she walked in. It looked as if court was still in recess, she thought.

Crossing the length of the room, Greer circumvented the judge’s desk and went through the door on the left that led to the hall and to Kincannon’s chambers. That door was closed, as well. She knocked on it once.

Not waiting for a response, Greer turned the doorknob and walked in.

Kincannon was at his desk, reviewing something that had him frowning to himself.

Nothing new there,
she thought.

Her brother was on the leather sofa, reading a paperback book that he’d stuffed into his pocket earlier when she’d asked him to stay with the judge for an hour. Most likely he was reading a play, she guessed. Ethan had a weakness for theater productions. Being in them, not seeing them. Ethan was the family ham.

“Hi, I’m back,” she announced just as Kincannon looked up. Tongue in cheek, she asked, “Did you miss me?”

“What I realized,” Kincannon answered, “was that I’d missed the silence. In the past twenty-four hours, I haven’t had any.”

Rather than rise to the bait, she glossed right over it. “Ethan’s not that much of a talker,” she agreed, setting down the bag that now only contained half a sandwich.

Both Blake and Ethan laughed shortly, the sound merging. Just like when both her brothers used to gang up on her when they were growing up. She liked to point out that it took two of them to equal one of her.

“Compared to you, an auctioneer isn’t much of a talker, either,” Blake told her.

He wasn’t fooling her, she thought. Her eyes crinkled as she drew her conclusion. The man
had
missed her. The fact that he would probably go to his grave rather than admit it didn’t matter.

“Thanks for filling in,” she told her brother. “You can go back to your homicide now.”

Kincannon looked mildly interested. “She always boss everyone around?” he asked Ethan.

“For as long as I can remember, Judge. Good luck,” he addressed the remark to Kincannon, not Greer. “And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“He means he would if he had one,” Greer corrected.

Blake said nothing. He was too caught up in remembering. Scottie and he used to engage in the same kind of banter. It reminded him how much he missed his younger brother.

“See you later, Greer.” And then Ethan nodded at him. “Goodbye, Judge, nice meeting you.”

“Goodbye,” Blake murmured, already turning his attention back to what he was doing. And trying very hard not to notice that the woman had the crisp, fresh smell of the wind about her.

It seemed rather appropriate, he couldn’t help thinking, seeing as how Detective Greer O’Brien had all but blown into his life.

Chapter 10

“S
o, what are we having tonight?” Alexander asked, seeming to materialize at the door the moment that Greer opened it.

Tired, Greer still grinned as she dropped her shoulder bag on the hall table and removed her weapon, still in its holster. She placed it next to her purse. Her secondary weapon she only removed when she was going to bed.

It was a little more than three weeks into her assignment and she and the senior Kincannon had hit a comfortable stride.

After what seemed like several initial false starts, she sensed that the former gunnery sergeant had begun to view her as the daughter he’d never had. His own wife had died years ago and, from what he’d told her, he’d never really gotten to know his late daughter-in-law. He, Margaret and his son would get together around the holidays, but only if he was stationed in the area, which wasn’t very often.

Alexander now called her by her first name rather than by her last and things were now comfortable between them. Greer wished she could say the same for her and the judge. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, Kincannon still looked as if he would rather she wasn’t around, which made her job more difficult.

“In the interest of time,” she said in answer to Alexander’s question about dinner, “I was thinking of making shrimp alfredo.”

Greer knew that she, like all the other Cavanaughs, had a standing invitation to drop by Andrew’s anytime for a meal. She’d done it the first night because she needed something to break the ice, but left to her own devices, she liked cooking and there was something very intimate and bonding about cooking for these two bachelors.

Widowers, she silently corrected herself. Both men had loved and lost in the cruelest way nature could devise, long outliving the women they had vowed to love, honor and cherish to the end of their days.

At least they’d loved someone, she thought wistfully, which was more than she could say. Of course, it was hard to fall in love when you kept a tight rein on your heart the way she did. But she was determined not to be hurt the way her mother had been and the only way to prevent it was not to fall in love in the first place.

“Sounds good to me,” the older Kincannon enthused. “I’m partial to seafood,” he said, telling her something she’d already found out for herself. “Need any help?”

The offer, out of the blue, surprised her. Her eyes crinkled as she told the man, “I could use some company. You up for that, Gunny?”

“Sounds like something I can handle,” Alexander told her amiably as he slid onto a stool by the counter. He watched her gather the ingredients that another detective had dropped off earlier. “You know, this isn’t so bad, having a woman around.”

She knew that as far as former gunnery sergeant Alexander Kincannon was concerned, he’d just given her a very high compliment. When she’d first arrived, Greer was well aware that the older man resented her intrusion into the home he shared with his son almost as much as his son did. Added to that was the fact that he didn’t feel that women belonged in law enforcement doing anything other than sitting behind a desk. With all of that stacked up against her, things could have become a little dicey.

But they didn’t.

“Wish your son felt that way,” Greer said offhandedly as she separated the already cooked shrimp from their tails. She threw the shrimp, one by one, into a bowl and the shells surrounding their tails onto a paper towel.

“He minds less than he lets on,” Alexander assured her. “Blake just has trouble letting his feelings show. He’s used to keeping everything all bottled up.”

She raised her eyes to the man sitting opposite her, barely able to suppress her smile. “Gee, I wonder where he got that from.”

Alexander shook his head. “Beats me.”

What really amused Greer was that Blake’s father was being serious. He didn’t see the connection of his passing on his behavior to his son.

A noise behind him had Alexander swiveling his seat to the right to get a better look. Blake had just walked into the kitchen.

“Speak of the devil,” Alexander marveled, chuckling under his breath. “Hey, Blake, we were just talking about you.”

Blake stopped short of the refrigerator and the cold drink that had been his goal. Suspicion flittered across his features as he looked from his father to the woman who, unbeknownst to her, was increasingly getting under his skin. “Why?”

Greer decided to answer before his father said anything to get her in trouble. There was no telling how the older man would deliver the truth.

“Your father seems comfortable having me around. I just commented that I wish you felt the same way.”

Opening the refrigerator and taking out a can of soda, Blake popped the top. He took a drink, nudging the refrigerator door closed with his elbow. His eyes shifted toward her before he said anything.

“Hard to feel comfortable with someone shadowing my every step.” He took another long sip and then laughed shortly. “I guess I should count myself lucky you let me use the bathroom by myself, without requiring me to share the experience.”

Alexander’s laugh was far less subdued or guarded. “Might prove interesting,” he commented more to himself than to either one of them.

Blake sighed. He knew better than to take his father to task for making the comment. The odds were fifty percent against him that Gunny might say something even worse the next go-round.

So instead, Blake nodded at the pot that was growing crowded with shelled shrimp. “That dinner?”

“It will be,” she answered.

Kincannon didn’t usually come out of his office until dinner was ready. She’d learned in the first few days that the judge was a man of routines. That was good for her when it came to keeping tabs on him, but not so good when it came to the matter of the lowlife who was after him. A routine was something they could easily use to their advantage.

That’s what you’re here for, remember?
she reminded herself. It was up to her—and the patrolmen who periodically drove by Kincannon’s house—to keep the judge safe even within his routine.

“Something on your mind, Judge?” she asked mildly, filling a second pot with water and placing it on the front burner. A sealed box of angel hair pasta lay on the counter beside the stove burners.

He took a breath, as if silently saying
now or never
. “What are my chances of getting a furlong?”

She went on working, even as she raised her eyes to his face. She couldn’t gauge what he was thinking. “From work or from me?”

He never hesitated. But he did, she thought, smile just the smallest bit. What was
that
all about? “The latter.”

Dream on, Judge. It’s just
not
going to happen.

“About a million to one.” Greer raised her eyes to his just for a fleeting moment. “Possibly even greater than that.”

It was no more than he apparently expected. “That’s what I thought,” he replied with a nod. “I’ll just tell them no.”

Now he had her curious. Greer adjusted the temperature under the pot. “Tell who no?” she wanted to know.

Blake hesitated for a moment, debating just answering her question with a careless shrug as he left the room. But he knew her rather well by now. Greer wouldn’t stop until she found out what he was referring to.

So he told her and saved them both a lot of needless interaction. “Aurora Memorial Hospital is having one of their fundraisers. They’re trying to raise enough money to build a new leukemia wing.”

“Worthy cause,” she commented. Greer’s voice was low, but there was no mistaking the genuineness of her feelings.

That surprised him. He thought the police force was only into pushing their own charities to the exclusion of all else. Apparently there were exceptions.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “They asked me if I would say a few words to jump-start the donations, get them flowing.”

She was still waiting for him to come to the heart of his dilemma. When he didn’t, she prodded him. “So far, I don’t see a problem.”

Blake looked at her, his eyes meeting hers. “You, Detective, you’re the problem.”

In the middle of purloining a shrimp out of the bowl to sneak a taste, Alexander sprang to her defense. “Hey, go easy on her, Blake.”

Greer held up her hand for a moment, stilling her silver-haired protector. “That’s okay, Gunny. My fault. I did ask.”

The water began to boil and she slid out half the spaghetti in the box. The next moment, she’d removed the pot’s lid, broke the spaghetti in half and rained it into the pot. She did the same with the second half.

Only then did she glance at Kincannon over her shoulder. “You’re afraid I’ll embarrass you?” she asked in a mild tone, as if they were merely discussing the weather.

It wasn’t her but the situation that embarrassed him. “Most judges don’t have bodyguards.”

“Most judges didn’t receive a threat on their lives and their family’s lives via their personal laptop,” she pointed out. Greer dusted her hands on the makeshift apron she’d tied on.

“If they do have bodyguards, those bodyguards
look
like bodyguards.” And that, he concluded, made his argument for him.

Stirring the spaghetti, Greer turned her attention back to the shrimp. The judge’s father had already disposed of four and was working on a fifth. Melting butter and garlic in the frying pan, she tossed in the shrimp that had escaped Alexander’s questing fingers and began to stir.

“I could ask my brother to go with you,” she speculated, “although he probably doesn’t look burly enough to suit your purposes, either.” Chewing on her lower lip, she considered the situation. “Or, I could just go disguised,” she told him brightly.

“You mean as one of the hostesses serving drinks or appetizers?” He supposed that might work.

He was in no way prepared for what she was about to say next.

“No, as your date.”

He looked at her, the words not registering. “Excuse me?”

Turning down the heat, Greer rested the stirring spoon on a plate since there apparently was no spoon rest. “I’m assuming that invitees are allowed to bring along a guest. Am I wrong?”

Hope had sprung eternal—for exactly three seconds before it had sunk to an ignoble death. “No, you’re not wrong.”

To her it was the perfect solution. “Okay, then it’s all settled. You get to go to the fundraiser. Nobody has to know that I’m guarding you.” The spaghetti was ready. She turned off the heat and began to look for a strainer. “I’ll know.”

Instead of allowing herself to get deeper into a discussion where she apparently had the opposing view, Greer merely smiled.

“That, Judge, is the whole point. Knowing your back is covered so that you can relax.”