Cavanaugh Judgment (17 page)

“You give this kind of service to everyone you’re assigned to guard?” he asked, murmuring the question against her ear.

She was amazed, considering what she’d just experienced, that the feel of his breath along her neck was arousing her again. By all rights, she was more than half dead from exhaustion. And yet…

He was still waiting for her to respond to what she assumed was a semi-serious question on his part. With a careless shrug, Greer gave him a non-answer. “This is my first bodyguard assignment. I’m playing it by ear and improvising as I go along.”

“I see.” He strummed his fingertips along her curves, enjoying her. “Very innovative of you.”

She couldn’t tell by his tone if he was serious or not. “Any complaints?” she asked.

“Can’t think of a one.” He laughed shortly. “Actually, I can’t think. You seem to have short-circuited my brain.”

She raised herself into a semi-sitting position, resting her chin on his chest and looking up at him. “Maybe your brain’s just resting since it wasn’t needed.”

“Oh, it was needed,” he assured her. “Haven’t you heard? The brain is the most sexual organ in the human body.”

Tilting her head, she looked at him again, mischief playing on her lips. “I seem to recall hearing something like that, yes. So, you want to put it to the test?” she asked. Before he could answer, she continued, carrying on both sides of the conversation. “You want to
think,
Judge? Or do you want to
do?
” she asked, tilting her head as she waited for him to respond.

Rather than answer her the traditional way, Blake caught the back of her head, pulled her to him and brought her mouth down to his.

The kiss stretched down to the very edges of her soul.

She felt his desire for her resurfacing. Growing hard.

Greer grinned, doing her best to hide her own excitement. She had the answer to her question.

“I have my answer,” she murmured against his mouth before she threw herself into round two. And lost herself in him completely.

Chapter 13

S
leep was an elusive element in Blake’s life. Waking at least twice each night, he hadn’t managed to come anywhere close to sleeping straight through the night since Margaret had died. He’d just accepted that this was the way things were, just as he’d accepted that he would never have feelings for another woman again.

He was wrong on both counts.

After making love with Greer a second time, he’d drifted off to sleep and slept through the entire night without waking up once.

Slept so soundly that apparently he hadn’t heard Greer leave.

When, still semi-asleep, he’d reached for her, he’d found the other half of his bed empty. The sheets were cool to the touch on her side, which meant that she hadn’t just left. She’d been gone a while.

Sitting up, Blake saw that she’d taken her clothes with her. And hung his up neatly, folding his socks and underwear and placing them on top of the bureau while his tuxedo and shirt had been returned to their hangers in his closet.

It was, he thought, as if last night had never happened.

Maybe that was the effect she was after, he thought. Maybe she wanted to physically deny what had transpired between them.

Blake scrubbed his hands over his face. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He knew that a lot of men would have been relieved not to be held accountable. Not to feel that they were going to be tangled up in a bunch of strings and expectations.

But he wasn’t like most men.

Still, if he pretended that nothing had happened, then he wouldn’t have to feel as if he’d been unfaithful to the memory of his wife. That was something he’d expected to have weigh heavily on him once the passion and desire had cooled and faded and the lovemaking was in the past. But while he was, for the moment, emotionally on shaky ground, oddly enough, there was no guilt pressing down on him.

Maybe he was still in shock, he speculated, getting up. After all, he’d been fully prepared to face the rest of his life as a single man. Loving someone else wasn’t even remotely on his agenda. Once was all he thought anyone could logically hope for.

But apparently, he could be wrong.

He
was
wrong, Blake amended, because last night wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t felt something for the woman it was happening with.

Ever since he could remember, he’d always needed something more than just chemistry in order to want to be intimate with a woman, although, he mused with a faint smile as he headed off into the shower, there was definitely something to be said for chemistry. Last night had felt as if the whole damn lab had been set on fire and exploded.

As he turned on the water, he concentrated on that and not on the fact that he had let his guard down and allowed the notion of love to creep in.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Blake was dressed and making his way down the stairs. The scent of coffee greeted him when he was less than halfway down.

A man could get used to this, he thought. These past two years he’d forgotten what it was like, coming down to freshly brewed coffee, to the aroma of breakfast being made. Ever since Greer had been assigned to be his bodyguard, coffee and breakfast had suddenly become the norm again.

Careful, Blake, don’t get used to this. She’s not a permanent part of your life. Once they catch Munro, she’ll be gone.

He found the thought more than mildly disturbing.

Taking the last step down, Blake could see that Greer was in the living room, folding up the bedding that she’d used. She’d spent the remainder of the night here, he realized. Why?

“You came down last night?” he asked her, walking into the living room.

It hadn’t been her imagination, she thought. She
had
sensed him.

Greer looked at him over her shoulder, doing her best not to flush. She’d left his bed sometime around 1:00 a.m. and come down, but bits and pieces of last night kept replaying themselves in her head until dawn. She’d gotten even less sleep last night than she ordinarily did.

Not knowing how he would react in the light of day after the night they’d shared, she kept her voice neutral. “I’m supposed to be your bodyguard, remember?”

“Couldn’t have guarded it more closely than you did last night,” he reminded her.

Was that amusement she heard in his voice? And if so, was that a good thing or a bad one?

Greer pressed her lips together. In either case, at least they were addressing the elephant in the living room right off the bat.

She cleared her throat. “About last night…”

He stood where he was, having no idea what to expect next. This was not a run-of-the-mill situation for him. “Yes?”

She forced herself to look into his eyes. “If you want to request another bodyguard, you are within your right to do so.”

He stared at her, trying to extract the hidden meaning behind her words. “I don’t understand. Why would I want another bodyguard?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “In case you don’t feel comfortable, or…” Her voice trailed off as the words she needed to use deserted her.

He was silent for a moment, and then he smiled. Slightly. “Looks to me like you’re the one who feels uncomfortable.”

He was right, Greer thought. She
was
uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the emotions that he’d aroused within her last night, uncomfortable with how easily she’d capitulated to those emotions. She was usually stronger than that.

Damn it, she should have fought harder to resist him. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would take advantage of the situation, or of her if she had said no. It had been up to her to stop things before they’d gotten out of hand. Instead, she’d wound up doing everything in her power to speed them along.

“I should have been more in control,” she finally told him.

His eyes made her feel that he was looking into her soul, seeing all of her secrets. “There was no pillaging going on,” he murmured wryly. “Seems to me that we were equally in control.”

Greer read between the lines. Blake obviously thought she was talking about the actual lovemaking. But she wasn’t. She was talking about the fact that she shouldn’t have allowed last night to have happened in the first place.

The very thought of the night they’d spent together made her pulse begin to accelerate again. Damn it, what was
wrong
with her?

“You’re blushing, Detective,” Blake pointed out, amused.

She tossed her head, sending her hair flying over her shoulder like a blond shower.

“It’s just hot in here.” This time, she avoided his eyes. It was safer that way. “I’ve got to get back into the kitchen and finish making breakfast before the eggs burn,” she said, breezing by him and heading toward the kitchen.

Turning on his heel, Blake followed her. “Isn’t my father watching them for you?”

“No, I haven’t seen your dad yet this morning. He told Jeff last night that he felt tired,” she told him, repeating what her partner had said to her before he left. “Maybe he decided to sleep in this morning.”

Blake frowned. His father was usually up with the roosters. “That’s not like him,” he commented. “But then, I wasn’t myself either last night.”

Entering the kitchen, she slanted a glance at the judge. “Regrets?” she asked, trying her damnedest to sound nonchalant.

“Maybe,” he allowed. When she looked at him, he explained further. “That I didn’t do it sooner.”

She was doing her best to put emotional distance between them, but all the while, she caught herself yearning for an encore of last night. Damn it, was she losing her mind? She didn’t behave this way. What had he done to her?

“It has been two years—”

He didn’t let her finish. He realized that she didn’t understand what he was saying. “That I didn’t do it sooner with you,” he clarified. He’d felt the sexual pull between them that first day in court, when she’d flown over his desk to shield him.

There went her heart, she thought, feeling it lodge into her throat. Their eyes met and she caught herself holding her breath.

Don’t buy into this,
she cautioned herself.
It’s going to hurt like hell when it’s over if you do.

She knew she was lying to herself. It was going to hurt like hell when it was over no matter what. She was already standing on the threshold of pain.

Greer changed the subject. “Maybe you should go upstairs and see what’s keeping your father. Tell him breakfast is almost ready.”

He nodded. “Maybe,” he agreed, but instead of going upstairs, Blake remained where he was, trying to properly frame what he was about to say. Ordinarily, words were no problem for him, but he had no experience in this area. He wasn’t someone given to exposing his feelings. But she obviously needed to be reassured, he thought. “I just want you to know that I enjoyed last night.”

Greer took in a long breath, as if that would somehow help her maintain her outer calm. She’d indulged in a breech of protocol last night.

“Yeah, me, too. Doesn’t change the fact that I behaved unprofessionally.”

Did she think he was going to put her on report? “For the record,” he told her, “you ‘behaved’ just perfectly.”

With that, he turned away and walked back toward the stairs, leaving her to contemplate her own thoughts.

Why did life have to be so complicated? Greer wondered, swiftly stirring the eggs that threatened to harden in a clump.

If she’d met Blake under different circumstances, then maybe last night would have been the beginning of something special rather than just an anomaly.

An anomaly, she caught herself thinking as she went to the refrigerator, that she would have dearly loved to have happen again at least one more time before her assignment here ended. But then—

Greer stopped looking for the butter and drew her head out of the interior of the refrigerator. She could have sworn she’d just heard her name being called.

Was Blake calling her? Or was that—?

No, she was right. She
did
hear Blake calling for her. Again. And there was an urgency in his voice. Oh, damn, what was wrong?

Turning the stove off and moving the large frying pan onto a cool burner, she hurried out of the kitchen. Passing the hall table, she grabbed her handgun, yanking it out of its holster—just in case.

She made it up the stairs in record time.

“Blake?”

Judge, she should have called him Judge, not something as familiar as his first name. She was on duty, for God’s sake.

Once blurred, the lines were hard to restore.

“In here!” he called out to her.

Following his voice, not knowing what to expect, she burst into the doorway of the room he was calling from. She held her weapon out in front of her, braced in both hands.

It was his father’s room. Blake had the senior Kincannon on the floor, lying on his back. Blake was in the middle of counting off compressions, one hand pressed on top of the other and both pressing down on the older man’s chest. His father was unconscious and Blake was performing CPR.

“Call 911,” he cried. “I think he had a heart attack.”

Stunned, Greer lost no time in putting in a call to her dispatch at the police station. Giving her badge number, she rattled off the circumstances and the patient’s address.

Flipping her phone closed, she tucked it away again. “They’ll be here right away,” she guaranteed. “They like to keep Aurora’s ‘finest’ in top running condition.” She came closer to him. Blake hadn’t missed a single beat, performing CPR for all he was worth.

“What happened?” she wanted to know as she looked at his unconscious father on the floor.

Blake shook his head. “I don’t know. When he didn’t answer my knock, I opened the door and found him like this.” He knew that time was of the essence. The quicker his father got treatment, the better his chances for a full recovery would be. “I don’t know how long he’s been unconscious.”

Greer bent down. Pressing two fingers against the other man’s throat, she felt for a pulse. It was thin and reedy, but it was there. Relieved, she told Blake, “At least he’s still alive.”