How to Seduce a Cavanaugh. Marie Ferrarella

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      Enraged and spewing obscenities, hurling them at the trembling woman kneeling before him on the cracked vinyl kitchen floor.

      The bruises on his mother’s face from his father’s last eruption were just now beginning to fade. The arguments, the rages, they were occurring more and more frequently these days, leaving an ugly rainbow of colors on every limb of her body.

      The sense of constant anxiety never really went away anymore.

      From the very moment he opened his eyes in the morning, Kane felt the frightening tension. Even during the lulls, which came less and less frequently, he knew it was just a matter of time before the next vicious outburst happened.

      He’d been in his bed, fearfully watching the shadows moving on his ceiling when he’d heard his father bellowing, heard his mother crying out in fear and then in pain.

      He was just a scrawny boy of ten, but the moment he heard his father yelling at his mother, he had abandoned his room and run into the kitchen to try to help his mother in any way he could.

      To protect her.

      Thin and fragile, she was no match against his father’s wrath.

      Neither was he, but maybe together...

      Kane had gotten to the kitchen just as his father’s anger had hit a new high.

      The flash from the handgun seized his attention as he struggled to process what he saw. What his brain already knew. He was terrified.

      He ran to his mother to block the bullet, to divert it from its course.

      But he was too late.

      The bullet from his father’s handgun had found its intended target less than a split second earlier.

      His mother’s face abruptly froze, highlighting surprise and pain. And then she pitched backward. Blood poured freely from the newly created hole in her abdomen.

      Kane opened his mouth to scream his protest, but nothing came out. Not a single sound came out to express his fear, his anger, his horrified outrage at the senselessness of it all.

      Unable to voice his reaction, Kane put all his energy into attempting to stop the bleeding. But his hands were too small for the task. Blood squeezed its way through his delicate, ineffective fingers, underscoring his helplessness.

      “Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me,” he begged the woman who was already gone.

      His voice only served to irritate his father further. “You love her that much, you little bastard? Then you’re going to join her!”

      The next second he heard his father’s gun discharge. Felt something sharp and painful tear through his chest. Felt something else oozing out.

      Blood.

      Was that his?

      Yes. He was bleeding. His blood was mingling with his mother’s.

      He sank to his knees in slow motion.

      At least it felt that way. The last thing he heard was the roar of the handgun again.

      The last thing he saw was his father going down.

      A cry of traumatized anguish tore from his lips. The sound of heavy breathing echoed in the empty room as he bolted upright.

      In his bed.

      In his bedroom.

      Kane looked down at his torso, checking for bullet holes. There were none. Just the scar of one, but it had healed.

      He was soaked, but it was with sweat, not blood.

      Shaking, Kane dragged his hand through his hair, doing his best to reclaim some sort of calm, and then resigning himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to find it in what was left of the night.

      The dream had found him again.

      He hadn’t had it in a long, long time, but now it was back, forcing him back to square one. He had to work at getting himself back on an even keel.

      Again.

      He was exhausted—and restless beyond words.

      Throwing off the covers, he got up. Beyond his window, darkness still embraced the city of Aurora, but there was no way he was going to go back to sleep. Not now.

      Resigned, Kane made his way to the kitchen, fervently wishing he hadn’t given up smoking last month.

      It looked as if his nerves were going to have to calm down on their own.

      He bit off a couple of colorful words under his breath.

      It wasn’t going to be easy.

Chapter 1

      The detective was ignoring her.

      Well, not so much ignoring her, Kelly Cavanaugh silently amended, as acting as if no one else was sitting in the chief of detectives’ office, waiting for the man to come in, except for him.

      They actually did know one another—by sight at least—from the department they both worked in. Robbery, a division in the Aurora Police Department, wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t exactly miniscule, either. She saw Detective Kane Durant in passing almost every day. He’d even nodded at her a couple of times in response to her voiced greeting, but they had never had any sort of conversation—not even an inane one—and that was on him. Kane Durant apparently wasn’t one for small talk.

      He didn’t seem to be one for big talk, either, Kelly thought now, even though she had tried to draw him out a time or two. His responses involved the absolute minimum of words. If something called for five words, she would offer ten if not more. Durant, however, seemed to be the type who would be hard-pressed to render more than three under the same set of circumstances.

      Doing her best not to fidget, Kelly tried engaging the stoic, dark blond detective in some sort of conversation now. The reason for that was her curiosity had gotten the best of her.

      “Do you know why we’re here?”

      Durant continued staring straight ahead, as if he was memorizing the titles of the books on the shelf behind the chief’s desk.

      Just when she decided he was going to continue ignoring her, the detective answered in a monotone voice, “Chief of ds called us in.”

      She took a breath. “Fair enough.” If the man had been any stiffer he easily could have played the part of the Tin Man in a production of The Wizard of Oz. Willing to give the stoic detective the benefit of the doubt, she told herself that maybe she should have been more specific in her query. “Do you know why he called us in?”

      “No.” The answer was given to the bookshelf, not to her.

      Kelly shook her head. She’d heard of the strong, silent type, but this was carrying things a bit СКАЧАТЬ