Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh's Woman

Or, at the very least, gagging on it.

His uncle Brian was not alone.

Rather than sitting at his desk, surrounded by piles of papers, Brian Cavanaugh, considered more than passingly handsome and a great deal younger-looking than his fifty years of age, stood on the far side of his desk, talking to a striking-looking blonde, who sat opposite him.

Even as Shaw took in the scene, the blonde turned and looked directly at him with the greenest pair of eyes he’d ever seen.

The second before he collected himself, Shaw felt as if a four-hundred-pound linebacker had just jumped on his chest before grabbing the game-winning football away from him.

The woman wore a light blue, two-piece suit. Powder-blue, he thought it was called by people, such as his sisters, who had more than six colors within their mental repertoire. Whatever the color was called, it appeared that most of the material had been used up making the jacket because there was precious little left over for the skirt.

Not that he would have registered a complaint with anyone. The less skirt there was, the more leg was visible. And he had to admit that the woman had the longest, shapeliest legs he’d ever seen.

Belatedly, Shaw realized that his saliva had completely disappeared. Which made up for the fact, he supposed, that Reese stood beside him, almost visibly drooling.

A vague feeling buzzed around in his slightly disoriented brain that he recognized the woman from somewhere, although for the life of him, Shaw couldn’t have said where. He supposed if it mattered, his uncle would fill him in. If it didn’t matter, he didn’t need to be wasting time trying to remember.

Like a five-star general who finally saw the key members of his army come into view, Brian Cavanaugh clapped his hands together.

“And here they are now,” the chief said, although it was obvious that while he said “they,” he was looking at only one of them. He was looking at Shaw.

Shaw nodded a respectful greeting toward his uncle, then let his eyes move back toward the woman.

Was this a personal case his uncle wanted to be handled discreetly?

It didn’t seem very likely, but stranger things had turned out to be true. Since he and Reese were assigned to Vice and Narcotics, he wondered just what this woman’s connection was to the shady world that he was sometimes required to travel through. The mistress of an up-and-coming drug lord, ready to turn state’s evidence in exchange for immunity and a new identity?

Or was there a more personal connection?

He stopped speculating and decided to wait out his uncle, who was smiling wider than ever.

Shaw then became aware that his venerable partner, the man he relied on to guard his back and be the other set of eyes to sharply watch the mean streets, had stopped breathing. Reese had sucked in one long breath and then nothing.

Shaw turned to look at him and saw that Reese’s brown eyes were all but riveted to the blonde. Turning his back ever so slightly toward her, Shaw lowered both his head and his voice as he asked, “Reese, you okay?”

All Reese could manage was a slightly wooden nod. His eyes never left the woman’s face.

Shaw heard his uncle clear his throat and realized the man was doing it to hide a laugh. Brian was laid-back, but ordinarily all business during working hours.

Just what the hell was going on here?

He noted that the woman looked a little concerned, rather than amused, by the obvious effect she was having on Shaw’s partner. Maybe she wasn’t as accustomed to men becoming tongue-tied, drooling and breathless around her as he’d thought.

“Would you like some water?”

Her voice was lyrical.

He’d half expected her to have a grating voice. It would have been nature’s way of balancing things out. Someone as beautiful as this woman couldn’t possibly have the voice of an angel. But she did. An angel who originated from somewhere in the deep South if his ear served him right. There was just the smallest hint of a Georgia lilt to her tone.

Or maybe he was just hallucinating. What the hell had gotten into him today?

When his partner made no response to her question, she pulled her lips back in a quick grin. Shaw had seen lighthouse beacons that possessed less wattage.

And then, as if by some miracle, Reese came back from the dead. “Are you—? Are you—?”

Shaw snorted in abject disgust. His partner, known for his interrogation skills, couldn’t even complete a simple four-word sentence.

The green-eyed goddess-on-earth apparently understood his garbled attempt at communication. She smiled again and said, “Yes, I am.”

Well, that cleared up nothing, Shaw thought, beginning to get annoyed.

He took police work very seriously. Every moment he was here, watching an episode of High School Confidential unfold was a moment he wasn’t sending the bad guys to jail.

Just what was it they were doing here? Shifting impatiently, Shaw looked to his uncle for a logical explanation.

“My nephew doesn’t get to the movies very much,” the chief told her.

What did going to the movies have to do with anything?

And then it hit him.

Shaw suddenly remembered where he’d seen the woman’s face before. Not in some covertly taken photograph of a drug lord with his high-priced mistress, but looking down at him from the giant screen of his local movie theater. Callie had dragged him there a little more than a month ago to view some romantic comedy whose name and plot escaped him at the moment.

Beside him Reese had returned from the land of the living zombies and rediscovered his tongue. His partner hit his shoulder with the back of his hand, as if that would make him return to his senses.

As if he’d been the one to leave them, Shaw thought, regain control over himself. She was a woman, a mortal woman, even if she did look like a goddess.

“Don’t you know who this is, Cavanaugh?” Reese demanded. “This is Moira McCormick.”

And that and two dollars, Shaw thought, singularly unimpressed, would get him a ride on the bus.

He wasn’t impressed by her.

Good, Moira thought.

She didn’t want him to be impressed. While the reaction of the man standing next to the chief of detectives’ nephew was sweet and more than a little flattering, ultimately it would only get in the way of what she wanted. She needed to get inside her character, and to do that, she needed a clear, unobstructed view of what life was like for a member of the vice squad. Moira McCormick believed in doing her homework and this was homework. Homework was never effectively dealt with when you were busy having a good time.

She’d spent a good deal of her life focusing on becoming exactly what she was, a highly regarded film star who was, thankfully, in great demand. That wasn’t something that had come easily. She certainly hadn’t arrived at her present position in life by sitting around, allowing others to fawn on her while she lapped up well-meaning but, for the most part, empty compliments.

Making her dream a reality took work. She worked hard to make it all look easy, effortless. And she had a feeling that it was going to take a lot of effort to make this unsmiling detective with the piercing blue eyes come around to her side of the table.

“You haven’t heard of me,” she concluded.

“I’ve heard of you.” In the last seven years, he’d seen maybe five movies. He believed in other forms of diversion. If he needed to knock off some steam, he turned to sports. He loved basketball and baseball the most, but almost any sport, other than golf, would do. To him, playing golf seemed too much like standing on the sidelines. Maybe that was why movies seemed such a waste of time to him. Plunking down money for a two-hour vicarious experience had never really sat right with him.