Marie Ferrarella - Dangerous Games

Shaw leaned back in his chair, his eyes pinned to her. “You went out with him, when? Seven, eight years ago? People change.” And then he laughed as he gestured at her. “For God’s sake, look at you. Eight years ago, your hair was blue, and so was your mouth. We all became cops so we could cover your butt and keep you out of trouble.”

Rayne rolled her eyes. “Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically.

“Hey, every family’s gotta have a goal that pulls them together,” Callie told her.

She was backed up by a chorus of murmurings. Amusement played on Callie’s lips as she looked at her watch. They all liked to tease Rayne, but there’d been a time when they’d been really seriously worried about the youngest Cavanaugh. A time when the future hadn’t looked as good as it did.

“I think all of us better be heading out.” Rising, Callie stopped to look at her almost stepdaughter, the child responsible for bringing her and Brent ultimately together in the first place. “Time to get you to school, Rachel, and your dad to the courthouse.” She looked at Brent. “Justice can’t make a move without him.”

A chorus of groans met her comment. “Kiss him and get it over with already,” Shaw ordered with a heavy sigh as he gained his feet and threw down his napkin.

“In front of all you Peeping Toms, no way.” Taking charge of Rachel, Callie moved the little girl toward the door, then paused to nudge aside Rayne and pick up her own holster and weapon. “You need a woman, Shaw.”

“I could fix you up,” Brent offered, helping his daughter on with her jacket.

Shaw held up his hands to ward off the offer and any others that might be following in its wake. “I’ll find my own woman, thanks a bunch.” He looked at the youngest Cavanaugh and attempted a diversion. “Besides, Rayne is the one you should be concentrating on. She’s the wild one, not me.”

“Not wild enough to want my own woman,” Rayne deadpanned. Ready, she paused long enough to brush a kiss on her father’s cheek. She figured if they both lived another fifty years, she might just be able to make amends for the way she’d treated him those awful years after her mother disappeared. “See you at the cemetery, Dad.”

Andrew eyed her. Like all his children, Rayne had good intentions. But her follow-through left something to be desired. Still, she’d come a very long way from the tremendous handful she’d been. There were times during those years when he’d been convinced he’d be celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday standing over her grave rather than joining the rest of her family at a ceremony naming her Aurora’s newest, youngest police detective. That had gone down as one of the proudest moments of his life.

He nodded, then winked. “I’m only half counting on that, you know.”

Stepping out of the way as Clay retrieved his weapon, she fixed her father with a reproving look. “Where’s your faith?”

“Plenty of faith,” he declared, sinking the skillet into a sink of sudsy water. “That’s why I’m half counting on it instead of not at all.”

“Someday,” Rayne told him as the rest of her family filed by on their way through the back door and to the cars that were parked outside, like as not blocking access to her own vehicle, “you’re going to learn to count on me completely.”

“I’m looking forward to that day, Rayne,” he told her as she hurried out the door, the last as usual. “I surely am.”

He glanced at the photograph on the seat beside him to make sure.

It was her.

Lorrayne Cavanaugh.

If his private detective hadn’t taken the photograph and given it to him, Cole doubted that he would have recognized her. Certainly not at first glance. She’d changed a great deal since he’d last seen her. The clothes were no longer this side of outlandish, but tasteful and subdued. She wore a crisp light gray jacket over pants the same color and a light blue blouse that even at this distance brought out her eyes.

The most startling thing about Lorrayne’s transformation was her hair. It was normal instead of the bright royal blue he recalled. She was a blonde now, like the rest of the females in her family. The last time he’d seen her, she’d worn it spiky. Now it was short, curly. Soft. It suited her.

So did the life she’d elected to follow instead of the hell-bent-for-leather one she’d led when he’d finally left town.

He supposed that gave them something in common. Once upon a time, while in their teens, they’d both been on a slippery slope, aimed toward inevitable self-destructive endings. But apparently she had reversed her course. Just as had he.

That gave them something else in common.

They had a third thing in common and it was that third thing that had brought him here to the Aurora police department’s recently repaved parking lot, waiting for her to put in an appearance.

A private detective was all well and good, but he needed someone on the inside. Someone in the know. Before it was too late.

He sat watching her for half a second longer. Lorrayne emerged from her vehicle looking a little breathless, as if she’d pushed her car to the maximum to get here. Slamming the car door, she took long strides toward the front of the building.

The expression on her face dovetailed with the one clear memory he had of her. She’d come barreling into the high school cafeteria just after the last bell had rung and run smack into him. Her books had gone flying, but it wasn’t that which had made an impression on him. And it wasn’t her blue hair, either, although that had fleetingly registered.

It was her wide eyes as they’d look up at him that had imprinted themselves on his memory. That and the press of her body against his. Soft in the right places, firm in the rest.

But he’d been a senior at the time and she was just a freshman, utterly wild by reputation, even then. He’d wanted none of that, none of Aurora. What had driven him at the time was a desire for escape. All he had wanted then was to finish high school and to get the hell out of the town, away from his family. More specifically, away from his parents.

And now here he was, back again. Looking to right what he knew in his soul was a horrible wrong.

Funny how life turned out. He would have bet anything of the fortune he’d managed to accrue that he would never set foot back in Aurora again, no matter what.

But then, having his younger brother accused of murder had never been factored into that initial scenario.

“Lorrayne,” he called as he got out of the cherry-red convertible. If she heard him, the woman gave no indication as she continued to hurry toward the front entrance. Cole lengthened his stride as he tried to catch up. She was small, but from what he could see, she was all leg. He raised his voice another decibel. “Lorrayne Cavanaugh.”

Lorrayne.

No one ever called her Lorrayne anymore unless it was official business—or someone in the family trying to get under her skin.

With an impatient sigh, Rayne abruptly stopped and swung around to see who was calling after her. And narrowly avoided colliding into a man who smelled good enough to eat.

It took Rayne less than a second to recognize him. The man she was looking up at was older now—ten years, if she recalled correctly—and perhaps even better looking now, if that were possible. But it was Cole Garrison, all right. She’d stake her next month’s pay on it.

She would have known him even if conversation at the breakfast table hadn’t found its way to the subject of his brother’s arrest for suspicion of murder. There was just no mistaking those chiseled cheekbones, that artistically perfect cleft chin, those deep blue eyes or that mane of deep black hair that, though tamer and shorter now, still reminded her of the mane of a proud lion prowling over a domain he considered to be singularly his own.