Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh on Duty

“What are you doing here?” Esteban bit off, making no effort to hide his hostility. After all, the woman was invading his space, a space she wasn’t even supposed to know about.

Can’t trust anyone these days, the former undercover detective fumed.

“Not being welcomed for one,” she answered glibly.

His eyes narrowed. “Then go home. No one’s stopping you.”

“And turn my back on such a charming invitation?” she deadpanned. “No way.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. Somewhere, he was convinced, a village was searching for their idiot. Just his luck, she’d turned up here.

“What charming invitation?” he muttered.

Kari remained blissfully unfazed by the daggers his eyes were shooting at her.

“The one you silently extended to me back at the precinct. You know, indicating that you wanted me to share a drink with you,” she answered. As if to reinforce her point, she held up the bottle of expensive whiskey she’d thought to bring with her. “I even brought the bottle in case you didn’t have any’or started without me and ran out.”

That, she felt, was a pretty safe bet. Leaning slightly forward, she gave him her best, most innocent smile. “But I see that you did remember to pick up a bottle on your way home.”

He was not about to get sucked into this mindless babble. He just wanted to be left alone, to get drunk out of his mind, pass out and not think for a while. This highly annoying Pollyanna was interfering with his plans.

“Look,” he ground out, “I don’t have time for crazy women’”

“Good, neither do I,” she concurred. Feeling her way around the room, she found a light switch and turned it on. Illumination instantly flooded the room.

“Turn it off!” he ordered.

But she didn’t. Instead, she informed him blithely, “Just looking for another glass.” She opened one cabinet, then another. Both were empty. This man lived worse than a hermit. “You do have another one, right?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him. “Otherwise, one of us is going to have to drink out of the bottle.”

Esteban stared at the woman in his house, feeling like someone who had just been slammed by a runaway train that had come barreling out of nowhere. She still hadn’t answered his question.

“How the hell did you find out where I live?”

“I’m a very resourceful person,” Kari told him with a wide grin. “You’ll find that out when we start working together.”

“We’re not going to be working together,” Esteban snapped. This was like some bad dream that refused to fade. Did he have to bodily carry her out of his house to get rid of her?

“Of course we are,” Kari countered brightly. “Fighting the inevitable is just a waste of time and energy. You like being a cop, I like being a cop and right now, the Chief of Detectives wants us to be cops together.” She looked at him as if he should have known that he couldn’t win this battle. “He always gets what he wants.”

The look he gave her was darker than any look she’d ever seen on a perp’s face. “Not this time he won’t,” he growled.

Chapter 3

The woman who had brazenly invaded his much-needed solitude smiled at him as if his strongly voiced protest was destined to fall by the wayside.

Outraged by her impertinence, Esteban could feel his already-fanned flames of anger swiftly growing.

He was well aware that he was physically strong enough to simply toss this golden-haired irritant with the sexy mouth out of his house, but, even with more than half a bottle of bourbon in him, Esteban didn’t want to resort to the behavior of the very lowlifes he was attempting to get off the streets.

However, if he ever was inclined to give a woman the bum’s rush, it definitely would have been this vexing thorn in his side.

“Who sent you?” he demanded, his eyes darkening into a frown. “The Chief of Detectives?”

She wasn’t about to hide behind her uncle, or allow Esteban to think she was nothing more than a puppet, obediently doing what she was told. So, rather than say that Brian Cavanaugh had indirectly asked her to bring him into the fold, what she told Esteban instead was, “I came to find out why you don’t want to work with me.”

Which was in actuality part of the reason why she was here.

Esteban looked down contemptuously at the bottle of aged bourbon she’d brought with her. “So you thought, what? That you’d liquor me up and I’d tell you everything?”

She looked at the bottle she’d placed on the counter out of the way while she searched for another glass. “No, this is to fortify me so I can put up with you,” she told him bluntly. “But as I already offered, you’re certainly welcome to share it with me if you’d like.” She lifted her bright blue eyes to his. “I might have a lot of faults, but stinginess is not one of them.”

Esteban’s expression remained inscrutable. She caught herself holding her breath, waiting to see if she’d managed to burrow her way into his inner sanctum at least a little bit.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” he wanted to know. “Your bravado?”

If she blinked and backed off, Kari knew that she’d lose any chance of making the tiniest bit of headway with him. And as for gaining any ground, well that was just an unfulfilled fantasy at this point.

So, with nothing to lose, she decided to duke it out instead. “I don’t know, is it?”

Esteban uttered a sound that was a cross between an intolerant, short laugh and a contemptuously dismissive one. And then his eyes darkened again as they swept over her.

The same strange note of familiarity whispered through him with no more clarification than the last time. Except that this time the thought that she was damn attractive and too sexy for his own good insisted on taking root.

“You don’t want me working with you,” he warned.

There was absolutely no hesitation whatsoever on her part. “Sure I do.”

“No,” he repeated firmly, his voice almost ominous in timbre. “Trust me, you don’t.”

She had never accepted anything at face value or just because she was told to. She’d always needed proof, ever since she was very young.

It was no different now.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why wouldn’t I want to work with you?”

As she spoke, Kari poured herself two fingers of bourbon, taking it neat, then offered the bottle to him.

Esteban poured twice as much for himself into his glass, then tossed it back quickly, making it disappear between his lips all at once. His eyes, watering ever so slightly, were the only indication that the alcohol intake had even affected his body at all.

“Because you come on like some prep-school educated Barbie doll, and I’m not going to pretend to be Ken,” he informed her.

Before he had a chance to take another swig from her bottle, Kari laid claim to it, her lips lightly touching the rim as she tilted it back.

“Good,” she pronounced once she’d swallowed. “Ken has fake hair,” she reminded him matter-of-factly, as if she was talking about an actual living, breathing being instead of an iconic doll. “I never really liked Barbie’s boyfriend.” She held the bottle out to him again. “Don’t worry. I won’t get in your way.”

“Especially if you’re not there,” Esteban agreed flatly.

Kari shook her head. What the hell had the Chief gotten her into? “You are a hard devil to get close to,” she commented.

Now she was finally getting it, he thought. It was about damn time. “Not hard,” Esteban corrected. “Impossible’and I like it that way.”

She laid it out for him, although she was certain that he’d already figured this out on his own. What did he hope to gain by playing this little charade out? Did he think this was going to “put her in her place”? Establish their hierarchy in relation to one another?