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“You are if you’re a cop,” he told her.
He had no idea why he was extending the invitation or saying any of this to her. The entire day, all he could think about was getting into his car and going home—to silence. At the very most, maybe he’d call Ethan or Greer to see how their day went. He’d already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to show up at Andrew’s tonight for the party.
But for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, he’d changed his mind. He knew that the former chief of police felt personally guilty for the way Kyle and his siblings had been physically and emotionally abandoned by the man responsible for bringing them into the world in the first place.
Ordinarily, someone else’s guilt was none of Kyle’s concern, but Cavanaugh had tried to do right by them. He supposed that not showing up tonight would be an insult. It’d be tantamount to throwing the man’s hospitality in his face.
That he felt a certain obligation to go was understandable. The real mystery was why he was asking Rosetti to come with him.
Maybe it was as simple as just feeling sorry for her.
And then again, maybe not.
“I was thinking of dropping over there tonight. He’s having some kind of gathering,” Kyle explained vaguely. “If you wanted to tag along…” He left the rest unsaid.
There was silence for exactly two seconds.
“Sure. Yes. That would be very nice.” Eagerness increased with every word she uttered. And then she shook her head. “You know, O’Brien, you’re a damn hard man to figure out.”
Kyle had a perfect solution for that. “Then don’t try.”
“Now that sounds more like you,” Jaren responded, grinning. “Look, I just have to get my car. I’ll follow you over to the house.”
He took out his worn notebook, vaguely realizing that there were only three empty sheets left. Kyle turned to a fresh one and wrote something down, then tore it out and held it out to her.
“Here’s the chief’s address. In case you get lost,” he added when she raised a quizzical brow.
There was no chance of that, he thought as he drove to the chief’s house. Jaren Rosetti followed closer than a heartbeat, leaving hardly enough room between his car and hers for a thin mint.
When he pulled up to the curb, she was right there behind him, matching movement for movement. “You know,” he said as he got out of his car, “if there’d been an eager cop around, you could have gotten a ticket for tailgating.”
“Lucky there was no eager cop around,” she countered, amused. They both knew that uniforms didn’t issue tickets to detectives unless gross misconduct was involved. Jaren examined the house number they’d parked in front of and turned to him. “This isn’t the address you gave me.”
“That’s because there’s no space left to park in front of the chief’s house.” He nodded toward the middle of the street. “It’s one of their birthdays and he’s throwing a party. Everyone was supposed to come.”
That stopped her dead. “Birthday?” Jaren echoed. She suddenly felt awkward, not to mention emptyhanded. “But I don’t have anything to give.”
“Why should you? You don’t even know Callie.” Callie was the chief’s oldest daughter, married to the judge whose kidnapped daughter she’d helped rescue.
He had a point, but he was missing the main one. “But if I don’t even know her, why am I—?”
“You hungry or not?” he demanded.
“Hungry,” she confirmed. Hungrier for company than she was for anything that could be served on a plate, she added silently. While she was comfortable enough in her own skin, she had to admit that she did like the sound of people’s voices and she really enjoyed interacting with them.
“Then stop arguing and come on,” he ordered.
Jaren hurried to catch up as he walked quickly down the block.
He was right. The entire way from where they parked to the front of Andrew’s house was jammed with cars, all going nose to tailpipe. She didn’t envy the owners when they attempted to free their rides in order to go home.
Music greeted them before they ever reached the house, as did the sound of laughter. Andrew Cavanaugh’s house seemed to exude warmth.
Walking up to the front door, Kyle didn’t bother ringing the bell. Instead, he knocked on the door. Hard.
When there was no response, he tried the doorknob and found it wasn’t locked.
“He leaves his door unlocked?” she asked, stunned. The neighborhood where she’d lived with her father had slowly gone downhill. By the time she’d sold the place, the front door had been outfitted with double locks coupled with a chain.
Kyle glanced at her over his shoulder just as he opened the door. “If you were a thief, would you walk into this?”
This was practically a wall of people, mostly detectives with their spouses and children. There was also a smattering of uniformed officers who’d come straight from work.
“Not unless I had a death wish,” she agreed. It looked as if half the precinct had gathered here. There wasn’t a solemn face in the lot.
This was it, Jaren realized. This was exactly what she’d longed for all of her life. Enough family stuffed into a house to make the very walls groan and bow. As far back as she could remember, there’d only been her parents and her. And, from the time she turned twelve—when her mother had decided that she’d just had enough and walked out, never to be heard from again—there’d been only her and her father.
Officer Joseph Rosetti had been a handsome man, quick to smile, quick to tell a joke and quick to raise a glass in a toast—even if he was the only one in the room. Most of her childhood had been spent either taking care of her father, or searching the local bars for his whereabouts in order to bring him home. Despite his shortcomings, Jaren loved him dearly and she knew that, in his own way, her father had loved her, too.
Just not enough to conquer the grip that alcohol had on him.
More than once when she was growing up, she’d found herself wishing that there was someone she could turn to—an aunt, an uncle, a sibling or grandparent—just someone with a few good words to cheer her on and buoy her up. But the only family she had was a man who seemed intent on pickling his liver one bottle at a time.
Eventually, he had. Liver failure claimed him, taking him, in her opinion, years before his time.
Lost in thought and wishful thinking as she scanned the large group of people, she suddenly felt a large hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw a tall, smiling man with the kindest blue eyes she’d ever seen. He’d placed himself between her and her new partner.
Instinctively, she knew this had to be Andrew Cavanaugh.
“You came!” he exclaimed, his booming voice echoing with both pleasure and surprise. He turned approving eyes toward the young woman with his brother’s son. “And you brought someone with you.”
Kyle nodded. “This is my new partner, Andrew. She’s new to Aurora and she asked me if I knew anyplace that served really good food.”
“And you brought her to me,” Andrew concluded, pleased. “Well, young lady, I hope you don’t come away disappointed. By the way, Kyle forgot to introduce us. I’m Andrew Cavanaugh.”
“Yes, I know,” Jaren said, shaking his hand. His grip was firm and warm. She noted that he didn’t insult her by weakening his grip in deference to her softer gender. She liked that. Nothing worse than a limp-wristed handshake. “My name is Jaren. Jaren Rosetti.”
“Rosetti,” Andrew repeated. His eyebrows drew together as he thought for a moment. “I used to know a Joe Rosetti. He was on the Oakland police force. Had an occasion to work with him early on. Great guy. Any relation?”
A spark of pride ignited. Until the end came when he had to be hospitalized, her father had somehow managed to be a functioning alcoholic, never drinking on the job, just continually from the moment he was off duty. He’d fooled a lot of people, she remembered.
“He was my father.”
“Was?” The concern in Andrew’s eyes was genuine. She liked him immediately.
Jaren nodded. “He died a couple of months ago.” It was still hard for her to say that. Harder still to imagine a world without Joe Rosetti.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Jaren. Your father was a good cop.” Somewhere in the distance, a timer went off, but Andrew continued talking to the young woman his nephew had brought into his house. “He must have been proud to see you follow in his footsteps.”
By the time she’d made it to the rank of detective, her father had retired from the force and been too wound up in his daily ritual of emptying wine bottles with Black Russian chasers to take much notice of anything.
Jaren knew that her smile was just a wee bit tight as she said, “I’d like to think so.” Was it her imagination, or had the chief’s eyes softened just a shade, as if he understood what wasn’t being said?
Andrew turned toward his nephew. “Why don’t you introduce Jaren around, Kyle? By the way, in case you’re wondering, your brother and sister are already here. You were the last holdout,” Andrew said with a soft laugh, as if he’d known all along that it would just be a matter of time before he was won over by the family. He clapped Kyle on the shoulder and said warmly, “Glad to see that you decided to make it. Wouldn’t have been the same without you.”
Kyle looked back into the house. The living room, the family room and parts beyond, including the backyard, were teeming with people.
“And how would you have noticed?” he asked dryly.
“Trust me,” Andrew assured him, “I would have noticed.” The timer sounded a second time. Andrew checked his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see to the main course.”
“He really does cook, then?” Jaren asked.
Kyle laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
She had never really mastered the kitchen. The best she could do was work with things that came in boxes and had the word helper in the title. Cooking for its own sake was a foreign concept to her. She’d been too busy juggling school, jobs—part-time and full—and caring for her delinquent father to spend any real time in the kitchen beyond cleaning up.
“He seems like a very nice man,” she observed as she watched the former chief retreat into his state-of-the-art kitchen.
“Yeah.” No matter how he felt—or didn’t feel—about becoming part of this close-knit clan, there was no denying the fact that Andrew Cavanaugh had done his damnedest to make the transition easy on all three of them. But he still wasn’t completely convinced that he wanted in.
He became aware that his new partner was studying him. When he glanced over at her, she asked, “And you’re actually related to him?”
He could see how she might doubt that, given their natures. “Yeah.”
“How?” The single word had launched itself out of her mouth before she could think to stop it.
He blew out a breath. “Do you ever stop asking questions?”
“Sure. Once I get the answers.”
Just because—in a moment of weakness he was beginning to regret—he’d felt sorry for her and brought her to this gathering, didn’t mean that he was going to bare his soul to her.
“If you get all the answers,” he told her, “then there’s nothing to look forward to.”
“Sure, there is,” she contradicted. “More questions—and answers.”
He wasn’t about to be cornered into a game of truth or dare with this woman. “Don’t make me regret bringing you here.”
Jaren knew when to back off. “I’ll do my best,” she promised.
They stood in the doorway of the living room for perhaps ten seconds before they were approached by another one of the Cavanaughs. This time, it was Patience, the only Cavanaugh besides Janelle who wasn’t a law-enforcement agent. Patience’s vocation lay with curing animals. Her involvement with the police department, other than through her sibling, cousins and uncles, was by being the official vet for the K-9 unit. Which was how she’d met her husband.
She was also Mike’s daughter and thus Kyle’s half sister, a connection she more than readily embraced. As she came toward them now, there was the same mixture of pleasure and surprise evident in her face that her uncle had displayed.
She brushed her lips against Kyle’s cheek, catching him off guard. “I didn’t think you were going to make it,” she confessed. Her eyes darted to Jaren’s face, then back to her newly discovered half brother. “And you brought a date?” It was more of a question than an assertion.
“I brought my partner,” Kyle corrected. “She was hungry and it’s a known fact that Andrew’s the best cook in town, so I just thought—”
Why was he even explaining himself? Kyle wondered. Maybe he shouldn’t have shown up at all. More than that, a part of him regretted pushing for recognition as Mike Cavanaugh’s son. He wasn’t even completely certain why he’d pushed the way he had. What had he hoped to accomplish? It wasn’t as if the man was still around to acknowledge the connection.
When he’d undertaken this little mission, he’d been prepared for fierce opposition. Just the opposite had occurred. He’d had dealings with the Cavanaughs before. Anyone who was on the force had had dealings with a member of the clan at one time or another. He’d always thought that they were a decent bunch of people. But even so, he’d expected them to be hostile to the idea that he and his siblings cast a shadow on Mike Cavanaugh’s name by turning up and claiming to be his offspring.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. He still didn’t quite understand why.
Patience hooked her arm through Jaren’s. “So, his new partner, huh? This should be interesting,” she prophesized. “By the way, I’m Patience, Kyle’s half sister. We shared a father,” she said matter-of-factly. “Let me take you around and introduce you, Jaren.”
Jaren felt her mouth curving, reflecting the smile she felt inside. “Works for me.”
Her smile didn’t even fade as she heard Kyle instruct Patience, “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”
“He takes getting used to,” Patience confided with a comforting smile. “But in the long run, we figure he’s worth it.”
“I’ve kind of figured that out myself,” Jaren told her.
Patience looked at her for a long moment, her smile warm and welcoming. “My money’s on you, Jaren.”
“Nice to know,” Jaren replied, the sentiment warming her heart.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_7882b497-387e-510c-b06b-8e5e9b913b6b)
“C’mon, Callie, tell us. How old are you?” Riley McIntyre teased as they all gathered around the birthday celebrant and the huge, three-tiered cake Andrew had baked, the last strains of an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” fading away. “You’ve got to be older than one.”
One large white candle, a pink rose winding around its thick base, was all that stood atop the third tier. Callie had made her wish and blown it out to the sound of cheers, applause and laughter.
“Older than you,” Callie responded with a toss of her head. Her eyes shone as she added, “That’s all you need to know.”
“My wife is ageless,” Brent Montgomery informed Riley and anyone else who cared to make inquiries about Callie’s chronological age. “Like fine wine, she just gets better with time.”
Slipping her arm around Brent’s waist, Callie inclined her head, resting it against his shoulder as she gave him a quick squeeze. “Knew there was a reason why I married this man.”
“Yeah, ‘cause he was the only one who wasn’t fast enough to run for the hills,” Clay, her younger brother and Teri’s twin, chimed in. It earned him a swat to the back of his head from his wife, Ilene.
“I suggest we begin cutting the cake before someone gets tempted to start throwing it instead,” Andrew told the gathering. He placed one of his prized knives in Callie’s hand, moving the plates closer to her.
“You heard the man,” Callie said to the rest of her family and friends. She made the first cut. “Line up if you don’t want to be left out.”
No one had to be told twice. Riley was first in line, but rather than take a plate and walk away, she began to pass out the slices as Callie cut them and placed them on the plates.
“Are they always like this?” Jaren asked. She was standing off to the side with Kyle, waiting for the crowd to thin down a little.
Kyle shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. I’m new to this.”
She slanted a knowing look in his direction. “That would explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“Why you didn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ when everyone else did.” She’d been standing right next to him and had wondered why he hadn’t joined in with the rest.
