Dawdling. There was no other term for it. She was dawdling. She"d been ready for more than half an hour, even moving at the slow pace she"d adopted. She"d even wrapped the gift she was bringing for the baby in what amounted to slow motion.
No one rang her bell. No one called.
He wasn"t coming.
Big surprise.
Tacoma nosed at her as she glanced out the window for the umpteenth time. When she looked at the pet, the animal gave her that funny, quizzical look she was wont to offer whenever she felt that her mistress was acting against type.
"Can"t fool you, can I?" she laughed.
Usually she"d be out the door way ahead of time, especially when a family gathering was involved. She liked helping out, liked setting up. It wasn"t just the food that was the allure. No doubt the food was always spectacular, but it was the company that drew her. There wasn"t a single person in her extended family that she didn"t get along with. And she loved catching up on what everyone was doing.
When she was younger, she"d turned to them for mute comfort, something just being around them accomplished. She genuinely loved each and every one of them and took great pleasure out of being involved in their lives. They were all good people.
She knew that her uncles could have easily ignored what was happening in her house, but they hadn"t. Especially not Andrew. Andrew had taken it upon himself to try to straighten out his younger brother. Time and again he"d come over late at night after her mother had tearfully summoned him following one of her father"s drinking binges. Uncle Andrew would stay up with her father, talking until the wee hours of the morning, trying to get at the root of his insecurities. It had been to no avail. But until the day her father had been killed in the line of duty, her uncle never gave up trying. Despite everything, her father had remained a loner, alone in a large family.
Was that how it was with Brady? she wondered. Was he destined to go through life alone? Not her problem. No one could change anyone, that had to come from within. She just had to accept that.
She glanced at her watch. If she wasn"t careful, she was going to be late. Picking up the present, she headed for the door.
"C"mon, girl, let"s go."
Swinging open the door, juggling leash and gift, she walked right into him. Patience bit back a scream. But it wasn"t Walter.
Brady was on her doorstep.
Chapter 10.
It took her less than half a second to recover. Beside her, Tacoma was jumping from side to side, joyously greeting master and pet. Patience held on to the leash as best she could. "You changed your mind."
Because it looked as if Tacoma was going to pull her down in her enthusiasm, Brady took the leash from Patience. "Something like that."
A sense of pleasure filled her and she smiled at him. "Good."
"Yeah, well, we"ll see." Brady glanced at the gift she was holding, a large box with a white-pink ribbon. "I don"t have anything to give them."
"No problem, we"ll put your name on this, too."
Before he could protest, Patience pulled a pen out of her purse and added his name to the card tucked under the ribbon.
The woman worked fast, he thought with a shake of his head. She made retreat impossible. Brady nodded at the gift as she dropped the pen back into her purse. "What do I owe you?"
Patience waved away the offer. "We"ll settle up later." And then she glanced toward the driveway where his car was parked beside hers. She could picture him having a change of heart five feet from Uncle Andrew"s house. "Why don"t we take my car since I know the way? Besides, there"s going to be a sea of cars in the area. Parking one extra vehicle"s going to be challenge, much less two. And I wouldn"t want to see anything happen to your pretty car."
"I could turn around and go home."
She could have slipped her arm through his, but she relied on her own power of persuasion instead. Patience pinned him with a look as she asked sweetly, "And just what makes you think I"ll let you go after you"ve come this far?"
Brady pulled himself up to his full height. There was less than a foot between them only because she wore four-inch heels. But she still looked small.
"Don"t see that there"s anything you can do about it if I change my mind." Rather than answer, she watched him steadily. Brady relented. "Okay, your car."
And then she grinned that grin of hers, the one that went straight to his bones and filtered out into all his extremities, making him feel just the slightest bit weak. Just the slightest bit invaded, but in a good way. Brady knew he was going to regret this.
But he had to go.
Andrew Cavanaugh, the former chief of the Aurora Police Department and present host of what both he and those around him felt were the largest, best parties in the city, greeted them at the door when they arrived twenty minutes later. Checking on some of his guests, Andrew had pa.s.sed by the bay window that looked out onto the front lawn when he saw his niece, a man he vaguely recognized, and two dogs coming up the front walk. It was enough to catch his attention.
Patience did not bring men to the house. Ever.
Before his niece could ring the bell, the door swung open and Andrew embraced her as if he hadn"t just seen her at the breakfast table less than three days ago. He nearly crushed the present she carried.
"Patience, come on in," he told her with enthusiasm the second he released her from the bear hug. "Patrick, Maggi and the little one are already here."
"Well, that"s a switch," she laughed. "Patrick was always the holdout." Marriage and fatherhood had drastically changed her brother, all for the good. She slanted a side glance toward Brady. "A little like you were trying to be."
Holding on to both her dog and his partner, Brady made no comment.
Andrew sized him up quickly. Twenty-eight years on the job had taught him well and honed his abilities to a fine point. "And you"re ... Brady Coltrane."
Mild surprise flickered through Brady"s eyes as he glanced at her. Patience knew he was asking her how her uncle knew he"d be here when even he hadn"t known that until he"d turned up on her doorstep.
"Someone must have pointed you out to Uncle Andrew at one time or another. Uncle Andrew"s got a photographic memory," Patience explained.
"Actually," Andrew conceded, "I recognized the dog." He nodded at King. "Fine animal." He allowed King to smell his hand before he ran it over the dog"s head. "Josh is already here." He nodded in the general direction he"d seen the other man in the last time he"d looked. "He brought Gonzo so the three of them should have a good time." He pretended to take Patience to one side and suggested in a stage whisper, "Why don"t you see if you can do the same for Officer Coltrane?"
Brady looked around, missing the light pink hue that filtered along her cheeks. He was too busy having misgivings about what unchecked impulse had caused him to come here.
He looked like a man one step away from bolting. She could read him, Patience thought as she shifted and leaned into Brady. "I admit this takes a bit of getting used to. Maybe I should have started you out small, like inviting you to breakfast."
"Breakfast?" Brady looked at her quizzically.
"Uncle Andrew likes to have the family over for breakfast every morning." There was a giant, custom-made table in the kitchen that they were quickly outgrowing now that marriage and procreation had entered the Cavanaugh picture. "Anywhere from two to twenty-two people show up on any given day."
"Twenty-three," Rose Cavanaugh, a serene-looking blonde with lively eyes, interjected as she joined them and slipped her arm through Andrew"s, "if you count Shaw"s baby."
"Of course we"ll count Shaw"s baby. Why shouldn"t we count the newest member of the family?" Andrew asked.
Her face glowed as she looked up at Andrew. Rose Cavanaugh was clearly a woman in love with her husband. "He takes his family very seriously," she confided to Brady.
Brady felt himself responding to the woman"s warm smile. Though they were related only by marriage, he felt that Patience had a lot in common with her aunt. He knew he should leave now, while the getting was still good. "So I"ve heard."
"Make yourself at home," Andrew instructed. Callie waved to him from across the room, beckoning her parents over. Andrew began moving in that general direction. "Let me know if there"s anything you want," he told Brady as he melded into the crowd with his wife.
"Other than to leave," Patience whispered against Brady"s ear.
Brady looked at her as if she"d just read his mind and she couldn"t help laughing at his expression. "How did you know?"
She stopped to pick up two canapes from a tray. Everywhere she looked, there were people and food. It was a hungry crowd. She fed the meat-filled canapes to the dogs before looking at Brady.
"You forget, I have the advantage of having Patrick as a brother. He resisted becoming part of all this for a long time. But he finally surrendered. Being part of this family soothed most of the wounds he"d been carrying around." She spotted her brother and his wife over in a corner. Patrick had the baby on his lap. "Maggi took care of the rest."
"Maggi?"
"His wife. Detective Mary Margaret McKenna," she elaborated. Some people referred to her sister-in-law as "3M." Patience referred to her as a saint because Maggi made her brother so happy.
Brady knew the name. Maggi McKenna had been a native to Aurora, leaving for a while to work with the San Francisco police before transferring back to Aurora when her father, a patrolman, was shot on the job. No one knew she was with Internal Affairs until she"d been a.s.signed to investigate rumors that Patrick Cavanaugh was a dirty cop. She"d wound up clearing his reputation, marrying him and transferring to vice. He"d heard that all of the former police chief"s kids had a similar story to tell, their jobs leading them to love in one way or another.
Made for good stories to swap, but things like that didn"t happen to people like him. His was a different world.
What are you thinking, Brady? Why is tension never far away from you?
Patience fixed her best smile into place. "Why don"t you take that frown off your face and relax a while, Coltrane?" she suggested. "I promise you dinner will be worth the trip here."
If he was about to comment, his words were swallowed up as Josh came up behind them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders. Gonzo barked as all three dogs cl.u.s.tered around them, sniffing at each other. Patience made a mental note to get all three dogs out into the yard where they could run free.
"I thought I saw you two coming in." Josh looked from one to the other, his expression that of mild surprise. "You two come together?"
Patience read between the lines and kept her answer light. "He didn"t know the way. I thought that if I had him follow me, he might make a U-turn and go home."
Brady snorted. "Not a bad guess."
Before Josh could comment, she enlisted his help. "Help me get him to mingle."
Josh paused to give the other man a long, skeptical look. "You know the old saying about leading a mule to water."
"That"s horse," Brady corrected.
Josh smirked knowingly. "In your case, Coltrane, it"s mule."
She moved in between the two men. "Have you seen Shaw yet?"
Josh"s expression softened slightly. "Yeah, over there." He pointed the oldest of Andrew Cavanaugh"s offspring out and grinned. "Acting as if he"s the first guy who ever fathered a kid."
Brady glanced over toward the far right, saw not only the detective he recognized as one of the Cavanaughs, but also a woman who seemed vaguely familiar to him. For a moment he couldn"t place her. And then, the brain being a storage house of all sorts of unused facts, an image from a movie promo clicked into place.
His eyes narrowed as he looked first at the woman, then at Patience. "Isn"t that...?"
Patience laughed. This was one of life"s little ironies. Shaw met his wife when the latter, doing research for a movie role, had requested a ride-along. He"d agreed to it under duress. Funny how life turned out.
"Moira McCormick. Yes, it is. My somewhat attention-shy cousin wound up marrying a Hollywood movie star." She saw Brady looking around. It didn"t take a mind reader to know what he was thinking. "Don"t worry, the press is strictly barred from showing up and crashing the party. Uncle Brian would find a reason to have their b.u.t.ts busted and tossed into jail overnight so fast their cameras wouldn"t be quick enough to record it."
She rubbed her hand along his arm and found her mouth growing a little dry. She had to force the words out. "Relax, you"re among friends."
"Haven"t you heard? Coltrane doesn"t have any friends beside his dog," Josh quipped.
"We"re here to fix that," Patience cheerfully informed the other patrolman. But she wasn"t about to accomplish this with Josh shadowing her every move. She had the distinct feeling that she was the unwilling partic.i.p.ant in a tug-of-war. And Josh was tugging a lot harder than Brady was.
She needed help.
Scanning the room, she found and made eye contact with her cousin, Janelle. Uncle Brian"s only daughter was an a.s.sistant in the D.A."s office. Growing up, she and Janelle had been on a special wavelength. Patience could only hope that some things didn"t change just because they were older now.
It took a moment, but then she watched her cousin disengage herself from the person she was talking to and make her way toward them. Patience secretly blessed Janelle.
The relief in Patience"s eyes might not have been evident to some people, but Janelle felt as if she knew her cousin inside and out. Besides, the dilemma was easy to spot. Patience had one too many men at her side. Judging by her stance, Janelle knew which one was the spare and which was not. If she was surprised about Patience"s choice of dates-policemen-she gave no indication.
The moment she reached them, Janelle turned her attention to the friendlier of the two. "Hi, I"m Janelle Cavanaugh, Patience"s cousin, and you"re...?"
"Josh Graham."
Janelle reached around Josh to get a gla.s.s of wine. The maneuver was shameless and she knew it, but she was doing it to bail Patience out and that was enough to a.s.suage her conscience.
"So-" she lifted the gla.s.s to her lips "-what do they have you doing in the police department, Josh?"
"He"s with the K-9 unit," Patience told her. "The bomb squad."
"Really?" Janelle"s peaches-and-cream complexion grew a little rosier as she registered rapt attention. "Why don"t we take these three outside where they can run around a bit?" She hooked her arm through Josh"s. "Tell me, how do you get a dog to find a bomb?" With a minimum of effort, she had man and dogs halfway across the room, heading for the patio.
I owe you, Janey, she thought, taking her hat off to Janelle. She turned to Brady, who looked a little bemused by the quick extraction. "My cousin works at the D.A."s office."
He laughed dryly. "I"d hate to show up on the wrong side of her table." The woman was clearly a master at anything she undertook. Picking up two gla.s.ses of wine, he handed one to Patience. "So, what was all that really about?"
She thought of denying any knowledge of what he was talking about, but that was just absurd. Besides, she liked the fact that he wasn"t easily dazzled. "So you caught that. I got the feeling you and Josh weren"t exactly buddies. So I called for help."
"How, through mental telepathy?"
"Janelle and I can usually guess what the other"s thinking. Comes in handy."
"I"ll bet." Brady shrugged, thinking of her comment about Josh. "Graham"s all right." He said the words without feeling. He and the other policeman had had about five or so conversations in total, with Graham doing most of the talking. "He seems to be interested in you."
"Josh is always asking me out." She shrugged. "I figure it"s all in good fun."
He studied her for a moment as he took a sip of wine. "Then you"ve gone out with him?"