Dangerous Games

“Now?” Cole asked, the word shimmering between them. He thought of warm moonlit nights and soft, supple bodies. Kisses that went on forever.

Did her kisses do that? Had she ever felt that strong pull that drew a person into the eye of a hurricane? Or had she been like him, seduced by the promise only to be disappointed in the execution?

“What are you thinking?” Cole smiled.

“Nothing that has to do with the case.”

“Yeah, me too.” He took a breath. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes. Slowly he rose to his feet, slipping his hand to her cheek. “Want to get it out of the way?”

“You’re on,” she heard herself whispering.

The moment he kissed her, he was on. Completely turned on.

Dangerous Games

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

writes books distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To

my readers,

with sincere thanks

for being there

Love,

Marie

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” Lorrayne Cavanaugh declared loudly before anyone else had a chance to comment on the time as she burst into the kitchen. She was still dressing herself, her hair only half dry from the whirlwind shower she’d taken less than five minutes ago. To the eleven people already in the room, she knew she had to look like a tornado searching for somewhere to land. But they were used to that. They were her family. “I’m late.”

“You’re not late, honey,” Andrew told her mildly, setting her plate down on the table. His gray-blue eyes met his youngest daughter’s as she slid into her customary chair. “For lunch.”

Not trusting the watch she’d just strapped on, Rayne glanced at the clock on the wall above the industrial stove.

“Dad, it’s just a little past seven-fifteen,” she protested.

“More like seven-thirty,” her oldest brother, Shaw, corrected. Amusement played on his lips. Rayne had been born six days past her due date and had been habitually late ever since.

Clay, her other brother, reached for a second helping of eggs and bacon. He spared her a fleeting glance. “Give it up, Rayne, we all know you’re going to be late for your own funeral.”

About to refill the decreasing supply of hotcakes, Andrew looked up sharply. As head of a clan that had, for the most part, all found their calling in some form of law enforcement, he took some things far more seriously than the rest of them. He’d been to too many funerals in his time, seen too many good people cut down in their prime and put into the ground.

His eyes swept over the group he loved more than life itself. “There’ll be no talk of funerals at the breakfast table.”

“Right, much better topic at the dinner table,” Rayne cracked. It earned her a chiding look from her older sister, Callie. Though she didn’t move a muscle outwardly, inside, Rayne squirmed. “What, did I miss something?”

Teri, Clay’s elder sister by a minute and a half, a fact she rarely allowed him to forget, laughed shortly. “The way you like to lounge around in bed, it’s a wonder you don’t miss everything.”

There were two years between the sisters and if there was one thing Rayne hated, it was to be made to feel like the baby of the family. At twenty-five, she was hoping to have finally left that issue behind her. She was beginning to realize that the odds were she never would.

But that didn’t mean she was about to accept it docilely. “That’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” They all knew that Teri loved to sleep in whenever she could.

With a sound of finality, Andrew placed the plate of hotcakes in the middle of the table, giving each of his daughters a warning look. Unlike Callie who’d never given him any grief and who’d now settled in with a good man, Teri and especially Rayne enjoyed burning the candle at both ends whenever the opportunity arose. There were nights when both or either of the girls would roll in only to have to leave for work a short while thereafter. He was utterly convinced that youth was wasted on the young.

“No bickering at the table—any table,” he deliberately underscored before one or the other resorted to a sarcastic question.

“Nope, that’s your domain,” Rayne pronounced cheerfully just before she bit into the short stack she had liberally doused with maple syrup.

The battleground between father and daughter was familiar, if no longer so frequently tread. “I don’t bicker, I impart wisdom,” Andrew informed Rayne, then widened his scope. “The rest of you bicker with it.”

“Not me, Dad.” Rising, Teri crossed to her father and kissed his cheek. “I know you just spout pearls of knowledge.”

He looked at the plate Teri had left in her wake. She’d hardly touched any of it. He was a firm believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day. “Is that all you’re eating?”

It had never taken much to fill her. She was usually the first one up from the table. This morning was no exception. Besides, there were reports waiting for her, reports she’d put off filing. She had that in common with the rest of her siblings.

With a grin, Teri patted her flat stomach. “I eat any more and I won’t be able to catch the bad guys.”

“You could always try talking them to death,” Clay suggested. It earned him a sharp poke in the ribs from his fiancée who sat beside him with the little boy he’d only recently discovered was his.

Ilene flashed an apologetic smile in Teri’s direction. “He hasn’t had enough coffee to seal his mouth yet.”

Teri returned the smile. “Don’t need to explain Clay to me. I had his number years ago, right, Clay?” She sent a penetrating, affectionate look his way before going toward the back counter where all of their weapons were carefully placed whenever they entered the house. With six of them police detectives, that made for quite an arsenal.

Rayne glanced in Teri’s direction. The display of weapons was something they all took for granted, but sometimes she saw it through the eyes of an outsider, a role she’d once occupied within her own family. “Enough hardware there to start a gun shop,” she commented, shifting her attention back to her meal.

At any one given mealtime, there were anywhere from the three Cavanaughs who still lived in the house Andrew and Rose had bought on their fifth anniversary to the eighteen members and almost-members of the Cavanaugh family. Most of the time, the count was far higher than three. That was due in equal parts to Andrew’s skills in the kitchen where the love of cooking he’d inherited from his own mother bloomed, and to the fact that they were a tightly knit family, a credit to the man who required their presence on a regular basis.

Rayne knew he was determined to keep them all together no matter what went on in their separate lives. “In family there is strength” was something he’d instilled in all of them.

The credo was fashioned after Rayne’s mother’s disappearance and in no small way helped to keep Andrew Cavanaugh going from one day to the next.

Sitting at her side, Callie leaned over and whispered, “It’s the anniversary of Uncle Mike’s death.” The expression on her face told Rayne that Callie was certain she’d forgotten the date. Rayne said nothing because she had remembered. “He’s a little touchy today. Try not to get under his skin too much, okay?”

Rayne bristled slightly. She would have done more so if it hadn’t been for the fact that her oldest sister was right. In her time, she’d gotten under her father’s skin far more than the rest of them combined. But then, she’d been the youngest when her mother disappeared, not quite ten at the time, and it had been an almost impossible adjustment for her.

She’d been the closest to Rose. It had taken her a while to get over her resentment toward the others who had had more time with the mother she adored. She’d felt cheated somehow, both by fate and her siblings who could recall more things, had more stories concerning their mother than she did.

It had taken her more time still to forgive her father for the argument that had caused her mother to leave the house that day in the first place. Heated words had been exchanged, and Rose Cavanaugh had gone for a long drive to cool off. It was a habit of hers. Except that this time, she’d never returned home.

A massive dragnet had been set in motion. Only three Cavanaughs had been on the police force then: Andrew, Mike and Brian. Her father and his brothers, aided by the entire force, had hunted extensively. Rose Cavanaugh’s car was found at the bottom of the river the next day.

It took little imagination to piece the sequence of events together. Visibility had been poor that morning, with a low-lying fog enshrouding the winding road that was her favorite route to take. The car had swerved and gone over the side, plunging into the river just beyond. “Death by drowning” was the official verdict when the case was finally closed.

But Rose’s body had never been recovered and so, Andrew maintained, she was still out there somewhere. Everyone outside of the family had given up hope of finding her alive years ago. And then, one by one, though none ever put it in so many words, everyone within the family had eventually accepted what seemed to be the inevitable conclusion: Rose Cavanaugh had perished that morning and her body had been swept out to sea.

Everyone within the family except for Andrew. Taking early retirement and leaving the force, he still retained the copious notes on the case, still periodically pored over them in hopes of seeing something that he hadn’t seen the other thousand times he’d reviewed the file. Something fresh that would lead him in the right direction and to Rose.

He didn’t seem like a man given to unfounded optimism, but he clung to his hope the way a drowning man clung to a piece of floating wood.

“I might be retired, Callie, but my hearing’s not.” Andrew turned from Teri as she took her leave and looked at his oldest daughter. “When you’re a cop, or an ex-cop,” he added significantly, even though he maintained that once a cop, always a cop, “death isn’t something you like to joke about. It sits in that squad car or unmarked vehicle beside you every day, keeping you company whether you want it to or not.” He looked at his late brother’s children, Patrick and Patience. His door was always open to them as it was to his brother Brian’s four. He couldn’t love any of them any more than if they were his own. “Mike’s death just reminds us of that.” He felt himself tearing up and deliberately turned back to the stove, even though there was nothing left on there to cook. “I’ll be going to the cemetery around three today. Any of you is welcome to join me.”

Rayne didn’t wait for any of the others to say something. She knew they’d all be paying their respects, one way or another, when they could manage it during the day.

“I’ll see if I can stop by, Dad,” she told her father.

He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. Everyone knew that there was a special place in his heart for the child who had caused him the most grief. “That’s three today, not tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, but without animosity in her voice. There had been a great deal of it once, but all of it had long since been leached from her. She’d come to terms with her demons. Gulping down her coffee, she snatched up a piece of toast to see her on her way. Her plate was immaculate.

Rising, she shoved the chair back into place. “Well, if I’m going to claim some personal time today, I’d better put in a few hours first.”

Clay shook his head as he looked at his sister’s plate. The last one at the table, she was technically the first one finished. This after two servings that had gone by at lightning speed. “Damn, but you eat faster than any three people I know.”

Rayne gave him a knowing look before glancing sympathetically toward the woman next to him. “That’s because until Ilene had the clear misfortunate of hooking up and taming you, all you knew were exotic dancers who consumed a grape a day and pronounced themselves fat.”

The disgruntled look her brother shot her was reward enough for her. Rayne headed toward the collection of weapons on the counter. Hers had been there since last night.

“Cole Garrison’s back in town,” Patrick told his cousin just as she was about to strap on her holster.

It stopped Rayne in her tracks. Cole. She hadn’t thought anything would bring him back to town. “What?”

Patrick looked at the others. It was clear that he had the inside track on this piece of news. “Yeah, I heard that he came back last night, driving a flaming red Porsche. I guess he doesn’t hate money anymore.”

Shaw gave a low whistle of appreciation. “A flaming red Porsche. Not bad for a black sheep.”

Left in the dark, Ilene looked from Patrick to Shaw to Clay, waiting for enlightenment. Like the others, she’d grown up in this city, but she’d gone to a private school. “Cole Garrison?” The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Someone I went to school with,” Clay told her.

Shaw drained the last of his coffee. “The town’s official bad boy.”

“Except that it’s his brother who’s accused of murder, not him,” Callie said as she pushed her plate back. “That makes Eric Garrison the new winner of the title, wouldn’t you say?”

“Keyword ‘accused,”’ her fiancé, Brent Montgomery, reminded her.

As a criminal court justice, Brent had been the presiding judge who had placed bail for the younger Garrison. The amount had been high, but certainly nothing to cause Eric’s affluent parents more than a momentary pause. It had surprised everyone when they hadn’t come up with the money. Especially when they had gone through the trouble of securing Schaffer Holland, an excellent defense lawyer for him. Currently, Eric was still in lockup.

“There’s an awful lot of evidence against him,” Patrick pointed out.

Without realizing it, Rayne squared her shoulders. “Maybe.”

Rayne saw the others all turn to look at her. She knew what they were thinking. That she was tilting at windmills again. Maybe that made her like her father, unwilling to accept something that everyone else took to be true.

Shaw put the obvious into words. “So you don’t believe he killed Kathy Fallon?”

The blond crop of curls moved about her head like rays of sunbeams dancing along the wind as she shook it. “Not a hundred percent, no.” It was a gut feeling, but she wasn’t about to admit that to this crowd. She knew what they’d say. Gut feelings were instincts reserved for the older members of the family, not her. “Eric’s spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he’s not violent.”

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.

Chapter 2

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.

The thing she didn’t understand was what Cole was doing here, calling out to her. She didn’t even think he knew her name. Undoubtedly he was here to see his brother, but why was he trying to get her attention?

And how had he even known it was her? She’d only been thrown into his speech class that one semester when she was fifteen. That was ten years ago and she’d gone through a hell of a lot of changes since then. When she looked back at photographs from that period, she hardly resembled her younger self.