The Woman Who Wasn't There by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-16T08:14:23+00:00

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Chapter 9

Mayday!

The urgent cry echoed through Delene’s brain over and over again. Now that he was no longer holding on to her wrist, she knew it was time to get up from the table. Common sense told her she should be walking away from Cavanaugh and out of the coffee shop as quickly as possible. Before she found herself in danger again.

In danger of what? Of coming under someone’s thumb again? That was never going to happen and she knew it. She was too distrustful, too vigilant for that to be a real threat. She wasn’t nineteen and impressionable anymore.

In danger of falling in love again? Fat chance, she sneered silently. To love someone, she had to be able to feel something, and as far as she was concerned, she was pretty much dead inside. Russell had conducted a scorched-earth policy through her soul, making it impossible for her to feel anything for anyone, other than perhaps a little compassion. Love didn’t enter into the picture. And trust was a big factor here. To love, she would have had to trust—and she trusted no one.

That left her only with a physical reaction. She supposed she was only human. Humans reacted to stimuli and Detective Troy Cavanaugh was nothing if not stimulating.

She looked at him for a long moment, debating her next move. Retreat? Or charge?

If you entered a dark room and you thought your imagination was going to run away with you, see things that weren’t there, you’d turn on a light, right? A light that illuminated all the corners, broke up all the menacing shadows. You’d take action, you wouldn’t remain in the dark, huddling in fear.

If she walked away from this now, a part of her was still huddling in fear. She’d come too far for that to be true.

Still looking at Troy, Delene squared her shoulders like a warrior on the battlefield, about to engage in combat. Ready to dispel the shadow of attraction and send it into her past.

“Detective Cavanaugh, would you like to come over tonight?”

Troy stared at the woman across from him. Was he hallucinating?

Had he still been sipping his coffee, he had a feeling the black liquid would have found its way out again in a less-than-fine spray. She was kidding, right? Baiting him.

Each time they ran into each other, Delene D’Angelo had parried and blocked his every attempt to get close to her. There might have been more than the usual amount of attraction humming between them, but there was also a barbed-wire fence separating them, and that put a rather large crimp in his getting to know her.

There had to be something he wasn’t getting.

Had he been a resident of the ancient city he’d been named after, a name that had been heaped on his shoulders because his mother had been reading The Iliad when he was born, he still would have been one of the people voting against taking the huge wooden horse inside the city walls.

At least not until it had been carefully examined.

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