Cavanaugh Vanguard by Marie Ferrarella

Author:Marie Ferrarella [Ferrarella, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-01-09T14:57:32+00:00

Chapter 12

Jackson was in no mood to be trapped in his car, listening to Brianna go on and on about his so-called mandatory attendance at something he had no desire or intention of attending.

“Do you mind if we table this discussion about going to your uncle’s gathering for the duration of this road trip?” he asked crisply.

“Sure,” Brianna readily agreed. “It can wait until we get back. I’m easy.”

Slanting her a quick look, Jackson murmured more to himself than to his partner, “Well, that answers that question.”

She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she finally asked, “What question is that?”

“If your nose grows when you tell a lie,” he said matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t.”

Brianna didn’t take any offense. She didn’t think of herself as being small-minded or petty. But she did feel that she needed to set him straight.

“I don’t lie, Muldare.”

Jackson found it hard not to laugh at that. “You’re also not easy to get along with.”

“I’ll refrain from pointing out that that’s like the pot calling the kettle black,” she informed him. The man was definitely a challenge, but she did enjoy a challenge. “Just get your mind back on the case.”

“Gladly.” Jackson counted to ten—slowly—in his mind. Then, just as Brianna reached over to turn the radio on in an effort to terminate the almost suffocating silence in the car, he asked, “You really think this woman we’re traveling all this way to see is going to be able to tell us anything useful?”

“I don’t know,” Brianna replied honestly. “I’m hoping she’ll say something that might trigger something else. Half of all crimes wind up being solved by accident.”

A frown darkened his handsome, chiseled face. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Oh, but it is,” she contradicted, “because accidents happen all the time, and in the end, it really doesn’t matter just how you figured something out as long as you did.”

He shook his head. She was just spouting a bunch of rhetoric, most likely because the woman liked hearing herself talk. It could be worse. She could have a voice that sounded like nails dragging along a chalkboard.

“Still say this is a wild-goose chase. After all, all the other people we’ve interviewed in the last few days didn’t enlighten us,” he reminded her.

She studied his profile. The man could have been chiseled out of granite. “You’ve always been a pessimist, haven’t you?”

He didn’t even have to think about his answer. The path he was on had been set years ago. “Pretty much. Although I’m not a pessimist,” he corrected. “I’m a realist.”

“Reality can be pretty nice at times.”

They might both be police detectives, but they came from totally different worlds. Hers was made up of roses, his was the thorns. “Not from my point of view,” he answered.

Sympathy filled her. “Hard life right from the beginning?”

All right, he’d been polite enough, Jackson thought. “This is a car, O’Bannon, not some shrink’s couch. Stop trying to act like one,” he warned sharply.

“I’m not trying to shrink you, Jackson,” she protested, because she really wasn’t trying to do that.

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