to hanging back and observing. It was both his failing and his strength. Standing on the perimeter of life where he felt he could do the most good. Impartially.
Maybe he’d come forward because he recognized the man standing to the woman’s left. Andrew Cavanaugh, the retired police chief of Aurora. Her father, he was to learn later. The others were her brothers and cousins.
Whatever the reason that had prompted him to shed his cloak of silence, he was suddenly standing before her. Introducing himself and asking her if she would like to dance. Something else he didn’t do willingly, even though he’d been instructed in the fine art of dancing only recently. Jennifer had insisted on it. So he wouldn’t embarrass her, she’d said.
He had no desire to embarrass Jennifer. Had no thoughts of his wife whatsoever. For the space of a score of heartbeats, she was completely excised from his brain, if not his life.
He vividly remembered the way Callie Cavanaugh’s smile had gone straight to his head as she’d raised her eyes to his and accepted the hand he held out. Remembered how low her voice was, like fine, hundred-year-old brandy being reverently poured into a crystal glass. Low and sexy.
Remembered, too, the electricity, the tension, the indescribable feeling of lightness that came over him as he held her in his arms and danced.
One small dance, a simple exchange of words, and a connection was made that felt as if it had been forged out of steel in the beginning of time.
Before.
He’d looked down into her eyes and gotten lost.
But he had a child and a position and a wife—who intruded into the moment the instant the music faded away. Like an avenging hawk, jealous that her cast-off had attracted someone else’s attention, Jennifer had swooped down from wherever it was that she had been roosting to reclaim what was hers.
And he was obliged to let her.
Even though his eyes followed Callie as she moved from the floor.
He had no idea what they called it. A connection, chemistry, kismet. Some term invented by inert poets who had nothing better to do than to bury people in rhetoric. He couldn’t put a label to it himself. All he knew was that he’d felt something nameless. Something wonderful. Something he’d never felt before. Or since. Something that whispered into his ear “If only” long after the dance, the fund-raiser itself, was over.
If only…
But the timing then had been all wrong.
As it was now.
Brent roused himself, realizing that he’d paused and that his secretary and his aide were both unabashedly staring at him.
“Court is in session.” He shot an accusing look at the bailiff in the rear of the room. The latter raised his hands helplessly.
Callie circumvented the man, her attention on Brent. God, but he had only gotten better looking since she’d seen him. The next moment, she upbraided herself. How could she even think something like that? She was here to give him awful news, not appraise his appearance.
“Excuse me, Your Honor.” She took another step toward him, only to find herself in a dance now with the bailiff who tried to get in front of her. “I need a word with you.”
Brent hated disruptions. “Can’t it wait, Officer Cavanaugh?”
“Detective Cavanaugh,” Callie automatically corrected, wishing what she had to say could be put off. “And no, I’m afraid it really can’t.”
Brent looked to his left, to his aide, Edwin Cambridge, who in turn looked pained as he stared down at the calendar he had drawn himself to accommodate the judge’s cases. Precision was Edwin’s passion. He felt it a matter of honor to have things running smoothly in the court.
The man sighed, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod of his head.
“There’ll be a slight recess,” Brent announced to the two opposing lawyers, who looked at him with exasperation. The plaintiff was seated to the far left of the center. The man, barely in his twenties, looked greatly relieved at the interruption, like someone who had been granted a stay from the governor just before the switch was thrown.
Brent beckoned Callie forward. He wondered if she’d ever married that detective he’d heard she was engaged to and what had brought her into his courtroom today. Had there been a bomb threat? Should they be evacuating? After the events that had rocked the country very recently, nothing seemed impossible anymore.
“Make this quick, Detective Cavanaugh,” he demanded, suppressing the urge to ask her how she’d been since that evening. “I have a very full schedule today.”
“You have a full schedule every day,” Edwin informed him.
Brent chose to ignore the man. It seemed simpler that way than to engage in a dialogue with him. Edwin liked getting in the last word.
“You might want to reschedule your cases,” Callie suggested tactfully as she followed Brent to his chambers.
Brent closed the door behind her, locking Edwin out, much to the latter’s displeasure, then turned around. The judge crossed his arms, looking for all the world like an angel of darkness to her.
“All right, Detective, I’m waiting. And this had better be good,” he warned her, although a part of him didn’t believe that she would just waltz into his courtroom without a damn good reason.
Callie took a breath. “Actually, it’s not. It’s bad.” Her eyes met his. There was no easy way to do this, no way to prepare someone for the words she was about to say. There wasn’t even a way to prepare herself to say them. They felt like molten lead in her mouth, and even while she wanted nothing more than to expel them, she knew the damage they would do the second they were out. “Very bad.”
Something seized his gut, tightening it so that for a moment he stopped breathing. A prayer materialized out of nowhere as he hoped that, for whatever reason, the woman he’d once held in his arms and danced with was overstating the matter.
“I didn’t realize that you have a flare for the dramatic.”
If only. If only this wasn’t more than she thought it was and the little girl was somewhere, safe but frightened, hiding. Ready to be found.
Callie pressed her lips together, wishing it was so. But the truth was all she’d ever known and she couldn’t sugarcoat this. “I don’t.”
The two words hung in the air between them, foreboding. Frightening.
He tried not to let his imagination run away with him. It couldn’t be helped.
Was this about his wife?
His ex-wife, Brent amended. The first in his family to don black robes and become a judge, he was also the first in his family to get a divorce. Not all firsts were commendable, he’d thought bitterly at the time. Just unavoidable. Had this woman come to tell him that something had happened to Jennifer?
Inner instincts had him bracing himself. “Well then, what is it, Detective? I really—”
Do it.
