Mission: Cavanaugh Baby. Marie Ferrarella
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met his scrutinizing glance head-on just before she walked into the main lobby. “No, I’m not.”
He took a guess at the most logical reason she’d be distrusting. “What happened, you found out your boyfriend was cheating on you?”
There was no way she was about to let him know a single personal thing about her life. “I just haven’t found people in general to be trustworthy,” she replied coolly. “That’s why I like animals better. They don’t lie.”
There was something about the way she said it that caught Shane’s attention. He found his curiosity aroused. “Who lied to you, St. James?”
Her eyes narrowed. He could tell that it took everything she had not to tell him to butt out, that her personal life was none of his business. Instead, she apparently decided to play along. “Do you want that chronologically, alphabetically or arranged by height?”
He assumed she was just exaggerating, but there was no way he was going to accuse her of that. “Ouch, that many?”
“That many,” she confirmed, her expression remaining impassive.
Ignoring the detective, Ashley was about to sweep past the front desk and head directly to the elevator.
“Hold on a minute,” the sergeant manning the front desk called out. He looked uncertainly at the terrier in her arms and directed his question to Ashley. “Shouldn’t you be using the rear entrance, heading toward Animal Control with that mutt?” He nodded his head toward the terrier.
She could actually feel Cavanaugh’s grin as the sergeant referred to Albert as a mutt, just as he had. She ignored him.
At the sound of the new voice, the terrier became agitated and began to bark again.
“Shh, it’s okay, Albert,” she whispered softly to the dog before answering the sergeant. “I’m supposed to take him down to the crime lab.”
Shane intervened. “It’s okay, Murphy, she’s with me.”
She looked at Shane, surprised by his statement. “No, I’m not,” she contradicted.
“I’m taking you to the crime lab,” Shane informed her. “So that makes you with me.”
“I can find it on my own,” she retorted. “So that makes me with me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then took a guess. “Ever been there before?”
She didn’t see what that had to do with it. It was just another department in the building. “No, but—”
“I have,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ll be your guide.”
Exactly how incompetent did he think she was? “It’s in the basement,” she pointed out, “not somewhere in the Northwest Territory, Sacagawea. I think I can find where I’m supposed to go.”
Shane laughed, as if that was a common mistake almost everyone made. “Trust me, it’s better with a guide,” he told her, taking hold of Ashley’s arm. The moment he did, the dog began to growl. Rather than pull back his hand, Shane just scowled at the animal. “You want to call him off?” It was more of a command than a question.
Which was exactly why Ashley bristled at his tone. “I think it might just be simpler for him if you let go of my arm.”
For a moment Shane debated standing his ground, but it hardly seemed worth it. So after a beat—just not to seem as if he was jumping through hoops—he removed his hand from her arm. “Have it your way.”
He found the half smile that rose to her lips irritating and yet oddly intriguing at the same time. Intriguing even though he’d made a silent promise to himself that he wasn’t going to even remotely approach this no-man’s land for a very long time to come.
Not until after he’d fully recovered from what Kitty had done, and most likely, not even then.
The way he saw it, one sliced-up ego was enough for any man to deal with in one lifetime.
Granted, he’d never had to go through something like this before, but when it happened, it had caught him so completely off balance, it had taken not just his very breath away, it had also taken away a great deal of his inner confidence.
“Thanks for your ‘permission,’ Detective,” Ashley retorted icily, “but I really don’t need it.”
He wasn’t put off by her tone. Instead he looked at her very closely and asked, “Exactly what do you need, Officer?”
She raised her chin, and Shane caught himself thinking that it made one hell of a tempting target. A target that was almost too tempting to resist.
“Space,” she informed him.
“Then you’re out of luck at the moment,” he informed her. “You won’t find overly much of that downstairs,” he answered. “In fact, it’s more like one great big maze until you get used to it.”
“And you’re used to it.” It wasn’t a question; it was an assumption since he was offering to play the big safari guide. She couldn’t see him making the offer if he had a tendency to get lost.
“Yeah.”
The elevator finally arrived, and Ashley walked in first. He was right behind her.
Because of her upbringing—or more accurately, the lack of it, Ashley had learned to pick her battles. Otherwise, life became one huge battleground and after a while, she lost her perspective. That guaranteed her to be the major loser in any confrontation.
“Okay,” she said as she pressed the button on the bottom. The doors closed, and the elevator began to go down.
“Okay what?” he challenged, waiting for her to be flippant or perhaps even painfully specific. He was beginning to learn that she wasn’t as easily readable as he’d initially thought.
Rather than give him any kind of an answer he could understand, Ashley lifted one shoulder in a half shrug and said, “Just okay.”
By the time she said that, the elevator had made the short trip from the first floor down to the basement. The silvery doors slid open. Eager to put any distance she could between them, Ashley hurried through the doors before they were even completely parted.
She looked around the immediate area. She hated to admit it, but Cavanaugh was right. It did look like a maze down here. A narrow maze that offered her two directions to go. Which way did she go? Neither wall was labeled to make it easy for anyone not intimately familiar with the lab’s layout.
She looked at Shane, waiting for the detective to come through and tell her where the lab she needed to go to with Albert was located. After all, wasn’t that the whole reason he’d said he was accompanying her to begin with?
Guessing what was going on in her head right now, Shane savored the moment. “Don’t know which direction to take, do you?”
Wiping the smirk off a detective’s face wouldn’t be a good career move at this point of her life, Ashley thought darkly. Unlike the fine young detective, she didn’t have a family name to fall back on or a well-placed superior to take up her side.
But God, removing that smirk from his lips would feel good.
Nevertheless, mindful of the consequences, she restrained herself and answered, “Eventually, there has to be a sign, but in the interest of not wasting your precious time watching me try to find it, why don’t you just tell me which way to go?”
For two cents, he might, Shane couldn’t help thinking. But that wasn’t going to move this case along an inch—although it undoubtedly would be very soul-satisfying.
Nevertheless, when he pointed in response to her question, it was to the right. He wasn’t about to plant a red herring or to play a practical joke on this less than jovial woman.
“That way.”