Matt stared at her. This was a new twist. “Are you asking me if I’m passionate?”

      Although the thought amused him, he just didn’t see Kendra putting that sort of question to him. It didn’t jibe with her personality—at least, not the way he perceived it.

      Was he wrong? And if so, about what, exactly? Less than twenty-four hours in the woman’s company and she was becoming one huge, intriguing enigma. A puzzle he found himself wanting to solve.

      “No,” she contradicted, a flash of embarrassment over the misunderstanding sending heat up her neck to her cheeks—as did the unbidden thought of his being passionate. “What I’m asking you is if your fellow co-workers know the first thing about what makes Matt Abilene tick,” she asked. “Or do they know only what you want them to know?”

      Dear Reader,

      Welcome back to the Cavanaughs. We continue to explore this latest branch that has recently come to light. This time, we peek into the life of Kendra Cavelli aka Cavanaugh, who, when her fiancé dies, distances herself from personal relationships, avoiding them like the plague.

      For his part, her new partner, Matt Abilene, liked relationships just fine. The more, the merrier—and the lighter, the better. He’d learned to keep any sort of commitment out of the picture by watching the way his mother, desperate for someone to love, had been taken advantage of over and over again. He wanted to keep her safe and swore to himself that he would never follow in her footsteps.

      But love, Kendra and Matt come to learn, is a very hard thing to shut the door on when it comes knocking. Come watch it unfold with me.

      As ever, I thank you for reading and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

      All the best,

       Marie Ferrarella

      About the Author

      MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA^® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon^®, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

      Cavanaugh

      Rules

      Marie Ferrarella

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      To Nik

      Hearts really do heal,

      If you let them

       Chapter 1

      Detective Kendra Cavelli remembered reading somewhere that life was a series of leavings. At the time, she’d thought this was a very pessimistic point of view. But, she realized now, she’d been a lot younger and full of hope then.

      Granted, no one would consider her old by any standards, except for maybe when measured against the life cycle of an everyday fruit fly. But the truth of it was, these days she felt a great deal older than what the age indicated on her birth certificate.

      And who knew? Maybe the year that was written down wasn’t as accurate as she’d once thought. Certainly the last name had turned out not to be.

      She’d spent more than twenty-six years thinking she was a Cavelli, only to be told that she wasn’t, that she and her brothers and sisters were actually Cavanaughs because her father was really a Cavanaugh. Thanks to a distraught maternity nurse who had been enveloped in grief the day her father and the real Cavelli baby were born, the two infants had accidentally been switched before either was a day old.

      Former police chief Andrew Cavanaugh had done some research into the matter once it had come to light. It seemed that a nurse on the maternity floor, a Jane Allen, had just been told that her fiancé, Private First Class Wade Johnson, had been killed in some unnamed battle halfway around the world. Grief-stricken, Jane had gone through the paces of her job, utterly dazed and confused.

      And because of that, Kendra’s father and his subsequent offspring had lost their identities. Her father was taken home by the Cavellis while the real Sean Cavelli had been claimed by Seamus Cavanaugh and his wife.

      And now, several months into what she and her siblings referred to as the “great revelation,” she was still having trouble centering herself. She felt trapped between the past she’d thought was hers and the completely new present that loomed before her.

      Maybe she’d have less trouble adapting, Kendra thought now as she cut across the hall of the second floor of One Police Plaza, if this name thing had not been tangled up with the loss of her own fiancé and now, on top of that, the sudden exit of her partner.

      The first had all but destroyed her when he had deliberately blown himself away to the next world, and the second had just recently—and voluntarily—retired. The upshot was that both had left her to deal with things as best she could on her own.

      She doubted that either one of them had given her so much as a thought when making their final decision. God knew that Jason hadn’t because if he had, he’d still be alive today. And they’d be married.

      Instead, here she was, feeling incredibly isolated and alone. Alone even though her immediate family, counting her father, Sean, and her brothers and sisters, came to a grand total of seven people—plus her. At this point, Kendra didn’t know if she was even allowed to count the family members she was no longer actually related to.

      As for the “family” she was suddenly supposed to be part of, she hadn’t gotten around to doing a successful head count there. All she knew was that, when gathered together, they could probably fill up half a stadium. God knew they filled a great deal of the Aurora Police Department, of which she was a proud part.

      At least that hadn’t changed.

      At least, she now amended silently, she assumed that wouldn’t change, even though she’d just been summoned by the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh, who, along with the former chief of police, was one of her two “newfound” uncles.

      Walking into the chief of detectives’ outer office, she stopped at the desk positioned just in front of the door to the man’s inner sanctum.

      The entrance was guarded by a very capable-looking young woman in her late thirties. As Kendra crossed to her desk, the woman raised her eyes to Kendra’s and quietly waited for her to say something.

      “Detective Kendra Cavel—Cavan—” Kendra stumbled, not having decided which name she was going to use now that she was aware of the whole story. It wasn’t as easy a decision as some might have thought. Thomas and Bridget had already both opted to go with Cavanaugh, as had her father, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to abandon the name she’d used for more than a quarter of a century.