Free Cavanaugh Watch by Marie Ferrarella Page A

later.
    Brooding about this wasn’t going to help. If life threw lemons at you, you made lemonade, right? She’d get through this, she promised herself.
    Taking in a deep breath, she tossed her purse down on a nearby chair.
    “You hungry?” she asked as she crossed to the refrigerator. Opening it, Janelle found herself looking at empty rack space. She hadn’t had time to go shopping for food and nothing had magically appeared on her shelves.
    Her mouth twisted in a fond smile. Every so often, Uncle Andrew, dabbling in what amounted to his third passion, right after his family and law enforcement, would experiment with a new recipe and leave a sample of whatever he’d created in her refrigerator. He, along with her father and siblings, had a key to her place. She was the only unattached Cavanaugh and as such, had no one to help her out. No one to fill an empty refrigerator.
    Obviously, if Uncle Andrew was experimenting, he and Aunt Rose were consuming whatever it was he was creating.
    “I could eat,” Sawyer allowed. Coming up behind her, Sawyer looked into the interior of the refrigerator. “Invisible food?” he guessed.
    He was mocking her, she thought, struggling with a flash of temper. She was also struggling with another unsettling feeling. An unwelcome warmth spread through her. The man was standing too close for her comfort.
    Janelle swung the refrigerator door shut a little too hard. “I was thinking of ordering takeout. Chinese? Pizza?”
    To her relief—and suspicion—he’d left her side and the kitchen. “Didn’t know the Chinese made pizza.”
    Very slowly, Sawyer looked around, absorbing the lay of the apartment. Moving like a panther that was ready to pounce on a stalking enemy in less than a heartbeat, the detective went from room to room, making sure they were all empty and free of any surveillance equipment. The pretty woman in the other room struck him as a tad naive, especially considering her family background.
    “Whatever,” he tossed in as an afterthought.
    Janelle frowned at the careless answer. She’d asked him for a reason. To make a choice. Whatever was not a choice. It would, however, probably give him a chance to complain about whatever it was she did select.
    “How about cattle feed?” she asked sarcastically.
    Sawyer raised what was almost a perfectly shaped eyebrow as he looked at her over his shoulder. “Didn’t take you for someone whose tastes ran in those directions.”
    Enough was enough, she thought. She was hungry and she wanted to eat. Before morning came. “Pizza,” Janelle declared.
    His shrug was vague and noncommittal. Sawyer didn’t care what she wound up ordering. It wouldn’t have been what he wanted anyway. Because tonight, in hopes of at least slightly appeasing his hunger, he found himself craving a whiskey, neat.
    Several shots, actually. Something to drown out, or at least tone down, the presence of this woman he was supposed to be guarding. But the very fact that he was guarding her dictated that he consume nothing stronger than a double shot of espresso.
    He needed a clear head.
    God knew that being around Janelle Cavanaugh and her smart mouth wasn’t conducive to having a clear head. Between her antagonistic nature, which both amused and galled him, and that perfume she was wearing that softly announced her presence moments before she was actually there, he felt as if his head were submerged in seawater.
    There was irony for you, he mused. Her perfume subtly announced what her tongue loudly proclaimed. In his book, she didn’t need the perfume—or the chip on her shoulder for that matter.
    Even if she just stood still, a person couldn’t help noticing her. There was just something about the woman that caught a man’s attention, that fired his imagination. He wished that weren’t the case. He wished that Janelle Cavanaugh was colorless enough and mousy enough to fade into any gathering of two or more. His job would be a hell of a lot easier.