The Strong Silent Type. Marie Ferrarella

out eight, nine words a day and keeping everyone at bay, but inside, you’re a decent guy.” She turned to look at him. “Just like your alter ego.”

      “What alter ego?” Bullet wound or no bullet wound, he was quickly losing his patience with her. “Cavanaugh, what the hell are you babbling about?”

      It was as clear as a bell to her. “Clint Eastwood’s a really nice guy when he’s not playing tough guys. I heard somewhere that he’s a real pussycat.”

      There was traffic on the road at this hour, which meant that he was stuck in the car even longer than he could tolerate. Served him right, he thought darkly. No good deed ever went unpunished.

      “Cavanaugh, get this through your addled brain. I am not interested in your font of useless knowledge or your Vicodin-laced attempt at psychoanalysis. Now why don’t you be a good little detective and just pass out the way the doctor said you would?”

      “And make it easy for you?” she scoffed gleefully. “Nope. I want to enjoy this little breach.” The sound of her own voice egged her on. “Don’t get me wrong. I like tough guys. My cousin Patrick could spit nails—until his fiancée came into his life.” And good luck to her, she thought. She adored her cousin, but living with him was going to be a tough thing. Patrick had his demons.

      Not unlike the man next to her.

      He had to stop her before she was off and running in another direction. He’d thought she was bad before, but that didn’t hold a candle to the way she could run off at the mouth with this painkiller in her.

      “Look, I don’t know what gave you the idea that I’m interested in your family history, but I’m not, so save your breath.” He glanced at her as he came to a light. She was smiling broadly at him. “Now what?”

      “It’s not working.”

      He knew he should just keep quiet. After all, that was his way, wasn’t it? Allowing himself to enjoy silence? But something about the look on her face had him ask, “What’s not working?”

      “Your tough-guy act. I’ve seen the light.”

      He just bet she had. And it was probably all the shades of the rainbow. “That’s the pain medication. It distorts things.”

      “Not enough to fool me.”

      There was no point in arguing with her. He’d already learned that she could argue the ears off a stone statue.

      “Look, Cavanaugh, just save your breath,” he repeated. “Okay?”

      “Okay.”

      He’d won that round. Hawk found that difficult to believe. She never retreated like that. It wasn’t like her. As he came to a stop before another light, wondering if she was all right, Hawk looked at her.

      The next thing he knew, Teri was kissing him.

      Chapter Four

      It just happened. She hadn’t planned it, or even thought it out.

      To say she had never thought about kissing Hawk would have been a lie. She had. Several times. The man was tall, dark and handsome by absolutely anyone’s standards. But she wasn’t really attracted to him, she’d insisted. Brooding men weren’t her type. She liked outgoing, gregarious men. Men who knew how to have fun and didn’t mean anything by it once the good times were over.

      Simple. That was the way she liked it.

      Jack Hawkins, on the other hand, just breathed complexity. Every word he uttered—when he deigned to utter any—all but screamed the word.

      No, she wasn’t attracted to him. Nope, not a whit.

      If anything, Hawk was her pet project. She meant to drag her partner out among the living if it was the last thing she did on this earth. She had to get him to loosen up and smile more than once every nine, ten months or so. Nothing else, just that.

      Kissing him hadn’t been a means to that goal.

      What had brought her today to this junction of skin pressed against skin was extreme gratitude, or at least that was the excuse she fed herself. Hawk had remained by her side at the hospital when she knew every single inclination inside his body leaned toward walking away. That he didn’t meant a great deal to her.

      So she was kissing him because she was filled with gratitude. Gratitude and a healthy dose of Vicodin, or whatever painkiller the nurse had injected into her.

      And maybe it was the Vicodin spiking up through her system, but suddenly, the outside world faded away. The wound, the traffic, the car itself that Hawk was driving—all melted into oblivion as she became aware of this intense rise of heat all around her. Not like when she’d gotten shot and yet, somehow oddly similar.

      Except without the pain.

      No matter which way you sliced it, Teri felt she was definitely having an out-of-body experience and not really minding it one bit.

      What the hell was going on here? Always aware of his surroundings, Hawk had not seen this coming. Not in his wildest dreams. Not Cavanaugh.

      It wasn’t even as if they had particularly easy access to one another and her lips had accidentally bumped against his. The car had bucket seats, for Pete’s sake.

      One hand on the wheel, he grabbed Teri by the shoulder with his other for the purpose of removing her mouth from his. He was as surprised as anyone when he found himself holding on to her instead.

      Surprise very quickly turned into something that involved not just his brain but his whole body. Desire moved through it like a sleeping snake uncoiling itself after an aeon of inactivity.

      Worse still, Hawk could feel himself reacting to her in ways he didn’t welcome. Sure, the woman was attractive—anyone with eyes could readily see that. But she was also a walking mouth, someone who never knew when to cease and desist—which for him would have been before the very first word was uttered. As it was, Cavanaugh had more words in her arsenal than could be found within the pages of a congressional investigation.

      So why the hell did he feel as if someone had just knocked him off his feet by swinging a wrecking ball into him?

      The sound of horns blaring directly behind his vehicle pulled Hawk out of the center of the vortex he found himself in and pushed him quickly back out into the real world.

      Finally wedging a space between them, he turned and quickly clamped both hands firmly on the steering wheel before he was tempted to repeat the offense.

      Before he was tempted to initiate the next kiss himself.

      The woman tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever had.

      The moment his eyes were back in focus, Hawk took his foot off the brake and stepped down on the gas pedal.

      Hard.

      They flew through the intersection.

      He realized that they’d come extremely close to having an accident. It would have taken very little for his foot to have slipped off the brake while his attention had been directed to other regions. Although there was no car in front of them, there was an intersection. They could have been smack in the middle of it with through traffic slamming into them before his brain would have registered the danger.

      That had never happened to him before.

      His pulse was racing harder than if he’d just done a 10K run.

      Once they were on the other side of the intersection, he glared at her. She’d made him lose control and he didn’t like that. It didn’t go with the image he had of himself.

      “What the hell was that?”

      Teri took a deep breath. It didn’t help. Her heart was pounding harder than a drum soloist showing off his expertise. She took another breath before slanting her eyes in his direction. “Boy, you do need to get out more. That’s commonly known as a kiss.”