Cavanaugh Rules Read Free Page B

call you ‘Good’?”
    The elevator arrived and she turned her back on him as she entered, silently cursing Joe for having left her to undertake a life revolving around fly-fishing.

Chapter 2
    W hen Abilene got off behind her, Kendra turned around to look at her new—and hopefully very temporary—partner. Why was he following her?
    “Shouldn’t you be going up to your floor to get your things?” she asked him.
    Just for a moment, he’d allowed himself to watch her walk, appreciatively taking in the way her hips swayed ever so slightly. Her question pulled him back to reality. He nodded toward the squad room just behind her. “I thought I’d see where my desk is first.”
    “And what?” she asked. “If it doesn’t meet with your standards, you’ll stay where you are?”
    Abilene grinned, amused. “Is that a hopeful note in your voice I hear?” He studied her for a moment, looking beyond her high cheekbones and her fascinating eyes. “You don’t do change very well, do you?”
    The last thing she wanted to put up with was being analyzed. Kendra’s eyes blazed as she tossed her head. “What I do or don’t do is none of your business,” she informed him.
    The way he saw it, that wasn’t quite true. “Some of it will be. And I want to see where my desk is so I don’t have to wander around aimlessly when I come down with an armload of my stuff.” He looked at her with eyes that seemed earnest. “Does that meet with your approval?”
    Rather than answer him, she merely sighed and beckoned him to follow her through the door. Crossing the floor, she stopped at what seemed to be the center of the room.
    “This is yours,” she told him, gesturing toward the cleared expanse of desk that butted up against hers.
    A greater contrast between the two areas would have been difficult to find. One desk was the picture of virgin territory without so much as a scrap of paper on it, while the other desk bore silent testimony to a very cluttered style. There was a computer off to one side, its keyboard stretched out before it rather than neatly tucked out of sight. The rest of the desk was buried beneath files and a snowstorm of scattered, interweaving papers. Not so much as a square inch of desktop was visible.
    Matt made no verbal comment, but the way his mouth curved seemed to say it all. At least, she read a great deal into it.
    Kendra took umbrage at what she perceived as criticism from her new, God-help-her, partner. Periodically, she went through everything on her desk and cleared spaces, trying her best to organize the raft of papers into some sort of a system, but inevitably, the stacks would bleed into one another again, merging and creating a chaotic pile.
    “I’ve got a system,” she retorted defensively in response to the amusement in Abilene’s liquid-green eyes.
    “I’m sure you do.” To the untrained ear, Abilene’s mild tone sounded completely agreeable. Why, then, did it make her want to scratch his eyes out or at least challenge him to a weapons proficiency contest on the gun range?
    Absently, Matt opened the center drawer of his new desk, then checked, one by one, a few of the other drawers. Like the surface of the desk, they were all pristinely clean.
    He shut the last drawer. “Your old partner did a thorough job cleaning things out. He didn’t leave anything behind.”
    “Not even any hope,” Kendra murmured under her breath. The amused sound coming from her new partner told her that her voice hadn’t been quite as low as she’d thought.
    Great, Pretty Boy has hearing like a bat.
    Stepping back, Abilene pushed his chair into his desk. “I’ll go get my stuff now.”
    “I can hardly wait,” Kendra deadpanned, pasting a pained smile on her lips.
    Matt paused for a moment, his eyes slowly sliding down the length of this sharp-tongued woman. Thanks to his chaotic upbringing, he was basically nomadic in his lifestyle and his relationships. It gave him the ability to take whatever came