Cavanaugh Judgment by Marie Ferrarella

she might assume, Blake thought. “I’m the man you jumped on, remember?” He saw what he took to be a slight blush accent her cheeks and found himself momentarily intrigued. He hadn’t thought that they made women who blushed anymore. “You’re given to broad strokes,” he continued with his analysis, “not tiny lines.”
    She had always been a big picture kind of person. It made taking care of details particularly difficult for her. There was always something that she missed, that she forgot. Right now, the fact that Kincannon had nailed her so accurately made her very uncomfortable. Made her feel as if he was poking around in her head, invading her space.
    She resented it. This wasn’t going to work. And while she wasn’t about to go back to the chief with that—Kincannon could.
    “If you’d rather have someone else assigned to you, Your Honor, please feel free to ask the chief,” she told him. “I’m sure he’d listen to you.”
    “I’d rather that no one was assigned to me,” he told her curtly, “but you saw where that went.”
    Tired of dancing around in circles, she shrugged off the whole situation. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the chief’s men’ll find Munro quickly.”
    Blake sincerely doubted that luck was on his side. Munro had probably gone underground. “Lots of places a man can disappear in this county.” He looked at her pointedly. “Or out of it. If Munro had any brains at all, he’s take this opportunity to flee the country—at least until things cool off for him.”
    “Oh, he has brains all right,” Greer assured him. She’d dealt with people like Munro before, too often for her liking. In her opinion, they were the vermin of the earth. But Munro seemed to be a cut above the rest. Smarter. Sharper. And that worried her as far as the judge’s safety went. “But he’s also the type who relishes taking revenge.”
    Taking his jacket out of the small closet, Blake slipped it on over his light blue tapered shirt. “In that case, shouldn’t you be the one with a bodyguard?” he asked. “After all, you were the one who pulled off that sting and brought Munro in.”
    “But you were the judge who sent away his buddies,” she reminded him. And there was one more salient point. “And you were the one who got the e-mail.”
    To her surprise, just the barest hint of a smile curved the corners of a mouth that could have been called sensual under different circumstances. He shrugged at her words. “It was worth a shot.”
    Swiftly, she pieced things together. “You were trying to talk me out of guarding you?”
    It was obvious that the man she was going to be protecting saw no reason to offer a denial. “I was.”
    Well, he’d wasted his time, she thought. “It’s not up to me.”
    “And if it was up to you?” he wanted to know. “Would you guard me?”
    She could smell the lather he’d used shaving. Or maybe that was the scent of his soap. In any case, he was standing too close, she thought. His space was commingling with hers and that was definitely interfering with her thought process.
    Greer subtly moved over to where his robe was hanging and pretended to be interested in the texture of the weave. It was called survival.
    The automatic response to his question would have been no. But this didn’t require an automatic answer, it required one that had some thought behind it. The chief never said things just to hear himself talk. If he felt the judge needed a bodyguard, then he damn well needed a bodyguard. She’d already silently agreed with that judgment.
    She worded her response carefully. “If there was no one else to do it, yes, I would.”
    His eyes held hers for a moment. She felt as if he was looking into her soul. “A truthful answer.”
    There was a reason for that. The judge wasn’t the kind of man you lied to. Not without a great many consequences. “I’ve got a feeling you could see right through it if it wasn’t.”
    Her answer amused him. Was she