Read Online Cavanaugh Hero by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online

in the upkeep of his property or worrying about its image. The man who went by one name—Ortega—relied strictly on word of mouth from his customers. And the word was good .
    A deceptively sleepy-eyed old woman, who might have been either his mother or his grandmother, served as the cashier, seemingly coming alive the moment their take-out order was ready. She muttered a price to Declan which might or might not have been in English.
    All Charley knew was that the woman’s voice was so low, the words so garbled, she could have been speaking in any language. But Declan apparently understood her.
    Either that or he knew the prices by heart and had the right amount to give her from the beginning.
    As they left the tiny establishment, Declan handed one of the two bags he’d been given to her. As she took it, Charley noticed that even the paper felt warm.
    She couldn’t place the aroma. “What is it?” she asked.
    Declan got back into the car and began to drive. He spared Charley a glance. “Try it. You’ll like it,” he told her. He was being deliberately mysterious and he knew it.
    Charley laughed shortly. “That argument didn’t work for Tommy Mason in the tenth grade and it’s not going to work now.”
    The sudden image of a teenaged Charley decking some overly hormonal suitor and standing over him, threatening to do more harm if he tried anything further, had him laughing.
    “Tommy Mason, huh?” Declan asked when he finally stopped laughing. “So, did he turn out to be your first love?”
    “I said the line didn’t work for him,” she said pointedly. Opening the bag, she looked inside. “You’re not paying attention, Detective.”
    Declan pulled over into a large parking lot on the next block. The lot was buffered by a discount furniture store on one end and a chain pharmacy on the other.
    When he turned off the engine, she looked at him with confusion. “Why are we stopping?”
    “Because the first few bites require using both hands,” he explained.
    He took out something steaming and wrapped in wax paper. Whatever it was, it was beginning to smell pretty good, even to someone with no appetite. Seeing Declan taking a healthy-sized bite and neither tearing up nor having any sort of a coughing fit because the food was overly spicy, Charley decided to chance taking a bite out of her own portion.
    Emulating Declan, she peeled back the wax paper, but rather than take a large bite, she took a small one.
    The moment she did, she knew she’d made a mistake. Her eyes immediately began to tear up and her mouth felt as if she’d just bitten into a handful of red hot peppers on steroids.
    Rather than diminish, the burning sensation seemed to increase by the second. She grabbed at one of the bottles of water Declan had bought when he’d purchased the two lunches. Popping the top, she consumed almost half the bottle in under thirty seconds.
    Only then did the fire in her mouth begin to feel as if it was receding.
    Sensing she’d just had a practical joke played on her, Charley glared at her new partner. “What was that?”
    “Ortega’s specialty,” he told her.
    “His specialty is setting people on fire from the inside out?” she demanded, more than a little annoyed.
    Charley liked always being in control. She didn’t like losing her composure around people, even when it involved something so minor as being caught off guard by an overly spicy meal.
    He laughed, really amused at her reaction. “You’re exaggerating.”
    “No, I’m not even beginning to do it justice,” she informed him. Rewrapping it, she deposited her so-called lunch back into the bag it had come from. “Seriously, how can you eat that?” she asked.
    He found the meal a little spicy, but certainly nothing he couldn’t handle. Declan shrugged in answer to her question. “A cast-iron stomach, I guess.”
    “More like an asbestos-lined mouth,” she quipped with feeling. Her own mouth still felt as if it was smoldering. She drained