Read Online Cavanaugh's Surrender by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page A

to be their sole parent, his father was dating.
    Seriously dating, from the sound of it.
    At twenty-eight, Logan felt he was too old to be entertaining the idea of getting a stepmother. Wasn’t that something children acquired?
    You’re not the one who matters here.
    That was just plain weird, he thought. He could almost hear Bridget’s voice in his head. Bridget, the one who always put him in his place.
    The main thing to remember, he told himself, was that his father seemed happy, and heaven only knew his father deserved to be happy.
    Arriving at the closed elevator door, he was about to press the button on the wall beside it when a light pooling along the floor down the hall caught his eye, and then his attention. He’d come in early to catch his father alone so that he could feel him out about the woman he was seeing—he’d run into Kendra and Matt on his way out of the precinct last night and they had mentioned the change in his father’s evening schedule. Logan knew his father was always in early and always alone, which made it a good time to talk to him.
    Was he wrong? Did his father have a kindred spirit amid the CSI unit?
    Curious, Logan moved away from the elevator bank and made his way down the hallway.
    He had a hunch the light was coming from Destiny’s office even before he actually got to the doorway and looked in. Given the current case the unit and he had just caught, her being here early didn’t exactly come as a great shock to him.
    But it did surprise him that Destiny appeared to be wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday.
    “Didn’t you go home last night?” he asked.
    Completely absorbed by what she was doing, Destiny jumped at the sound of Logan’s deep voice intruding into her world. She pressed her lips together just in time to suppress the yelp of surprise that automatically rose to her tongue.
    Taking in a shaky breath as she tried to calm her nerves, Destiny turned her chair halfway toward the doorway to confirm what she already knew. That Logan was standing there.
    She shrugged in vague dismissal. “I lost track of time.”
    There was something extremely attractive about the rumpled way she looked, he thought. He found himself wishing that they weren’t involved professionally so he’d be free to get involved another way. “Then let me clue you in—it’s tomorrow.”
    She frowned. Why was he even here at this hour? “Just what everyone needs, a talking desk calendar. Thank you, your work here is done,” she said, hoping he would leave so she could concentrate.
    “And so will you be if you don’t go home and get some rest.”
    Her frown deepened. Was that a note of concern she heard in his voice?
    No, she was just tired, that’s all. And then she remembered his offer of coffee and to listen if she just wanted to talk. Maybe he really was being nice and she was being too hard on him because her temper had shortened by half. Lack of sleep tended to do that to her, to make her irritable and impatient.
    “I’ll rest when we catch the bastard who did this,” she told him.
    “Your sister wouldn’t want you running yourself into the ground like this,” he pointed out.
    Now that was just empty talk. He didn’t even know her sister—and now he never would, she thought with a pang before she could tamp down the pain. With effort, she firmly put her emotions under lock and key. Anything she couldn’t use to help her catch Paula’s killer would just need to wait.
    “My sister didn’t want me doing a lot of things,” she pointed out briskly. “She wasn’t the easiest person to get along with.”
    Logan had a feeling his father’s chief assistant was using anger to keep herself from falling apart. Whatever worked. With a smile, he made an observation. “She probably said the same thing about you.”
    “Yeah, she did.” Logan had expected her to admit as much. The half smile that accompanied the words, though, was a surprise.
    It was the first time he’d seen