by Anna Sugden
Switching on the spinning red light often called the “gumball” on the patrol car’s roof, she pulled out behind the speeding driver.
“Sorry, buddy. This isn’t your lucky day, either.”
CHAPTER TWO
A SCENT OF something deliciously fried and, therefore, off-limits wafted over Delia as she opened one of the heavy wood doors to the Driftwood Inn. Ignoring the urge to let the door fall shut and hurry back to her practical champagne-colored midsize, she stepped inside and wiped the snowy sludge off her shoes onto the mat.
Rich wood paneling and low lighting hinted at a hunting-lodge feel, but the mounted deer heads and the antler chandeliers clinched it. Because the place had given her the creeps on the few occasions she’d joined the group here—like dining on a cemetery plot—she scanned the length of the gleaming bar instead of looking at any of the mounted creatures too closely.
“About time you got here.” Sergeant Leonetti stood up from one of the tables that had been pushed together and waved her over. “Did you go to Casey’s instead?”
Before she could stop herself, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was speaking to her. Why had they been waiting for her? How had they known she was coming? Even she hadn’t known for sure until her car had pulled into the parking lot as if on autopilot.
“Yeah, what was the holdup?” Trooper Kelly Roberts brushed back the dark blond hair she wore tied up for work but which fell in perfect waves to her shoulder blades tonight.
“Oh. Sorry. I had the place right. I was just dragging in getting out of work.” Delia tried to ignore the strange temptation to pat her own hair into place. What was that about? She knew perfectly well that her bun was still right where it always was. Well, except for that one section that had refused to stay put all day.
Anyway, since when did she worry about her appearance around these people? That made about as much sense as her showing up there tonight to take part in an activity that she usually avoided just to make an odd day seem normal.
“Still dragging, aren’t you?” Trooper Warner noted.
“Oh. Right.” Well, she couldn’t keep standing there by the door, so taking a deep breath, she forced herself forward toward their table, casually taking attendance as she went. They were all dressed in street clothes—Leonetti, Roberts, Campbell, Warner and Maxwell. A few others, too. Even the two most recent additions at the Brighton Post, Trevor Cole and Jamie Donovan, had put in appearances. Cole was a casualty of the Manistique Post closure in the Upper Peninsula, and Donovan was so new that the ink hadn’t dried on his recruit school certificate.
Only Lieutenant Peterson was noticeably absent.
Delia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Of course she would be on the lookout for him. She’d avoided him throughout the rest of her shift, delaying the awkward moment when she would have to face him again after her embarrassing comments. But now she had this disturbing, heavy sensation she refused to define as anything other than relief.
Only three empty chairs remained at the far end of the table, so she took the one in the center, which gave her a buffer on either side. She was making an appearance as the lieutenant had suggested without the extra effort of actually holding up her end of a conversation. A win-win situation as far as she was concerned. No one seemed to pay attention to where she sat, anyway, so she opened her menu and started reading.
“Hurry up and figure out what you want,” Trooper Warner said. “We waited to order, and we’re wasting away from starvation down here.”
“That’ll take a while for you, Shane.”
Delia’s breath caught, forcing her to cough into her sleeve to cover it. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder to confirm who’d spoken from somewhere behind her. The shiver feathering up her spine did a fine job of that all by itself. But she couldn’t resist turning to the door any more than she could stop the unfortunate dance in her tummy when she did.
Now that she couldn’t explain at all.
She’d seen Lieutenant Peterson out of uniform before as they all changed after their shifts, but he looked different tonight. As if it wasn’t dramatic enough that he’d skipped wearing his glasses, he was also dressed like a fashion model. He’d paired dark jeans with a gray cable sweater, and his black wool coat hung open. Strange how his shoulders and chest looked broader than she remembered. That could have been the sweater. He looked taller, too, though it didn’t take much to tower over her, especially when she was seated.
He would hate to hear it, but without his glasses and with his dimples flashing, his eyes crinkling at the corners, he looked even younger than normal. Boyishly handsome. The descriptor that popped into her head with no permission whatsoever had her turning back to her menu with a jerk.
Trooper Warner pushed his burly self away from the table, stood and crossed to the door to shake Lieutenant Peterson’s hand.
“If you were trying to offend me, you failed.” He did a biceps flex. “I take that as a compliment.”
“Whatever gets you through the day, man.” Lieutenant Peterson patted the trooper’s shoulder, his eyes alight with mischief.
The lieutenant seemed as different outside of work as he looked. Not as formal. Or serious. But then everyone was more relaxed when they were here together. Well, everyone except for her.
“Glad you made it, Ben,” Lieutenant Campbell called from the other end of the table.
“Guess we should feel privileged that you squeezed us in with all of your public appearances,” Sergeant Leonetti chimed as he waved him over.
So much for this new, relaxed Lieutenant Peterson. He stopped at the end of the table, his posture suddenly stiff.
“Can we not make this a repeat of this afternoon?” He covered his face with his hands, staring at them through his splayed fingers. “If my head gets any larger, I won’t be able to fit into my shoe box. Er... I mean office.”
Lieutenant Campbell shook his head. “Or if you don’t stop, he’ll shoot out of here faster than an IndyCar at Belle Isle.”
The two men exchanged a meaningful look, and Lieutenant Peterson shrugged. As if by unspoken agreement, the others returned to their own conversations. Delia might have done the same if she’d been speaking to someone or if the lieutenant hadn’t started walking again. Right toward her.
The idea of having an empty seat on either side had seemed clever at the time. Now...not so much. He was left with no choice but to sit next to her. And if her stomach had been unsettled before, it now moved on to a gymnastics routine.
What was the matter with her? Their earlier conversation was no excuse. Her nerves were on full alert, and this wasn’t even a crisis situation. She was vacuous, all right. What would she do next, bat her eyelashes at him?
He stopped behind the seat to her left and shrugged out of his coat, hanging it over the back of the chair. The sporty, masculine scent of his cologne drifted in her direction. She had this ridiculous temptation to close her eyes and breathe it in until her lungs ached when she should have been holding her breath. She didn’t care about things like cologne, whether it smelled incredible or not. She didn’t even own a bottle of perfume.
Without looking her way, he opened his menu.
She cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Peterson.”
“Delia.”
He caught her sidelong glance and smiled. “We don’t have to be so formal off the clock.”
“I know.”
Not that she would ever be comfortable addressing any of them informally. Skipping titles was like ignoring the chain of command. Something she never did. Yet now she found herself rolling his first name around on her tongue. Ben. Because it tasted a little too nice, she again returned to her menu, deciding between a ham-and-Swiss panini and a Caesar salad.
“Glad you decided to come.”
She blinked. Of course, she’d said she planned to come, but he’d been right to doubt she was serious. She searched madly for a safe topic and then blurted the first thin
g that came to mind.
“I’ve never seen you in contacts before.” That wasn’t what she was going for. She’d just admitted to watching him when he wasn’t wearing them.
“Yeah, I just wear them when I want to look about eleven.”
“Are you kidding? You look every bit of thirteen.” Why couldn’t she stop herself? Now he knew she’d noticed his baby face. And maybe even that she liked it.
At the brush of his arm against hers, Delia startled and whacked her other elbow against the side of the table. She crossed her arms, as much to brush away uncomfortable tingles as to rub her smarting joint, and give her nervous hand something to do.
“Sorry.”
“No big deal.”
He leaned in close and spoke again in a low voice. “Just promise you won’t compliment me again.”
She tried not to shiver as his warm breath tickled her ear and neck. She forgot about the pain in her arm altogether. “Oh, I promise,” she choked out.
If only she hadn’t opened her big mouth earlier today, then maybe she wouldn’t be on sensory overload now. She wanted to believe that, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that even if she’d shut down her primary senses, she would still be every bit as unsettled by his nearness.
“Good. Of anybody, I knew I could count on you to keep this in perspective.”
Of anybody? His words ripped her right out of her off-limits daydream, leaving a path of irritation in the gaping tear. Was he praising her or slamming her? Did he know that she’d been watching him to see how he would handle his moment in the spotlight? She expected him to look back to her with a knowing expression, but instead he turned to the waitress and ordered a bacon cheeseburger.
Without saying more, he leaned in to listen to a conversation farther down the table. Apparently, this was just like any other day for him. She was the only one who’d worried that there had been a shift in their professional relationship. Had she overreacted? She might as well have called in the bomb squad for a one-block power outage. With a frown, she turned to the waitress and ordered the salad.
Ben, whom she’d suddenly started thinking of as Ben, was oblivious to her discomfort as he spoke to the other lieutenant across the table.
“What did you think about that Red Wings game last night? Killed the Avalanche, didn’t they?”
Lieutenant Campbell shook his head, chuckling. “A man with five kids? When would I have time to watch pro hockey?”
Delia rolled her eyes. Not that she cared, but male officers often used sports talk to exclude women from their conversations. Just another reminder that it was a mistake to think of any man, Lieutenant Peterson included, as different from the others. Using sports to shut her out only proved what little he knew about her. It would serve him right if she spouted sports statistics until his eyes crossed.
“Don’t let him kid you,” Sergeant Leonetti piped in. “His whole gang was watching that game. And doing the wave on their couch.”
“Who do you think started the wave?” Lieutenant Campbell said.
She was dying to talk about last night’s overtime goal or how much the team had suffered since their star player’s retirement, but she held back. Then Ben gestured toward her.
“Delia, you’re a Wings fan, aren’t you?”
His words startled her as much as his touch had earlier. Maybe more. “How did you—”
“Just a guess.”
But he reached down to the purse at her feet, her car keys resting on top. When he lifted his hand, her winged-wheel key chain, the symbol for Detroit’s professional hockey team, dangled from his fingers.
“I’m a cop. They pay me to notice details.”
He jiggled the keys until she reached for them, and then he lowered them into her hand, accidentally brushing her fingers.
“Well, you blew that case wide-open.” She ignored another round of tingles as she stored away the keys.
Ben had made a point of including her in the conversation. It shouldn’t have surprised her, given that he’d been suggesting ways for her to become more involved with the team for the past few months, but it did.
“He’s on a roll this week, then,” Sergeant Leonetti piped. “First the bank and now this.”
Ben pointed at the team’s comedian. “Come on. No more.”
His warning only started the ball rolling, though, and soon hero jokes were shooting from both ends of the table. He accepted several jabs with good humor before putting up his hands.
“Enough already. I thought we were talking about hockey.”
“Were we?” Trooper Warner lifted a brow, but as if he realized they’d pushed the lieutenant far enough, he turned to Delia instead.
“Fair-weather or die-hard?”
“Excuse me?”
“Fan. Which kind are you?”
She shrugged, her gaze shifting among the others, who were suddenly focused on her. Was this how Ben had felt that afternoon after the big announcement, like a bug under a microscope, smothering between the slide’s glass panes?
“Die-hard, I guess. I mean, the Tigers and Lions are great, too, but there’s nothing like the Wings during playoffs.”
“You’ve got that right,” Ben agreed.
The waitress and a second waiter appeared then, carrying trays laden with food. Delia was relieved to be forgotten as everyone got down to the business of distributing and inhaling their late-night meals.
Even as she took tiny bites of her salad, Delia couldn’t help but to steal glances at the man beside her. Because she wasn’t even sure that she needed his help to fit in with the team—or if being enmeshed in a team was critical to her job—she found her rush of gratitude toward him unnerving. But she did find his actions awfully sweet. He’d gone out of his way to invite her tonight and then to include her in the conversation. She couldn’t remember anyone who’d done something just for her. Was it only for her sake? Or was he just paying her back for the things she’d said earlier? Maybe he wanted to even the score. Or have her owe him.
Delia shifted in her seat, pulling her elbows tightly against her sides, her closed hands pressed against her hips below the table. He might have done something nice, but that didn’t mean she owed him.
She would never owe any man. Anything. Ever.
She drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. Now she was really being paranoid. If Ben did have an ulterior motive for directing attention to her, it was probably just to deflect some of it away from him. And who would blame him for that after the day he had just spent?
If only she didn’t always have to question people’s motives. Didn’t have to suspect that there was an evil grin lurking behind every smiling face. But she couldn’t help it. Some hard-learned lessons couldn’t be forgotten no matter how much she wished she could whitewash the gate guarding her memories.
She risked one more peek at him. One too many. He was looking back at her, watching so closely that he could have described each of her pores. Only this didn’t feel like an examination. More of a caress, really. One that smoothed from her temples to her baby toes. And from the heat building in her private places, that touch hadn’t missed any tourist stop along the way, either.
Hell, even her arches tingled.
Then it was over. Well, on his end, anyway. He turned away as if nothing had happened. She, on the other hand, was too shocked to do anything but hold herself perfectly still, as her frayed nerve endings still snapped with sparks. Obviously she was out of practice at reading signals from men, not that she’d been all that good at it when she was in practice. But her reaction now was not just inappropriate, it was downright indecent.
You know you wanted it.
She swallowed, ice water dousing the heat that had radiated along her skin. Those words and their speaker shouldn’t still have been able to reach out from the past to club her, but they could and had. The few bites she’d managed to swallow turned to acid in her stomach. Swirling. Clenching. She couldn’t go back there. If she allowed her
self to slip down those shadowy halls and become lost in that maze of lies and blame, she might never find her way back.
“You okay, Delia?”
It took her a few seconds to decipher the concern creasing his brows. What had he seen? Had she given herself away? “Oh. Just a headache.” She rubbed her temples with her thumbs for effect. If only it were that easy to rub away those thoughts.
He indicated farther down the table with a tilt of his head. “Let Kelly know if you need something for it. She carries a whole pharmacy in that big bag of hers.”
“Hey, I resent that.” Trooper Roberts showed off a large lime-green purse without a bit of shame and then stowed it under the table.
Delia pushed around a piece of chicken on her salad. There was no way she’d be able to eat another bite. She wanted to believe that the past could no longer break her, but it was sure giving it the old college try.
At least Ben didn’t try to start another conversation because she couldn’t look him in the eye now. If she dared, she might do something unforgivable like melt into a puddle on the floor. Or, worse, tell him about her past. She squashed that thought immediately. That it had even crossed her mind was unacceptable. She would never again tell anyone. She’d shared her story once, and look where that had gotten her.
What was going on with her, anyway? For someone who prided herself on having an absolute immunity to men, she needed a booster shot where Ben Peterson was concerned. No, make that Lieutenant Peterson. Impersonal. Distant. The way it was supposed to be. Until she built up some resistance to this particular strain of male, she needed to avoid the exposure zone.
CHAPTER THREE
BEN STOMPED UP the front steps to the 1930s farmhouse his friends had deemed “the project.” To him it was just home. He grimaced as a loose floorboard creaked when he reached the wraparound porch. Something else to fix. Just like the mess he’d made at the Driftwood. As if things between him and a certain trooper hadn’t been awkward enough today, he’d just made them a whole lot worse.