by Anna Sugden
Ben swallowed, his pulse suddenly pounding in his ears. Had she just said she believed he was a hero? He must have heard her wrong. She hadn’t even admitted that she thought he was innocent in the post investigation case, and yet she’d just all but called him a hero.
He didn’t want to be drawn in by her words, didn’t want to need her approval, but the temptation was too strong this time. She believed in him. Did she understand how much he needed someone to have a little faith in him right now when he was beginning to question himself?
Before he could think better of it, Ben reached for Delia in the dark and crushed her to him, their mouths finding each other in less a dance than a frantic claiming of lips. He shouldn’t be doing this. He knew better. It had MISTAKE written all over it in indelible marker. All uppercase letters. But Delia’s lips were even softer than he’d imagined in his best dreams, her taste unbearably sweet.
The most amazing thing of all, though, was that she was kissing him back, and she seemed every bit as hungry as he was. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t stop kissing her now if he wanted to. And, God help him, he didn’t want to.
She moved restlessly against him, her lips parted and pliable as he tasted the corners of her mouth, flicked his tongue over her cupid’s bow and nipped at the fullness of her bottom lip. He would do anything to get her to repeat that soft gasp of pleasure when he angled his head to kiss her more thoroughly.
Anything.
She seemed to want more, too, and he was happy to oblige. He slid his tongue between her willing lips, and he groaned as she drew on his tongue, shock waves shooting to every nerve ending in his body. Forget the cold. He could start a fire right next to them with just the heat coming off his skin.
Walking her backward until her backside touched her car door, Ben pressed against her, leaving no doubt just how obliging he could be. Instead of pushing him away, she gripped his waist, holding him close.
Though they were still bundled up like a pair of overdressed snowmen, his gloved hand found its way inside her coat and covered her small but perfect breast. In response to his over-the-sweater move that he’d mastered in middle school make-out parties, she arched against his hand.
His mind told him this should stop—must stop—but his body was delivering entirely different messages. Of claiming. Of completion. Of inevitability. Just one more kiss. Another touch. One last sweet taste.
And then he realized he was kissing all by himself.
Her lips were still warm, still malleable, but Delia had stopped moving beneath his touch. Her arms had fallen to her sides. All of that sweet urgency was gone. A much-deserved bucket of ice water seemed to have been poured over his head, as well.
Slowly, he lowered his hands and took a step back. What was he doing? What could possibly have told him this was a good idea, no matter how great she tasted and no matter how much he was tempted right now to start the whole thing over again? Needing to see her face, he strained his eyes against the darkness, but the shadows that had been friends before were now enemies. What was she thinking right now? Was she as furious with him as she had every right to be? Why had she responded like that?
“I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Liar. Well, it was partly true. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened, but there was no way he was sorry.
“You’re right. It shouldn’t...have.”
The tremor in her voice hit him harder than a slap would have. He could understand her being mad, but her voice didn’t sound angry. She sounded upset. Vulnerable. Delia Morgan? That didn’t make any sense. It was just a kiss. Okay, a kiss like an Orion spacecraft blastoff and with a little more hands-on involvement than the average peck, but it was still technically just a kiss.
“I didn’t mean...” He didn’t bother finishing. Oh, he’d meant it, all right. In the worst way. But only if she was on board with the idea. Her distress ripped right through him.
“I don’t know what you were thinking—”
“What I was thinking?” He cleared his throat. He was sorry for blurting, but she had to realize that he wasn’t the only one involved in that kiss. With gusto. He gave her a break by not calling her on it.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I did a lousy job of reading your signals—”
“Well, whatever it was, it can’t happen again.”
“You’re right. It can’t.”
Had the outside temperature just dropped a few degrees, or was the chill coming from Delia? Clearly, she wasn’t taking any responsibility here, even for the mixed signals she’d sent. But at least she was back to her hardheaded self. This stubborn, impossible Delia Morgan he understood, but that other, more vulnerable Delia was a mystery to him. Could he have imagined her? He cleared his throat, jamming his hands in his coat pockets as his gloves were no longer keeping his hands warm enough.
“Look, I want you to know that I don’t expect...uh...anything from you. Even for you to keep helping me if it makes you uncomfortable now.”
“We’re not starting that again, are we?”
Ben could only look at her, wishing again he could see her face. “I just didn’t want—”
“To let me help you. We’ve already established that.”
It took him a few seconds to realize she was joking, even if her voice still sounded strained. Still, the fact that she was making jokes gave him a reason to relax. Maybe things wouldn’t be weird between them after all.
“But there’s one thing I have to say.”
“What’s that?” he asked as that spark of hope was extinguished.
“This can’t happen again, or I won’t help you, and then you won’t have anyone to support you from the inside at the post.”
“Of course.” He didn’t bother mentioning that he’d tried to talk her out of helping in the first place. Or that she was still suggesting that he’d acted alone in the kiss.
“And you need me, Ben.”
“Is that because you believe I’m innocent?”
She met his gaze and then looked away without saying the words he longed to hear. “You need me,” she repeated.
With those parting words, she clicked her key fob, opened the car door and climbed inside. She barely glanced at him, just enough to make sure she wouldn’t drive over him, before backing her car out of the parking space and pulling away. Her taillights showed her path to the exit and then disappeared as she turned onto the street.
Oh, it was going to be weird between them, all right. But she hadn’t walked away from him completely, no matter how easy it would have been for her to do that. As he trudged toward his SUV, he chose not to analyze why it relieved him so much that she hadn’t given up on him.
At least when he’d apologized, he hadn’t claimed he didn’t want her. What would have been the point of lying? To her or to himself? After the little event that had just happened between them, she could have no doubt exactly what he wanted, anyway. But why Delia Morgan? Even if timing wasn’t lousy and the workplace romance thing wasn’t a big issue, Delia couldn’t have been more wrong for him. She was as guarded as he was open, as bullheaded as he was reasonable.
What was it about her that made him behave so differently? He approached everything else with almost obsessive forethought. There were too many potholes in life, too many chances for him to make a mistake and prove he was a product of the faulty genes he’d tried to escape. But with Delia he was tempted to throw caution to the wind. Why? Did he have some sort of career-related death wish? Was one more taste of forbidden fruit worth losing everything he’d worked for?
The fact that he couldn’t answer that question with an emphatic no was just another sign that he needed to get his priorities straight. Delia had hers in order. She might have blurred some lines by offering to work with him, smeared a few more by kissing him back, but now she’d drawn the precise boundaries of their relationship. He had to be just as clear about what he needed now, and that was to prove his innocence and find out who had comm
itted the acts that had put at risk the reputation of the Brighton Post and the Michigan State Police.
If he hoped to have any help finding the answers he needed, he would have to figure out a way to keep his hands off the huge distraction that was Delia Morgan. Easy, right? He shook his head. After tonight, he wouldn’t be able to get the idea of kissing her out of his mind. Worse than that, even with his career and future on the line, if Delia showed any sign of being amenable to another kiss, he would need handcuffs to keep his hands to himself.
Frustrated in more ways than he cared to admit, Ben threw his car into Drive and pulled into traffic. He was in a bad place, and he knew it. He might as well go ahead and be fitted for his prison jumpsuit because he’d come to a telling conclusion. Even prison life didn’t sound as terrible as the thought of never having Delia in his arms again.
CHAPTER NINE
DELIA SLUMPED ONTO her sofa, as out of breath as if she’d been chasing a suspect. Or running from her own thoughts. Her lungs ached with the effort as she took a few deep breaths. Perspiration dampened the hair at her nape, and her underarms felt sticky beneath her coat. Dread was wedged inside her stomach as heavy as a fist-size stone, its edges sharp and cutting.
What had just happened? She covered her face with her hands, the scratchy sensation reminding her she was still wearing gloves. After peeling them off her clammy hands one finger at a time, she covered her mouth again, but her lips were chapped and sensitive. Lips that had been so thoroughly kissed that they throbbed with the memory. She dug her teeth into her bottom one to quell the tingling.
“What were you thinking?” she whispered into the empty room.
If only she could say that what had happened with Ben had been just a kiss. But just a kiss shouldn’t have ripped through her insides and fragmented like one of those RIP bullets, leaving a path of delicious warmth instead of destruction. Just a kiss wouldn’t have left her with skin that felt too tight, a heart that beat too loudly and the suspicion that her stepfather had been right about her all along.
How could she have let that kiss happen when she was supposed to be helping Ben? Or how could she have wanted it to happen and keep happening? She shouldn’t have allowed Ben to take the full blame for it, either, but she couldn’t face the fact that she’d responded to him with such relish. That she’d loved every touch, every taste, when she should have been repulsed or unwilling. Or at the very least, she should have felt nothing at all.
But she hadn’t felt nothing. She’d ached for the smooth and rough of his skin, the heat and pressure of his body against hers. She’d behaved wantonly. She’d been brazen. Needy. As if she actually wanted a man. Wanted Ben.
Shaken, she glanced around her apartment, determined to replace those unacceptable thoughts and images. She’d always thought of this place as streamlined, its clean surfaces and minimal accoutrements making a statement. Now though, with the ceiling fixture tossing yellow light and shadows on the bare walls, the apartment just looked empty.
As her gaze slid over her unadorned tables, she could think of nothing except the doilies and bric-a-brac that crowded end tables and bookshelves at Ben’s house. Her lonely pair of striped throw pillows—the ones that had come with her slouch-style sofa—only reminded her of the overgrown flower garden that was Ben’s living room.
Stop. She shook her head hard enough to make her neck hurt. She couldn’t keep doing this. Why did her every thought keep returning to Ben? She could no more answer that than she could explain why she’d thrown herself at him in the parking lot. Her actions had reeked of lust. She didn’t do lust.
Delia blew out a breath as she leaned back into the sofa cushions, crisscrossed her legs and hugged one of the pillows. She was acting like someone who’d never done those things before. And she had. Well, a few times. When necessary. She’d even had more than one partner. Two to be exact. One from college and another just before she started the academy. Sometimes it was just easier to get it over with than to make one more excuse as to why she wasn’t ready. Not that pretending had helped much. Both relationships had fizzled soon after she’d reluctantly agreed to go to that next level.
That uncomfortable history made everything that had happened tonight between her and Ben more unsettling. Agreeing to physical intimacy when she felt obligated to do it was very different from craving it like some hussy. Today she’d been tempted to crave.
That had to stop, too.
She could never allow herself to need someone that way. Need granted power, and she wouldn’t give anyone power over her ever again. She refused to be that weak. Ben was only a man, after all. Hadn’t he been as hungry as any man once he’d started kissing her? She knew perfectly well that all men were the same. Like animals. They used women to slake their lust and then tossed them aside like garbage.
Not Ben, a voice inside her insisted, as she squeezed the pillow tighter against her. She couldn’t listen to that voice. It was as dangerous to her as the man himself was. It tempted her to believe that Ben, the most quietly heroic man she’d ever met, might be a contradiction to his gender in other ways, as well. She couldn’t afford to let herself believe he might be different. It was too much of a risk. She couldn’t bear to place her hope in him and have it shattered.
She’d been right to pull back from him and get her head above water, even as every cell in her body clamored for the chance to drown in him. She had to keep the boundaries of their partnership firmly in place for self-preservation. For as much as she hated admitting she was physically attracted to Ben, this was about more than attraction or even that foolhardy kiss, and now they both knew it.
That more had her popping up suddenly from the sofa and padding back to the table near the door. She rummaged through her purse for her phone, but when she pulled it out, its screen was black. Of course, she’d forgotten to turn it back on before she left the bar. So much for an hour. Just how long had she been out of touch with the post? Two hours? Three?
Flicking on her phone, she cringed as she waited for the texts and voice mails to download.
“Seventeen missed calls?”
She quickly clicked through screens, only to discover that, yes, she had just as many voice messages. Why had she been so careless as to turn off her phone tonight? Some police officer she’d turned out to be. What had she missed?
She checked the call log first, and though there were a few different numbers, she didn’t recognize any of them. They didn’t seemed to be from the station, either. But then she wasn’t close enough to the other troopers to have exchanged private cell numbers.
Clicking on the first voice mail and tapping the play arrow to start the recording, she braced herself and waited.
“Delia, it’s Mom.” Delia deleted the message immediately without waiting to hear the rest.
The second message was from a different number, but when she clicked that one, her mother’s voice cut in again. “Delia, honey, we know you’re busy, but we’d really appreciate it if you would call back...”
The third message came from yet another number, but the result was the same.
“Stop it,” she said, deleting the message and then clicking out of that screen.
She paced back and forth in the living room to that closet that passed as a galley kitchen. The calls were coming from different numbers, and yet—Her chest tightened. Throwaway phones? They must have guessed she would try to block their numbers. Why were they going to such lengths just to talk to her? What did they want from her?
She considered getting rid of all the remaining messages without even listening, but she couldn’t do that. She might delete an important call from someone at the post, especially since she couldn’t tell if some of the calls had come from her coworkers’ personal cells. Maybe Ben was right that it wouldn’t kill her to get to know some of them, at least well enough to have their numbers.
Returning to her voice mails, she clicked on the next message, which turned out to be another entreaty from her mother.
But just as she started to trash it like she had the others, she paused, her finger hovering over the delete button. Was she destroying evidence? Just to be safe, she saved this message instead.
Of course, she was overreacting. Even if she planned to file a report, what crime would she accuse them of? Calling too often? If that were a crime, then a quarter of the parents in America could be charged with it.
Still, she listened. To every word of every message. And she continued to save them, though she wasn’t sure why since she would never file a report. In each message, her mother’s words were the same. Well, almost the same. Similar requests with escalating frustration and, perhaps, urgency.
“Delia, dear, it is impolite not to return our calls...”
“I know you’re receiving these messages, so you need to call back right away...”
By the sixteenth message, Delia could barely listen. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Well, she knew what she expected—an apology, a plea for forgiveness—but she didn’t know why she’d longed for it. Her mother hadn’t believed her then, so she had no reason to think she’d changed her mind now. Even if deep inside—in the place that she didn’t want to believe still existed—she’d hoped.
A glutton for punishment, she played the final message. The last message in a series that had been left over the past three hours. She could rest assured there would be more of the same tomorrow.
But the voice this time made her breath catch, blood freezing in her veins.
“Hello, Delia. It’s Daddy.”
* * *
“LOOK WHO FINALLY showed up.”
Delia shifted in the booth seat and looked around, but Sergeant Leonetti—Vinnie—wasn’t even looking her way this time. Could she look guiltier? She’d arrived early enough to help commandeer two of the deep Formica-topped booths at Casey’s Diner and to open the divider that separated them. She was grateful that Trooper Warner, make that Shane, was the straggler tonight.