by Anna Sugden
“Or whichever one of them might be targeting you.”
He didn’t have an answer for that, but the knot inside him twisted tighter. The reasons for letting Delia help him were becoming flimsier by the minute.
“When did Scott tell you this?”
“Right before I left. By that time I was already coming out of my skin.” She shivered. “Seeing shadows everywhere.”
“Why were you so upset before that? You said you found something on Trevor.”
“Just a few things about his time in Manistique,” she told him. “It’s going to be harder coming up with any official records since the post was absorbed by St. Ignace, but the local weekly newspaper was pretty vocal about questions involving post investigations and a growing crystal meth problem. Trevor’s name popped up several times and not in the most positive manner.”
“Any charges against him?”
“More a cloud of suspicion as far as I could tell. But two different posts. Drug issues. One trooper at each. Could just be a coincidence.”
“And we don’t believe in those. So do you feel as if Trevor was the one watching you patrol tonight?” The need to protect that he’d been struggling to keep at bay peeked out once again. He knew Delia could take care of herself. So why was he determined to rush in on his white steed?
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was just a feeling. And wouldn’t the GPS on the patrol cars have shown if we were in the same vicinity? No one mentioned that on the radio or in any of the calls tonight.”
“Do you think someone followed you to the park now?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She blew out another breath. “Obviously, I’m overreacting. To everything. All of this watching is starting to wear on me.”
“That and the collecting of certain police files.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
The frown in her voice only made him smile. “It’s a good thing that gray areas don’t sit well with you.”
“But black-and-white wouldn’t have helped you at all.”
She must not have been freezing anymore because she slid off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat halfway.
“It is getting warm in here.” He shut off the engine and loosened his jacket. Warm didn’t begin to describe how he was feeling.
Immediately, the atmosphere inside the SUV changed. Became smaller, more intimate. Delia must have noticed it, too, because her breathing became uneven. Was she nervous around him again? Would she insist that he start the ignition or, worse yet, demand that he take her back to her car? That was what she should do. Or if she didn’t, he should do the gallant thing and take her back anyway. But he hoped she wouldn’t, and he knew he wouldn’t. If he ever needed proof that he was no hero, there it was, right in front of him.
He cleared his throat. “Well, besides the stuff about Trevor and the heads-up from Scott, did you find anything else?”
“Since yesterday? I thought that was plenty.”
There was that chuckle again. So low and sexy he could barely keep himself from reaching for her. Did she realize that? Was that the reason she’d shifted closer to the door?
“What about you?”
“Nothing really.” He cleared his throat again and broached the subject that had been weighing on his thoughts all day. “You’ll find this funny, but I was so desperate to find any sort of lead that I did a search on your stepfather. I know it’s a stretch, but Lloyd Jackson was accused of several high-profile crimes when he was county commissioner and—”
She interrupted him by throwing open the door, casting light over the SUV’s interior. “Why did you have to go there? You know I’m not involved in the case at the post, but you just couldn’t resist digging into my family, could you? Titillating reading, wasn’t it?”
“Come on, Delia. I knew it was a stretch, but—”
“But nothing. You should have been trying to save your own sorry ass instead of digging into places where you have no business looking.”
With that, she climbed out of the car, slammed the door and stomped off, leaving him staring and wondering what had just happened.
He climbed out as well, but he left his door open to keep the light on. “Wait, Delia. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”
He let his words trail off because he had no idea why he was sorry or what he didn’t mean. He’d always planned to thoroughly research the backgrounds of each team member. He’d told her that. Had she really believed he would skip hers?
“Come on,” he called after her. But after Delia rounded the car’s back bumper, even the light coming from the interior wasn’t enough to help him see her as she kept walking.
Reaching across the driver’s seat, he opened the glove box and pulled out a flashlight. He flipped it on and started after her, at least the way he thought she’d gone.
For a few heart-stopping seconds, he couldn’t see her and wondered if she might have fallen somewhere, but he finally caught sight of her about twenty feet ahead. She had flipped on the flashlight app on her phone and was walking carefully in the tire tracks he’d made only moments before.
“Please stop. Let’s talk about this.” He hurried after her, not expecting her to listen to him.
But then she stopped and whirled so quickly that he had to move his flashlight beam that pointed directly at her face. At least she’d put gloves back on the hands she was using to shield her eyes.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I think there is.” He took advantage of the moment to close the distance between them. “You knew I had to look at everyone’s family, right? It was just a starting place. We talked about it.”
“Everyone else’s history isn’t as interesting as mine.”
“Are you kidding? You’re talking to me here.”
Her breath came out in white puffs when she chuckled. “You’ve got a point.” She paused for a few seconds. “But my history isn’t all that pretty, either.”
“Nobody’s is if we dig deep enough. Families like the Huxtables and the Cleavers only exist in TV shows.”
He didn’t get the laugh he’d hoped for, but she didn’t run away, either. She did shiver, however.
“Any chance we could continue this conversation in the car. It comes fully loaded. Heat and everything.”
Instead of answering, she turned and started back toward his vehicle. He still wasn’t sure what had made her so angry. It was the second time she’d made a big deal over something that should have been minor.
“Tell me,” he said as she opened the car door. “Did you plan to walk all the way back into the park to your car?” He climbed in on the driver’s side, turned the ignition and cranked the heat, shivering as freezing air blew on his face. The windshield and his glasses immediately fogged.
“If I had to.” She closed the door, crossing her arms and rubbing her upper arms.
Slipping off his glasses, he wiped them on the hem of his shirt. He could still see her from the glow of the dashboard lights, but just barely. “How did you plan to find it in the dark?”
“The flashlight in my phone.”
“Right. You think of everything.”
“I try.”
As he rubbed his aching hands together to warm them, he couldn’t help watching her out of the corner of his eye. She had pulled off her gloves but was blowing into her cupped hands.
“Now can we discuss Lloyd Jackson without the two of us having to run out into the snow again?”
* * *
DELIA NEARLY LAUGHED with relief over Ben’s question. He could have asked so many more difficult ones. She turned to face him, her left leg coming up on the seat.
“What do you want to know?”
“Just the overview.”
She nodded. “Marian thought she’d hit the jackpot when she met her boss, Lloyd Jackson. A rich corporate attorney with political aspirations.” She took a deep breath, finding even this part of the story tough to tell.
“She’d been strugg
ling for too long, I guess. My father died when I was two. So with Jackson, she got it all. Big house. Private schools for me. And he got an idyllic blended family for his political campaigns.”
“But everything wasn’t what it seemed, was it?”
She had to cough into her elbow to cover her sharp intake of breath. He couldn’t possibly know how true his words were. She was shocked to find that she was tempted to tell him the ugliest part, too, something she hadn’t shared with anyone since that one time so long ago. When no one had believed her.
No, she couldn’t go there. Couldn’t rip open old wounds, still hidden beneath the flimsiest of scars. Even if she suspected that this time someone would believe her and would help shield her from the hurt. Wasn’t it bad enough that she couldn’t be anywhere near Ben without imagining his hands on her, without remembering the taste of his kiss? Was her mind, maybe even her spirit, susceptible to him, as well?
She cleared her throat and started again, choosing to answer only what he’d asked. It was safer that way. “You saw the charges. Racketeering. Mail fraud. I guess being loaded and powerful wasn’t enough entertainment for him. Eventually he was forced to resign while he faced charges, but not a single one—”
“Stuck,” he finished for her. “All of the charges were dismissed on technicalities, right?”
“It helped that his attorneys were more accustomed to defending mobsters than crooked commissioners.”
“That was the connection I was looking at this afternoon,” Ben admitted. “Was it possible that the attorneys who defended Jackson could be the same ones hired by some of the defendants facing narcotics charges? The ones with the evidence against them that magically disappeared.”
“Sounds like you’re grasping at straws.”
He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “I thought so, too. But at this point, I’m desperate for any connection.”
“I get it.” She couldn’t blame him when she’d been so freaked out by her conversation with Scott that she’d insisted that Ben meet her tonight. “Well, to get this over with, so you can finally rule me out, you might as well ask me about Marian, too.”
“From the few things I read about her, she sounded like the dutiful wife.”
“A Stepford wife.”
“Don’t hold back or anything.” He chuckled before becoming serious again. “I take it you didn’t get along with her.”
She shook he head. “He was guilty. Everyone knew it. His attorneys. The prosecutor. Letter-to-the-editor writers who called for his resignation.” She paused for a second and then added, “Me.”
“Everyone except your mother.”
“Either she didn’t know it or refused to see what was right—” she paused, coughing “—in front of her.”
“A lot of people are like that.”
She swallowed, realizing he was talking about his own mother now. If only Delia’s story didn’t force him to Ben to relive his.
“I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing,” Delia said.
“I guess so.”
Neither needed to specify which “she” they were speaking about now.
“So when did Helen Miles become your legal guardian?” Ben said, returning to his questions as if he and Delia hadn’t just slipped away on a tangent.
“How do you know about her?”
“Her name was in your file. She passed away when you were in college, right?”
“Yes. How many times did you read my file?” She didn’t mention the obvious truth that he only could have seen her file before he was put on leave.
“A few, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “How long was it after the charges against Jackson were dismissed before your parents left you?”
For several seconds, Delia couldn’t answer. She’d told herself she would never cry over her mother again, and yet a knot the size of a golf ball formed in her throat, and her eyes burned, smoldering with the embers of a childhood lost.
“A few weeks later,” she began finally in a voice that sounded flat in her ears. “The media refused to go away, still parked outside our house. Lloyd started saying how much he hated southeast Michigan. That there were opportunities for them in Ohio or Illinois.”
“He didn’t include you in his plans?”
Delia swallowed, staring at her hands, which she gripped together in her lap. In all of these years, no one had asked her about those awful days. Even with Helen, who’d fed, clothed and sent her to school for seven years, Delia had learned that it was in her best interest not to mention any of the things that had happened to her. So it felt strange when something inside her, something wound so tightly that it had cut off the circulation to her heart, started to unwind in slow, halting turns.
“I didn’t realize they weren’t including me at first, even though I hadn’t been silent about my belief that he was guilty.” About more than just those charges, but she didn’t clarify that. “So they sold the house, scheduled the movers and we all started packing.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again, pushing through the pain. “Until my clothes and bedroom furniture were the only things left in the house, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be going with them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
The anger in his voice startled her. The man who’d refused to blow his top, even when someone targeted his career and his freedom, was furious on her behalf.
“I probably shouldn’t ask, but who was Helen Miles to your family?”
“Would you believe me if I said she was my mother’s hairdresser?”
His jaw flexed. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Then she was her distant cousin and her hairdresser.”
“That makes it so much better.”
“When Helen showed up that day with a truck, I was told she was to be my legal guardian and that I would be going to a new school. And that was that.” She brushed off her hands the way they’d wiped her out of their lives.
“How old were you?” He paused to calculate. “About thirteen?”
“Twelve.”
He blew out a long breath. “And I thought losing my mom was a tragedy.”
“What are you saying?” She stared at him, sure she hadn’t heard him right. “Of course your mom’s death was a tragedy. And the accident was a tragedy. Even your dad’s addiction—”
He only shook his head. “But they deserted you.”
“I was okay. I wasn’t on the street or anything.”
“But they left you intentionally. What kind of parents do that?”
“Come on, Ben. We work in law enforcement. We see things like that all the time.”
“Delia, your mother chose a man over her own daughter.”
At the last, her breath caught. “I know.”
She wasn’t even sure why she’d defended them, but she’d never been in this position before. Ben had taken her side. Not with conditions like the support that Helen had always offered. But her side. Even without knowing the whole story, he was wholeheartedly in her corner. She’d never had that. Had never known how much she’d craved it. Until now.
“It was tough at first. Like living someone else’s life. But then you start at the new school, learn to eat some iffy cooking and, well, just get on with it.”
“I know what that’s like,” Ben said as he stared out into the snowflakes fluttering on the windshield. “Sometimes I don’t know how we survived it. My grandparents or me.”
Delia nodded, remembering her own early days. “The first few months were the worst. I used to wait for Helen to go to sleep each night, and then I would close the door to my room and just let go.”
“Let go?”
She could feel him watching her, but she couldn’t look at him now, not if she planned to say the rest. For a reason she couldn’t explain, she wanted him to know. At least this much.
“I would sob so loud that the walls must have shook. I felt so abandoned, and I wasn’t even allowed to talk about it. No
t unless I wanted Helen to give me the silent treatment.”
“Did no one hear you? None of the neighbors?”
“None that I know of. But then I was used to no one listening or—” She somehow stopped herself before using the word believing, but the rest seemed to fall from her lips of its own accord. “I’d never felt so alone.”
Something rustled as he shifted, and suddenly Ben took hold of her hand, entwining their fingers. Her breath froze as she stared down at their hands.
“Delia, you don’t have to be alone.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A MISTAKE. THE WORDS filtered through Ben’s mind as he leaned across the console and touched his lips to the mouth he’d been dreaming about. But he didn’t care whether it was a good idea or not. Not even handcuffs would have been enough to keep him from her this time. She’d been alone, likely even before her mother had chosen someone else over her own child. Even with all the tragedy he’d experienced, he still couldn’t imagine that kind of betrayal.
Ben couldn’t let her sit next to him, away from him, not realizing that she no longer needed to be alone. Whatever it cost him.
He didn’t know what he expected as he sank his lips into all the precious softness, the mouth that his memory hadn’t come close to accurately describing. But the way she nearly climbed inside of him with just her lips nearly yanked him out of his seat. Where was this coming from? This was the stuff that guys lied about in locker rooms, not the kind of thing that happened to a nice guy who seldom finished first. But she made him feel as if he was the prize instead of the other way around.
He tried to keep his clarity, but it was fogging fast. She’d said she never wanted him to touch her again, had sworn she wouldn’t help him on the case if he did, and yet now it seemed as if she never wanted him to stop. Though well aware that he shouldn’t be doing this, he was ready to oblige. He’d never been so ready.
Unlacing their fingers because his were trembling, he rested both hands on the bulky shoulders of her coat and tilted his head to deepen the kiss. But she was way ahead of him. No gentleness or finesse, she kissed him with an intensity that startled him. As if he was the only man she’d ever wanted. The only one who could begin to satisfy her needs.