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 herself 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.
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.
His freezing hands fumbled with the keys,