by Anna Sugden
Until now. Until Ben.
He slept on, probably unaware that this had been such a pivotal moment for her. Did he understand that trust was a far bigger risk for her than sex ever could be? Shifting in his sleep, he turned toward her, his breathing slow and even. He looked so young and carefree as he slept, such a contradiction to the strong and steadfast man she knew him to be. A man who’d never let his scars prevent him from doing the right thing.
Had Ben watched her sleep last night as she was watching him now? Though it was already daylight, she shot a look at the lamp that he’d insisted on leaving lit earlier. Its switch had been turned off. As unsettling as the thought of being watched was, she wasn’t as uncomfortable as she would have expected, knowing that Ben would have been the one watching.
Without thinking, she reached over and brushed her fingers through his hair. He hadn’t had a trim since being forced to take administrative leave, and his hair was beginning to curl at his nape. Ben jerked from her touch, and his eyes popped open. But unlike her, he barely looked around, seeming to know exactly where he was.
“Well, good morning,” he said with a wide grin.
“Good morning.” She tried to be enthusiastic like he was, but her voice sounded strained. After everything that had happened last night, what were they supposed to say or do now?
Ben answered her unspoken question by popping off the pillow and kissing her soundly on the mouth before she even had the chance to warn him about morning breath. Apparently, he didn’t care about that. Her swollen and probably mascara-smeared eyes didn’t seem to bother him, either, even after he’d slipped on his glasses and could take a good look.
Clearly, he’d missed the memo that said guys were supposed to buy into that whole morning-after-awkwardness thing. Or should skip out before dawn to avoid it. But she couldn’t be as laidback about this as he was. Especially since she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing under that comforter. Her cheeks burned as she realized he was wearing—or in this case not wearing—exactly the same thing.
As she sat up and propped her pillow behind her head, she also discreetly tightened the blanket under her armpits so her breasts were fully covered. Ben’s gaze slid to the side as he sat up and propped his own pillow. He never missed anything.
She was relieved that he didn’t call her on it, though. He could have said that he’d already seen most everything she had to hide. And that what he’d missed enjoying visually, he’d explored by touch and taste. He could have said many things, but he didn’t, thank goodness. Still, her face felt like it might burst into flames as a slide show of tantalizing scenes played inside her head.
“Got anything to eat around here? Don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
Only instead of throwing on his jeans and stalking off to the kitchen on a hunting-and-gathering mission, he pulled her to him with a hunger of another kind.
“Oh, I want this,” he murmured against her skin. “I want us. After all of this is over, I want...”
He didn’t finish as he was suddenly preoccupied with the tender spot just behind her ear. But he didn’t really have to because she understood what he meant. She wanted it, too. Wanted there to be a them, now and later, after Ben’s name was cleared so he could return to the post, where he belonged.
So it made no sense to her that she couldn’t stop squirming in his arms, even as tingles blossomed along the path of kisses he followed from her ear to beneath her chin. Why was she still nervous? She’d said the words. Well, not quite as many as he had. She’d participated in the act. Willingly. And it had been lovely. Transcendent. Even now her body reawakened effortlessly with his lightest touch.
So why was she feeling out of sorts? Was there such a thing as too perfect? She was being overly sensitive, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Was she really never allowed to have something wonderful in her life, or had she just convinced herself that this was true?
Ben lifted his lips away from the skin beneath her ear. She shivered, but held her neck straight instead of stretching to provide him better access as she was tempted to do.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“Of course,” she said, even if her stiff posture proved her a liar. “But shouldn’t we be getting back to the case?”
“We will. Eventually.” He continued to nip at her neck.
She was tempted to just go with it, to let herself be swept away just as she’d been last night. But they’d wasted enough time already worrying about her issues when they needed to address his. They had to get back to the case, especially after her run-in with Trevor yesterday.
“Come on, Ben. Last night was...well, last night, but this morning we have to get back to reality. I’d already planned to tell you—”
“Always the workaholic. I like that about you.” He paused, pressing his lips into that spot on her neck where her pulse quickened. “You know, I like almost everything about you.”
Despite her determination to stay on topic, she couldn’t help asking, “Almost everything?”
“Isn’t that enough?” At Delia’s raised eyebrow, Ben answered her unspoken question. “I’m not a fan of the bun.”
She frowned. “What’s wrong with my bun?”
“Too tight.” He reached for a handful of her hair that was spread in every direction against her pillow. “Now this, I like.”
“It’s a mess.” She reached up with one hand to pat her hair down since she needed the other one to keep the blanket from slipping.
“I like messes.” He dropped a kiss right in the middle of the rat’s nest.
“You must.”
His grin as he pulled back suggested that he understood she’d meant more than just her tousled hair. At least he understood that he would be taking on a lot if he wanted to be with her. More baggage than could fill the belly of a 747.
Maybe it was just the old scars that had her uncomfortable this morning. Had she really believed that one perfect night—or even two—would blot out years of painful memories? Well, maybe she had, but she should have known better. There was no magic elixir. Even time hadn’t been a sufficient healer. So eventually she would have to take Ben’s advice and talk to a professional counselor who could help her deal with her past instead of fleeing from it. But not yet. Right now she knew better than to allow herself to think about it at all.
“Ben?”
He must have heard the frustration in her voice, because he blinked and then raised both hands in surrender.
“Okay. Okay. Let’s talk about the case.” He frowned. “There just hasn’t been anything new to tell lately.”
“There was something last night.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She cleared her throat. “I did try, but I didn’t really have the chance...”
“Right.” He swallowed, then nodded. “Well, can you tell me now?”
She glanced down at the blanket still tucked under her arms. “Could you please hand me my robe first?” With a tilt of her head, she indicated the fluffy periwinkle dorm robe on the chair next to the bed.
“Sure.”
He stretched and grabbed the robe, managing to keep the blanket from falling from his pelvis. If it seemed odd to him that she needed to cover up after last night, he didn’t say so.
She sat up, shifted her legs over the side of the bed and slipped her arms in the sleeves of the robe, carefully lowering the blanket from where it covered her upper body. Only after she’d cinched it at her waist did she pull the blanket away entirely. As she turned back to Ben, she had expected that he’d been watching the whole graceless process, but he wasn’t paying attention to her at all.
On the opposite side of the bed, he stood with his back to her. He was still shirtless, but he’d already pulled on his jeans and was zipping them. When he finished, he grabbed his sweater and yanked it over his head. He settled back on the opposite side of the bed, purposely avoiding brushing her skin this time, though she
could still feel his gaze on her. As awkward as Delia had felt before, she missed the soothing weight of his touch now, even if neither of them could afford the distraction.
* * *
BEN WAITED AS long as he could, just watching her. She looked bewildered. He didn’t want to admit that he’d hoped that one night with him would heal all of her wounds. Had he thought he had magic hands or something? Well, if he had thought that, the robe that she kept pulling tighter at the base of her throat suggested otherwise.
Finally, he couldn’t wait any longer. “Are you going to tell me what you figured out?”
“That’s the problem,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t figure out anything. But someone else found me out.”
A shiver danced up his spine, but he steadied himself. He didn’t even have the specifics yet. It wasn’t like him to react without compiling all the facts and weighing his options. But then he’d never been able to stop and think about anything first when Delia was involved.
“You’re not talking about Scott again, are you?” His words were rushed, as if by speaking quickly, he could make the answers come faster.
“It wasn’t Scott.” She pressed her lips together.
“Then was it Polaski?” He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them again. “I should never have let you become involved in this mess. Look, I’ll talk to him. I don’t know how much help I’ll be. Probably not much since I’m persona non grata. But I’ll try to make this right—”
“Ben,” she said in a firm voice. “It wasn’t him, either.”
He stopped, stared at her, his insides twisting in knots now. Had they miscalculated the risk of working together? Just how desperate was the person involved to keep the truth from coming to light?
“Then who was it? Tell me!” He gripped his hands together to keep from grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to spill it.
“I’m trying to tell you.” She drew her eyebrows together and then blew out a long breath.
But she didn’t say it immediately. Was this the answer to the question he’d had since that night when that reporter had appeared on the TV screen, gleefully describing the dismantling of his life? Was he prepared to hear the answer to the question that revealed which of his friends had betrayed him? Would he ever be ready for that?
“It was Trevor.”
“Trevor?” Disjointed thoughts smacked at each other from all directions, none finding the proper connections. “He can’t be the one who set me up. He wasn’t even here when most of those arrests went down.”
“Well, he’s the one who came after me at the end of my shift last night. He tracked me down at Kensington, asked me a bunch of questions and basically accused me of setting you up.” She paused and met his gaze. “Ben, he knows.”
“What does he know?”
She shook her head, frowning. “I can’t be sure. That I’m helping you? That I’m on to him? That we’re sort of, uh...together.” She sat straighter in the bed, tightening her robe over her chest.
She fidgeted, rubbing her palms together. “I don’t know if he really believes that I did it, or if he was just trying to throw suspicion off him.”
“I really wish you would have told me this last night.” His jaw tightened as fury unfurled inside of him. “Did he scare you?”
Her lips lifted. “Maybe I shouldn’t answer that. I’m a police officer. I’m not supposed to get scared. I’m just supposed to stay alert and take things as they come.”
“Of course you’re supposed to get scared. Fear is what helps you to proceed with caution. It prods you to call on your team members for backup.”
He crossed his arms, forcing his words to stop. Even after he’d confessed to her about his own fear during the bank incident, after their discussions about the importance of the team, she still couldn’t admit she’d been scared? That she’d realized she couldn’t handle the situation alone?
“Okay, it made me nervous,” she finally admitted with a tight laugh. “Particularly after the thing we witnessed at the park the other night. There are just too many coincidences.”
“And definitely too much risk,” he couldn’t resist adding.
“Do you think Trevor might be trying to set me up, too?”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so. How would he even know to target you?”
As soon as he’d said it, his insides gripped like a fist. Target. Had he unwittingly painted a bull’s-eye on Delia’s back to mark her for someone who already had it in for him?
How could Ben have been so reckless with Delia’s safety? From the beginning, they’d known that their partnership was tricky, but had it been naive of them to believe that only her career was at risk if someone discovered they were working together? They were involved in something they didn’t fully understand, tinkering in something that had to be bigger than a couple of guys escaping prosecution over selling a few dime bags of weed. And he’d sent a rookie cop in to investigate the case for him.
“If you still don’t believe it was Trevor, then why did he come after me? And if not him, then who?”
Clearly those were the critical questions. If they could answer them, they would have this whole thing settled. “I don’t know.”
“But we still can’t rule him out, either,” she insisted. “There were those drug cases in Manistique.”
“You’re right. We still need to get answers to those questions. Look, Delia, I can’t explain why Trevor asked so many questions, but my gut tells me it was one of the others who set me up. Someone I trust enough to make me vulnerable. Or, now, to put both of us at risk.”
For a few seconds, she was quiet, as if she was digesting his words. When she finally spoke, she didn’t look up at him. “Then I should tell you about the other things Trevor said.”
“You mean he didn’t just pepper you with questions?”
She shook her head. “When I told him I needed to get back to work, he told me to do that while I still could. Or something to that effect.”
“And is that it?” He managed through gritted teeth. How dare Trevor threaten the woman he loved? How dare he believe he could even come near her without facing consequences?
“One more thing. He said something about the answers coming out and not in a way I would like. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it gave me the creeps.”
Ben shivered. “I can’t let you do this anymore. It’s too dangerous.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t let me do anything. I volunteered.”
He shook his head. He had to present this delicately, to make her understand.
“But you’ve just had a taste of how out of hand this could become. It was a mistake for me to let you put yourself at risk like this. I should have thought it through. I should have realized that anyone who’d go to such lengths to protect drug dealers and to set me up would have no qualms about going after anyone who would help me. The suspect won’t hesitate to hurt you.”
He stopped, squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his head. “I can’t let that happen.”
Why hadn’t he considered that he might fall in love with her? That his need to protect her would be stronger even than his instinct to save his own hide. He glanced down at his lap, finding his hands almost in a stranglehold in the same way that his fingers ached to wrap around the neck of anyone who would dare to harm her.
He waited for some reaction from her, but when she didn’t speak, he couldn’t help but fill the silence.
“For your own safety, I’m asking you to stop digging for answers on this case, particularly at work. Just back away and let the state investigators do their jobs. I can no longer justify endangering you or your career to protect my freedom or my job.”
When he looked up at her at last, he found her staring back at him, a storm raging in her eyes. He knew he’d made a mistake before she spoke a single word.
“Are you listening to yourself, Ben? Are you really asking me to back off on an investigation because y
ou’re afraid I’ll get hurt?” She pushed off the bed and didn’t even bother tightening her robe as she stalked around the room, the opening falling loose over her chest.
“I didn’t mean...” Ben began, but he didn’t finish because he’d meant every word. The worst part was that she knew it, too.
“How can you say that to me after I’ve had to work so hard to get where I am? You know a female officer has to work twice as hard as a male officer to be taken seriously in uniform.” She turned back to him, trapping him with her stare. “I’m a cop. Just like you. This is my job. How can you ask me not to do it?”
He could have pointed out that this case wasn’t part of her job since she’d been specifically ordered to stay away from it—and him—but he wasn’t that foolish. She was already furious enough and, unlike him, she still had a gun.
Could he have said anything more disrespectful to a fellow police officer? Was being in love with her enough of an excuse for doing so? He shouldn’t have bothered asking himself that question because he already knew the answer. There was no excuse.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You’ve got that right. You shouldn’t have.” She paused from pacing to glare at him. “Do you have any idea how insulting it is for you to try to protect me?”
He swallowed and then nodded.
“This just shows that you never respected me as a fellow officer. It was all an act.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“All of those words about teamwork were just background noise to give the female cop the illusion that she was really part of the team.”
“That’s not fair. I never treated you differently because of your gender.” Until now, a voice inside him insisted. Did he believe she’d suddenly become less qualified because she’d stolen his heart? Just because she had become endlessly more valuable to him personally didn’t mean he had the right to place her in a padded box and shield her from harm.
“I don’t—” She suddenly stopped walking, tucked her chin to her chest and stared at the floor. After several heartbeats, she turned back to him and sighed. “You’re right. That wasn’t fair. But what you said wasn’t, either.”
