this is my friend’s first-grade classroom. I can’t have sex on her floor.”
“Or her desk?”
“Oh, God no.” She laughed, burying her face in his sweater. “I’d never be able to look her in the face again.”
“So we have to stop.” He paused, as if waiting for her to argue, but she was silent. “I don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to, either.” She took a deep breath. “But we have to.”
“Then we need to stop touching now.”
Very reluctantly, she backed away from him. Her face felt hot and flushed, and he looked a little hot and bothered himself. “Let’s find some paperclips and get you back to your poker buddies before they come looking for us.”
Brody held her hand for the walk back to the gym, and Delaney couldn’t help but feel things had changed between them. The hurt that had flared up when she saw him again had faded away and they were falling back into their old passionate but comfortable relationship.
She needed to remember that relationship she’d been so comfortable in had ended in pain and tears, though. Five years ago, Brody had kissed her and held her hand, and then he’d taken off in the night. No matter how good it felt to have him back, Delaney couldn’t forget he was only there because he couldn’t leave.
He released her hand before going through the doors into the gym, but not before giving her a quick kiss. Then he looked into her eyes for a few seconds. “I’d ask if you want to play with us, but now I remember just how bad your poker face is.”
She wanted to ask him what he saw in her eyes, but before she could work up the courage, he’d opened the door, brandishing the boxes of paper clips as though he’d been foraging for food and returned with a bounty.
Delaney watched as a group of kids swarmed him, their excitement obvious. But then she noticed Camille watching her watch her son and turned away. She was going to have to work on that poker face.
* * *
“HARD TO BELIEVE you made a living out of playing poker, son.”
Brody snorted, but it was hard to deny the fact his pile of paper clips was significantly smaller than the old man’s. “Maybe it’s strategy. Sucker you in and make you feel safe so you start betting large.”
“Or maybe you’re spending too much time watching that girl and not enough time watching your cards.”
If Delaney had been in the casinos and back rooms, fussing over people and checking things off her clipboard, Brody would probably have about two dollars to his name and be living in his car. If he still had one. She was one hell of a powerful distraction.
“What girl?” one of the kids asked. Jason, he thought his name was. He was the son of the guy who’d been a mouthy punk in school but was now, as Sandy had said, just a dad stuck in a room with his two boys waiting for the storm to end.
“No girl. My dad thinks he’s funny.” But he couldn’t keep himself from glancing in Delaney’s direction.
She caught him looking and smiled. He smiled back. The awkwardness between them had eased up and she wasn’t dodging his gaze anymore. He liked that. A lot.
“Much more of this and I’ll take everything you own,” Donnie Cox said, laying down his cards and sweeping the pile of paper clips into his own growing pile.
“Dammit.” Brody tried to force his attention back to the game.
“That’s a bad word,” Jason said. Really loudly.
“Sorry,” Brody said in the general direction of all the heads that swiveled to glare at him.
Most of the younger kids had grown bored with all the thinking that went into playing poker and were, probably much to Delaney’s delight, off playing Go Fish along with some game that seemed to consist of the kids slapping each other’s hands every time a jack turned up in the pile.
Once Jason moved on, probably lured away by the idea of slapping his brother, the guys played a few more hands before they lost interest. Brody shuffled the cards, strangely comforted by the familiar feel and motion in his hands, but he didn’t deal again.
“Becks is after me to pump you for information, you know,” Donnie said. “Took you guys quite a while to find paper clips considering every room in this building is, you know, a school room.”
“Delaney wasn’t comfortable taking them from just anybody’s classroom. One of the first grade teachers is a friend of hers, so we had to walk all the way to her room. And back.”
“Not judging. I wouldn’t mind a little alone time with my wife right about now.”
Brody wanted to point out he and Delaney hadn’t had that kind of alone time, but he figured it would go in one ear and out the other. People seemed to have made up their minds they were a couple again and nothing he said was going to keep the speculation down. It would only make them more determined to be right.
Maybe they were. He really wasn’t sure what was going on with them, but whatever it was felt right to him. It felt natural to kiss her and hold her hand in the hallway. What hadn’t felt natural was ending things in the classroom before it got any more physical. He’d wanted her badly—hell, he still did—but he hadn’t packed condoms for his less-than-two-days trip back to his hometown.
He glanced up again and caught Delaney looking at him. She was pretending to listen to the women around her talking, but the steamy look in her eyes almost made him flub his shuffle and blow cards everywhere.
“You two have to stop making eye contact,” his dad said, “or your mother’s going to get all kinds of ideas in her head.”
Brody jerked his attention back to the cards and dealt them out, without even asking if his dad and Donnie wanted in. He needed the distraction because he was starting to get ideas of his own in his head.
And those ideas were going to get him into nothing but trouble.
CHAPTER SIX
THINGS WERE QUIET in the gym on Wednesday morning. Nobody was sleeping soundly and it was starting to take a toll on people. And the sense of adventure was wearing off for the kids. They wanted their video games and favorite foods and their freedom. Everybody was doing their best to stay upbeat, if only for the children, but spirits were flagging.
Even if it came with an air of depression, Delaney was thankful for the quiet. She’d seen so much of Brody from a distance. He played with the kids and talked with the adults. Helped out wherever he could. Nobody would ever guess he’d been dragged back into the community against his will.
But she liked sitting on the floor with him in a quiet corner, on small cushions he’d made by folding up their blankets. They were side by side, and he had a sleeping Noah cradled in his left arm and the fingers of his right hand were laced through hers.
She’d be lying if she said it didn’t tug at her heart, the way they were sitting there like a little fake family. He was so good with Noah—and with the other kids—and she’d done a lot of thinking
