style="font-size:15px;"> She cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Peterson.”
“Delia.”
He caught her sidelong glance and smiled. “We don’t have to be so formal off the clock.”
“I know.”
Not that she would ever be comfortable addressing any of them informally. Skipping titles was like ignoring the chain of command. Something she never did. Yet now she found herself rolling his first name around on her tongue. Ben. Because it tasted a little too nice, she again returned to her menu, deciding between a ham-and-Swiss panini and a Caesar salad.
“Glad you decided to come.”
She blinked. Of course, she’d said she planned to come, but he’d been right to doubt she was serious. She searched madly for a safe topic and then blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“I’ve never seen you in contacts before.” That wasn’t what she was going for. She’d just admitted to watching him when he wasn’t wearing them.
“Yeah, I just wear them when I want to look about eleven.”
“Are you kidding? You look every bit of thirteen.” Why couldn’t she stop herself? Now he knew she’d noticed his baby face. And maybe even that she liked it.
At the brush of his arm against hers, Delia startled and whacked her other elbow against the side of the table. She crossed her arms, as much to brush away uncomfortable tingles as to rub her smarting joint, and give her nervous hand something to do.
“Sorry.”
“No big deal.”
He leaned in close and spoke again in a low voice. “Just promise you won’t compliment me again.”
She tried not to shiver as his warm breath tickled her ear and neck. She forgot about the pain in her arm altogether. “Oh, I promise,” she choked out.
If only she hadn’t opened her big mouth earlier today, then maybe she wouldn’t be on sensory overload now. She wanted to believe that, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that even if she’d shut down her primary senses, she would still be every bit as unsettled by his nearness.
“Good. Of anybody, I knew I could count on you to keep this in perspective.”
Of anybody? His words ripped her right out of her off-limits daydream, leaving a path of irritation in the gaping tear. Was he praising her or slamming her? Did he know that she’d been watching him to see how he would handle his moment in the spotlight? She expected him to look back to her with a knowing expression, but instead he turned to the waitress and ordered a bacon cheeseburger.
Without saying more, he leaned in to listen to a conversation farther down the table. Apparently, this was just like any other day for him. She was the only one who’d worried that there had been a shift in their professional relationship. Had she overreacted? She might as well have called in the bomb squad for a one-block power outage. With a frown, she turned to the waitress and ordered the salad.
Ben, whom she’d suddenly started thinking of as Ben, was oblivious to her discomfort as he spoke to the other lieutenant across the table.
“What did you think about that Red Wings game last night? Killed the Avalanche, didn’t they?”
Lieutenant Campbell shook his head, chuckling. “A man with five kids? When would I have time to watch pro hockey?”
Delia rolled her eyes. Not that she cared, but male officers often 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
