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Sean let out a long exhale as he bent over and retrieved the wok. His pounding heart knocked in his ears and his blood slowly slithered back into place. He rested the wok on the counter, next to the cat, and gave her a stern look. “Oh, now you want to throw things on the floor?” he scolded. “Not at 0500 when I need it.”
Delaney laughed and reached out to her. Callie immediately pressed into Delaney’s hand and accepted pets. “You little devil,” she said. Callie flopped on the counter and stretched. After a few more pets Delaney turned to him and offered a rueful smile. “I better get going. Early day at the shop.”
Sean kept his crushing disappointment to himself, even though the cat had probably done him a favor. His divorce was only a year old and his attempt to squelch his habit of rushing into things headlong was failing. As Delaney turned her back and headed for her helmet and gloves, he glared at the cat. “We’ll talk later,” he hissed as he followed behind Delaney.
“Dinner was great,” Delaney said as she stuffed her feet into her boots. “Thanks for having me.”
“You earned it.” Sean lifted her jacket and held it open. His body was normalizing, more and more sentience returning to his brain. It was the same sort of aftershock he experienced after chasing down a suspect, except now he wasn’t relieved and didn’t welcome the sensations. “Anytime you want peanut butter on a dessert spoon,” he joked, hoping to cover his disappointment at having her jerked from his arms so quickly, “you know where to come.”
Delaney slid her arms into her jacket and grabbed her helmet. “Highlight of the dinner,” she said with a grin.
“Liar.”
She grew quiet for a moment, her eyes traveling over his torso, then back up to his lips, then his eyes. “Bring the Harley in,” she said. “I’ll look at it even though you lost the race.”
“Really? You’re serious?”
“Sure.” She tilted her chin up, a twinkle in her eye. “I’ll check out your Willie, Detective. Get her purring again.”
Heat crept up the back of Sean’s neck, his body doing a sudden reversal. “Alright, then. I’ll bring her in soon.”
“Good.” Delaney’s hand rested on the doorknob. “I’ll make room for her in my shop. Give her a diagnostic and then see what needs fixing.”
“That’s really nice of you. I haven’t ridden the Willie in a long time.”
She bit down on her lower lip, near the corner of her mouth, and sort of snorted a laugh. “Understood.”
Sean laughed softly and glanced out at the setting sun. July had arrived with a lazy report, rolling in on the fading flowers, sometimes hot, seldom cool, with longer days and thicker air. “Ride home safe.”
“Always.”
Delaney hit the road, determined to let the evening wind and cooler temps blow away the residual desire running through her veins. She hadn’t planned on kissing Sean tonight, or any night. Relationships were not Delaney’s forte. She’d never stuck around long enough to establish roots, either for herself or anybody else. On top of that, she didn’t exactly have the female role model necessary to show her how a woman might behave in a healthy, long-term relationship. But after tonight’s dinner, Delaney had to admit that she might’ve met her match. No, Sean hadn’t won the race. But he’d damn well won something with how well he’d reacted to being on the losing end of a bet. Tasked with making dinner, he’d gone above and beyond, finding out what she liked to eat and then doing his best to provide it. He’d bought a wok, for God’s sake. He’d handled tofu, with no prior experience. That had to earn him some kind of gold star.
In the end, Delaney admitted that either the flowers or the peanut butter spoon had been the tipping point for her. Who else would have the balls to act on either one of those impulses? Good detective or no, that was quite the deduction he’d pulled off based on an old quilt tossed on the back of her sofa. And the peanut butter spoon? Delaney sputtered a laugh into her helmet. Who would really do that?
Sean was a risk-taker. That much was obvious. She counted herself lucky that the cat had interrupted their intimate moment before things went too far. Not that she hadn’t wanted to go far. She really, really had. But...then what? Relationships came and went, and by the time you started getting on each other’s nerves and looking for a way out, it was usually time for the next deployment. Problem solved.
This time, there would be no deployment. This time, Delaney might be here to stay. If there was one thing Delaney hadn’t learned how to do over the course of her nomadic life, it wasstay.
She idled at a stoplight, almost home. Only now that the wind had cooled her off did her desire sink like the setting sun before her. She shook off all thoughts of being in Sean’s arms before she got herself all worked up again. The light changed, and just as she started to edge her bike through the stoplight, she saw it.
At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks. But even later, she would close her eyes and relive the moment when she sat in the deep orange glow of sunset, her gaze on the flow of traffic coming from the opposite direction, and she would come to the same conclusion. Even if her eyes had deceived her, her ears had not. There was no mistaking that sound.
The sound of that motorcycle, flying through the intersection, heading south while she was headed north, with no way to turn around and give chase.
The Indian Four.
