“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Had he just asked me on a date? Right in the middle of my railing at him?
“I asked if you’d go on a date with me,” he confirmed.
A warm feeling that had nothing to do with anger coursed through me, making my fingertips tingle. “What about the hurricane?” I asked stupidly.
“What about it? It’ll be blown out by then, or on its way to the Carolinas.” He smiled, his teeth a flash of white in his tan face, his eyes lightening to a marine blue. “Well?”
“Okay.”
“Just ‘okay’?” He arched his brows quizzically.
“I’d like to go to dinner with you, John Dillon,” I amended. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“Much better.” He leaned forward, catching me by my upper arms, and before I could move, he pressed a hard, brief kiss on my lips. “I really like the way you’re so passionate about your friends.”
And before I could react—kiss him back? push him away?—he had turned and was striding down the hall. The bell rang and the hall flooded with students, hiding him from my sight.
Chapter Twelve
I STOOD IN THE HALL, AN OBSTACLE THE STUDENTS flowed around, for a good thirty seconds. In that time, my mind flitted from the zing I’d felt from Dillon’s two-second kiss, to the way his eyes changed color with his moods, to wondering what I should wear on Friday. I should’ve asked where we were going. Ye gods, you’d think I’d never been on a date the way I was letting it disrupt my thoughts. As students filtered into the locker room behind me to dress for gym, I knocked on Coach Peet’s door. If Agent Dillon thought asking me out would distract me from clearing Rachel’s name by figuring out who really killed Braden McCullers, he had another think coming.
“Come,” Coach Peet called in a gruff voice.
I pushed open the door. His metal desk was relatively bare of papers, but football trophies of varying heights stood along two sides of the desk’s top, like soldiers on guard. Three folding metal chairs sat in front of the desk, and a pile of what looked like lost-and-found stuff—shoes, jerseys, an umbrella, some books—cluttered one corner. “Do you have a moment?” I asked.
He looked down at me over the condor nose. “Who are you?”
“I’m—”
“Oh, you were at the ghost hunt. What do you want?”
His tone and manner were less than welcoming, but I plowed ahead. “It’s about what happened—”
He scraped back his chair and stood, revealing a yellow and white St. Elizabeth Sabertooths jersey and basketball shorts over hairy legs. A whistle hung midway down his chest. “I don’t have time,” he said, scooping up a basketball from under his desk. “Got a class to teach.”
“I’ll walk with you,” I said, backing up so he could get past me into the hall.
“Unh,” he grunted.
I took that as permission and walked beside him as he strode toward the gym. “I just want to know more about Braden McCullers. Was he a good student? A good football player? Did he get along well with the other guys on the team?”
Peet shot me a sideways glance. “You went to school here, didn’t you? Eight or ten years back? Played volleyball, right?”
It was more like twelve years ago, but I just said, “Right.”
“What the hell’s in this for you?”
I gave him a puzzled look. “In it? Nothing. But there are some ugly rumors going around about Rachel Whitley and I want to dispel them.”
He worked his lips in and out. “Whitley. Don’t know the name. She’s not an athlete.”
So that made her a second-class citizen? Or worse, a suitable murder suspect? I tamped down my rising irritation. “Being an athlete isn’t everything.”
He gave a crack of laughter, the sound Columbus must have heard when he announced the world wasn’t flat. “Okay. McCullers. Outstanding wide receiver. Recruited by Notre Dame and LSU but hadn’t committed yet. He was considering MIT.”
His tone said what he thought of that choice. “Good student. At least, I never had to go to bat for him, try to get teachers to bump his grades up so he’d stay eligible. Wish I could say that for a few more of my players.” Rubbing a hand across his jaw, he pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “A bit too much of a straight arrow, though. You know what I mean—turning in teammates who might have had a coupla beers before driving home after a game, testifying against a buddy who was up on vandalism charges—”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Keeping drunk drivers off the street was a darn good thing, in my opinion. Ditto for vandals.