by Megan Crane
Isaac was standing over by the flat-screen TV, where Oz normally put up various schematics and photographs. He smiled.
Because Isaac always smiled directly at any potential threats.
“Trooper Holiday,” he said, with a genial sort of chuckle in his voice that made a wise man sit up a little straighter. “If you can’t beat them, join them, right? It’s a time-honored strategy for a reason.”
But Kate did not disappoint.
“I may not think you’re responsible for the string of crimes plaguing this division,” she replied coolly. “But I’m certainly not joining your private army.”
Blue let out a laugh from where he was sitting, his tablet in his hand. “You tell them,” he said. “Never be a member of a club that would have you. Everybody knows that.”
Templeton surveyed the room. He knew that Rory and Griffin were out doing some recon fieldwork around the sites of each fire. That was in addition to the teams farther afield, in play in more distant locations. But Jonas was here, sitting over by the big stone fireplace, while Bethan was about as far away as it was possible to sit from Jonas—diagonally across the great room—and still be in the same space.
Interesting things about Jonas and Bethan included Jonas’s distinct, unusual objection to her hiring, when he typically offered either no opinion or quiet support to new members. Also the fact that the two of them never made eye contact. They never sat next to each other, close to each other, or anywhere that could even be loosely described as near each other. And when they were forced to speak to each other, or couldn’t avoid partnering up for some reason during Isaac’s horrendous workouts, they were so excruciatingly polite to each other that it could cause dental trauma to anyone in the vicinity.
Fascinating, Templeton thought, the way he always did, filing away the weirdness between the two of them.
“Now that you’re here,” Isaac said smoothly, still smiling, “we need to talk strategy.” He raised his brows in Kate’s direction. “Do you know the status of the Troopers’ investigation?”
“I know that it’s an active investigation,” Kate replied in that calm way that was clearly meant to slap down anyone who came at her. And very likely did the trick, most times. “I’m not here to interfere with that, or them, in any way. I need that to be clear right now, or there’s no point going forward.”
Templeton found himself grinning.
“If you’re not here to help figure out what’s going on, then why are you here?” Jonas asked from across the room. He stood still. Too still, as always. He was a man who chose his words carefully, wasted few of them, and was perfectly happy to sit in silence otherwise. And the force of his attention was enough to make the unwary trip over their own two feet.
Templeton thought he saw Kate stiffen slightly, but she didn’t back down. “I don’t know what kind of bargain you all had to make to go from serving your country to serving your own interests,” she said.
“That’s not what we do,” Isaac retorted, even as the tension level in the room ratcheted up.
Templeton, maybe because he was used to the kind of spice Kate liked to throw around, or maybe because he’d tasted her and knew exactly what it took to make his cool, prickly trooper melt, only laughed.
“Oh, do you work for free?” Kate asked sweetly.
“We’re a business,” Isaac said. And his smile was edgy, if you knew where to look. “Businesses rarely work pro bono.”
“Call it whatever you like,” Kate replied, and her chin tilted up a few notches. “I took a vow to serve, with honor, the people of the state of Alaska. I’m not going to do anything that compromises that vow.”
Jonas seemed to turn to stone to match the fireplace behind him. Blue scowled. And even Bethan, who had so far maintained pretty much of a poker face in all scenarios, looked like she was thinking of breaking enough to frown herself.
“Settle down, Trooper,” Templeton drawled. “Everyone in this room is committed and honorable. You’re the only one making cracks about other people’s promises.”
And to his surprise, Kate inclined her head.
“You’re right,” she said in the same cool way. She folded her arms over her chest and then looked around to meet everyone’s gaze for a moment. “I apologize.”
Capable, kissable, and able to admit when she was wrong? Templeton thought he might have died and gone to the heaven he’d never believed in. Not for a man like him. Even when Isaac started talking, laying out possibilities, he couldn’t seem to stop looking at Kate like she was his next meal. And dessert.
And a delicious hereafter.
This was nothing but a temporary holiday thing that would help him focus on the task at hand, he reminded himself. Or she would break his rules, and he couldn’t have that.
“Oz went through your closed cases,” Isaac was telling Kate. “He broke them down into three groups. Cases he thought were unlikely to produce this kind of reaction, cases he thought were either likely or at least possible, and then another set of cases that just got to him, one way or another.”
“Got to him?” Kate asked crisply, as if she hadn’t been chastised. As if she hadn’t apologized.
Again, it made Templeton want to get his hands all over her. And while he was at it, taste her again. And this time, everywhere he wanted to taste her. Not only her wide, generous mouth.
Once he did, once he glutted himself on her, he’d be able to stop all of this obsessing. He was sure of it.
Isaac gave the impression of shrugging without actually doing it. “Things he thought were weird or that tweaked him a little. He would be able to tell you why.”
“I understand. Gut feeling.”
“Do you discount gut feelings, Officer?” Jonas asked, his gaze hooded.
Kate’s smile was 100 percent police. “I wouldn’t be much good at my job if I did.”
Jonas nodded, as if that was settled. And maybe more than Kate’s thoughts on gut feelings.
“We think it would be enormously helpful if you sat down with these lists and went through them to see what pops up for you,” Isaac continued. “Then let’s see what kind of overlap we have between Oz’s lists and your lists.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Kate said.
“Templeton can show you where to set up.” Isaac nodded at everyone else. “Let’s get to it.”
Templeton stayed where he was as the rest of the team went off to get to work. Only when everyone was gone did he get up, taking his sweet time and watching Kate’s face while he did it.
“Are you pissed at me because I called you out?” he asked. Mildly.
“You weren’t wrong, and I apologized,” Kate replied in an infinitely serene way that Templeton didn’t bother to pretend he couldn’t feel all over him. He wanted more. More of that mouth, because the last thing it was when it was under his was cool or calm or serene. “I’m not sure why we’re revisiting the subject. Are you one of those people who can’t take an apology?”
“There’s not much I can’t take, Trooper,” Templeton rumbled at her. “As I’m happy to demonstrate at any point.”
“I’m so glad that you reminded me about your penchant for off-color remarks,” she said loftily, and he knew he wasn’t mistaking the challenging gleam in her gaze. “We’re working together now. So as inappropriate as it was for you to be doing this before, it’s even more so now.”
“We’re not officially working together,” Templeton replied easily enough. Because he’d thought about this way too much, clearly. “And even if we were, guess what? I’m a grown-ass man who makes his own decisions about his romantic life. My assumption was that you, too, were an adult and fully in charge of what you do and don’t do. Or do you need to hide behind rulebooks so you don’t have to feel anything?”
“I don’t even know where to begin with that.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Templeton said, roaming toward her. He watched how her eyes widened, then heated. It was about the hottest thing he’d ever seen. And he didn’t know how he kept himself from reaching over and getting his hands on her again. “What did you dream about?”
For a moment her face was blank. Then she flushed, bright and red enough to heat the whole of the lodge.
“Yeah,” Templeton said with deep satisfaction. “That’s what I thought.”
He picked up her bag again, carrying it as he pushed out the lodge’s front door. She came after him, and he could hear from the way her boots hit the deck that he’d pissed her off. A better man would probably not have found that as amusing as he did.
Oh well.
He led her along the intersecting wooden walkways until they reached the cabin that had been set up for her. He opened the front door, beckoning her in. And watched with sheer delight as the stiff way she preceded him told him all he needed to know about her mood.
It worked for him. Maybe he should have been concerned about how much it worked for him.
“I know this isn’t much,” he said as they looked around the cabin together. It was two rooms and a bathroom. The living room was furnished and winterized, and Oz had carefully laid out all the devices Kate would need to access the lists he’d made. There was a couch, a woodstove for heat, and a table in front of the window looking out over the misty cove. “But it’s yours as long as you’re here.”
“No secret handshake?” she asked coolly. “No initiation rituals?”
Templeton let his gaze rest on hers too long. With too much heat. “I can haze you if you want, Kate. But you have to ask nicely.”
Kate made a point of wrenching her bag out of his grasp. She marched into the other room, where Templeton knew there wasn’t a whole lot. A bed, a dresser. Rustic walls with very little in the way of ornamentation. A thick rug to keep the cold out.
Every now and again a client came to Fool’s Cove and stayed in one of these cabins. And then flipped out, because it was so stark and remote. And much too Alaskan.
But Kate wasn’t a client. And better still, she was local born and bred.
He stayed where he was, propping up the wall next to the front door until she came back out again and stood in the doorway to the bedroom.
And Templeton was not a teenage boy. He needed reminding, because all he could think about was that bedroom. That bed. And how easy it would be to cross the cabin floor in a step. Pick her up and hold her against him, then bear her down sweet and certain onto that bed.
His mouth watered. His sex registered its enthusiasm.
But Templeton stayed where he was. Maybe to prove he could.
“No,” Kate said.
Very distinctly.
“What do you mean, no?” Templeton protested with a laugh. “I didn’t do anything. Or ask you anything.”
“I can see your face. So I’ll repeat myself. No.”
Now he was enjoying himself. More, that was. He lounged as he stood there, crossing his arms and propping one boot up on the other in front of him to look that much more languid.
He’d seen his trooper in various versions of her uniform. And in early morning, cold-weather running gear.
But this was the first time he’d seen her dressed as . . . Kate. Or what he assumed was just her, nothing else. She wore tough-looking technical pants that licked their way over her strong thighs and athletic calves to tuck into boots appropriate for anything Alaska could throw her way. On top she wore a jacket she’d unzipped when she’d entered the lodge, and a dark green sweater he’d guess was wool. Hardy and practical yet quietly elegant.
And it wasn’t the kind of green that the locals wore, which could double as camouflage. It was more of a jewel tone, which suggested to Templeton that his trooper had more girl inside her than she liked to let on. Her hair was in a ponytail, sleek and neat, and she wore the kind of makeup that looked like no makeup at all. And he thought, This is Kate on leave. A woman who looked exactly like the cop she was, but with a few hints here and there that maybe there was more to her than her job.
More to her, full stop, that he had every intention of enjoying.
Temporarily.
“I don’t need you to help me read through my old cases,” she said, her voice as even and faintly disinterested as her gaze was wary. And still too hot. “So if that’s all . . . ?”
“Are you dismissing me?”
“It doesn’t appear to be working.”
“You’re not here in an official capacity, Trooper,” he reminded her. “Which means that unlike when you were, I don’t have to jump to obey your commands, do I?”
“I don’t recall you jumping. Certainly not at my command.”
“You tossed me out of the Water’s Edge Café. And my feelings are hurt that you can’t remember that example of my perfect obedience.”
“I don’t think you know the meaning of the word obedience.”
“That sounds a lot like an offer to teach me what I’m missing, Kate.”
“It’s really not.”
Templeton didn’t point out that for all her bluster, her eyes sparkled as they went back and forth. And he could see the smile she was trying to bite back. He didn’t point out what he knew, which was that if he reached over there and got his hands on her, she would melt into a puddle.
And moan against him. And taste so sweet and hot he wasn’t sure he’d recovered from it yet. Or would. Something he was pretty sure he knew how to remedy.
He didn’t point any of that out; he just enjoyed it.
“Don’t you have something to do?” she asked when all he did was gaze back at her. “Impressive physical feats? Various acts of controlled violence? Or maybe you need to go somewhere and . . . recharge all this.”
She nodded at him when she said that last part.
“Recharge?”
“I don’t know. I imagine you must need to take all that Templeton-ness and plug it in somewhere. So you can keep simmering away like this without interruption.”
“That sounds a whole lot like a challenge to my masculinity.”
She smiled. “If your masculinity is as fragile as a flower, sure.”
“I’ll say this as delicately as I can, Kate,” Templeton said. With great deliberateness. “I don’t need to recharge. I can go all night, tomorrow, and into next week if necessary. And nothing about it is fragile. Or delicate. Anytime you want me to provide you with a demonstration, just ask.”
And, once again, he had the distinct pleasure of watching her turn several different shades of pink, edging over into red. There was nothing he didn’t like about Kate in cop mode. But Kate flustered made his chest tighten in purely male anticipation.
“I’m going to have to take an extremely hard pass on that,” she said after a moment, in a voice that was all woman. Rough and warm. No trace of trooper at all.
“As long as we agree it’s hard,” Templeton replied.
Because he couldn’t seem to help himself.
And he left her then, before he couldn’t, because her eyes were too bright and her cheeks were bright red. He shoved his way outside and found himself whistling all over again, though he knew, intellectually, that the day was gloomy and wet and cold.
But as far as he was concerned, it was the height of summer. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and all the pretty birds were singing, because Kate was hot and bothered when she looked at him—and, best of all, part of the team in all the ways that mattered and yet not a coworker.
He was in no danger here. No danger at all.
As far as Templeton was concerned, Christmas had just come early.
Ten
What Kate wanted to do, though it was completely out of character, was dither around the cabin like a giddy teenage girl—the ones she’d w
atched on the television shows she’d studied when she’d first come out of her father’s compound, to try to understand what she’d missed of the world—spinning around and around on another Templeton trip.
Luckily, she was actually the grown adult Templeton had reminded her she was earlier. And an officer of the law, thank you. Which meant that after only the tiniest little bit of dithering—which in her case looked nothing at all like the girls on television and happily involved nothing more undignified than staring at the door he’d closed behind him—she ordered herself to stop. Immediately.
She did not moon at doors after inappropriate men. It was time to stop overthinking all things Templeton Cross and get down to the reason she was here, neck- deep in the gray areas she abhorred with a band of commandos.
“Veterans,” she corrected herself out loud, in almost as salty a tone as one of the Alaska Force members would have used. “Deeply committed veterans of our nation’s elite special forces, that’s all.”
Kate found a mini refrigerator masquerading as an end table on the far side of the couch, stocked with a selection of cold drinks. Better still, there was a coffeemaker in the small not-quite-a-kitchen area, with a hot plate to one side and a bag of ground Black Cup Fisherman Blend coffee beans. That was really all she needed as she settled onto the couch and dived straight back into her past.
It took her the first little while to move past her uneasiness at how much information Alaska Force had compiled on her past cases. Meaning, they had everything but her personal notes, and they shouldn’t have been able to access any of it, surely.
But once she let that go—because the point of Alaska Force, as far as she could tell, was their ability to do things they shouldn’t, and if she wasn’t prepared to handle that, she might as well go back to her impersonal apartment in Juneau while Christmas bore down on her like an angry grizzly—she sank into the task.
She started with the cases Oz had dismissed. As she went through them, she was pretty sure she’d figured out his methodology. The cases he thought were unlikely to relate to what had been going on here lately were the ones that mostly featured very small disorganized groups. A couple and their child, for example, off in a lean-to making noise one winter. Or lone-gunmen types, who tended more toward manifestos than military operations.
