by Megan Crane
She thought she was done, but he taught her otherwise. He taught her exactly how much she’d been holding back. And Kate felt moisture form in the corners of her eyes, because she’d never imagined anything could feel like this. So deep. So full. So perfect.
He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, and still he pounded into her. And she held on tight, meeting every thrust.
Connected. The word glimmered in her head, not quite making sense and yet making too much sense at the same time.
All her life she’d wanted this. This close. This intertwined. This incapable of telling one body from another.
She already knew that she never wanted this to end.
And she shattered so hard this time, so intensely, she wasn’t entirely sure she would survive it.
But she didn’t care, because he was right there with her.
It could have been days, then. Years.
Slowly, dizzily, Kate opened her eyes. Templeton was beside her, sprawled out and breathing hard at last.
He jackknifed up, going all the way to his feet. And she had the distinct pleasure of watching him walk away, gloriously naked. He went into the bathroom, and she heard the water running. She knew she should move. Get up, do something. But she didn’t. And when he came back into the room, he stood there for a moment, gazing down at her as if she were a gift.
“I’m gearing up to say something depressingly practical,” she told him, but her arms were still thrown up over her head, and the way his smile deepened, she could only imagine what she looked like. Thoroughly debauched, she was sure. “Appropriateness. Working relationship. Blah blah blah.”
“Gear up all you want, my little trooper,” Templeton said, his voice the deepest and darkest she’d ever heard it. And something almost fierce on his face, as if this wasn’t as easy for him as it seemed. “The weather outside is legitimately frightful. And I have plans for you. A lot of plans.”
Kate meant to object to that. She really did.
Templeton dropped down to the floor, then prowled toward her on his hands and knees, and she definitely wanted no part of his plans.
She needed to tell him that. She meant to.
But instead, when he wrapped her up in his arms and lifted her up against his shockingly beautiful body again, all Kate could seem to do was melt against him.
Eighteen
“Merry Christmas to you, too, jackhole,” Isaac growled into the phone at four thirty in the morning. “Who died?”
The obvious half-asleep crankiness in his best friend’s voice made Templeton that much happier that he’d decided to give the boss a call at his typical wake-up time.
“Are you sleeping in?” he asked, laughing. “I’m sorry, who is this? Isaac Gentry? Or some soft-bellied civilian?”
Isaac made a disgruntled sound. “Whether I sleep in or don’t is my business and definitely not something I plan to discuss on the phone. At this hour. While crashing on the pullout couch in my grandmother’s house.”
Isaac sounded . . . almost like a normal human, really. A regular guy—and not because he was putting on a show, for a change.
It was like Santa really had come.
“We spent an extra day in Fairbanks,” Templeton said. “Ice fog.”
Isaac grunted, because who hadn’t found themselves stuck in Fairbanks’s inversion layer at some point or another. Templeton opted not to give his friend a play-by-play outline of how he’d spent that extra day.
Trooper Holiday had taken the back of his head off. Repeatedly. Templeton was amazed that he’d managed to wake up at his usual time, shifting from a sound sleep to total alertness instantly, as was his way. And he’d known exactly who was curled up against his chest, nestled into him as if they’d always slept together like this, jigsaw puzzle pieces snapped together.
He’d never been the kind of man who reacted like a scalded cat at the very hint of affection or suggestion of intimacy. He’d never snuck off in the middle of the night, the better to avoid a conversation when the light came in. He left with a smile in the full force of daylight.
But the way he and Kate fit together made every single alarm go off inside him, loud and long. The way they had yesterday—but he hadn’t cared then. He’d gone outside to run a perimeter check and get a sense of the predawn weather, and he hadn’t been prepared for her when he’d come back inside. She’d been standing there in the kitchen, her brown eyes sleepy and her mouth soft, and Templeton had lost his fight there and then.
He very distinctly remembered thinking, Rules? What rules?
Waking up this morning, all he could think about were those rules. And how he’d broken every last one of them.
Over and over again.
He wanted to linger longer there, in the heat of the bed with her soft weight all over him, her hair drifting across his chest.
His heart had kicked at him—hard—like it knew things he didn’t about the mess he’d made. That was what had gotten him up and moving.
Because Templeton didn’t deviate from his routine. Deviation led to disaster.
And discipline was a practice, not a punishment, as he reminded himself when he went downstairs. Though maybe he was in the mood to punish himself, too, as he banged out his morning set of push-ups, crunches, and burpees, then two extra sets besides to get the blood flowing. He checked the weather, ran the frigid perimeter to make sure there were no uninvited guests of the human variety, then checked to see the status of potential flights.
He’d actually forgotten it was Christmas today. And that Christmas made disgruntled pilgrims out of every man with a family that still held on to expectations of a gathering. Blue was back in the suburb of Chicago he’d once vowed he’d rather bomb than visit, thanks to Everly. Griffin, the coldest and most remote individual Templeton had ever known—until the recent, gradual thawing that Mariah had brought about in him—was subjecting himself to his annual trip home to pretend to his family that he was normal, like them. That had always baffled and entertained Templeton, who had nowhere to go and no one to perform for.
But it was always the thought of Isaac, one of the most dangerous men alive, on a pullout sofa surrounded by his grandmother’s relentless Christmas cheer, that made his heart sing.
“Are the planes still grounded?” Isaac asked.
“Negative. They’re starting to let flights out at nine.”
“Are you headed back to Fool’s Cove?”
Templeton stood in the kitchen while the coffeemaker churned and sputtered, scowling out at the dark. “We’re heading down to Seward for a touching reunion with Samuel Lee Holiday.”
“There’s no love here in Anchorage,” Isaac said, sounding less grumpy. “Any religious separatist aspirations have taken a back seat to medical bills. Cancer, a couple car accidents. I’m hearing it’s the same story in Ketchikan. These malcontents look good on paper, but dig down into it another layer, and there’s nothing there.”
“We’re not finding a different story here,” Templeton told him. “The cousins were trigger-happy douchebags yesterday, but I don’t see them putting together anything sophisticated enough to sneak beneath our perimeter. We’re missing something. Still.”
“You figure Samuel Lee Holiday is pulling the strings?”
Templeton considered it. “I think Kate’s cousins wish that he was. But everything in Nenana felt more like a vigil than any seething hotbed of vigilante justice for past wrongs. And again, there’s only so much one old man can do from a cell.”
“What does your trooper think?”
Templeton ran his free hand over his head and hated that lurching sensation in his chest, which felt a whole lot like his heart carrying on in all the ways he’d been sure it never would. Ever again. Because everyone he’d ever loved, or felt something about, ended up dead.
But that wasn’t what
Isaac had asked him.
“I think she’s torn,” he said. “Part of her wants it to be him, because she’s familiar with that. She took him down once, so she probably thinks she’d do it again. On the other hand, it’s obviously better for everyone concerned if he’s as impotent as he ought to be.”
It was only after he’d answered that Templeton reflected on the fact that Isaac had called Kate his trooper.
Crap.
“What’s your read?” Isaac asked. He no longer sounded even remotely sleepy. Or, more precisely, he no longer sounded irritated that Templeton had supposedly woken him. Templeton wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Isaac sound truly sleepy. There was some debate as to whether or not the man actually slept. “Whether it is or isn’t her father, do you think she can handle the face-to-face?”
“She can pretend to handle anything. What price she’ll have to pay for that later, I don’t know.”
Isaac was quiet, which gave Templeton an opportunity to play that back to himself. What he should have said was that Kate was a well-trained Alaska State Trooper who could and would conduct herself in a professional manner no matter the circumstances. That’s exactly what he would have said if he’d been talking about any other law enforcement officer he might have been partnered with—right after he scoffed at the question even being asked.
He might as well have taken out a billboard to announce his relationship with Kate. He basically had.
“This is none of my business,” Isaac began.
“Like that’s ever stopped you before.”
“Here’s what we know about your trooper. She had one of the worst childhoods imaginable, and it’s not like you had a great one yourself. She emancipated herself at fifteen, literally. Put every adult in her life in jail. Unlike every other member of her family, she didn’t go crazy, didn’t spiral into darkness or a repeat of what she left. She became a trooper instead. Climbed the ranks, dedicated her life to taking down groups like her family. Thought that we’re one of those groups, so came on out to Grizzly Harbor and subjected herself to the Templeton Cross charm offensive.”
“I read her file, Isaac. And was there. I didn’t forget any of this.”
“Are you telling me that of all the women in the world—a revolting percentage of whom seem to find you attractive, for reasons unclear to me—”
“Bite me.”
“—this is the woman that you’ve decided to get close to? After all the carrying-on about your precious rules for all these years?”
“I didn’t tell you that. Deliberately.”
“Yeah, too bad I know you.” Templeton could see Isaac shaking his head over three hundred miles away in Anchorage. As if he were standing next to him in this cozy kitchen in Fairbanks. “Big laugh, big show, but if you didn’t care about her, you wouldn’t be psychoanalyzing what she’s pretending to feel. You wouldn’t have called me at four thirty to update me on your mission parameters when a text would do.”
“I was filled with the Christmas spirit,” Templeton lied. “I wanted to make sure Santa and his handy elves brought you the coal you deserve.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this woman has some trust issues, genius. What’s going to happen if she decides she can trust you?”
Templeton thought of their easy, unspoken choreography. At the scenes they’d visited and, better still, right here in this house. He found himself rubbing at his chest and slammed his hand down on the counter.
“Of course she can trust me.”
“To have her back in a firefight, sure. To work on a case together, great. But unless something has changed since—”
“I really don’t need you to remind me.”
Isaac was quiet for a moment. “You know my position on this. It wasn’t your fault. Sometimes missions go bad. That’s just the deal. I’ve been telling you this for years.”
“This situation has nothing to do with that.” But his voice betrayed him. It was too rough, too dark. It gave him away completely.
“It shouldn’t,” Isaac agreed. “But here’s what I know about you, Templeton. You’ve been beating yourself up since the day that car blew up. You’ve been squirrelly about working with local law enforcement ever since. Has something changed?”
“Please. I’m entirely too large to ever be called squirrelly.”
“Because I don’t think anything has changed,” Isaac said, answering his own question. “You like this woman. Great. But sooner or later your guilt is going to kick in, because it always does. And when that happens, you’re going to do what you always do. You’re going to flip that switch. No more happy-go-lucky Templeton. No more easygoing, big smile, too-lazy-to-breathe guy without a care in the world. It’s going to feel like a bait and switch to her because, guess what? It will be. She won’t like it, and you’ll leave anyway. Meanwhile, all of this could be avoided.”
Templeton rubbed a hand over his face and told himself that the churning in his gut was outrage, not the sneaking suspicion that all of this was an uncomfortable truth he didn’t particularly want to hear. “This is great stuff, Isaac. Really. And all the more poignant coming from a man whose only true long-term relationship is with his mobile phone. Oh, right. And with a woman who can’t stand the sight of him.”
It was a low blow, throwing Isaac’s messy situation with Caradine into the mix, but Templeton felt like low blows were going around. And right now, he felt a lot like kneecapping his best friend.
“Are you going to tell me those things aren’t going to happen?” Isaac asked, and Templeton was glad that there were so many miles between him and the leader of Alaska Force. Because he had the feeling that if there weren’t, that note of dark disapproval in Isaac’s voice would have been the least of his problems. “Kate is smart. She’s good at her job. And if this entire thing hinges around her and her family the way we think it does, she’s already on course for a crappy New Year. The last thing she needs is your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act.”
“I never know which one of those is which,” Templeton replied, more growl than anything else. “But this conversation is over. I’ll update you after we talk to the father.”
“Or you could not be a dumbass. Try that one on.”
Templeton hung up before he said something he’d regret. Something else he’d regret.
And he wished, maybe for the first time since they’d started Alaska Force, that Isaac wasn’t one of his oldest friends. Because if he had the same relationship with Isaac almost everyone else did, Isaac could remain the wise, distant leader. Diplomatic, but never involved. Instead of the friend who felt it necessary to tell Templeton things he really didn’t want to hear.
He moved from the kitchen into the living room of Isaac’s sister’s house, no light anywhere except for the flames in the woodstove. He stared in the general direction of the fire, but he didn’t see anything. He was far away, back in the past, neck-deep in yet another mission he couldn’t discuss in a place he couldn’t name. His contact had been a high-ranked aide to one of the local president’s cabinet ministers. She’d served as part of the man’s security team, and she’d been good at her job. Better still, she and Templeton had made an excellent team. In and out of bed.
And no one, not Isaac or the United States military, could convince him that it wasn’t that teamwork that had gotten her killed.
A last-minute call had kept Templeton out of the convoy he’d supposed to be in. He remembered the sound of the explosion and his split-second realization of what it meant. Then he’d been running to the wreckage, hoping for survivors, and denying the evidence he could see with his own two eyes.
And later, after the shock had worn off and Templeton’s team was back on American soil, he’d understood the real truth. It was him. It was his fault. He was some kind of walking Bermuda Triangle—let a woman care about him and she w
as doomed. His mother had been the first, the aide was the second.
Yeah, he had some past trauma around working with anyone not trained the same way he was. About letting a woman care about him when he knew what would happen next. He’d made a lot of rules around that, for everyone’s safety.
Which meant he knew exactly what he had to do here. Now. Before what was going on with Kate got any more intense.
“Why are you standing in the dark?” she asked from behind him.
And he nearly jumped out of his skin, which was embarrassing. He should have heard it the moment she sat up in bed upstairs. He certainly should have heard her come down those stairs. He couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had managed to sneak up on him.
There was only one thing to do about this. He needed to pull the trigger. Now.
Templeton turned around, and Kate was standing there before him. Not a ghost. Not shades of his own past, his own guilt.
Just . . . Kate.
Beautiful Kate, who tasted sweet everywhere. She had her hair up in a lopsided knot on her head, her shoulders were high enough to suggest she was trying to ward him off, and she was scowling like she was having similar internal debates with herself. Right now.
Templeton should have sung a few hallelujahs. Instead, he . . . didn’t like that idea at all.
Kate rubbed at her face. “You’re staring at me. It’s weird.” She said that matter-of-factly and didn’t sound as if she was looking for a response. Good thing, because he didn’t have one. “It’s much warmer this morning. I want to go for a run. A hard one, if you’re up for it.”
And he could have psychoanalyzed her. He could have pointed out that it made sense to go test herself on a snowy road in “much warmer” ten-degree weather, because a much bigger test was coming her way later today. Or that working up a sweat was a terrific way to clear her head and pretend last night hadn’t been one big, epic jumble of crossed lines.
But he didn’t say any of that. Because he didn’t want to look too closely at himself.
“Bring it on,” he told her instead.
