by Megan Crane
“Okay.”
The placid agreement came too quickly to be real. “I see her every year over the holidays. She and Oscar have three kids now. Good cars. Vacations during summer break. A nice house in the same neighborhood where we grew up. As far as I can tell, she’s happy.”
Gabrielle had told him so herself at a Christmas Eve party he’d been forced to attend with his entire family during his Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing week. She’d gripped Oscar’s arm and they’d both beamed at him, obviously terrified. They clearly worried a whole lot about Griffin.
More than he ever had about them, if he was entirely honest with himself.
He might have been tempted to share that fact had his sister, Vanessa, not steered him away from the pair of them. In a hurry.
“And let’s be real here,” he continued now. “I could never have been happy in that world. Oscar likes being a dentist. He likes taking his kids to Little League and the Girl Scouts and working on his front yard on the weekends when it’s not too hot. That’s not the life I want. That’s not who I am. If it was, I wouldn’t have joined the Marines in the first place. I should have cut Gabrielle loose when I enlisted.”
“I said okay, brother.”
“And even if I wasn’t okay with her choices a hundred years later, it wouldn’t affect my work now. I’m offended that anyone would think otherwise.”
This time, when Isaac turned toward him, Griffin met his stare.
“I’m not commenting on your work, dumbass. I’m pointing out that you’re having a reaction to a pretty blond woman who looks a whole lot like the one who cheated on you with your best friend, then turned around and married him instead of you. It’s not crazy that you might have some stuff crop up around that.”
“Now I’m offended that you think I need to . . . what? Talk about my feelings? What’s next? Are you going to give me a unicorn stuffed animal? Are we going to make friendship bracelets?”
Isaac laughed, though Griffin couldn’t tell if the laughter made it to his canny eyes. Horatio’s head cocked to one side, as if he wasn’t fooled. Isaac clapped a hand on Griffin’s shoulder.
“I’ll come with you into town,” he declared, pulling Mariah’s cell phone from his pocket and flipping it over to Griffin. “I want to meet this blond woman who doesn’t remind you of anyone, is in no way a ghost of your own complicated past, and absolutely, one hundred percent, doesn’t get beneath your skin.”
Griffin had a lot of things he would have liked to say to that, but decided it was better to maintain a dignified, affronted silence instead. Because if anyone had ever gone head-to-head with Isaac Gentry and won, he sure hadn’t heard about it.
He and Isaac took one of the boats this side of the spring breakup of all the winter ice. The frozen rivers inland were starting to flow again. The snow that had been packed down hard all winter had started to melt, leaving mud and puddles everywhere. Even the sea was settling down as the days stretched out longer and longer.
Griffin had been born and raised in the desert—and he’d joined the Marines, not the navy. He was fully competent, but he was also more than comfortable letting Isaac do the navigating through the dark, with the expertise he’d learned growing up here.
This part of Alaska had been settled by prospectors out of places like Seattle, San Francisco, and Russia, drawn to the mountains by rumors of gold. They’d mingled with the natives that were already here when the gold didn’t pan out, then carved out hardy settlements where the edge of the world met the elements and often lost, and they dug in. There was no living here without contending with nature in a major way, day in and day out. No one here was indifferent to the seasons. There were four, they were distinct and challenging in their own ways, and everyone tracked them with the obsessiveness of people whose lives depended on knowing what was coming. Because they did.
Tonight Griffin felt the cold slap of the wind on his face as Isaac took them out into the swells, then along the coast of the island to Grizzly Harbor. But it was already significantly warmer out on the water than it had been a few weeks back. He’d call it downright balmy.
The members of Alaska Force lived in their own cabins in the woods around Fool’s Cove, with views out over the same intense sea. Some of those cabins were connected to the lodge. Some were accessible by a short hike. Still others were set back in the woods, off anything resembling a grid. All that undisturbed silence allowed men like Griffin, who spent most of their time assessing every person they saw for potential threats, to actually relax.
The demanding sea in the distance was the only companionship he really needed. It was as much a part of him as his rifle.
Isaac piloted the boat into town with the same offhanded skill he showed in everything he did. They moored down at the docks, then walked the rest of the way into the village. Everyone in town liked to hang lights on the outside of their houses, all huddled together in the narrow strip between the high tide line and the forest. Tonight the lights blazed against the thick spring dark, as if daring the inky, endless black fist of winter to take another swing. It was a moody sort of night, with a hint of fog pooling between the buildings, and Griffin liked that Isaac kept his own counsel as they headed up the hill when he wasn’t fielding mission-related calls.
Griffin found himself thinking about Gabrielle, the girl he’d expected to spend the rest of his life with back when he’d expected to have a completely different kind of life. She was supposed to have waited for him to come back so they could pick up the plans they’d made when they were still kids. And she had waited, or so she said, through his first two tours.
It was when he’d re-upped instead of coming home and settling down that she’d had enough. Apparently. She and his best friend from high school had comforted each other—because Griffin’s service to his country was equally upsetting to both of them, they’d claimed. The fact that Oscar had wanted Gabrielle for himself since they’d all hit puberty hadn’t factored into it at all, Griffin was sure.
He could have forgiven that. Probably. But neither of them had confessed what they’d done when Griffin had finally come home. Gabrielle had moved ahead with their wedding, acting every inch the excited bride-to-be—until right before the invitations were set to go out.
Six weeks before he’d been set to get married, Griffin had instead discovered that he not only didn’t have a fiancée, he didn’t have a best friend, either.
He hadn’t even been as angry about it as maybe he should have been. He’d taken it as a sign.
I don’t know who you are, Gabrielle had told him, convincing tears tracking prettily down her cheeks. She’d always been good at crying, and it always used to make Griffin feel like crap, but he’d changed in the Marines. She was right about that. I don’t know what they made you, but it isn’t the Griffin I remember.
Of course he wasn’t the Griffin she remembered. That dumb kid had died in boot camp when he was still eighteen. The Marines had made him a man, then he’d taken it a step further and made himself a perfect machine. One who had seen too much, too fast, in far-off countries, and had quickly taught himself how to feel as little as possible. A sniper, cold and calculating, who needed nothing and no one and could therefore take out anyone on command. He’d been so good at what he did that the enemy had given him their own nicknames but never managed to stop him.
His real secret wasn’t that he remembered Gabrielle and mourned for what he’d lost. She was his cautionary tale. He shouldn’t have imagined that he could be who he was, do the things he did, and slip back into that kind of life. He shouldn’t have tried so hard to convince himself he could feel the things others did, because he couldn’t. He’d given that up.
He would never make that mistake again.
He’d left for Alaska the morning after Gabrielle and Oscar had delivered the news, leaving them to clean up the mess they’d made. He’d followed up on that legend he’d h
eard while he was still in the service, about a dangerous man on the edge of the world and the band of skilled soldiers who gathered there to keep fighting.
All these years later, he still didn’t regret his choice.
They walked along the village’s winding main street, past the Fairweather, which was doing its usual brisk Friday night trade—or what passed for such a thing in Grizzly Harbor when summer was still a long way off. Griffin could hear loud music from the jukebox and voices to match, but he and Isaac kept on, up the hill past the Water’s Edge Café, the peeling yellow post office, and the community center, until they reached Blue Bear Inn.
“She’s not here,” Madeleine said from behind the desk, not bothering to look up after the first glance she’d thrown their way.
Madeleine Yazzie was a Grizzly Harbor native. She liked to wear her hair in that beehive, the better to contrast with her cat-eye glasses, so that people would mistake her for a very old woman. Griffin figured her to be in her early forties. She married, divorced, remarried, and redivorced her husband, Jaco, in tune with the seasons, so no one could say with any certainty if they were on or off at any given time. She had never been known to suffer a fool, she told better fishing tales than old Ernie Tatlelik, and she’d been a fixture behind the desk at the inn for at least as long as Griffin had lived here.
What she wasn’t, usually, was an unreliable narrator. But what she’d said didn’t make any sense.
Griffin stared at her. “What do you mean she’s not here?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear the racket on your way over. Last I heard, she and Caradine were going shot for shot down at the Fairweather and causing a ruckus.”
“Are we talking about the same person?” Griffin asked, tempted to laugh at the absurdity. “Blond, snooty? The least likely person alive to walk into a dive bar like the Fairweather, much less drink anything there?”
“All I know is that Caradine closed early and headed over to get her drink on with an outsider. Pretty sure she’s yours. But it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong, and I imagine it won’t be the last, either.”
“I didn’t think you were ever wrong, Madeleine,” Isaac said, flashing the smile that made unsuspecting people think he was safe. Charming, even.
“Neither did I,” Madeleine replied, grinning over the top of one of the fat paperbacks she got in crates from her sister in Anchorage. “But who knows? This could be the night it happens.”
As they pushed back outside and retraced their steps through town, it took every bit of self-control Griffin had not to ask Isaac his opinion on Caradine Scott, the most prickly café owner in Alaska. And therefore in the rest of the world, too. Because everybody knew that Isaac and Caradine didn’t get along. They didn’t get along to such an extent that there were bets among the Alaska Force brothers as to when and how the tension between them would finally snap.
Every woman in the known universe got silly at the sight of Isaac’s patented smile.
Except Caradine. Caradine got mad.
Blue had all of his money riding on there being a solution involving a locked room and a bed. But Griffin figured it would be bloodshed. And as dangerous as Isaac was, Griffin’s money was on Caradine winning the inevitable fight.
Like everyone else, however, he didn’t push Isaac on the subject.
Not only because it was an unhealthy choice, but because he was certain he didn’t want Isaac pushing back.
Either way, the moment they stepped inside the Fairweather, Isaac’s gaze went directly to the dark-haired woman leaning back against the bar like she owned it. Caradine was egging on one of the burly locals at the pool table, looking slightly more relaxed than usual—yet no less fierce.
Griffin studied the much softer blonde by her side instead.
It was like Mariah had turned into a different person over the past few hours, and he didn’t like it. The princess who’d glided off the ferry like she’d been walking into her own coronation was gone. In her place was a pretty woman packed into well-fitting jeans and a snug, expensive-looking T-shirt. She was also leaning back against the bar, propping herself against it on her elbows so that she looked out at the assorted Friday night shenanigans as if she’d never seen such a show before. The position drew Griffin’s attention to the way that T-shirt clung to her sculpted, lean curves.
And if he was drawn to that view, he assumed every other man in the bar was, too.
But far worse than that was her laughter.
She wasn’t laughing like she was made of ice. On the contrary. Her laugh was loud, warm, and rich, and it affected him the way her drawl did. Poured honey, sweet and golden. It washed over him, and Griffin was seized with a totally unreasonable urge to bundle her up and carry her out, so no one else could hear. It struck him as entirely too intimate for a dive bar in the middle of nowhere filled with rough, hard men who were always, always looking for a warm body on a cold night.
Settle down.
Griffin checked out the room automatically, letting his gaze move from the pool tables to the jukebox. All the dark, intimate booths along the walls and the more accessible seats in the center where Nellie, who prided herself on being a battle-ax, waited tables with her usual brisk impatience. There was no threat. There were only locals blowing off steam on a balmy spring night between storms.
His attention tracked back to Mariah and stayed there.
Isaac was already moving, forcing Griffin to do the same when he would have stayed right where he was in the doorway. He told himself he wanted to take a minute to fully control his temper, but the truth was that he wanted to keep looking at this version of Mariah, with her head tipped back and a wide-open expression—not a care in the world.
“So you’re running for your life,” Griffin said in a dark undertone as he and Isaac headed toward the bar and the two merry women who hadn’t appeared to see them walk in. “You think your husband is trying to kill you and you think he’s probably chasing you, too, so you lay down a little misdirection on your way out of town. It takes you the better part of a week, then you jump on a plane and end up in Grizzly Harbor. You meet someone who isn’t all that sympathetic, you pour out your story, and then what do you do? Do you lock yourself in your hotel room, waiting to see if anyone’s chasing you? Or even if the men you came to hire will take your case? Or do you go out drinking with a random stranger you met in a café?”
“You have a very specific idea of how this woman ought to behave,” Isaac said, mildly enough, and the look he shot Griffin was too amused for Griffin’s peace of mind. “Maybe she’s happy that there’s a continent between her and her ex. He sounds like the kind of guy any woman would want to keep away from if she could. Maybe she thinks she earned a party because she didn’t die as planned. Twice.”
Griffin bit his tongue. With prejudice.
“Oh goody,” said Caradine in her usual dry way as he and Isaac approached. “Someone invited Gentry Company to ruin the party.”
“You know it’s called Alaska Force,” Isaac replied, sounding significantly less mild and amused than he had a moment before. A stranger might not have been able to tell the difference. But to Griffin, it was glaring.
And he shouldn’t have taken much comfort in that, but he liked knowing that even Isaac had a weakness. Griffin had tried to rid himself of as many weaknesses as possible, but it was comforting to know that someone as seemingly invulnerable as Isaac Gentry had one lurking around.
Griffin couldn’t help but enjoy it.
“We’re not in your café now,” Isaac was saying, and the look he aimed at her wasn’t the least bit safe or charming. “You can’t make idle threats about banning me from a bar you don’t own. What’s your next move, Caradine?”
Caradine reached over the bar, picked up a shot glass, and raised it mockingly in Isaac’s direction.
“Bottom’s up, jackass,” she said,
and tossed it back.
And then she proved exactly how tough she was, in Griffin’s opinion, by failing to react in any visible way to the menacing, knife’s edge of a smile that Isaac aimed her way.
Griffin shifted his attention back to Mariah. “I’m surprised you’re out celebrating at a time like this.”
It was possible he sounded slightly cranky. Maybe that was why she laughed at him.
And laughed. And laughed some more.
He could have handled more of that cool, haughty politeness she’d tried to slap him with earlier. He liked the cold. He could handle it.
But her laugh was something else. It was loud, it was teetering on the edge of rowdy, and she didn’t seem to care at all that it made heads turn throughout the bar.
“If you’re trying to keep a low profile,” Griffin bit out, “going shot for shot with an infamous local and making scenes in the middle of town is probably not the best idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Am I supposed to be keeping a low profile?” Mariah asked. Her blue eyes danced, and Griffin didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that. “You didn’t leave me with a list of instructions, sugar. You just left.”
“I have things to do, most of them with life-or-death consequences. Explain to me why you—left to your own devices, on the run and supposedly afraid for your life—figured this was a good time to make a spectacle of yourself?”
He expected to shame her. Or offend her enough, anyway, to get them to the same place. What he didn’t expect was another one of those wicked belly laughs that rolled over him like a gas fire. And made him feel charred all the way through.
He also didn’t expect it when she lurched forward, flinging herself from the bar with such force that she would have toppled over and gone straight to the sticky floor if he hadn’t snaked out an arm to catch her.
It was a reflex.
It was also a mistake.
Because she felt even better than she looked, silky smooth and warm where her T-shirt sleeve ended and her arm began. Mariah might not be his ex. She might not even be in particular danger, no matter what she said.
