Page 12 of Sniper's Pride

Mariah decided it was charming, like everything else in this place.

“I don’t think I’m jet-lagged,” she said, almost idly, because neither one of them was paying attention to her. “I got a great night’s sleep in Juneau.”

“She could use some protein,” Griffin was saying. “But no shellfish.”

“Did you really just order for me?” Mariah asked when the woman walked away again. She should have been angrier than she was, but she couldn’t seem to muster up more fury at his high-handedness. She suspected it had to do with the impossibly sharp line of his jaw. Or maybe his mouthwatering cheekbones. Or possibly her own shallowness. “I didn’t even get a chance to look at a menu.”

Griffin’s expression tightened as he gazed at her. “There aren’t any menus. Caradine cooks what she wants. And if she doesn’t like the look of you, she won’t cook at all.” He did something with his shoulder that made her think he’d shrugged when he hadn’t. “Welcome to Grizzly Harbor.”

“I’m surprised that there are enough people here that she can pick and choose who to serve and still stay in business.”

“Nobody comes to Alaska because they want to be like other people. This isn’t a place where anyone conforms, and those of us who belong here like that.”

There was a rebuke in that if she wanted to look for it. She didn’t.

Mariah considered him instead. “How does that nonconformist thing work when you have to do military maneuvers, or whatever you do? Don’t you have to follow orders?”

She had no idea if he didmilitary maneuvers.All she knew was what she’d heard in that video and in the other limited comments about Alaska Force she’d found in strange corners of the internet. Corners where everyonewas a soldier, according to them, and were therefore forever throwing around nonsensical terms likealpha charlie whatever.

“I follow the chain of command,” Griffin said stiffly.

“Meaning you follow orders.”

“Don’t you?”

He didn’t look angry, and he certainly didn’t sound it—beneath all that tight control. And yet the question was another one of those belted-out sentences that Mariah was starting to realize was a weapon. Because every syllable felt like a blow.

Griffin didn’t wait for her to reply. “I read your file. Married young to an older, much richer man.”

“You make him sound like he had one foot in the grave. David was twenty-nine when we met. Not exactly ancient.”

“It was a Cinderella story, right? That was what you called it. Whirlwind romance. Picture-perfect wedding out in the country at his folks’ place. I’m betting they paid for it. Did you call the shots after all that? Is that how things worked?”

Mariah had trouble keeping her gaze steady. But that half smile stayed welded to her mouth, because she’d certainly heard worse things about her marriage. Usually delivered directly to her face with a syrupy drawl and a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression.

The sad truth was that she’d been head over heels for David when they married. He hadn’t forced her into anything. She hadn’t been blind, and she’d walked down that aisle with her head high and her eyes wide open. She’d known what her marriage was. Or at least she’d known its dynamics. She hadn’t minded. What did a no-accountwaitress know about anything outside Two Oaks and the rural county spread out around it? It had been so easy to let David take charge.

It had been a relief, if she was being honest.

All you have to do is stay pretty,he had told her.

That had been a far sight better, to her way of thinking, than having to be responsible for her troublesome younger siblings and her wild cousins and, all too often, her mouthy aunts, drunk uncles, and even sometimes the father Rose Ellen had never bothered to marry before she’d tossed him out. Mariah had been tired of being the one the county sheriff always called to come pick up this or that relative. She’d been neck-deep in all the assorted troubles of every generation of McKennas in the area whether she’d liked it or not, and she’d had no idea what was going to become of her.

Was she going to settle down the way everyone seemed to do for lack of any better options? Have a few babies? And maybe even do those two things out of order, so she could take her turn as the source of family gossip for once?

People in her family barely made it through high school. They certainly didn’t prance off to collect degrees, even if there had been money lying around for such rich-person foolishness, which there wasn’t. They also didn’t up and join the army like some folks in town, and if there were other ways out of Two Oaks, Mariah had never heard of them.

Until David.

It pained her to admit it, even to herself, but he’d been like magic.

Five

“I wouldn’t say David called the shots,” Mariah said now, carefully. Coolly. And too aware of the weight of Griffin’s dark gaze. “That’s a cynical way to put it.”

“If the two of you had a fight, and you couldn’t come to an agreement, who won?”

That shouldn’t have scraped at her, but it did. Mariah shoved that away, too, because what did it matter if she felt raw? That was nothing new.

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