Page 10 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“Wonderful,” she replied crisply. “Because what everybody wants from the local neighborhood commando is drunken philosophy.”

She turned to Caradine then, who was lounging in the door to the kitchen like she was watching premium cable play out there before her. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I could.”

Caradine’s brows rose. “I don’t really do questions.”

“Nonetheless,” Kate said, in that friendly yet implacable way Templeton figured they had to teach them at the academy over in Sitka, “I’d like to chat with you all the same.”

Caradine scowled but nodded. Once, and clearly with reluctance.

Templeton’s trooper turned to him and lifted a brow. “Can I anticipate that when I arrive at the Blue Bear Inn, my accommodations will be ready for me? Or are there more hoops to jump through first?”

“I can call Madeleine. She’s usually on the front desk when there’s someone staying, though it’s the off-season.”

“You do that. And I’ll take your mobile number, so that I can reach you, should I need to.”

Templeton obediently rattled off his cell phone number and watched her jot it down in her notebook. Then she tucked it back into her pocket.

“Does this mean we’re dating?” he asked.

Because he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“It means I’ll let you know when I’m ready to see you again, Sergeant,” Kate said. And then she nodded toward the door, dismissing him. “But for now? You can leave.”

Templeton met Caradine’s gaze and assumed he looked as astonished as she did entertained. Because he couldn’t recall the last time anyone had ordered him around. Not even Isaac, and that was only because they’d worked together so long that Templeton tended to anticipate his orders.

He didn’t argue. He sauntered over to the hook where he’d left his jacket, shrugged it on, and then offered a theatric salute before he let himself out into the dark.

And waited to see what his brand-new favorite Alaska State Trooper was going to do next.

Three

The door slammed behind Templeton, and for a strange, dizzy little moment, it was like all the air, light, and heat went with him.

But that was absurd. And more of that fanciful nonsense from which Kate normally steered clear. She ordered herself to get it together and focused her attention on Caradine, who still stood in the kitchen doorway with reluctance written all over her.

For a moment, Kate only gazed at the other woman, because the scowl on her face was interesting and Kate knew well the power of an awkward silence.

But all Caradine did was continue to scowl, without saying a word. Which was very unusual in the average civilian with no experience being interrogated by law enforcement. Then again, out here in remotest Alaska, people tended toward prickly and uncooperative by nature. It didn’t make them criminals.

“What is your relationship to Alaska Force?” Kate asked crisply when it was clear the silence wasn’t going to prod the other woman into revealing anything.

If possible, the scowl on Caradine’s face deepened. “I would never call anything between me and them arelationship.”

“Call it whatever you like. What is the nature of it?”

Caradine looked as if she’d swallowed something sour. “I run a café in a very small village. They live in and around the same small village, and they eat at my café. The end.”

“Mr. Cross mentioned that you opened today, just for him. Or did I misinterpret something?”

Caradine crossed her arms, and Kate wondered if she knew that the gesture on her looked belligerent more than defensive. She suspected she did know. But Caradine’s surliness didn’t bother her. Alaskans weren’t always fit for human interaction. It was a side effect of living in the midst of so much relentless nature. Besides, while many people came to Alaska for a job or because they loved the idea of all that nature, Alaska was also a place a lot of folks came to disappear.

Kate would stake her reputation on the likelihood that Caradine was one of the latter.

She studied the café owner carefully. Caradine, which Kate very much doubted was the name she’d been born with, was a beautiful woman, though she clearly preferred to downplay that fact. Her dark hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail that looked as if she’d slept in it. There wasn’t a trace of makeup on her face, her nail polish was black and chipped, and the jeans she wore were at least a size too big. Her baggy T-shirt used a cartoon fox in place of a curse and the apron she wore wrapped around her waist looked about as battered as her jeans. And of course, there was the deeply prickly body language turning all those things into a deliberate suit of armor.

But it was the wary, combative light in the other woman’s eyes that made the back of Kate’s neck itch.

“If someone in the village calls and asks me to open,I usually do,” Caradine said flatly. “That’s just part and parcel of the service I provide to my friends and neighbors.”

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