Page 104 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

One night, about three months in, they were in Templeton’s cabin in Fool’s Cove. It was technically spring, but there was no evidence of that outside. Alaska liked to hold on to her winters. They’d been talking through the raid the Troopers had undertaken on Russ and Liberty’s property the month before and the cache of illegal arms recovered. The children removed from their parents’ custody.

“I understand why you want things this way,” Kate said abruptly. Templeton eyed her from across his kitchen, seeing his woman, not his trooper. “The fact is, the gift of the Holiday family keeps on giving, and it likely always will.”

“Baby.” Templeton shook his head. “Your family is noise. You’re the gift.”

“Things are better separate,” she insisted, scowling at him. “You maintain plausible deniability, and I—”

“Hey.”

He went to her then, pulling her into his arms and trapping her there, so she had no choice but to look at him. But it was Kate, so she glared.

“We can be realists about this, can’t we?” she asked.

“I told you a long time ago that I’m an optimist,” Templeton reminded her. “What do you think is happening here?”

“I...” And he loved that the only time his strong, smart, capable woman ever got flustered was when her heart was involved. He loved her. Though he had to pick and choose when to tell her that, because the wordsmade her flushed and red and soft, and he preferred to keep that to himself. And act on it. “I’m trying to...”

“You have a job that means everything to you,” Templeton said. “So do I. We won’t have them forever. What’s a little travel?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s as easy as we decide it is,” he told her.

And then he showed her just how good he could make easy feel.

A few weeks after that, her captain made Kate the Troopers’ special attachment to Alaska Force. That gave her even more reason to go to Fool’s Cove and stay there while Alaska Force handled various missions of interest to local law enforcement.

“Something strange came up,” Kate told him one night in their Anchorage apartment. Not that she called it theirs, but Templeton had his stamp all over it. A lot like the stamp he had on her. “I need your thoughts.”

And she looked like Kate, but she had her cop face on, so Templeton decided not to see if he could get his hands on her. That moment.

“Hit me,” he said.

“After my interview with Caradine in December, I asked for her records,” Kate said. And rolled her eyes at Templeton’s expression. “Like you don’t have Oz run background checks on everybody you see on the street.”

“That’s different.”

“You know it’s not.” She wrinkled up her nose. “The thing is... Caradine Scott doesn’t exist. She appeared out of nowhere some years back.”

But when Templeton turned that over in his head, all he thought about was Isaac.

“Has she broken a law?” he asked.

“Not that I know of.”

Templeton shrugged. “People come to Alaska to be someone else, far away from anyone who knows better. You know that.”

“I do. And I like her. I really like her cooking. I just...”

He grinned at her, because she was so cute and she looked so lost. “Welcome to the gray areas of life, Trooper. Complicated, isn’t it?”

She answered him with a challenge no man could resist, and Templeton made sure that in the end, they were both winners.

As far as he was concerned, things were moving along just fine.

Especially on the nights in Fool’s Cove when Kate came back from dinners with Bethan and Everly a little tipsy, shooting her mouth off about red wine andintimate friend time.

He always took that as an opportunity to experiment with intimacy. On an epic level.

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