Page 14 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

The Blue Bear Inn was hushed. The town outside her windows was quiet. The dark and the fog muffled everything, so it almost felt as if Kate were suspended in space or lost in some kind of sensory deprivation tank, and she chose to find that relaxing. Not creepy.

The old television propped up on the dresser in the corner had an ancient VHS player attached to it, so she picked one of the tapes sitting in a tidy stack beside it, stuck it in, and then climbed into her bed to watch a remarkably bad movie starring people she’d never heard of before.

And as she drifted off, she congratulated herself, sleepily, for not thinking about Templeton.

But her subconscious got the last laugh, because she dreamed about him.

And not about the interview or all the things he’d adroitly, deliberately, failed to tell her.

Oh no. Her subconscious treated her to an erotic tour of the man’s powerful body that felt so real that she woke up, her heart pounding, sweating all over, and with a slick heat between her legs.

It was so real that she sat up straight, staring around the room in a panic, convinced that she’d somehow slipped, maybe gone off and gotten drunk somewhere and had actually brought suspected domestic terrorist Templeton Cross back to her room to do all the wild, acrobatic, deliriously wicked things she dreamed—

But no.

Thank God, no.

She was still alone. The inn was still as quiet all around her as it had been. Her watch told her it was four thirty, which meant she’d slept through much of the night.

She kicked off her covers and lay there, ordering herself to stop the madness storming through her. To get her pulse under control. To go back to sleep. But the dream was so real she could feel his big, hard hands, streaking down her body to cup her butt, then pull her flush against his—

“Enough,” she ordered herself, her voice sounding scratchy there in the darkness of her room.

But she couldn’t get back to sleep.

When it finally got to around six—long after Kate had given up and read through her notes again, then found herself scrolling through her phone, idly looking up the names of various members of Alaska Force online, to no avail—she decided she’d had enough.

Feeling jittery and over-caffeinated when all she’d had was some of the weak, watery coffee she’d made there in the room, she pulled on what she needed to face the chilly Alaska morning hours before the sun was due to make an appearance. A few thin, technical layers, complete with a light strapped to her head. She laced herself into her hardy trail shoes and headed outside. If the maps she’d studied online were correct, there was a staircase that led up the hill to a lookout over the town. That seemed like a much safer option in the dark than trying her luck on a trail that could be actively treacherous. If not, she could always run up and down the main street until she worked off some of her excess energy.

Because that dream still clung to her.

She found the stairs and set off at a brisk jog, enjoying the slap of the cold morning against her face. The sound of her breath against the dark. The fog had thinned in some places, though the higher she climbed, thicker patches came in like clouds.

The altitude and the incline made a nice challenge,and Kate picked up her speed, enjoying the physical exertion.

And for a moment, in motion, in tune with her breath and the sound of her feet against the cold earth, Kate didn’t feel hollow at all. She didn’t feel alien.

She felt very nearly whole.

Kate was grinning with the sharp, sweet joy of that when she sensed someone coming toward her, hurtling down from the top in a liquid streak—

But he stopped. So precisely it was clear he hadn’t beenhurtlingat all but had been completely under control. And though she could see his breath dance against the light from her headlamp and his, he didn’t look winded.

On the contrary, he looked beautiful. As if she’d conjured him up, straight out of those tangled, dirty dreams she’d had.

For the first time in a very long while, Kate found herself incapable of speech.

But Templeton had no such problem. His mouth moved into that endlessly wicked curve that she’d dreamed she’d tasted. That she’d dreamed had moved all over her body with lazy certainty and no apparent goal.

“Good morning, Officer,” he drawled, lazy and lethal and much too smug, as if he knew.

When he couldn’t possibly know. He couldn’t possibly see what her dream had done to both of them. He couldn’t possibly know how shefelt.Or how completely her body was betraying her, even now. She hoped he chalked up all the heat she was putting out as the exertion, nothing more.

But the way Templeton smiled, she doubted it.

“Nice morning for a run,” he said.

That was all he said.

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