Page 26 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

Kate frowned again, looking up at him.

And when his mouth crooked up in one corner, it was like no smile she’d seen from him before. It made everything in her shimmer, then go still. Then seem to hum,as if she were spinning around and around to the music he made, though she knew he wasn’t whistling any longer. Not out loud.

He reached over, and she was sure that he was going to do something inarguably inappropriate—

But all he did, very carefully, was flip the collar of her jacket into place. And she would have sworn he took particular care not to brush his fingers against the exposed skin of her cheek and neck while he did it.

Kate couldn’t have said why that ache inside her seemed so large it nearly overtook her where she stood. Nearly took her right down to her knees.

Or why it took her another long moment or two to recognize that while she didn’t approve of all this emotion, right out here in public, it was better than that dislocated feeling of watching herself on a screen.

And she didn’t understand how he did that. How he put her back into her body.

“There’s nowe, Templeton,” she managed to say, trying to keep her frown in place.

“Look at that,” he said, his deep voice a rumble of satisfaction. It struck her as particularly male and too intensely hot for a cold December day as it wound around and around inside of her. “You do know how to say my name after all.”

And then he left her there—out on the dock with the wind kicking at her but failing entirely to cool her down—as she took another call from her captain in Anchorage.

It wasn’t until later, when her fellow troopers had handled the crime scene, and she’d flown back to Juneau and the temporary office where she’d been deployed to conduct her Alaska Force investigation, that Kate realized what a close escape she’d really had.

Not from whoever was running around blowing up buildings and stabbing people with hunting knives but from Templeton Cross.

Because back in Juneau, Kate couldn’t access eitherthe strange feelings she’d had while she was out there or, even worse, the things Templeton himself had made her feel.

Deliberately and more than once.

She was happy, or maybe relieved, that she hadn’t crossed any lines.

And then horrified, as she sat in her temporary office with her colleagues, talking through everything she’d done and seen since she’d headed out to Grizzly Harbor, that she’d even put herself in a position to consider the crossing of lines. Kate Holiday, who prided herself on following the law.

And sure, the troopers were given some fairly broad allowances, given where they lived and worked, but this was different.

Kate couldn’t help feeling that if she hadn’t left Grizzly Harbor when she had, she might have crossed not only the sorts of lines she maintained as a trooper but a good number of her own personal boundaries.

And she really couldn’t think of anything that appalled her more.

That night, Kate let herself into the little apartment she’d rented. She’d chosen it for its efficiency and convenient location a few blocks away from her current office. She liked it. Or she had when she’d left it the other day.

Kate couldn’t bring herself to live in the sort of stark, scary hovels like the ones where she’d been raised, so she always rented furnished places. But tonight she couldn’t help but think that she was living in the odds and ends of other people’s lives instead of making her own. Tonight it felt... makeshift and discordant.

Or she did.

“Get over yourself,” she muttered, rubbing a hand against that weird hollow sensation in her chest.

She went to the bedroom, peeled off her uniform, and threw all her clothes into her hamper. She stood in theshower, let the hot water pour all over her, and told herself she was fine. Because she was always fine. Because nothing had changed, out there on those mysterious islands.

Because the one thing—the only thing—Kate had ever depended on was herself.

And Templeton Cross was a problem, that was for certain. But he wasn’therproblem.

That was what she kept telling herself, all night long, hoping that somehow that would keep her from dreaming that same desperately erotic, wickedly dirty dream about him.

But it didn’t.

That night or any of the nights that followed.

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