Page 28 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

She actually obeyed him.

That gold, gleaming thing in his dark gaze brightened. Making her feel hot and itchy all at once, which she chose to interpret as a good opportunity to turn her car heater down.

“I know how to track people, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I know where you live. But I would never turn up there, because that’s exactly the kind of potential threat I think you really would take a dim, possibly armed, view of.”

“You know where I live?”

“Juneau is not a big city. It’s not hard to figure out where anyone lives.”

“That’s really not the point.”

“Here I am at your current, if temporary, place of business, filled with various cops of all shapes and sizes,” Templeton said. “As harmless as a lamb.”

The idea of him as either harmless or any kind of lamb was so ridiculous that it didn’t bear commenting on. Kate frowned at him instead.

“What could you possibly want? Let me rephrase. What could you possibly want that you couldn’t achieve through a phone call? An e-mail? Or any of the time-honored forms of communication that do not necessitate a personal appearance at twilight?”

“Please. It’s two thirty-four in the afternoon. Technical twilight is still the middle of the afternoon in Alaska.”

“I don’t need lessons on Alaska from an Outsider. I think we’ve already covered this.”

“This is fun,” Templeton said with that wicked drawl that licked all over her whether she wanted it to or not. “Matching wits with you always is. But I didn’t come here for the entertainment. I have a proposition for you.”

“I can’t express to you how little interest I have in any propositions that come from—”

“Kate.” He shook his head, just slightly. “We’re past that.”

She had no idea why she wanted to agree with him. But maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe it was that she felt so... unmoored. What was she supposed to do without work? Who was she supposed tobe?

When he rounded the front of her vehicle, looking relaxed and at his ease and completely incongruous against the backdrop of downtown Juneau, she didn’t know what came over her. But she unlocked her door and let him in.

And then Templeton Cross was sitting in her car.

Taking up entirely too much space. It was like a violation—except she couldn’t pretend that it was anything so negative. It was just that she was so violently, painfully aware of him. All of him. He had to reach down to shove the passenger seat back as far as it would go, then tilt it back even farther in a bid to get his huge frame to fit.

And there was absolutely no reason that anything about the simple reality of a big man trying to fit into a relatively small SUV should have made her break out into a sweat.

“I feel like I’m in a mobster movie,” she muttered.

“Am I the made guy in this scenario? I don’t really think that works. I don’t have the right accent, for one thing.” Templeton nodded toward the office building. “Why don’t you drive somewhere? Before you have to explain to all your cop buddies what you’re doing playing mobsters with a person of interest in an ongoing and active investigation.”

Now it was more like a cold sweat, and her stomach twisted. “I don’t know why I let you in my car, but that moment of insanity has passed. You need to get out. You need to—”

“Kate. I have it on good authority that you’re not on active duty yourself right now. Did they suspend you?”

“There are absolutely no grounds to suspend me,” she snapped at him.

“Mandatory leave?”

“I’m enjoying the Christmas season,” she gritted out, then turned to meet his gaze as blandly as she could. “Ho ho freaking ho.”

“Drive,” he told her, in that same commanding way, his eyes much too steady on hers. His voice too rich, too smooth, too...much.

But she went ahead and obeyed him all over again anyway.

Not, she was at pains to tell herself, because he’dordered her to do something. She didn’t take orders from him. But because he wasn’t wrong about sitting there outside a building filled with law enforcement officials, practically begging them all to see what she was doing. And with whom.

She didn’t take him back to her apartment. Instead, she drove up Starr Hill to one of her favorite spots in Juneau. It had a great view over the channel to Douglas Island when the sun was out. But the sun barely came up at all here at this time of year, and it disappeared quickly behind the mountains to the west when and if it did. By the time she got to her preferred place to park and sit awhile, the sky was dark and there was no view of any mountains or water. Just the lights from the houses tucked away up on the hill around them, and the city below.

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