Page 29 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

And it occurred to her that either she was extraordinarily stupid to isolate herself with this man—again—or she actually did trust that Templeton was the man he said he was.

Or her gut trusted him, anyway, no matter how the rest of her tried to argue.

It irritated her, deeply, to admit that, even if her version of trust was fairly anemic. It had been beaten out of her early.

She turned to face him, scowling across the few inches between them in the dim interior of her car, with only the light from the dashboard to illuminate him. Like he was her own personal mountain.

“Well, you got your clandestine meeting. Here we are, like a couple of drug dealers.”

“I don’t think drug dealers hang out and talk,” Templeton drawled. “I suspect that probably gets in the way of the wholemoving product and sampling their waresthing.”

“If you say so. I have no experience dealing drugs myself.”

“Nice. Now I’m a drug-dealing mercenary. I keep on impressing you, don’t I?”

She felt the hitch in her chest and told herself it was acid reflux. Stress. Something vaguely medical and having nothing to do with him. “Are you trying to impress me?”

Templeton turned and wrapped one big arm on the back of her seat as he moved, but she chose to interpret that as him making space for his big body, not... anything else. And the look on his face was an odd mix of sternness and what she was tempted to call surprise, mixed up with all that wicked sensuality that was just... him.

“You want to know if I’m trying to impress you?” he asked. “Are you sure we’re not dating?”

The grin in the corner of his mouth and the way he said that made it clear that he was joking, but somehow, the air in the car between them was too stiff. Too tense. Too ripe with something Kate didn’t want to understand.

But she’d dreamed about it.

Stop it. Now.

She pulled herself together. Or tried. “Why are you in Juneau? And why did you seek me out?”

“To ask you for a date, clearly.”

“If you don’t plan to answer my questions, fine. I’ll turn this vehicle around, return you to my office, and you can explain to a roomful of Alaska State Troopers who want to date you as little as I do exactly what you’re doing lurking around cars in parking lots at dusk.”

“Sexy as that sounds,” Templeton said, his grin deeper than before, “I’m here because of you. Because of who you are.”

“You knew who I was in Grizzly Harbor. I’ve been an Alaska State Trooper for—”

“I don’t mean your job. I mean you.”

And she knew where he was going. Where people were always going when they were suddenly so interested inwho she was.

This had happened so many times before that she’d taken to telling herself she was used to it. That it didn’t matter. Ancient history that happened to also be a matter of public record was still history. She didn’t have to talk about anything she didn’t want to talk about, and she certainly didn’t have tofeela damned thing.

But it felt different here. In the dark, again. With nothing in front of them but glaciers and frigid bays. Nothing around them but the looming mountains she couldn’t see but knew were there.

And still there was nowhere to hide from her family.

Maybe, she thought darkly, this was how everyone felt during the holidays.

Templeton was studying her face. “Your father is Samuel Lee Holiday.TheSamuel Lee Holiday.”

“I know who my father is.”

“The Samuel Lee Holiday who, with three of his brothers and two of his cousins, packed up all their wives and children and took them off into the interior of Alaska. Where they created a doozy of a little cult that was chiefly notable for sending explosive packages through the mail to a whole host of politicians some fifteen years ago. And might have kept on doing it if it weren’t for his oldest daughter, who walked out of the Alaskan interior in subzero conditions, directly into an Alaska State Trooper office.”

“Thewalking out of the interiorpart is always exaggerated. I stole a snowmobile and rode it until it ran out of gas. I walked for maybe ten minutes, and it wasn’t that cold.”

It had been negative twenty. She’d been dressed well for the elements. And lucky.

---