Page 37 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

She didn’t mean to say that out loud. And she didn’t really understand why she hadn’t dismissed the idea out of hand. The time of year was a factor, sure. Maybe she was afraid that if she didn’t work, all those things she was usually so arrogantly sure she’d left in her past would bloom in her all over again. And not as a sharp little stab of shame, like when a new person pointed out her father’s sins, but something bigger. More dangerous. Something that might lead her to end up like one of her cousins, living bitter and grim and, most of the time, blind drunk.

A fate worse than death, as far as Kate was concerned.

“The only reason I’m entertaining this notion is because if that body had been found in anyone else’s seaplane, I’d be running the investigation. This sort of thing is what I do.”

“I know.”

“And I have to think taking my expertise off the fieldentirely in a situation like this has the potential to make it worse.”

“Yeah. Kind of like when you’re one of the most highly trained and competent soldiers in the world, capable of doing things that make regular men think you’re superhuman. And when you’re done with the service you look around and think... maybe there are other ways I can use these skills for good.”

“Are you comparing me to a band of—”

His dangerous mouth crooked. “Let’s not call each other names, Trooper. It won’t end well.”

Kate looked at him. Justlookedat him.

This impossible man, too big and too much in every conceivable way. And she understood that it was entirely possible that for the first time in her adult life, so far as she could recall, she wasn’t actually doing something because it was right. That even though it was true that she had more expertise in this area than most of her colleagues, there was a Templeton factor as well. Her lips still tingled from his kiss. There were...thingshappening in her body because of him, when she’d been perfectly comfortable believing herself numb straight through.

There was no way to be sure that she wasn’t acting on that same impulse that led to the kinds of stupidity she’d spent the early part of her career helping clean up, in one way or another. People did foolish things for sex. Kate had never been one of them, because she’d always had a clear head where such things were concerned.

Mostly because she’d had no idea it could feel like that. Until now.

Until him.

It’s almost a 100percent certainty that you’re being an idiot, she informed herself.

But outside this overwarm, overly close car, it was as dark as if it were two in the morning, when it hadn’t yethit five p.m. Christmas was just over a week away and closing in fast.

And Kate felt, starkly, that she had to choose between the demon she knew too well—and the one she had only learned to fear today.

She knew how Christmas felt when she was working around the clock, focusing on the job to the exclusion of everything else. And she was so terrified of the prospect of not working that she’d not only allowed Templeton to climb into her vehicle, she’d made out with him like the kind of teenager she’d certainly never been.

She had to think that it was better to do what she could to handle the devil she knew before it took her down. And worry about this new demon if and when she had to, hoping all the while that what had happened here was an aberration brought on by her unexpected leave of absence from her job.

This was certainly not how Kate was used to doing things. But then again, nothing that had happened since she’d gone to Grizzly Harbor was how she was used to doing things. Maybe it was time to lean into it.

And maybe, if she went out there and worked with Alaska Force to figure out what on earth was really going on, she could settle all of this on her terms. Prove this had nothing to do with her past and make sure that she never had to take a break from the Troopers again, no matter what blew up in the middle of a dark December.

“You okay there?” Templeton asked, his voice a low rumble in the dark, and yes, she could feel every syllable inside her own body. Making her melt and shift a little in her seat.

But she could handle it.

Because if she had to handle something, she did. That was the story of her life.

She turned and looked Templeton full in the face, asmuch to prove to herself that she could handle anything as to prove something to him. More, maybe.

“Okay,” she said briskly. Before she could second-guess her decision. Or think better of it. “I’ll do it. I’ll work with you. Just as long as I’m on leave.”

And she told herself she didn’t feel a thing when Templeton unfurled that long, slow, dangerous smile that made her think she should have laid out a list of demands before she’d agreed.

Then made him sign it, no matter what that list might have told him about the things clamoring around inside of her.

As long as she kept them hidden, where he might guess at their existence but never know for sure, she’d be fine.

Perfectly fine, she told herself sternly.

And when all he did was nod in reply, slow and much too sexy, she pulled herself together and drove them both down the hill and back into what light there was in Juneau on this side of the December solstice.

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