Page 45 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

It had never occurred to her that she could tell those stories and make them funny.

And maybe that, too, was the wine. Maybe she would wake up in the morning with a headache and that same old sense that she was an alien in a world of normal, well-adjusted people. But she found that hard to believe when Everly had made them all laugh at her story ofriding a pink bike around in circles until she made herself dizzy and scraped up her own knees, then lied about it to her parents.

I told them I had to dodge an out-of-control driver and they called the police,Everly had confessed.Huh. Maybe that’s why I have police anxiety.

Then Bethan had told stories of trying to get one over on her very strict career-army father, who had reacted to the slightest infraction of his endless rules as if his family were a boot camp and he was its drill sergeant.

He made me drop and do fifty push-ups on the front lawn of my high school,Bethan had said in her dry way.In retrospect, the fact I couldn’t get a date to the prom isn’t really all that mysterious.

None of those stories was all that funny if Kate picked them apart. Just like her stories weren’t all that funny in their particulars. But there was something about telling them to two other women who hadn’t judged her or seemed to want anything from her, and then laughing about it all. Together. It felt like some kind of magic spell.

It felt retroactive, like the laughter had wound its way inside of her and changed her memories where she carried them. She wasn’t likely to forget anything that had happened to her. But now when she thought of it, she suspected she might also think about sitting at the kitchen table in Everly’s cabin, laughing until her cheeks hurt and her eyes felt damp.

If it was magic, she’d take it, she thought, as she walked the last little way toward her cabin. No matter how fanciful that might seem in the light of day.

Here, tonight, in the small hours of the endless Alaskan night, Kate didn’t have to worry about daylight.

For once, she could let herself be as fanciful as she liked. She could indulge herself. She could let herself stay something perilously close to happy, with no one the wiser.

Tomorrow she could gather herself into familiar pieces again. Tomorrow she could remember who she really was, a bit too grim and always too serious, out of step with the world. Tomorrow was soon enough.

“Tomorrow,” she muttered to herself.

Tonight she could let herself float a bit, whether it was magic or merlot. Tonight she could pretend she had it in her to be like other women for a change.

To be normal.

But when she got to her cabin and pushed her way inside into the warmth of it, she stopped dead.

Because Templeton was there, stretched out in the living room with a book like he belonged there, his big body dwarfing the six-foot couch. And his dark eyes glittering when he looked up at her, too wicked and too knowing all at once.

Kate felt more than warm then.

And the more layers she stripped off in the little entryway, the hotter and more flushed she became.

“Careful there, Trooper,” Templeton drawled, looking lazy and unbothered and entirely too delicious to be real. “You’re looking a little unsteady on your feet.”

Kate should have been furious that he’d invaded her privacy. She should have been outraged that he thought he could make himself at home like this. She should have ordered him to leave, and she meant to. She was sure she meant to.

But instead of opening her mouth and telling him to go away, the way she knew she should, she thought...magic.

Because whatever else he was, the man was magic.

And she was going to have all kinds of things to regret tomorrow, from her comments in the lodge that had required she offer an apology to thatintimate friend timehorror to telling anyone anything about herself—much less two people she hardly knew and one she’d never met before. She knew that as surely as she knew that redwine gave her a headache, sooner or later, no matter how good it tasted going down.

But some things were worth the price, whatever it was and whatever it took from her. Kate had learned that a long time ago.

And there and then, flushed hot and red down to her toes, she decided that Templeton Cross was one of them.

Eleven

Templeton had run through this scenario in his head a thousand times already. It was one of his favorites.

Rules or no rules.

Kate, flushed and looking at him like she wanted to eat him alive, here and now. Kate, walking toward him with nothing but a bright gleam of need in her eyes and a sway in her hips.

But his imagination, always vivid, wasn’t even close to the reality of his trooper stalking across the cabin floor to the sofa, where he sat like he didn’t have a care in the world when really, he thought it was possible he might die of sheer longing. His imagination hadn’t prepared him for the way she smiled at him, something he knew instantly he’d be replaying in his head forever.

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