Page 86 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“This isn’t a turn. You came out of nowhere and broke all my rules. I’m recalibrating, that’s all.”

“Congratulations. Your recalibration efforts read a whole lot like a man who got what he wanted, then got really grumpy about having to continue to spend time with the woman he’d gotten it from.”

“You can’t think that’s who I am. I know you don’t.”

“Who you pretend to be?” she asked with that unerring accuracy that he appreciated a lot more when it was aimed at someone else. “Or who you really are?”

Templeton stared back at her, aware of too many things at once. The pounding of his heart. The way his pulse racketed around, like the enemy was upon him and it was time to bring out the big guns. All things he was great at.

He could have single-handedly sorted out all kinds of war games. But staring down at this woman, he couldn’t find the right words. Not one.

Kate’s mouth twisted. “That’s what I thought. Maybe it’s time the great, eternally happy-go-lucky Templeton Cross dealt with stuff for a change.”

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, then turned to continue up the street toward the inn.

“Today sucks,” Templeton growled after her. She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “I get that. But I was right there with you, Kate. You didn’t have to do it by yourself.”

“Merry freaking Christmas to me,” she replied, her voice perfectly audible and razor sharp on the cold breeze. “You’re basically Santa Claus in this self-congratulatory scenario, aren’t you?”

And he got that she had stuff of her own. They had been tracking that stuff all over Alaska. But there was something about the way she said that—unnecessarily snide, he thought, with a bright surge of temper—that hit him the wrong way.

“I would kill someone for the chance to see my mother again,” he told her harshly, because she wasn’t the only one who could hit below the belt. “But I can’t. And there’s no shame in taking the opportunity to see if a broken thing can be fixed, Kate. Maybe not with Samuel Lee Holiday. But with your mom, who knows?”

Kate turned slowly. Very slowly. That prickle on the back of his neck warned Templeton, the way it always did, that there was incoming gunfire. Shooting straight out of those brown eyes, if he had his guess.

“Is that why you’ve never visited your living, breathing father?” she asked. “With or without the shame you claimed you don’t feel because you’re so dedicated to living in the now?”

Templeton would have preferred her cousin’s automatic rifle in his face again.

“That’s different.”

“Sure it is. It’s completely different. We have nothing in common at all. Certainly not a father in prison. Serving a life sentence. With very little contact. How could I possibly begin to imagine what you might think or feel about anything?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Because you and your friends are the only people who can do background research, is that it?” Kate shook her head. “You actually have an advantage over me. You have no idea if you have a good father or not, you only know that you have an incarcerated one. But at least you can be fairly certain he doesn’t want to kill you.”

“I have no idea what he wants or doesn’t want.”

“I don’t have that comfort. Because even if my father isn’t responsible for all the nonsense that’s been going onaround here lately, he’s always wanted to kill me. And would have if I hadn’t escaped. So you tell me, Templeton. Should I really go try to repair my relationship with the woman who chose him over me, her only child, again and again and again?”

“Go right ahead and be pissed at me because I didn’t talk to you enough today, or whatever you’re mad about.”

Kate laughed. And this time, clearly not because she thought anything was funny. If she’d been someone else, he might have thought that glassiness in her eyes meant—

But not Kate. Not his trooper. He’d only ever seen her cry because she was laughing.

At him.

“I bet that works for you usually.” She laughed again. “I bet all of this works for you. And I’ll admit, it’s quite a package. But the problem is, I’ve actually seen more than one of the faces you wear. I know that the Templeton Show is a way to avoid the kind of intimacy you pretend you want. You’re not fooling me.”

“I’m not trying to fool you, Kate. I was trying to explain.”

“I don’t need your explanations.” She lifted her chin again. “You don’t have to follow me up to the inn. I can handle this by myself. I’m used to handling things by myself.”

That was clearly supposed to land like a punch, and it did. Templeton stalked toward her, aware that for the first time in living memory—or at least, since he’d been hotheaded and a teenager—his temper was getting the better of him.

“You think because we’re fighting I’m going to throw you to the wolves?” He shook his head. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do. That’s not how I roll.”

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