Page 87 of Sergeant's Christmas Siege

“Then let me request that you roll with a little less male posturing,” Kate threw back at him. “Let mehandle the endless family situation I seem to be in the middle of, and I’ll be sure to schedule some time for your ego and unexpected emotions when it’s done. If that’s all right with you.”

Suddenly he didn’t care if his Alaska Force brothers were arrayed around the town, watching all this unfold while they watched the perimeter. He’d handle their inevitable responses later. And he’d take his ribbing like a man.

But right now, his attention was on her.

This woman with the cool gaze and that hard-edged trooper’s smile, who had turned his world completely inside out.

“I never planned on wanting anyone this much, Kate,” he told her. “I didn’t think I was capable of it. And, believe me, I have no problem whatsoever standing right here in the middle of the street and telling you, the entire Alaska Force team that’s probably listening in and watching us right now, and every citizen of Grizzly Harbor every last thing that I’m feeling on this topic. But I’m pretty sure you don’t want that.”

She scowled at him, but that glitter in her gaze was different. “As I said. I can pencil you in for sometime next year. Lucky you, that’s in a week.” Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go talk to the second-to-last person I ever wanted to see again. Much less in one day.”

Templeton didn’t intend to hold her here. But he reached out anyway, curling his hand over the nape of her neck beneath the hat she wore against the weather, and pulled her even closer.

“Templeton,” she began, sounding impatient.

But he didn’t care if she was impatient. He didn’t care if she wanted to yell at him some more, or always. That was what he’d been wrestling with all day. Everything inside of him made no sense. It was too big, too out ofcontrol, temper and emotion muddled together with things he really didn’t want to think about at all, like his father.

And wrapped up in all of it, the bright bit of color stitching it all together, was her. Kate. His very own trooper.

He’d known she was trouble the minute he’d walked into that café.

And that was why he bent down and pressed his mouth to hers. It was the memory of that first meeting. It was an acknowledgment of Christmas Eve.

It was him and it was her.

He had the sinking feeling he knew exactly what that ache in his chest was. He’d been fighting it off since he’d woken up this morning, and it had only gotten worse. Until it felt less like an affliction and more like an acknowledgment.

“Don’t pencil me in. Use a pen,” he told her, against her lips that softened only for him. “And you’re going to need to block out some time, Kate. When this is over. You and me.”

He expected her to argue with that. He expected her to argue, period.

But instead, her gaze searched his for another moment, in the darkness, with Christmas lights sparkling all around her like a halo.

She didn’t say a word, and still he felt as if she’d said a thousand things. Somehow, he heard them all.

When she turned around this time, he followed her. Up the rest of the hill to the inn, where the lights inside made it look cozy. Inviting.

Kate didn’t pause on the threshold. She pushed her way inside, nodding coolly at Madeleine Yazzie, who stood behind the desk in the lobby, looking neither cozy nor inviting. Templeton nodded Madeleine’s way, able to tell by the way her red beehive trembled that she was outraged that she’d been dragged out of her house—all of three minutes’ walk away—to work on Christmas.

But he couldn’t do more than smile at her.

“There you are,” came a woman’s voice from the lobby. “My sweet Katie.”

Kate stood in her trooper stance in the doorway to the common area, one hand hovering near her weapon and the other ready to go for her comm unit. And Templeton took his place at her back, getting a glimpse of the woman who had married Samuel Lee Holiday, given him a baby, and followed him out to that compound.

Tracy Holiday looked rough. Templeton would have known at a glance that she’d spent time in prison even if he hadn’t pored over her record. Even so, he could see where Kate had come from. The same brown eyes. The same forehead. But where Kate was sleek and strong, her mother was unhealthily skinny. Wiry in a way that spoke to Templeton about bad choices, tough living, and too many cigarettes.

“My sweet, sweet little girl,” Tracy cried in her smoker’s rasp with apparent delight. Though she stayed where she was, sitting on the couch in the Blue Bear Inn’s living room. As if to make sure she didn’t turn her back on the stuffed grizzly by the fireplace. “Look at you, all grown up.”

And this was the trouble with emotional involvements. Templeton couldn’t tell if this woman was setting off his alarms because she was up to no good here or because her presence clearly bothered Kate.

“Okay, Mom,” Kate said after a moment. All police, no give. Her mother could have been a drunk driver by the side of the road for all the emotion she let into her voice. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, don’t you think? What do you want?”

Twenty-one

Kate’s mother stared back at her for a moment, her face still set into what looked like concern. Or some other emotion. Something in the neighborhood of tender and affectionate, maybe.

Kate assumed she’d seen it on TV.

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