Page 105 of Delta Force Defender

Of all the things he’d said to her, that struck her as perhaps the most unjust.

Caradine stood up in a rush. She was tired of glaring at him. Of scowling and sniping endlessly. She wanted to hit him, but then, she always did. That chest of his looked like sculpted marble beneath the henley he wore, and some months, that was the only way she got to touch it.

But she’d told him she was tired of fighting. Now she needed to show him.

“If I wanted to fight with you, sure,” she said, striving to sound serene. Or at least even-keeled. “We’re not doing that.”

“Aren’t we?”

With a tremendous dignity she only wished she’d had with this man in the past, she turned and walked toward the door. Horatio looped around her as she pushed her way outside, letting the dog run in front of her. Out in the street it was getting on to full darkness, though a hint of indigo still remained.

The crisp Alaskan air filled her lungs, and she still wasn’t finished marveling at it. Not when she’d taken a tour of so many other places this summer, none of which got to her like this. She loved the quiet that hung all around the town, as if it poured out of the mountain itself. No traffic, no crowds, no oppressive heat or humidity. She could hear the music from inside the bar. Therewere people wandering around, talking in the mild evening. Somewhere in the trees, she could hear a guitar and some singing.

But in and around all of that, there was Alaska.

It felt like peace, no matter how far from that she might have been feeling inside. It made her imagine that if she stayed here long enough, breathed deep enough, she would get there, too.

And the man who she knew was behind her, though she couldn’t hear him and didn’t look, was the same kind of presence. That huge. That intense.

That perfect.

She didn’t wait for him. She headed down toward the beach. Before she reached the docks, she took a turn and climbed up a set of rocks that were almost like stairs. She navigated out to the large, flat boulder that jutted out toward the water.

He didn’t make any noise, but she knew when he climbed up and stood beside her, there on the edge.

Below them, the tide was coming in. The dark water surged against the stone, retreating but always returning. Five years ago she’d stood right here and identified with the water. Always fighting, always failing.

Tonight, she was thinking about the rock. Still here. Still solid.

No matter what the water threw at it.

“Do you remember?” she asked him. She turned then, as the stars got bright above them and the inky night seemed to grip them, hard.

“Caradine.” He ran a hand over his face, which made her pulse kick at her, because this was Isaac. He didn’t do things like that. He didn’t fidget.Unless,something in her whispered hopefully, because she let herself do that now,he’s just as agitated as you are. “I remember everything.”

And his voice was so raw it hurt.

It actuallyhurt.

She even lifted her hands as though she were going to put them on him, but he gave her a look that was so intense she dropped them to her sides.

“Why did you come back here?” he demanded, and he wasn’t loud this time. He didn’t shout. But his voice was ragged. Uneven. And somehow, that was worse. “After all the things you said in Boston?”

She wanted to do what she normally did. Scowl. Glare. Say something mean and storm off.

But if she kept doing the same things with him, she would end up in the same place with him. You couldn’t expect things to change if you weren’t willing to change, too. The fact that motivational quotes made her feel dead inside didn’t make them untrue. And she didn’t have to festoon them around her restaurant on cheerful plaques, decorated with butterflies, to take them on board.

That was a performance. Here in the dark, on a cold rock above a pitiless sea, she could do the hard work.

All she had to do was let herself be vulnerable.

She thought she really did die then. But that didn’t change what she needed to do here.

After all, she’d basically died at least once already.

“What is it you want from me?” he asked, still in that rough, un-Isaac voice.

Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the only one feeling vulnerable tonight. She clung to that.

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