Page 108 of Delta Force Defender

He let out a breath then, long, hard, ragged. As if he’d just finished one of his revolting workouts.

“When I was hopeless,” she whispered, “the only hope I had was you. I tried so hard to hate you for that. But all I could ever seem to do was love you instead.”

“Baby.” And his voice came out of him like it belonged to someone else, tortured and wild. “Caradine. You’re killing me.”

“When I went to Germany, I had every intention of wandering off into the wilds of Europe and losing myself forever. Because that was what I always thought I wanted to do. But, Isaac. When I was finally free, when Jimmy was dead and no one was coming after me and I could finally do anything I wanted, the only thing I wanted was you.”

“Listen to me.” He grabbed her shoulders then, in a grip that might have been uncomfortable if she didn’t long for it the way she did. If it didn’t thrill her. “You weren’t wrong. Those things you said to me in Boston... I wanted to dismiss it all out of hand, but I couldn’t. Because you were right.”

“This isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong,” she said, sounding as wild as he did. As if the Alaskan sea all around them was in them, too. “This is about what has always been between us. Always, Isaac.”

“From day one. I know.”

Caradine smiled, and there were tears everywhere. But she truly didn’t care. She slid her hands onto his chest. “What if, once in our lives, we got to do it over? The right way, this time. What if we got to make this one thing right?”

She watched this man, this beautiful, remarkably tough man, crumble.

She watched that storm break in his gray gaze. She watched the thunder, the rain, and then everything was silver.

Isaac dropped his forehead down to hers, and then they were both gasping for air together, as if they might never breathe normally again.

Then he was kissing her, or she was kissing him.

And it was so hot it burned, but it was more than heat.

It had always been more than heat. Even that very first night, when he’d kissed her here and changed them both. Forever.

“We don’t have to do it over,” Isaac said against her mouth. “I don’t regret a single moment of the past five years. Not if it brought us here.”

“We were always coming here,” Caradine said right back. “Always. If it wasn’t worth it, we wouldn’t have fought it so hard.”

Isaac lifted her up, wrapping her in his arms and grinning when her legs went around his waist.

“No more running,” he said. “No more hiding.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” she vowed, wrapped around him at last.

And this time, she never planned to stop. This time, she could fall asleep in his arms and wake up with him, only to do it all over again. This time, maybe he would sleep, too.

This time, they could love each other the way they should have from the start. Openly. Happily.

“The only place I’m running,” Caradine promised him, “is straight to you.”

The way she always had, even when she hadn’t wanted to admit it. Even when she’d run all the way to Maine, she’d known he would come after her. She hadn’t believed that anyone could save her, but deep down, that part of her she’d pretended wasn’t there had hoped that he would.

Because he already had.

The same way, she thought, she’d saved him. One hope, one smile, one winter made of stolen bits of happiness woven into the darkness, one at a time.

That was how they’d made it here.

That was how they’d go on.

Nothing beige about it.

Isaac kissed her again, deep and long, right there on the spot where he’d kissed her the first time. Horatio, too smart by far, barked his approval from the shore.

She would push him, but he wouldn’t break, because he was tough and strong and the kind of man who held on to the things he loved. And she would hold him tight right back, no matter how he challenged her, because she’d been waiting all her life for someone to truly love her—and five long years to allow herself to love him.

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