Page 110 of Delta Force Defender

Mom and Dad would love this for you,Amy said fiercely after a breakfast in the Water’s Edge Café the morning she left. She was headed north to the house she kept up in Fairbanks, but only in the summer. During the winters, she and her husband left Fairbanks to the snow and subzero temperatures and poked around the Lower 48 in their fifth wheel, visiting her kids at college and usually finding their way to a selection of beaches.They wouldloveCaradine.

Isaac had looked back at the café, standing tall and shiny and new. And its owner, who wasn’t as cheerful asthe colors she’d used on her walls—but wasn’t exactly the grumpy black cloud she’d pretended to be for five years, either. Especially with her new addiction to screamingly bright nail polish.

They would,he’d agreed.They really would.

I can tell you as a parent, Isaac.Amy had smiled when she’d hugged him.They just wanted us happy.

He thought about that a lot, particularly today. Because a man he would have said had no more acquaintance with real happiness than he did looked... swamped with it. Blue was grinning ear to ear, especially once Everly became his wife.

“That’s forever, baby,” Blue said, though that wasn’t in his vows.

“That sounds like a good start,” Everly replied.

And it was hard to say who kissed whom, only that it sure looked a lot like forever from where Isaac was standing.

After the ceremony, everyone gathered in the big tent Isaac and the others had helped put up behind the wedding site. The whole village was invited, because that was how they did it here in Grizzly Harbor. A wedding was like another one of their beloved festivals. A local band played, everyone wandered around and got acquainted while Everly and Blue took pictures, and Caradine bustled here and there with her usual fierce energy and smart mouth, feeding all of them appetizers.

Her food had always been love. Isaac knew that now.

But tonight it was something even better than that.

Because she was happy, too, and he was pretty sure everyone could taste it. He knew he could.

Once the blue house had been cleaned, repainted, and taken care of the way it should have been years ago, Isaac had moved in.

You have a cabin in Fool’s Cove,Caradine had said, glaring at him from the fancy new kitchen of the Water’sEdge Café while she made lunch for a few tables.Why do you need two residences on one island?

Because sometimes I’ll need to be in Fool’s Cove, and sometimes I’ll need to be here,he said. He raised a brow at her.Won’t I?

I thought we were all in,she’d said, frowning at him.Or is this one of your cute little games? The ones you pretend you’re not playing when we all know you are. And then we end up going round and round and—

I want you to live in it with me, jackass.He’d cut her off.I thought that was the plan. Isn’t that what you asked me in Boston? You can stay in both places, too, unless you’d rather have your own place you can throw me out of. Are we doing that again?

She’d scowled at him. And burned a grilled cheese.

No,she’d said, grinning down at the ruined sandwich as she scraped it out of the pan.We’re definitely not doing that.

And that was how, almost five years exactly after their first night together, Isaac and Caradine not only stopped hiding their relationship, they solidified it by shacking up together. In the blue house on the hill that she’d christened with a strange painting of sailboats and red canoes.

Now, can we talk about you and Isaac?Mariah had asked Caradine a few moments later from a nearby table, grinning over the top of her laptop, where she was working on her various accounting spreadsheets.

Sure,Caradine had replied serenely.If you want a lifetime ban from the café.

Because she was still Caradine. She didn’t magically transform into a Disney princess overnight, thank God.

The truth was, Isaac liked her a little surly. He liked her grumpy, he loved that scowl, and he would have had to beat someone up if there had ever been menus in the Water’s Edge Café. Or the artistic chalkboards detailing specials, complete with smiley faces, that she showedhim on her phone at night while she laughed like a lunatic.

Over the course of that first month, they both learned how to be all the things they were with each other for the first time, instead of just feeling them. Because it was one thing to make grand, sweeping announcements about how no one was hiding anymore. And it was something else to turn those statements into actual intimacy.

Waking up together. Sleeping together. Simple negotiations about things like counter space in a bathroom. There was roommate stuff, relationship stuff, and, for them, the fascinating shift from knowing each other for a long time, plus sex, into building something that was about both of them. Together.

It was like the tables his grandfather had made. It wasn’t enough to choose the right piece of wood. The wood had to reveal itself to the maker, too. Art only happened when those two things were aligned.

And if you’re lucky,his gruff grandpa had told Isaac when he was small,you figure out how to make it beautiful.

As goals went, Isaac liked that one the most.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Everly said now, clapping her hands together to get the crowd’s attention and direct it to where she and Blue stood. “Dinner is served.”

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