Page 13 of Delta Force Defender

Isaac grinned then, but not in the genial, good-ol’-boy way he’d perfected for residents of Grizzly Harbor who’d known his parents, ignored his uncle, and really, truly wanted to see him as cuddly. “At what point in the five years you’ve known me did you get the impression that I’m the kind of man who would watch a building blow up in Grizzly Harbor and not dedicate myself to figuring out why? Or who did it?”

“Gas leak,” she offered blandly. “You can go home now.”

“Try again. We caught two clowns in a fishing boat who were only too happy to admit that they threw a weak Molotov cocktail through your front window.”

“Youths today.Millennials. Am I right?”

She wanted him to rage at her, he had no doubt, so he kept his expression as even as his tone. “Some people think you hired them to light your own café on fire.”

“For the supposed insurance money?” Her head tipped to one side as she considered it, the smirk that alternately infuriated and intoxicated him playing with her mouth. That didn’t help anything. “Sure. That sounds like me. Shifty straight on through.”

Isaac eyed the small weapons collection on her bed, pointedly, then looked back at her. “You figure you need all that to fight off the Allstate agent?”

“Isaac.” She shook her head at him, managing to look world-weary and pitying all at once. “What makes you think you get to know why I left? Maybe I just left. Maybe I don’t want to stand around handing out explanations to anyone. Especially you.”

They were standing maybe five inches apart in a tiny, prissy room that made him feel like more than a bull in a china shop—more like a herd of bulls three seconds away from crashing through a glass wall. The double bed took up most of the floor space, and he should have been thinking strategically, but this was Caradine. So what he was really busy doing was picturing the numerous uses he could make of the bed. Not big enough for him to get all that comfortable, it was true, but certainly big enough to cause a little trouble. And adjust her attitude, as he’d done more than once.

But he’d thought she was dead.

And this was supposed to be a reckoning. Not a retread of every other encounter they’d ever had.

“These are the facts,” he said coolly, the way he would if he were briefing his team back in Fool’s Cove. “You arrived in Grizzly Harbor five years ago out of thin air.”

“Or, you know, off the ferry like everyone else. But sure. Make it dramatic if you must.”

“Caradine Scott doesn’t exist,” Isaac continued as if she hadn’t spoken, and she jolted at that. Just a little, hardly a whole flinch, but he saw it. In that second before she schooled her reaction—which was an interesting thing all on its own, and something he filed away—he saw it.

He expected her to say something, but she didn’t. She only glared back at him, obviously prepared to stand there and scowl back at him for all eternity.

“Alonzo and Martie Hagan tried to sell that place for years. Martie had her heart set on getting out of the Alaskan winter and down to a beach somewhere south, wherecoldmeans the low seventies. But no one bit. Until you.”

“Are you the only one who’s allowed to open a business in Grizzly Harbor?”

“You bought the place sight unseen, paid cash, and showed up in early October. Which is not a time peoplegenerally decide to pick up stakes and move to Alaska from the Lower forty-eight.”

Caradine shrugged. “I’ve never cared that much about what ‘most people’ do.”

“I get itchy when fake people with fake names show up and start wandering around my hometown.” And Isaac’s voice was a little more terse than necessary. “Grizzly Harbor is supposed to be a safe, quiet, idyllic escape, far away from the rest of the world. And its problems. That’s why people move there.”

“Maybe you’ve missed what’s been happening the past couple of years, then.” She even laughed, right in his face, because Caradine was one of the few civilians who knew exactly how dangerous he was and taunted him anyway. “Safeis not the word I’d use to describe your hometown, what with all the dead bodies and bombs going off left and right.”

“Five years ago it was perfectly safe, aside from the weather and the wildlife.” Isaac studied the defiant way she tilted up her chin, like she’d welcome it if he swung at her. “And you’re not the first person to turn up in the middle of nowhere and think that it would be better all around if you left your real name behind with whatever it is you’re getting away from. I don’t blame anyone who wants a new start.”

“Are you sure? Because this sounds a whole lot like blame. Meanwhile, I guess we can keep pretending that Alaska Force isn’tyourversion of a new start. Just with bigger guns than most and an exciting club name to go with it.”

“The difference, Caradine, is that while a person might not choose to use their real name in casual conversation while they’re living off-grid somewhere in the Last Frontier, it’s always attached to them anyway. One way or another. But not you.”

She didn’t look cowed. Quite the opposite. He was sure she stood a little straighter and even smirked a littleharder. “You sure seemed broken up about that. Each and every time you ended up naked in my bed, using the name I gave you.”

Isaac let himself smile then and watched goose bumps break out down the distractingly elegant line of her neck.

They were in Maine tonight, not Alaska. And maybe they were both done hiding.

He knew he was. “I’m so glad you brought that up.”

Isaac took a step closer to her, and she swallowed, hard. And for a moment, even though his pulse was racketing around and making noise, he let himself simplylookat her.

This woman who worked so hard to pretend she wasn’t as pretty as she was. All the scowling. The smirking. The rudeness, the belligerence, and enough armor to outfit the better part of the Middle Ages wrapped around her at all times. Especially with him.

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