Page 37 of Delta Force Defender

When she knew better. And if she’d been tempted to forget, the way she had been these past five years, the past week was an excellent reminder of reality.

She stared at Everly, stone-faced. “I would rather die.”

But that only made Everly laugh. “Of course you would. I’ll take that as a yes.”

And then they were all just... sitting there in Isaac’s cabin. Staring at one another while in the other room, his five thousand computers whirred and chirped.

“Are we allowed to talk about you and Isaac now?”Mariah asked after that dragged on awhile. “Since we’re sitting here in his cabin. And not in one of the guest cabins.”

Caradine eyed her, always elegant, though the self-defense course they’d taken together had showed her exactly how much steel lurked in this particular magnolia. “There is no me and Isaac.”

“That sounds like a firm no on the talking about it,” Kate said, with a smirk.

Mariah shifted her deceptively mild gaze to Kate. “What about you and Templeton, then?”

“I’m here in Fool’s Cove in an official capacity,” Kate said loftily. “Templeton is kind enough to play host. We’re not shacked up in a house together like you and Griffin.”

“Funny,” Everly murmured. “I thought Blue told me you two had an apartment up in Anchorage?”

Caradine sat there, feeling like a fraud and a kind of ghost, as they all bickered good-naturedly amongst themselves.

About this life she’d already given up on.

This life she would have said, and had said—loudly—she didn’t want.

But she couldn’t seem to hold on to that quite as firmly as she should have. It was too easy to sit on Isaac’s couch, surrounded by the scent of woodsmoke and leather, with a gorgeous Alaskan cove outside the windows and Isaac’s bed in the other room. And these women she liked against her will, who had made her one of them, despite her best efforts.

Caradine had made a promise. But she still found herself slipping into what-ifs.

You know better than that,she told herself sternly.You know where that leads.

“You look like you’re about to crawl out of your own skin,” Mariah drawled. Then grinned. “Do y’all need another hug?”

“I would rather punch myself repeatedly in the face.” Caradine couldn’t seem to keep control of all the different aches and agonies inside of her any longer. They seemed to swell and hum, right there beneath her skin. She needed to sleep. She needed to run. She needed to get back in control of something or she was going to explode. “And I appreciate this... thing you’re doing, but we can stop now.”

“Do you mean caring about you?” Everly asked, and smiled innocently when Caradine glared at her. “That thing?”

“I’m not going to stay here,” Caradine tossed out then, like a bomb. And she didn’t scowl or stomp off, or any of the other things she wanted to do. She looked at each one of them in turn, though it was harder with Kate. Because she was too much a trooper. God only knew what she could see. “I enjoyed my time in Grizzly Harbor, but it’s over now.”

If she expected that to cause a commotion, she was in for disappointment, because none of the other women really reacted to that at all.

“You’re here now,” Mariah pointed out after a moment. Gently.

Caradine sighed. “Isaac has a hero complex. It’s cute. But it’s not reality.”

“What exactly is your reality?” Kate asked, and again, there was no pretending she wasn’t an Alaska State Trooper, used to interrogating suspects and talking down criminals in turn.

Caradine got the distinct sensation that Trooper Holiday knew more about her than she should. Or knew how little there was to know about Caradine Scott, anyway, which amounted to the same thing.

“People come to Alaska for all kinds of reasons,” Caradine said, keeping her voice as even as she could. “For me it was an extended vacation. But all vacations must end.”

The three women on Isaac’s leather couches exchanged glances with one another.

“Where will you go?” Mariah asked.

“I don’t know,” Caradine said, trying to imagine what the character of Caradine Scott would say in a situation like this. “I don’t like to be tied down.”

“Right.” Everly nodded sagely. “That’s why you moved here in the first place, instead of living off-grid in the woods. And why you opened a restaurant in the center of town and made yourself a fixture in the community.”

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