Page 45 of Delta Force Defender

“It occurs to me after telling this whole story that I’d like to hire you after all,” she said, because that was probably the only way she could complicate this situation further. But as the words came out, seemingly of their own accord, she found they were true. “I’d really like to know how they found me.”

“We’ll be more than happy to answer that for you,” Isaac said, mildly enough. Which was a clue, of course. It was always a clue. The milder his voice, the more dangerous he was. She braced herself. “But the first question I’m going to ask you as an Alaska Force client iswho.”

“That’s what I’m hiring you to find out, Gentry,” she said. Maybe with a little heat.

“Not who’s after you.”

The world narrowed down to his gorgeous face. The steady demand of his ruthless gray gaze. And how safe she always felt when she was near him. She knew better, and still, there was Isaac.

And he wasn’t finished wrecking her.

“Who did you make a promise to? You said you were breaking a promise by talking about what happened to you.” He was all steel then, head to toe. No give, and no matter that she couldn’t breathe. He didn’t soften at all. “Caradine, who else survived that bomb?”

Twelve

Isaac watched that question go through her like a body blow, and there was no part of him that liked delivering it.

But he didn’t take it back. He didn’t make it easier for her. They were way past that.

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” she managed to say, with a clear attempt to lift that belligerent chin of hers.

“If you hire Alaska Force, the expectation is that we’ll decide what’s relevant, not you.”

He threw that out there like it was another round in their endless punching match. But Caradine—he couldn’t think of her asJulia—was sitting there, her legs pulled up and her arms tight around them, and he had the strangest notion that this was the soft underbelly she’d been hiding all this time. Behind all the sniping. Behind every sharp word.

Isaac wanted to tear apart the whole of Boston, and the world, to get her back to her usual cranky, smart-mouthed self. Even if the target of that mouth was him.

Especially then.

“I’m guessing it’s your sister,” Isaac continued in a low voice, sounding like who he was. The leader of the group who would solve her problems, as soon as she was honest about them. The way he sounded in every other meeting like this he’d ever held with a client. But who was he kidding? This wasn’t any other meeting or any other client. This was Caradine. “I’ve never heard a single thing about one of your brothers or either of your parents, from you or anyone else, that suggests they’d be worth protecting.”

Her face didn’t crumple. Not exactly. He saw her lips tremble, slightly, before she flattened them into a line.

“I made...” But her voice cracked. She looked down at her hands for a moment, then out toward the cove. And in all this time, and all the many ways she’d put up walls, pushed him away, outright tossed him aside, he had never seen her look as remote as she did now. As lost. “I made a promise. And until today, I’ve kept that promise.”

Isaac was so used to pretending nothing had ever happened with Caradine or ever would. Or changing the subject when someone brought her up. He was so used to the secrets, the too-short nights, that look she gave him that dared him to do something about it. It wasn’t that he’d never dared. It was that he’d chosen to wait her out instead.

But then he’d gotten that call and thought she was dead for twenty hideous minutes. Even if she’d sat here and admitted that she’d burned down her parents’ house with her family inside, he would still be relieved thatshewasn’t dead, and he didn’t know where to put that. His career in the military had pretty much cured him of thinking in black-and-white terms, but Caradine felt far more complicated still.

He was done waiting.

Isaac crossed over and squatted down in front of herchair and then, because he was ago big or go homekind of a guy, he took her hands in his.

Her blue gaze flew to his, startled. But she didn’t pull her hands away.

“Let me keep your promise for you,” he said. “I promise you, I’ll protect it, and you, and whatever else needs protecting, as if it was my own.”

He forgot that they weren’t alone. All he could see was the conflict on her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her fingers tightened on his. If she were anyone else, he would have expected her to cry.

But she was still Caradine.

She opened her eyes and they were clear. And she nodded once, hard. Then she pulled her hands from his and Isaac shifted back onto his heels but stayed where he was, there beside her chair.

Caradine cleared her throat. “It was my sister, Lindsay, yes.”

She outlined the differences between her sister and herself. While Caradine had been at college, Lindsay had been ransomed off to one of her father’s business associates.

“He used to call Lindsay his princess. She was the youngest and she was very pretty, in that delicate, skinny, waifish sort of way he thought was the most feminine. Because she looked breakable. A certain kind of man likes that.” And it was the Caradine he knew best who looked around then, that cool indictment in her gaze moving from one man to the next. Including him. “They like to break their toys. The man my father wanted her to marry could barely contain his excitement at getting his hands onMickey Sheeran’s princess. Still, Lindsay thought that was a better option. The other choice being defying my father.Thatalways came at a price. Usually a very painful price.”

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