Page 56 of Delta Force Defender

Horatio met her at the end of the short hall, and she calmed herself by leaning over and kissing him on his furry forehead.

Then she went into the kitchen and did what she did best. She heated up the food she’d prepared earlier, because she hadn’t known what else to do with herself after Oz was done extracting every detail of her life from her. An easy savory pie she’d thrown together from the ingredients in his refrigerator and freezer. Beef, vegetables, and a thick, creamy sauce that hinted at curry.

Cooking was better than breathing. Or feeling. Cooking filled all the ugly places inside her. It allowed her to pretend she was whole. Normal.

It let her imagine she could have things she knew she couldn’t.

Isaac appeared in the kitchen. One moment she was alone and the next he was there, leaning against the counter, wearing nothing but a pair of cargo pants low on his hips.

He was enough to give her a heart attack.

And that was if she looked too long at the honed perfection of his abdomen alone. The rest of him was equally problematic.

“That’s creepy.” She threw him a glare, then served up two plates with the briskness she would have used in her café. If it still existed. Another thing she didn’t want to think about, because it also hurt more than it should. “A man as big as you are shouldn’t move so quietly. I’m going to put a bell around your neck.”

She saw a hint of that dark smile. “You can try.”

Caradine slid the plates on the table over by the windows. She wondered if the table, clearly handmade, was his work or if he’d inherited it from a family member. It had that sort of look about it. An heirloom or a piece of personal history.

“Where did you get this table?” she asked when he came and took a seat across from her. “Or did you make it?”

“My grandfather made it.” The expression on his face altered as he looked down, running his hand over the surface, and there was a kind of familiar reverence in the way his palm moved over the wood. It wasn’t unlike the way he’d moved that same hand over her skin. Caradine bit back a small sigh. “Grandpa Gentry was a fisherman, but when he had to wait out one of the sea’s moods, he liked to work with wood. As he got older, he spent more time with it and made bigger projects. Like this table.”

The table was a work of art, tucked away in the kitchen of this faraway cabin. It was an irregular shape, as if to honor the wood itself, the whorls and the knots. This was Isaac’s legacy, Caradine couldn’t help but think. Art. The work of careful hands, polished over time and set to gleam.

Meanwhile, she was a Sheeran. And the work of her family’s hands was death. Blood and bullets. Bombs and guns.

The opposite of art in every way.

Isaac shifted across from her. When she looked up, she wasn’t surprised to find that gaze of his on her face again. She braced herself, but all he did was pick up his fork and then take a long, deep breath. Of pleasure.

“How do you always know exactly what to cook? When I don’t even know what I want?”

“Magic,” she responded, once again without the edge she’d meant to put in her voice.

Isaac looked at her for a moment, and she expectedone of those killer questions of his. Something that would slam straight through her, rip her heart open, and force her to jump back into that prickly, armored space—

This is what you want from him,a voice in her whispered.You like that he never lets you off the hook. That he would never let you run away.

“So,” Isaac said, settling back in his chair. She held her breath. “Looks like you have friends after all. That must have thrown you for a loop.”

For a moment, they only stared at each other.

“I don’t think you understand,” Caradine said, in a baleful sort of outrage. “There washugging.”

Fifteen

Isaac chose not to point out that they’d never shared a meal before. He figured she might stab him with her fork.

When they were done, they actually sat there and talked. Like regular people.

He saw the exact moment that occurred to her.

And watched, fascinated, as she stiffened. He would have said he knew every expression that could possibly cross her pretty face, but it took him a moment to place the one that flashed there for a long, telling moment. Panic.

It was a relief when she scowled at him.

“You need to go away now,” she said, sounding like herself again. Not the warm, pliable woman who’d been in his bed, but the sharp-edged, hot-eyed pain in his butt. Good thing he had a powerful need for both sides of her. “I need to clean this kitchen, to my satisfaction, not yours.”

---