Sergeant's Christmas Siege

by Megan Crane

  “That’s great for you.” Kate stepped closer, and the hand that held the strap of her bag over her shoulder balled into a fist. “I’m delighted that you’re having some kind of emotional moment here, Templeton, instead of laughing maniacally and pretending you don’t care about anything. I’m sure it’s really meaningful for you.”

  “I’m trying to tell you what’s going on,” he said stiffly.

  “That’s really good of you,” she said in that sharp way of hers that was as hard as a blow. And did more damage. “I’m sure you even think that’s true.”

  “I know I’m going to regret this,” he growled, his eyes narrowing as he stared down at her. “But what the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I understood how you operated the first time I met you,” Kate told him, and there was no trace of laughter on her face then. “You put on a big light show, Templeton. But it’s precisely calculated to make sure you only ever give anything away, if you ever give anything away, on your terms.”

  He kept being amazed by all the ways she could land a punch without swinging. And he shouldn’t have been. “Great. A character assassination.”

  “I don’t have time to assassinate your character, actually. I’m in the middle of a joyful family reunion. Maybe you missed that part.” Her head tilted slightly to one side, and her expression was as scathing as her voice. “It’s been one for the books. Who doesn’t want to get shot at in a creepy compound, follow it up with a little prison time, and then come back to what’s supposed to be a safe space only to discover that your favorite gorgon is waiting for you?”

  “You skipped right over Christmas Eve. I found that part pretty memorable.”

  “Yes, Templeton, we had sex,” Kate said, and he told himself that she was trying to sound that patronizing. She was doing it deliberately, trying to poke at him, get under his skin, play her little cop game. “And yes, it was good.” She jutted out her chin at him. “Too bad it clearly scared you half to death.”

  “Army Rangers aren’t scared of anything, Trooper. Especially not sex.”

  Something moved over her, intense enough to make it look as if she was reeling for a moment. And Templeton had to fight himself to keep his hands where they belonged. Meaning, not on her.

  “I learned something important today,” Kate gritted out at him, and it took him a moment to realize why he was reacting to her voice the way he did. As if he were under attack. It was because she didn’t sound like a cop. She sounded like a pissed-­off, emotional woman, and Templeton couldn’t decide if he wanted to get the hell away from that or celebrate it. “I’ve spent my whole life feeling like an alien walking among humans, trying to figure out their ways. At a certain point I gave up. Sometimes it’s easier to let people call you all the usual names instead. Ice queen. Aloof. Intimidating. Unfriendly. Or worse.”

  “You’re not any of those things.”

  She shifted closer to him and jabbed a finger toward him, as if she was thinking about thumping him on the chest. He wished she would. He had always excelled at the physical. It was the emotional where he clearly didn’t know what he was doing.

  “That’s the point I’m trying to make. I’m not any of those things. Maybe I became those things, in reaction. I don’t know. But I was raised by sick, twisted people. That doesn’t make me one of them.”

  “Kate. You’re not. You’re nothing like your father.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And yet I can look back at every relationship I’ve ever tried to have with another person and see the moment where it all turns. Because it always turns.”

  Templeton understood where this was going now. He stopped battling himself and his urges and reached over to wrap his hand around her shoulder, holding on to her through her coat. Just because he needed to touch her.

  “This isn’t a turn. You came out of nowhere and broke all my rules. I’m recalibrating, that’s all.”

  “Congratulations. Your recalibration efforts read a whole lot like a man who got what he wanted, then got really grumpy about having to continue to spend time with the woman he’d gotten it from.”

  “You can’t think that’s who I am. I know you don’t.”

  “Who you pretend to be?” she asked with that unerring accuracy that he appreciated a lot more when it was aimed at someone else. “Or who you really are?”

  Templeton stared back at her, aware of too many things at once. The pounding of his heart. The way his pulse racketed around, like the enemy was upon him and it was time to bring out the big guns. All things he was great at.

  He could have single-­handedly sorted out all kinds of war games. But staring down at this woman, he couldn’t find the right words. Not one.

  Kate’s mouth twisted. “That’s what I thought. Maybe it’s time the great, eternally happy-­go-­lucky Templeton Cross dealt with stuff for a change.”

  She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, then turned to continue up the street toward the inn.

  “Today sucks,” Templeton growled after her. She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “I get that. But I was right there with you, Kate. You didn’t have to do it by yourself.”

  “Merry freaking Christmas to me,” she replied, her voice perfectly audible and razor sharp on the cold breeze. “You’re basically Santa Claus in this self-­congratulatory scenario, aren’t you?”

  And he got that she had stuff of her own. They had been tracking that stuff all over Alaska. But there was something about the way she said that—­unnecessarily snide, he thought, with a bright surge of temper—­that hit him the wrong way.

  “I would kill someone for the chance to see my mother again,” he told her harshly, because she wasn’t the only one who could hit below the belt. “But I can’t. And there’s no shame in taking the opportunity to see if a broken thing can be fixed, Kate. Maybe not with Samuel Lee Holiday. But with your mom, who knows?”

  Kate turned slowly. Very slowly. That prickle on the back of his neck warned Templeton, the way it always did, that there was incoming gunfire. Shooting straight out of those brown eyes, if he had his guess.

  “Is that why you’ve never visited your living, breathing father?” she asked. “With or without the shame you claimed you don’t feel because you’re so dedicated to living in the now?”

  Templeton would have preferred her cousin’s automatic rifle in his face again.

  “That’s different.”

  “Sure it is. It’s completely different. We have nothing in common at all. Certainly not a father in prison. Serving a life sentence. With very little contact. How could I possibly begin to imagine what you might think or feel about anything?”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Because you and your friends are the only people who can do background research, is that it?” Kate shook her head. “You actually have an advantage over me. You have no idea if you have a good father or not, you only know that you have an incarcerated one. But at least you can be fairly certain he doesn’t want to kill you.”

  “I have no idea what he wants or doesn’t want.”

  “I don’t have that comfort. Because even if my father isn’t responsible for all the nonsense that’s been going on around here lately, he’s always wanted to kill me. And would have if I hadn’t escaped. So you tell me, Templeton. Should I really go try to repair my relationship with the woman who chose him over me, her only child, again and again and again?”

  “Go right ahead and be pissed at me because I didn’t talk to you enough today, or whatever you’re mad about.”

  Kate laughed. And this time, clearly not because she thought anything was funny. If she’d been someone else, he might have thought that glassiness in her eyes meant—­

  But not Kate. Not his trooper. He’d only ever seen her cry because she was laughing.

  At him.

  “I bet that
works for you usually.” She laughed again. “I bet all of this works for you. And I’ll admit, it’s quite a package. But the problem is, I’ve actually seen more than one of the faces you wear. I know that the Templeton Show is a way to avoid the kind of intimacy you pretend you want. You’re not fooling me.”

  “I’m not trying to fool you, Kate. I was trying to explain.”

  “I don’t need your explanations.” She lifted her chin again. “You don’t have to follow me up to the inn. I can handle this by myself. I’m used to handling things by myself.”

  That was clearly supposed to land like a punch, and it did. Templeton stalked toward her, aware that for the first time in living memory—­or at least, since he’d been hotheaded and a teenager—­his temper was getting the better of him.

  “You think because we’re fighting I’m going to throw you to the wolves?” He shook his head. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do. That’s not how I roll.”

  “Then let me request that you roll with a little less male posturing,” Kate threw back at him. “Let me handle the endless family situation I seem to be in the middle of, and I’ll be sure to schedule some time for your ego and unexpected emotions when it’s done. If that’s all right with you.”

  Suddenly he didn’t care if his Alaska Force brothers were arrayed around the town, watching all this unfold while they watched the perimeter. He’d handle their inevitable responses later. And he’d take his ribbing like a man.

  But right now, his attention was on her.

  This woman with the cool gaze and that hard-­edged trooper’s smile, who had turned his world completely inside out.

  “I never planned on wanting anyone this much, Kate,” he told her. “I didn’t think I was capable of it. And, believe me, I have no problem whatsoever standing right here in the middle of the street and telling you, the entire Alaska Force team that’s probably listening in and watching us right now, and every citizen of Grizzly Harbor every last thing that I’m feeling on this topic. But I’m pretty sure you don’t want that.”

  She scowled at him, but that glitter in her gaze was different. “As I said. I can pencil you in for sometime next year. Lucky you, that’s in a week.” Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go talk to the second-­to-­last person I ever wanted to see again. Much less in one day.”

  Templeton didn’t intend to hold her here. But he reached out anyway, curling his hand over the nape of her neck beneath the hat she wore against the weather, and pulled her even closer.

  “Templeton,” she began, sounding impatient.

  But he didn’t care if she was impatient. He didn’t care if she wanted to yell at him some more, or always. That was what he’d been wrestling with all day. Everything inside of him made no sense. It was too big, too out of control, temper and emotion muddled together with things he really didn’t want to think about at all, like his father.

  And wrapped up in all of it, the bright bit of color stitching it all together, was her. Kate. His very own trooper.

  He’d known she was trouble the minute he’d walked into that café.

  And that was why he bent down and pressed his mouth to hers. It was the memory of that first meeting. It was an acknowledgment of Christmas Eve.

  It was him and it was her.

  He had the sinking feeling he knew exactly what that ache in his chest was. He’d been fighting it off since he’d woken up this morning, and it had only gotten worse. Until it felt less like an affliction and more like an acknowledgment.

  “Don’t pencil me in. Use a pen,” he told her, against her lips that softened only for him. “And you’re going to need to block out some time, Kate. When this is over. You and me.”

  He expected her to argue with that. He expected her to argue, period.

  But instead, her gaze searched his for another moment, in the darkness, with Christmas lights sparkling all around her like a halo.

  She didn’t say a word, and still he felt as if she’d said a thousand things. Somehow, he heard them all.

  When she turned around this time, he followed her. Up the rest of the hill to the inn, where the lights inside made it look cozy. Inviting.

  Kate didn’t pause on the threshold. She pushed her way inside, nodding coolly at Madeleine Yazzie, who stood behind the desk in the lobby, looking neither cozy nor inviting. Templeton nodded Madeleine’s way, able to tell by the way her red beehive trembled that she was outraged that she’d been dragged out of her house—­all of three minutes’ walk away—­to work on Christmas.

  But he couldn’t do more than smile at her.

  “There you are,” came a woman’s voice from the lobby. “My sweet Katie.”

  Kate stood in her trooper stance in the doorway to the common area, one hand hovering near her weapon and the other ready to go for her comm unit. And Templeton took his place at her back, getting a glimpse of the woman who had married Samuel Lee Holiday, given him a baby, and followed him out to that compound.

  Tracy Holiday looked rough. Templeton would have known at a glance that she’d spent time in prison even if he hadn’t pored over her record. Even so, he could see where Kate had come from. The same brown eyes. The same forehead. But where Kate was sleek and strong, her mother was unhealthily skinny. Wiry in a way that spoke to Templeton about bad choices, tough living, and too many cigarettes.

  “My sweet, sweet little girl,” Tracy cried in her smoker’s rasp with apparent delight. Though she stayed where she was, sitting on the couch in the Blue Bear Inn’s living room. As if to make sure she didn’t turn her back on the stuffed grizzly by the fireplace. “Look at you, all grown up.”

  And this was the trouble with emotional involvements. Templeton couldn’t tell if this woman was setting off his alarms because she was up to no good here or because her presence clearly bothered Kate.

  “Okay, Mom,” Kate said after a moment. All police, no give. Her mother could have been a drunk driver by the side of the road for all the emotion she let into her voice. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, don’t you think? What do you want?”

  Twenty-one

  Kate’s mother stared back at her for a moment, her face still set into what looked like concern. Or some other emotion. Something in the neighborhood of tender and affectionate, maybe.

  Kate assumed she’d seen it on TV.

  The next moment, it cracked. Tracy stopped wrinkling up her forehead. She stopped her attempt at an encouraging, tremulous smile. She coughed, and that took Kate back. It was her smoker’s cough, the music of her mother, and Kate filled up fast with the swamp of emotions she associated with all things Tracy. Revulsion, hurt, and the leftover ruins of long-­lost hope.

  “As self-­righteous as ever, I see,” Tracy said. Her canny eyes flicked from Kate to a point behind and above her, where Kate knew Templeton stood. And Kate would have ripped out her tongue before she admitted how comforting she found it to have a man the size of a mountain at her back. No matter how irritated she was with him. “Can’t a mother have a change of heart? A desire to see her only child?”

  “I’m sure mothers can and do,” Kate replied. “But we’re talking about you.”

  There was a flicker of something in Tracy’s eyes, but she only shrugged. “It’s been a long time. People change.”

  “I’ve changed,” Kate agreed. “But none of you seem to be any different from how I left you. Will is a mess. Liberty and Russ are overzealous. And Dad is exactly the same as he was back then. The only thing that’s changed is his audience.”

  “I did my time,” Tracy said stoutly. “My debt is paid. It’s not unusual to want to rebuild a life after prison, is it?”

  “You’ve been out of prison for three years.”

  “I had to get on my feet.”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t buy whatever this is. Even i
f you were rebuilding your life, you wouldn’t be doing it here.” She narrowed her eyes at the woman in front of her. “Do you have a bomb strapped to your chest?”

  Tracy sighed. “I guess I deserve that.”

  She stood up, and Kate felt those same swampy things spiral inside her. She could see too much of herself in this woman. In the shape of her. The way she jutted out one hip when she stood. The way her shoulders sloped. She’d despaired of these things years ago. Today it made her feel hollow.

  But somehow not as dislocated as she might have expected she would.

  Tracy smirked. Then she lifted the hem of the shirt she wore, exposing her abdomen. Then higher to show her bra. There was nothing visible there except her rail-­thin body, with her ribs poking through. Kate could almost feel the impression of those bones against her face, the way she had as a child on the few occasions she could remember being sick enough, feverish enough, that her mother had actually held her.

  “I hope you enjoyed the show,” Tracy said, and Kate couldn’t tell if that was directed at her or Templeton. “One thing prison does real well is make a person less self-­conscious.”

  “You have five minutes,” Kate told her. “If you have something to say, say it.”

  “This is awkward for me, too, Katie.” Tracy shook her head, looked at Templeton as if he were on her side in this. “I’m sorry that you feel you can’t talk to me alone.”

  “You didn’t ask to speak with me alone.” Kate had to work very hard not to bite her mother’s head off. “I don’t feel one way or the other about it.”

  “Caradine’s is open today,” Templeton said.

  Kate didn’t want to look at him. She wasn’t ready to think about all the revelations they’d tossed at each other on their walk up from the docks. Certainly not when her mother was around, like a hovering toxic event. But because her mother was there, and watching, she aimed a cool smile his way.