by Megan Crane
The fact that some fancy Southern princess could saunter off a ferry and get to him at all was embarrassing. And unacceptable.
“Alaska Force keeps a few rooms on hand for clients,” he said, his voice free of inflection, as it should have been from the start. He was going to have to do a serious personal inventory to determine how and why he’d veered off course. “I’ll show you to yours. If you need to change, shower, whatever, now is the time to do it. Then we’ll discuss your situation in more detail. Any questions?”
“No questions.” He didn’t like the way her head angled as she said that, because there was too much defiance in it, but he let it go. Even when her smile tipped over into a smirk. “Sir.”
He didn’t tell her not to call him that. Because it shouldn’t matter what she called him. It didn’t. Sugar. Sir. Whatever.
Griffin didn’t have to like his job. All he needed to do was complete it.
He pushed through the heavy front door of the inn, putting his shoulder behind the movement with maybe more aggression than was necessary. He nodded at Madeleine Yazzie, who was sitting in her usual spot behind the desk with a fat paperback and her dyed red hair up in her signature beehive, and headed straight for the stairs. He didn’t look around because he didn’t have to. He knew what the lobby looked like, with its mix of country charm, hunting trophies, and self-conscious attempts to look like some kind of cozy mountain lodge. It failed on almost all counts and yet was so entirely itself that it circled back around to pleasant. Griffin had stayed here himself when he’d first found his way to Grizzly Harbor in search of the legend of Alaska Force and the man who ran it. He almost smiled, thinking back on how different he’d been then, fresh out of the Marines and no good at interacting with civilians.
He’d tried. He’d gone home to Arizona to be the son his parents wanted, the brother and the fiancé he’d been when he’d left. He’d tried to pick up his life where he’d left it before his three tours. And he quickly discovered that a man who’d made himself a machine had no business spending time with humans.
Much less a beautiful, blond princess like his ex-fiancée, who’d acted like a stiff wind might break her and cried so prettily it made him feel like a monster before he’d become one. While all along she’d been lying to his face about wanting to marry him—but that was one of those compartments he didn’t open.
He heard Mariah laugh behind him, a breathy little sound that did nothing for his mood. Nothing good, anyway.
“Is that a real bear?” she asked as she climbed the stairs behind him. “Standing right next to the fireplace?”
“It was. Once.”
“It’s not that I haven’t seen my share of taxidermy,” she said in a conversational tone that told him two things. First, that she had absolutely no sense of the danger she was in here in Alaska, or here with him, or at all. And second, though she looked unruffled and languid, like she spent her days stretched out on a chaise somewhere, she was a whole lot hardier than she looked if she could take the steep stairs while carrying a load and not pant at the exertion less than a week since she’d been in the hospital. “I am from the South, after all. But my Uncle Teddy’s collection of raccoons and possums did not prepare me for . . . what was that exactly? A ten-foot beast of a grizzly bear?”
Griffin got to the top of the stairs, then turned to look at her. “Better a stuffed bear in the lobby than a real one outside. This is Alaska. It is not an amusement park. If you see a wild animal, you better believe you’re its prey.”
“I will keep that in mind should I take it upon myself to go on a nature walk.”
It was that gleam in her eyes, Griffin suspected. That was the problem. She looked almost . . . excited. Wound up and lit up with it. Instead of how she should have looked if she really was running for her life, which was scared.
Or even plain old worried.
“You seem pretty upbeat for someone who thinks they have a murderer on their tail, especially one who almost killed them twice.”
Mariah aimed that smile at him again, and it actually took a good-sized chip out of him. But Griffin refused to show it. Not to this woman who shouldn’t have registered as anything more than a job.
He would have to examine that, too.
“Funny thing about two near-death experiences in a month,” she said, her gaze cool but her voice steady. Light and airy, even. Griffin didn’t trust it at all. “It takes all the fun out of curling up in the fetal position, whining and weeping. I’m sure I might get back to it. I like a good cry as much as the next girl. But for the time being, I’m going to enjoy being alive while I still am.”
He couldn’t say he liked the heat that worked its way through him, licking its way down the length of his body the same way that drawl did. He stalked down the hallway instead of answering her, stopping at the farthest door. He pulled out the key he’d picked up from Madeleine earlier, set it to the lock, and opened the door. Then he took more time than strictly necessary checking the room for potential intruders.
“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked.
“Of course I do. But it’s switched off.”
“Why?”
A faint dent appeared between her brows. “I was under the impression it could be used to track me.”
Griffin nodded, and certainly wasn’t disgruntled that she wasn’t an idiot.
“When you’re done, come back downstairs,” he told her curtly. “And leave the phone off.”
She’d followed him in, looking around as if she’d never seen a hotel room before.
“Is this what it’s like when you hire . . . whatever you are? Mercenaries?”
His lips thinned. “I am not a mercenary.”
“Is that offensive? I’m sorry.”
“A mercenary is a soldier for hire. No loyalty. No honor. Always for sale to the highest bidder, no matter who that is.”
“And that’s not you.”
“Alaska Force solves problems. We are not for sale. We turn down more jobs than we take. And we never ransom our honor. Ever.”
Maybe he only imagined that she looked paler at that, because he wanted her to. Because people should be careful asking questions like that of a man who’d dedicated his life to honor, courage, and unquestionable commitment.
“Noted,” she said softly.
“I’ll be in the lobby,” he told her, and then he left before he could do something he would really regret.
Griffin was not a man whose impulses controlled him. The fact that he’d spent twenty minutes in this woman’s presence and imagined he might have changed was a problem.
But not as big a problem as the heat that settled there in his sex like a clenched fist as he closed the door behind him and stalked back downstairs.
Reminding him how long it had been since he’d allowed himself any kind of release. Especially that kind.
And worse by far, reminding him in no uncertain terms that there was a man beneath the machine, no matter how much he wanted to pretend otherwise.
Four
When the door shut behind the coldest man Mariah had ever met—even colder than her in-laws, who had always struck Mariah as walking blizzards with fancy Georgia accents, even her relatively more friendly father-in-law—she moved to the bathroom, grabbing her toiletry bag as she went so she could deal with how ragged she must appear after her ferry ride and that march up from the docks.
She washed her face, then paused as she patted her skin dry. She blinked at herself in the mirror, slowly lowering the towel to the lip of the sink.
When was the last time she’d seen her own face without makeup for more than the few moments it took to start applying her foundation to conceal her flaws? When was the last time she’d dared to step out of her own bedroom without making sure she had her face on the way David liked it—a habit she’d continued even after she’d moved out?
She couldn’t remember. It had become second nature to her. Like her accent, it was a way to make absolutely certain she never backslid and found herself in Two Oaks again. She’d worked so hard to make herself worthy of being David’s wife—or at least to look and sound and behave like the sort of woman who might not deserve him but wouldn’t reflect badly on him, either.
And yet he had always been the first to remind her she was nothing but trash.
She reached up and took the clip out of her hair, letting it tumble down around her shoulders. It was starting to show its natural wave, which normally she would have already ruthlessly tamed with her flat iron, because she lived in horror of parading around looking messy. Especially where David could see her. But today she ran her damp fingers through her hair instead, fully aware that doing so would encourage it to curl more.
If she was all the way out here on the far edge of the world, she might as well see what it was like to be whomever she felt like being instead of who David had made her.
Even if that meant no makeup and less-than-perfect hair.
As revolutions went, it was tiny and silly, but it was hers.
Mariah left the wrap she’d bought in Seattle on the cozy sleigh bed that dominated one wall and dug out the half-zip fleece and down vest she’d also bought. If her surly, icy guide was going to continue racing up and down hills in this charming little village, she figured she ought to be better prepared for the weather.
She dressed quickly, then forced herself to leave the room without checking the mirror, which was another thing she never, ever did. Because she’d learned quickly that it was better to conduct her own inspection than to fail David’s.
The consequences of displeasing her ex had always been much, much worse than taking a few minutes to make sure she looked the part.
Mariah felt giddy and reckless as she closed the door behind her, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she had to stop near the windows in the hall. She stared out at the water in the harbor, the boats moored down at the docks, and the implacable mountains, which loomed in a way that soothed her somehow. She ordered herself to settle down. And as her heart slowed to normal speed, her gaze moved from the raw, brooding water to the village. The seemingly haphazard collection of bright buildings with hand-lettered signs. The wooden boardwalks in place of streets. Grizzly Harbor was as hardy as it was picturesque, and the combination made her . . . deeply glad.
She was smiling when something in her peripheral vision caught at her. She turned to look down at the street directly below. There was a post office sign on a yellow building across the way. And what looked like some kind of antique store slightly lower down the hill, flanked by houses in competing shades of green. And she had the sense of movement between the store and one of the houses, as if someone had stepped back into the shadows.
As if someone had been staring up at her.
But this was Alaska, not Atlanta, Mariah reminded herself as her stomach dropped with a sickening lurch— no one was watching her here. No one knew where she was and her phone was off, so no one could track her. Still, she couldn’t help the shudder that speared its way down her back in an icy, uncomfortable prickle. And she moved back from the window, then toward the stairs, more quickly than she might have otherwise.
By the time she made it down to the inn’s lobby, she’d convinced herself she was being paranoid. That she’d spent the whole week looking over her shoulder and didn’t yet realize that she could stop. If you jump at every shadow even here, so far away from Georgia, she told herself, David wins.
Then she forgot about David, because Griffin Cisneros was standing with his back to the far wall of the inn’s comfortably eclectic sitting area, on one side of the huge stone fireplace. He mirrored the stuffed, rearing grizzly bear on the other side of the stone too closely for her peace of mind.
“Should I be concerned that you think I’m prey?” she asked him, laughing. Maybe a bit too nervously.
But he didn’t laugh. If anything, those dark eyes sharpened, and she felt something tighten in her.
She told herself it was a healthy dose of fear. Because it should have been.
His full lips formed a straight line. “If I was hunting you, princess, you wouldn’t see me.”
That thing she wanted to believe was fear and only fear, nothing hotter or more dangerous, tightened all the more.
And Mariah decided to concentrate on the part that wouldn’t keep her up at night. “Princess?”
“If the glass slipper fits.”
“Oh, sugar. I’ve already done the Cinderella thing. Been to the ball. Fit my foot into that cute little shoe and made it work. Lived happily ever after for ten whole years, but the happy part never lasts. Before you know it, Prince Charming is sleeping with the maids, poisoning your food, and threatening you in parking lots all over Georgia.” Mariah was aware that the sharp smile she aimed at him had far too much Two Oaks in it. Too much McKenna challenge and not enough Lanier reserve. But she chose not to be horrified by her own transformation. “I can’t imagine why they leave that out of the fairy tale.”
“Fairy tales are for small children and spoiled women.”
“I’m not at all surprised you don’t believe in them. I used to, of course. But I think after my last emergency room visit, the urge to dive headfirst into a happily-ever-after might finally have been beaten out of me.”
Griffin continued to stand with his back to the wall, and his intense stillness clawed at her. Mariah had never seen a man stand like that. As if he could disappear into the wall if he wanted to.
His intense watchfulness pricked at her. It made her say whatever came to mind without worrying she needed to bite her tongue. It made her reckless and giddy all over again.
It made her more like a McKenna and less like a Lanier by the second, but she didn’t do anything to stop it.
And when he moved away from the wall, it was no better. He had a kind of rangy, lethal grace that something deep inside her, some feminine awareness she’d never known was there before, identified instantly.
He was the most male individual she’d ever seen. Intense and dangerous from his dark hair to his boots. Not soft and carefully pressed the way the men in David’s world always were, as if how they wore their khakis and preppy collared T-shirts decided the fate of the world. Griffin was hard and smooth, lethal and compelling, all over.
And the way he made what felt like every last hair on her body stand on end had nothing at all to do with fear.
Mariah accepted that uncomfortable truth as Griffin headed for the door again, pushing his way back out into the moody Alaska afternoon and indicating that she should follow him.
She did, grateful for the slap of the crisp, cool, fresh air and the cloud cover that felt less revealing than the earlier bursts of sunshine. She took a breath so deep it made her lungs ache, then indulged in a moment to enjoy the fact that she could still do such a thing.
With that in mind, she made herself stare down that alley where she’d seen absolutely nothing earlier. Don’t do David’s work for him, she lectured herself.
When she shifted her attention back to Griffin, he was glaring at her again, his arms crossed and an impatient look on his astonishingly beautiful face.
And for some reason, Mariah melted. Everywhere.
Particularly low in her belly and that place between her legs, where she hadn’t felt a thing in a long, long time.
But like it or not, she was still married. Technically. And would continue to be unless and until she survived her divorce.
It didn’t matter that she found another man unreasonably, almost unbearably hot, she concluded as she stood there, the Alaskan cold nipping at her despite her layers. Griffin was a work of art, that was all. And despite all her years of overlooking any number of outright slights, she wasn’t blind.
Still, she was terrifie
d it was written all over her face when his impatience deepened into a frown.
“Hungry or thirsty?”
Mariah decided not to answer that with the recklessness that she could feel pumping through her blood, making her feel entirely too young and invulnerable and foolish, the way she’d never let herself feel when she’d actually been all of those things. “That sounds like a trick question.”
Griffin didn’t move a muscle. She could see he didn’t move at all. And still he managed to turn into granite and ice right there in front of her. Or, really, more of both. “If you’re hungry, I’ll take you to get some food. If you’re thirsty, I’ll take you to the bar. It’s your call.”
Mariah had the sudden urge for what her cousins had always called the McKenna cure. Any bar, an armful of shots tossed back as quick as possible, and when you got back up off the floor the next morning, you could count on feeling much too bad to worry about whatever you’d been worried about before.
But Mariah had never been one of those McKennas. She’d usually been the one scraping her relatives off of bar floors, pouring them into the back of a pickup truck, and carting them back home to sleep it off.
“I could eat,” she said, almost primly, as if that could remind her who she was. Or who she’d spent the last ten years trying to be, anyway.
She followed Griffin’s long, almost angry stride as he wheeled around and started down the haphazard lane. She looked around as they went, and not just down the alleys so she could jump at more shadows. The buildings in the village were clustered together, which she figured had to do with the long, tough winters. No need to do more than stumble out of one door and then in through the next, a few steps away. She tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place like this, filled with people who nodded to Griffin as he passed them and eyed Mariah in a manner that told her they knew she didn’t belong.