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“Okay. If you keep disturbingme,” Caradine amended, smirking the way she liked to do, “I’ll ban you.”
“You’re not going to ban us,” Isaac said then, sounding amused though he didn’t quite look it. There was something too sharp in his gaze. “You like money too much and we’re your best customers.”
And then it was Blue’s opportunity to read some faces, because everything shifted when Caradine looked at Isaac. The way it always did. Something dark and electric seethed in the air between them, but Isaac only smiled. As if he liked that kind of trouble, too.
Or wanted Caradine to think he did, anyway.
“It’s a good thing you have such a high opinion of yourself, Gentry,” Caradine said, her voice sweet. Which, given that she was about as sweet as a mouthful of the bitter coffee she brewed, was nothing short of alarming. “Someone should.”
Blue could have given his friend and leader some crap about the way he watched Caradine walk away, but he didn’t. Because he was just that much of a better person than Isaac was, he told himself piously.
Or, if he was more honest, because he didn’t want to hear what Isaac might say in return if Blue jumped in and mentioned the thing no one ever mentioned. That being the mutual dislike that Blue thought Isaac and Caradine needed to work out in a locked room. As long as that locked room contained a very sturdy bed.
“I’m assuming you want to take point on this,” Isaac said, as if there had been no interruption. “Since our uninvited guest is all yours.”
Blue didn’t take the bait and issue denials that would make the leader of Alaska Force howl with laughter. “I don’t think we need a full tactical team. Not yet, anyway. No need to pull resources away from other projects. I’ll do a little recon first.”
“Your call.” Isaac leaned back in his chair. “It could still be a domestic situation that got out of hand. Maybe the roommate had that jealous boyfriend after all, and maybehehas a few too many idiot frat-boy buddies. You could smack a few heads together and be done with it.”
“Possible.”
Blue realized he was tapping his fingers against the tabletop, an obvious outward sign of agitation, and notnormally the sort of thing he let betray him. He stopped, but he knew it was too late. There was no way Isaac hadn’t clocked it. He figured it was his continuing silence on the subject of Caradine that got him a measure of grace in return, because Isaac didn’t say anything.
Blue took that as the gift it was. “I’m not sure a bunch of drunk frat boys could engineer a cleanup at all, or in such a short span of time. And even if they tried, I don’t think they’d manage to fool the Chicago PD.”
Isaac studied him for a minute, and Blue braced himself—while trying to look as if maybe he was actually boneless. In the six months he’d lived here, working with Isaac and the rest, going on their particular missions to solve the kind of problems only Alaska Force could, he’d come to respect Isaac in much the same way he’d respected his commanding officers back in the SEAL teams. But the way Isaac was looking at him now had nothing to do with mission directives. This was personal.
“I thought you barely knew this woman,” he said. Mildly enough.
“How well do you know all the kids who grew up with you?” Blue asked. Too defensively. He tried to ratchet that back. “The ones you haven’t seen since you were seventeen? That’s how well I know her, which is not at all.”
“Have you looked around Grizzly Harbor? There are maybe a hundred people here once the weather turns.” Isaac shook his head. “I know them all, dumbass. Every last one.”
“Everly was a kid when I left. I know who she is— I don’t know her. And I’m getting tired of repeating myself.”
Blue heard his own voice and barely managed to keep from cringing. That gruff, dismissive tone that he didn’t even believe himself. But whatever Isaac might have said to that, and it looked like he had a list or two, he never got the chance. Because the door opened at the front of the café, and Everly herself walked in.
And whatever lies Blue had been telling himself about what had happened on that porch—that a woman who was basically a stranger hadn’t gotten to him, that he didn’t care what happened to Everly personally, that this was just another mission like all the others he’d run in his career—he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t feel the kick of attraction when she appeared. As if she’d lobbed a grenade at him and he’d been stupid enough to catch it and hold on tight.
Terrific.
She’d twisted her strawberry blond hair into a knot on the back of her head, messy and haphazard, and it shouldn’t have made him want to smile. She was wearing the same skinny jeans that were slightly too baggy and the same completely pointless shoes, but she’d traded the T-shirt and jacket for a long-sleeved top that looked like the kind of performance wool hikers wore, reminding Blue that summer in Alaska did a pretty good impression of a moody fall day down south. Her green eyes were sleepy as she looked around, but they seemed to snap with awareness when she saw him.
Just like he did.
Damn it.
Six
“Oh,” Everly said, coming to a stop as the café door slammed shut behind her. Her gaze was on Blue, and it was like he could feel it. Like it was her fingers on him, not her eyes. “Hi.”
And then her ears did that thing that had been driving him crazy last night, turning a little red along the tips. Blue didn’t understand how he was expected to get any work done under conditions like this. He’d never met a woman who blushed as much as she did. He didn’t know anyonecouldblush as much as she did.
It fascinated him.
He knew it should have irritated him. She was like a puppy, wide-eyed and beaming her innocence all over the place. Blue liked dogs, like Isaac’s entirely too intelligent dog, Horatio, who was waiting outside for him right now, keeping watch over the sleepy summer streets. Blue also liked women who looked like Everly, for thatmatter, especially all soft and sleepy, like she wasn’t fully out of her bed—an image he didn’t need in his head.
But he knew that, sooner or later, she was going to look at him like he’d kicked her.