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“Stop gawking,” Blue had ordered her in that clipped, hard tone of voice he liked so much, as if he were her commanding officer.
His military background was why she’d sought him out. But it was a stark change from the way he’d talked to her as if they were some kind of almost-friends, there on the streets of pretty-as-a-postcard Grizzly Harbor. At first she’d told herself she’d imagined the change in him. That odd way he’d talked to her in the café and on the street, as if he were worried about her. Her personally, not just her as his next job. She’d lectured herselfextensively that she was delirious and still exhausted andin Alaska, so of course she was hallucinating things like even the slightest little bit of softening in the hardest man she’d ever known.
But then, after she’d gathered her things from the adorably cozy Blue Bear Inn and had tried to relax in the alarmingly tiny seaplane that was flown by yet another one of Blue’s frighteningly competent ex-military friends, she’d changed her mind. It was something about the deliberately curt way Blue spoke to her. Not rude. Not mean.
But as if he’d gone too far before and was dialing himself back.
She’d decided that she hadn’t imagined anything after all.
Maybe that was why she’d grinned at him so openly, standing there on a chilly tarmac in Juneau with only the ever-present mountains as witness.
“I thought the whole point of having a private jet was so the unwashed masses would gawk,” she’d said.
That gleam in his dark gaze that she was starting to crave too much had gotten brighter then. His hard lips had hinted at a curve, there on that impossibly strong jaw he still hadn’t bothered to shave. It was her curse that she liked it that way. She likedhim.
“You can’t fly commercial if you want to conduct missions on any kind of timetable.”
She’d nodded sagely. “And also, no one gawks at you if you arrive late from a layover in Cincinnati. Because that makes you one of the unwashed masses yourself.”
“There’s a lot ofunwashed, suddenly. Is this your way of trying to tell me you didn’t shower today?”
Everly had only smiled wider. “I showered. But someday I’m going to have to go back to Grizzly Harbor and try those hot springs.”
Blue had looked at her for a moment that had gone on too long. Lifetimes, maybe, though it was possible only she had felt it that way. And the longer he’d looked at her, the less his eyes had gleamed in that way she liked.
“Are you planning to get in more trouble?” he asked, in a too-mild tone that Everly hadn’t really cared for.
But she’d answered him anyway. “Obviously, if I survive this, I plan to get in no trouble of any kind ever again.”
His mouth had twisted then, but it wasn’t a smile. “Then why would you come back to Grizzly Harbor?”
She’d spent the first few hours of their plane ride turning that one over and over in her head when she wasn’t reliving those odd, hushed moments near the pier—and spent the last few hours beating herself up for being such an idiot.
Maybe it was only natural to try to make this whole thing into something it wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t so much an idiot as a very scared woman hoping like hell that Blue could really do the things she thought he could. The things she desperately needed him to do when they got back to Chicago.
But she had to remember that this was nothing but a job to him. Another mission, that was all. A favor he was doing her because they’d grown up on the same street, and nothing more.
It was disheartening—or maybe the word she was looking for wascrazy—how hard that seemed to be for her to remember.
“Do cities make you feel claustrophobic?” she asked Blue as they lurched along in traffic, slowly making their way toward her apartment building.
He made a low noise. Maybe it was a laugh.
“I don’t get claustrophobic. I was a SEAL, Everly. Not a great career choice if you get claustrophobic.”
Everly had never been particularly claustrophobic herself. But that was what it felt like, returning to Chicago tonight. Driving back into her life, which had felt cheerful and good, for the most part, before that night a month ago. Now everything she’d built here seemed like a nightmare. When they passed her favorite coffee shop, the one she’d stopped at every morning on her way to work for years, it was like an unseen hand wrapped around her ribs and squeezed her tight.
The closer they got to her apartment, the harder and tighter that hand felt.
Then again, she thought when they pulled up in front of her building, maybe it wasn’t claustrophobia at all. Maybe it was simpler than that.
Maybe it was plain old terror, sickening and syrupy, rushing back in after the brief vacation she’d had from it in Alaska. Since the moment she’d slammed on the brakes in her rental wagon because she’d recognized the man standing there outside the lodge in Fool’s Cove.
She snuck a look—or three—at him as he pulled up in front of her building and parked there, tossing something on the dashboard that looked a lot like a parking pass that police might use. Not that she knew too much about Chicago parking passes without a car of her own.
Blue didn’t seem to notice the way she kept looking athim, as if she expected him to disappear at any moment. He swung out of his seat, slamming his door behind him. By the time Everly unfastened her seat belt and opened her own door, he was there, their bags slung over his broad shoulders as if they weighed nothing at all.
She figured with shoulders like that, he could carry their bags, the SUV, and her without breaking a sweat.