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“I’m descriptive. It’s part of my job. Now it’s second nature, basically.”
All of this sounded like trouble, but not the kind Blueliked to handle and was trained to solve. This sounded instead like the kind of trouble he’d been avoiding for the past twenty years. The kind of trouble that came with his mother’s bad choices and his stepdad’s late-night rants and all those choking, suffocating ties of stepsisters he’d never wanted and neighbors he’d never chosen and people who wanted something from him when he didn’t respect them. When he couldn’t and wouldn’t respect them.
Pass.
There was a reason he never went home. And never would. The last thing he needed was a specter from that time, right here in front of him, like his past had a rental car and an evident death wish.
“I don’t care,” Blue said, his voice hard. “About your brother or your job.”
He didn’t sayor you. He figured that was implied.
Everly sighed at that, but she didn’t deflate. She also didn’t slink back to her car and leave, the way she should have if she’d possessed even the barest hint of self-preservation. And for a moment there was nothing but the sound of the tide coming in, the summer breeze hinting at the coming fall weather, although the air was still warm enough in the afternoon sun. Not that cold bothered Blue much. He’d spent so much of his life uncomfortable, courtesy of the United States military, that the alternative made him edgy.
The woman standing there in front of him was just a new form of discomfort.
Everly Campbell should not have been anywhere near him. She shouldn’t have been able to find him in the first place, much less remind him of the life he’d led before he’d become a SEAL. She should not have been within aten-mile radius of him, because the kind of blood Blue had on his hands never washed off, and he’d stopped trying, and she was still made of picket fences and cute little dolls and happy golden retrievers who rolled around in leaf piles. All that sweet suburban happiness hung around her like a kind of mist.
He wanted no part of it. Or her.
But it didn’t keep him from noticing that she was definitely not a little girl anymore. Blue bet she despaired over the curves she’d packed into skinny jeans, a T-shirt with something cute on it, and a sleek blazer in a too-bright shade of blue.Despairwas not the word Blue would use to describe those curves, however. Not when his mouth was watering.
She’d lost the pigtails. Her hair was strawberry blond, hanging in long layers around a face that begged for a man’s hands. Her face was a problem. Straight up. Sweet and smart at once, with a wide mouth that invited all kinds of deeply impure thoughts.
Blue had spent years filled with only impure thoughts, happily, but he refused to entertain such notions about Everly Campbell.
For more than a perfectly understandable moment or two, that was, because he wasn’t dead.
He reminded himself that she’d careened over the long unmarked road that was officially called Hardy’s Pass but was colloquially known as Hard-Ass Pass. It was the only road on the island during the roughly seven days a year it was not actively treacherous. It led directly to the sprawling lodge here in the cove, ramshackle wood cabins connected by wooden stairs and boardwalks, where Blue had been living since the night Isaachad turned out to be a whole lot more than a legend. With a handful of other brothers-in-arms who’d gotten out of the special forces just like he had and shared not just his desire for a mission but a great many of his own very specialized skills.
At least three of them had weapons trained on her right now.
Not because they thought she was a threat, of course. No one who intended to do harm out here—a good thousand miles west of the middle of nowhere—would roar up blaring classic Bruce Springsteen and then jump out the way she had, calling his name like they had been tight once upon a time. Alaska Force wasn’t just a home for wayward veterans who hadn’t quite adjusted to civilian life. Isaac hadn’t set it all up in the fishing lodge his family had once operated as a summer tourist trap out of the goodness of his heart.
Alaska Force was a last resort for people who needed very serious solutions to very complicated problems.
No one came here for fun. Mostly, no one dared come here at all. Especially without an invitation.
Blue refused to accept that Everly had the kind of problem she’d need a man like him to solve.
No matter how pretty she was.
“Great to catch up on old times,” he said while she was still frowning at him, likely considering another run at him with more memories he didn’t want to entertain. “Really. If you survive another pass over that road, which I have to tell you is unlikely, make sure you tell your mom I loved her oatmeal cookies.”
Everly’s frown deepened, and that was a head trip. He remembered the little girl on her nauseating pink bike,and yet the woman in front of him made him... greedy. Restless in ways he understood perfectly and refused to indulge. No matter how much he wanted to strip off her funky blazer and help himself to—
Stand down,he ordered himself. Especially that part of himself that wasn’t listening to anything but the surprising need pounding through him.
“My mother is a thoracic surgeon,” Everly replied after a moment. “She’s never baked an oatmeal cookie in her life.”
Blue didn’t give an inch. “You need to go home, Everly. Wherever that is.”
“Chicago. And I can’t.”
“You can. If you don’t feel like suicide by mountain pass, take a seaplane somewhere a whole lot safer than Alaska, which is pretty much anywhere else. You don’t belong here.”
“I can’t.”
She took a step closer to him, and this time she didn’t seem to think better of it. Blue was giving her a look he knew from experience made grown men back off and fall all over themselves to apologize, but Everly took another step toward him instead, which put her in arm’s reach.