by Megan Crane
Paradise, in other words. He didn’t know why that bothered him. Why it mattered to him one way or the other how Bethan had grown up.
As if it mattered at all what different worlds they came from.
“Home sweet home,” Bethan said, irony in her voice. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked like she was perfectly at her ease. But he remembered that raw expression on her face earlier. And he could see the difference. Maybe he’d always seen the difference. Maybe that was the trouble. “There will be too many guests for all of them to stay on the property, but if I had to guess, I would suspect that the highest-profile guests will probably take over that far left wing and the guesthouses. If you’re looking for all five to be in the same place while not in the middle of the wedding ceremony, that’s probably where they’ll be.”
“Do you rate a guesthouse?” Jonas heard himself ask.
When she looked at him, there was no trace of the woman he’d seen on the beach. She was pure soldier, completely contained, and it was his problem that he liked both versions of her, whether or not he wanted to admit it.
“I doubt very much that the black sheep of the family is considered high-profile enough to rate the stellar guest accommodations,” she said.
“You’re the black sheep of your family?” Isaac asked, with a laugh. “How is that possible?”
“My father’s an air force man,” Bethan said with a grin. “He would forgive me anything . . . except the army.”
The briefing quickly devolved into the usual ribbing about which branch of the military was the best—a pointless conversation as far as Jonas was concerned, because it was obviously the navy—and when it died down, Bethan was grinning.
Jonas was not.
“This is the most excited I’ve been about my sister’s wedding since I got the invitation,” she said. “Viewing the whole thing as a tactical endeavor can only make it more enjoyable. All I need—”
“Is a date,” Jonas said, his voice cutting through the room. And he didn’t falter when every eye in the place turned to him. He was looking at Bethan instead. “No problem. I volunteer.”
Five
Hours after the briefing had finally ended, Bethan still hadn’t managed to get herself back under control.
She was aware that they’d sat around hashing out more things about the scientist, his sister, and the confluence of jackholes that would be at her sister’s wedding, but she was unable to remember a single word of it. Much less the other scenarios and missions they’d run through afterward, one after the next, making sure that the plan they had in place—the one where she was going to basically go deep cover as herself in her family’s home—was the best.
Bethan was . . .
Well. Astonished didn’t begin to cover it.
She was perilously close to emotional, a state she avoided as if her life depended on it—because it often did. Men spent a lot of time substituting anger for fear. Bethan had learned a long time ago to do the same, because the alternative was to feel what she actually felt and cry, and she allowed that about once a year, and in private.
Though sometimes it happened more than once a year, like when she’d finally found herself alone in a hospital in Germany after the transport that had lifted her and Jonas out of that terrifying hellscape that should have killed them both. She’d crumpled, right there against the nearest wall, sinking down into a ball of anguish. Her clothes covered in stains she didn’t want to identify. Her hands smelling like him.
Sometimes she dreamed about all that and woke up with her eyes wet, but she told herself it was nothing more than a nightmare. Par for the course for anyone who’d spent any real time in the field.
Today she did not think she was at any risk of crying over Jonas Crow.
After the briefing had finally broken up, she’d avoided the subject by spending a couple of hours on the firing range, because she was sure that putting bullet holes through targets would soothe her the way it normally did.
But it didn’t.
She wasn’t any happier about things when she ran into Jonas in the lodge’s mess hall come lunchtime.
“We’ll need to sit down and hammer out our backstory,” he said after dropping down at the table where she was very clearly sitting by herself. Not that anyone could read that poker face of his, but she could have sworn he looked . . . well, not alarmed and a little shaken, the way she was. “And I’m going to need more personal details about your family that a date of yours would know.”
Bethan stabbed a forkful of the vegetables on her plate, and that, too, failed to make her feel any better. It wasn’t violent enough. She suspected nothing would be violent enough to make her feel better unless it involved punching Jonas in the face.
But that would be unwise.
Probably.
“Are we in an episode of The Twilight Zone?” she asked, quietly enough, which felt like a victory because she wanted to yell. “Am I having a psychotic break? This morning, walking down the beach with me was too much for you to bear. But now you’re volunteering to be my date?” She didn’t like that word. It didn’t seem to fit in her mouth, not when he was regarding her with all that implacable coolness, as if none of their history mattered, suddenly. “At my sister’s wedding, surrounded by my family?”
“I volunteered for an op,” he said mildly. A lot like he was attempting to control a crowd, not have a conversation. Like she was being irrational on the level of a mob. She would have snarled at him for that if she didn’t think that was what he wanted. “Is that a problem for you?”
He knew that she was going to tell him it was no problem. Bethan was fully aware of that. She was almost convinced she could see a cool little gleam of challenge in his gaze.
“No problems on this side,” she replied, trying to hit that same wow, you should calm down before your craziness infects the world tone he was using. She smiled when he seemed to stiffen just the littlest bit. “As we’ve established, I’m pretty much a problem-free zone. I’m a little more concerned about you, your feelings, and what it might do to you to be in such close proximity to me.”
He wasn’t the only one who could make a patronizing tone into an art form.
Jonas didn’t laugh. It wasn’t entirely clear if he knew how. But still, Bethan thought she saw a hint of it in that dark gaze of his then, if only for an instant.
“I appreciate your concern.”
“Alaska Force is a family,” she replied. And smiled. Kindly and with even more condescension.
That gleam in his gaze intensified. “Tomorrow.”
And then he’d left her there, fully convinced that he meant that to sound like a threat. That it was a threat.
Not that there was anything she could do about it, except fume. There was no complaining to Isaac, as that would be as good as announcing that she and Jonas really did have personal issues requiring mediation, of all things. When Bethan had no intention of acknowledging that there was an issue, much less attempting to mediate it. The very idea made her shudder.
Jonas had boxed her in pretty well, she had to admit. What she couldn’t figure out was why.
That evening, she jumped on one of the boats heading into Grizzly Harbor. Blue navigated the skiff around the jutting edge of the rocky coast, nimbly picking his way through the treacherous water like the navy man he was. And when they made their way into the main harbor on the island, Bethan forgot, for a moment, the enduring issue that was Jonas Crow.
She gazed out at the pretty fishing village that waited for her instead. Because she’d seen it almost two years ago and fallen in love at first sight. She’d stood out on the deck of the ferry as a summer day made the whole island sparkle, caught her breath, and that had been that.
Fool’s Cove was quiet, tucked away on the other side of the island. Seaplanes came and went in accordance with Alaska Force’s mission plans,
but that was the only version of traffic they had. Sometimes they used the helicopter for faster response times. And there were a lot of satellite dishes around to keep them linked in despite being in the middle of nowhere.
In comparison, Grizzly Harbor was the height of civilization. There were no real streets, but there were enough people here that there were dirt paths and wooden boardwalks to connect the brightly painted, if often peeling, buildings. There was a general store, a post office, and the Blue Bear Inn. Other little shops that sold curiosities or fishing supplies or both. Tourists came here in the summers, though never in high numbers, as the island was off the Inside Passage cruise, and throughout the year the citizens threw themselves festivals, wallowed in the natural hot springs on the trail out of town, and built as tightly knit a community as was possible when everyone was a rugged individualist who liked their own company and space, or they wouldn’t be living on an island off the coast of Alaska in the first place.
Grizzly Harbor boasted a couple of restaurants, assuming a person counted the hearty, down-to-earth food in the Fairweather—the dive bar in town that was also the only bar in town. And the scenic harbor wasn’t just for show—it was used by the fishermen who lived there and was a stop along the Alaska Marine Highway, where a person could catch a ferry that could take them all over the state’s coastline and down into the Lower 48, too.
Blue moored the boat at the docks and then they made their way up the hill toward the community center, where Blue headed up the weekly self-defense class. Bethan loved that the local women had taken to it. Rumor was, some of them had even used the techniques they’d learned in class when necessary, which just . . . made her happy.
Bethan had taken intensive training in self-defense methods on a much higher level and had a smattering of martial arts in her background, but she loved nothing more than teaching regular women that they weren’t helpless. That they could fight back. And more, she loved that civilian women were always filled with what-ifs. That they typically had no trouble whatsoever stopping class to ask about the various scenarios they imagined, so Blue could show them what they could do to fight off their nightmares.
It was fun. And just the kind of fun that Bethan liked most, rough-and-tumble and dangerous besides.
She sometimes wished she could go back in time and tell the little girl she’d been that despite what her mother told her in tones of despair, it was okay to play rough. It was okay to be a girl who wanted to be tough and physical like the boys.
It was okay that she’d always liked playing with guns better than dolls.
“We’re all going to the Fairweather,” Everly said when self-defense class was done. She nudged Caradine with her elbow when she said it, and Bethan was surprised that the deeply aloof owner of the Water’s Edge Café not only allowed it but didn’t actively scowl. Was that what taking her relationship with Isaac public had done for her? Made her more approachable?
But though she didn’t scowl, Caradine did step out of range of Everly’s elbow, restoring Bethan’s faith in her famously bad temper.
“We’re all,” Caradine echoed, her eyes gleaming with what looked a lot like said temper. “We’re a big we now. A group. What fun.”
“She loves it,” Everly told Bethan.
“Does she?” Bethan wasn’t convinced.
“That’s how she shows affection,” Everly said with a grin. “The more outraged she pretends she is, the more filled with love she actually is.”
“Or dead inside,” Caradine countered, though she didn’t walk any farther away. “And praying daily for deliverance.”
Everly only laughed, her gaze on Bethan. “Come get a beer. Eat a burger. It’s Friday night.”
And that was how Bethan found herself sitting at a table of civilians, listening to Everly, Mariah, and Caradine laugh about what it was like to be in relationships with Alaska Force men.
“Baby. Got to go,” Caradine was saying in a credible impression of Isaac.
“Wheels up in thirty,” Everly said gruffly, as Blue.
“Briefing at oh nine hundred,” Mariah added, sounding remarkably like Griffin.
And that cracked them all up to such an extent that Everly cradled her face in her hands and Mariah wiped at her eyes. Caradine got so carried away she actually smiled.
“All of those are valid statements,” Bethan said into the lull, but that only set them off again.
Bethan was grinning despite herself, but she wished Kate were here. Kate Holiday was an Alaska State Trooper as well as being in a relationship with Templeton. That wasn’t the same as what Bethan did, but it meant she wasn’t a civilian, either. And best of all, she had a certain no-nonsense, refreshing matter-of-factness about her that always made Bethan feel comfortable.
Because it was different when you were a woman doing what was historically a man’s job. That was just a fact.
“I wish I could relate,” she told the group, though she did not, in fact, wish anything of the kind. Sex with a coworker was a risky proposition in any job, but in hers? It had always been catastrophic. Bethan had seen too many good women go down thanks to some guy who never seemed worth the fall, to her mind. She shrugged. “But I only work with them. I don’t date them. Seems like a better plan.”
“Here’s my question,” Everly said. She leaned across the table, shoving her beer out of the way. “Do you actually not notice that they’re all ridiculously gorgeous? Or do you have to accept on some level that yes, they’re remarkable male specimens, but yet somehow remain functional anyway?”
“If it’s the first,” Mariah drawled, “I salute you. But also have follow-up questions.”
“And if it’s the second,” Caradine said, her gaze considering, “you’re even more badass than I thought you were.”
“I can’t possibly answer that question.” Bethan looked around the table. “We have more interesting things to talk about than my job, don’t we?”
“Yes, yes,” Everly said, and patted her hand. “What a trial it is for you to have a job like that, anyway. Constantly in the company of a legion of gloriously good-looking men who can also perform feats of skill and endurance on command, and you get to do it all with them.”
“In fairness,” Caradine said after a moment, “that does sound a lot like hell to me.”
Bethan sat back in her chair and looked around the Fairweather, which she’d first seen almost two years ago when she’d come to meet the myth that was Isaac. It looked the same. The rough-looking regulars who were, for the most part, sweethearts beneath all their bluster. The pool table that was always in use. The jukebox that was usually tuned to classic rock or country and was currently blaring out Creedence Clearwater Revival. The neon sign outside that flashed in the window, and the matching ones over the bar.
She’d come here chasing a story people in the service told one another but that she hadn’t really believed was real. Oh, she knew Alaska Force was real. And she’d assumed Isaac was—whatever real meant for a man of his skill and background. But the idea that this place could actually be a kind of sanctuary for special ops soldiers? Or that it could be a group of the good guys—instead of some of the individuals she knew from all her years in the service, who she was never surprised to hear went into the kind of private security firms that everyone knew made them straight-up mercenaries.
Because Bethan might have been furious at the army. Or brokenhearted, maybe, and ready to leave. But she was no mercenary. She had always wanted to do good in the world. If she dug down beneath the skin of the eighteen-year-old she’d been, so determined to thumb her nose at her father by joining a different branch than his, that had been at the root of it.
That was still what she wanted.
But she was with civilians tonight. She could worry about doing good in the world tomorrow—with or without the looming complication of Jonas Crow.
“My personal
hell is different,” she said. “It involves big family weddings. Ones I have to be in, I mean, as the maid of honor, when my entire life has proven to me and my entire family that given the opportunity, I will shame them all.”
“You’re the maid of honor in a wedding?” Everly asked, as if Bethan had announced she was, in fact, Santa Claus.
“Like a real person,” Bethan said, biting back her grin. “I know. I’m as thrown by it as you are.”
“Have you tried not agreeing to appear in people’s weddings?” Caradine asked. “That would be my first choice.”
“Says the woman who catered mine,” Everly retorted.
Caradine shook her head. “Food is not the same thing as all that matching-dresses-and-giving-speeches nonsense, and it’s all such a hard pass I can’t even think about it.”
Mariah sat up straighter in her chair, the light of battle in her eyes. “When is this wedding, and who is getting married?”
“Two weeks,” Bethan replied. She took a big gulp of her beer. Then a bigger one. “And it’s my sister.”
“Is she also in the military?” Everly asked.
Bethan laughed. “God, no. Imagine if a Disney princess became a corporate lawyer and lived in San Francisco. That’s Ellen.”
“Please tell me the wedding is Disney-themed and princess dresses are required.” Caradine’s smirk was evil. “And if there’s a God, let there also be pictures.”
Bethan smirked right back. “I have actually worn dresses before, Caradine.”
“But a Cinderella dress?” she asked. Hopefully.
It occurred to Bethan that this was an opportunity. She really had been hoping that she’d be unavoidably called away on a mission. For the entirety of April, if possible. She loved her family, but it was never easy or relaxing to be around them. Or much fun, either. And part of that was because she never knew which version of her they wanted. The daughter they’d imagined she’d be or the daughter she was?
