by Megan Crane
Bethan knew that he’d been faking it for the cameras this last time, but that didn’t change the fact that his mouth had been on her. All over her. She knew what that felt like now. She knew where it could lead when there were no cameras involved. And she thought she was holding herself together pretty well, all things considered. After all these years and everything that had happened between them, to find out that she’d been right all along about what was beneath that dark gaze of his was . . . spectacular.
But she remembered herself. And more to the point, she remembered that he’d decided to act like all he’d done was scratch an itch.
“I left here and never meant to return,” she told him, pleased with how calm she sounded. “I don’t really care what they did with the room, if that’s what you’re asking.”
His gaze moved over her. “Seems like you had a lot of rooms to choose from.”
Bethan rolled her eyes. “Do you expect me to apologize for the house my parents bought when I was a teenager and renovated when I was gone?”
“I don’t expect you to do anything.”
“Of course not. Because then you might have to admit that you actually have a feeling about something. And obviously, the whole world would immediately explode.”
All they had to do was go up a flight of stairs. Dominic Carter was staying in the suite directly above them. They could do what they’d come here to do—create the necessary diversion, sweep the rooms, and cut the feed if this was where it originated. If the feed wasn’t coming from his rooms, they could check the rest of the guest suites and then fan out to the cottages. A whole night of tasks to complete— possibly while all the suites and rooms were occupied. It was right up their alley.
But neither one of them moved.
Jonas’s eyebrows rose on that stark, stunning face of his, all those sharp brown planes and the impossible sensuality of his mouth. That she’d now tasted.
She couldn’t say she had regrets. But she couldn’t seem to get past it, either.
“Is this about what happened earlier?” His voice was cold. “While we’re in the middle of an operation?”
Bethan didn’t think. She surged forward so she could get her face as close to his as possible, without actually poking him in the chest like a cartoon villain.
Though she thought about it.
“Don’t you dare patronize me,” she clipped at him. “I get that it’s convenient for you to pretend that you’re somehow above all this. But the only real difference between yesterday and today in terms of operational functionality is that we’re being honest about this situation. You’ve been treating me differently from the rest of the team as long as you’ve known me. And yes, I’m including way back when. It has nothing to do with men and women in combat roles, and it never has.”
She pulled in a breath, not expecting to see anything on his face. Not expecting anything at all. “It has to do with you, Jonas. And me. That’s always been a thing. It always will be. And it’s certainly not going to change now, while the operation in question is in my parents’ house.”
“Bethan,” he began, and she took a strange sort of solace from the fact that he didn’t sound as frigid as he usually did. How sad was that?
But he didn’t finish what he was about to say, because a door opened. Directly across from the small hall where they were standing.
“There you are, Bethan,” her mother said in her cultured tones. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Bethan was still seething inside, whether she wanted to admit it or not, and more than spoiling for a fight. Jonas was maddening. The situation was worse, though she supposed it was the same as it always had been. Maybe that was why it was worse.
But she couldn’t deal with any of that—with him—because she had to plaster a smile on her face and try to look as if it made all the sense in the world that she was standing here, in the little back corridor that was for family only. Where they could go back and forth without staff or guests any the wiser.
“Looking for me?” she asked lightly, though it cost her. “Why?”
Birdie opened the door wider, and Bethan saw that her entire family was gathered in the sitting room adjacent to her father’s office.
“We’re having a family summit,” Ellen said, waving the tumbler in her hand a little too carelessly. Next to her, Matthew was looking on indulgently while rattling the ice cubes in his own drink.
“We’ve been trying to contact you all evening,” Birdie continued. “It’s not like you to have your phone switched off.”
Because it was never switched off. Which was how Bethan knew her mother was, at best, exaggerating. If she’d texted Bethan, it could only have been in the last hour—while her cell phone was back in the room in the clutch she’d discarded once she and Jonas had returned from town.
“My fault,” Jonas said from behind her. Bethan wished she had a word to describe what it was like to be this annoyed by someone and yet absurdly comforted when his hand came around to rest on her hip. Like a real couple. “We’ve been out to dinner, and I’ll admit, I like to keep her attention on me.”
If Bethan let herself think about that—about all her attention on him, or his insisting upon it in some alternate reality where this relationship they were faking was who they actually were—but she couldn’t. She couldn’t go there.
He ushered her into the room with his hand a faint weight in the small of her back, and she let him do it while her mind raced. It was impossible not to wonder if, after all, her family was responsible for those cameras. But as she scanned all the faces around her, no one seemed to look anything but mildly interested that Jonas had a phone rule.
No one seemed to think that they ought to have been tucked up in a hot tub, even now, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to cover their bases.
“We’ve been having a very Santa Barbara evening,” she told them, lying brightly. “We had dinner in town. Then we wandered State Street, looking at all the shops. We went down to the beach to say hello to the Pacific Ocean, then came back to make use of that hot tub on our patio. Then I decided it was a fine time to take Jonas on a nostalgic tour of the house I grew up in. Although to be honest, so much of it’s changed now that it’s hard to be too sentimental.”
“It’s practically a hotel,” Ellen agreed. She eyed their mother. “A very pretty boutique hotel, of course.”
Jonas pulled his phone from his pocket, making a show of checking to see if it was switched on. She saw him send a swift text and knew that he was making sure Rory and the rest handled those cameras. If she had to bet, she’d say he told them to create some kind of disturbance in that feed because they weren’t going to be able to track it as planned.
“Sit down, sit down,” her father said in his overly hearty host voice. He handed out drinks, then settled back in the armchair he’d vacated, smiling a bit indulgently. “We’re plotting out a war, apparently.”
“Not a real war,” Ellen said with that smirk of hers that it turned out Bethan was very fond of. “Down, military people. No need to call in the cavalry.”
Bethan found herself exchanging glances with her father and Jonas, which unsettled her. They were two of the most maddening men she’d ever met, she had complicated relationships with both of them, but if she wasn’t mistaken, all the soldiers in the room were . . . having a moment.
She didn’t know where to put that. She would have said—she had said, repeatedly—that her father bent over backward to act as if he didn’t have a daughter who had ever gone near the military.
“It’s time to separate,” Matthew intoned. “Since the girls are doing their thing, I’m hoping you’ll join my groomsmen and me.”
It took Bethan a long moment to realize that her soon-to-be brother-in-law was addressing Jonas. And if it took her a long moment, she could see that it was going to take Jonas a whole lot more than that
.
“Are you and your groomsmen doing something exciting?” Bethan asked when Jonas only stared.
“Matthew and I thought it would be fun to split things up for the last time,” Ellen said. Bethan watched the way her sister smiled at her fiancé. She’d always thought that smile had to be fake. A show of some kind, but she was revising her opinion. Because when Ellen smiled at Matthew, it was softer. Her nose wrinkled. She didn’t look like the Ellen that Bethan knew, but maybe that was the point. “All the girls and all the boys are going to split up. We’ll see each other tomorrow night at the rehearsal dinner, then again at the wedding.”
“What do you mean by split up?” Jonas asked, sounding utterly baffled.
And he made Bethan’s heart ache. She suspected he really was baffled. By everything that was happening here.
“A reasonable question,” the general said, getting a sharp look from his wife in return.
“I think it’s a lovely custom,” Birdie said, as if that settled it. “Bethan, just throw a few things in a bag.”
“You don’t need anything in a bag,” Ellen protested, clearly not seeing the way Bethan blinked at that. “You can just come back to the vineyard house with me. You can share my bed. And don’t worry, I’m no longer the cover hog I was when I was a kid.”
“It will be fun,” Matthew was saying in an undertone to Jonas, because none of these people seemed to understand that both Bethan and Jonas could kill all of them. With very little effort. “Maybe a hike, maybe shoot some pool. Stuff like that.”
“Matthew and his groomsmen are staying in a hotel about ten minutes away,” Birdie chimed in. “Now that we’ve found you, he can give you a ride tonight.”
“To the hotel that’s ten minutes away,” Jonas said, sounding . . . wooden. Maybe only she could see that he was as baffled as he was horrified. “So that we can . . .”
“Bond,” Bethan told him, suddenly seized with a sense of what she could only assume was mischief. Yes, at his expense. It felt like the logical response to all these years of nonsense. “How fun, honey. Don’t you think?”
And she smiled sunnily at him when he shifted that dark, murderous glare to her.
After they’d all sat around in that sitting room talking wedding details to death, and after Jonas had been forced to smile and tell his loud jokes before heading off with Matthew, Bethan found herself bundled off to the vineyard house with all her sister’s friends—and a shared bed. Which she lay in while her sister snored gently beside her and tried to imagine Jonas doing frat boy things.
She fell asleep with a smile on her face.
* * *
* * *
The following morning, all the bridesmaids got up and insisted that it was time for a morning run.
“Fun run!” one of her sister’s blonder friends squealed.
Bethan’s halfhearted protests that she had to go back to her room to get her running stuff were ignored because they could lend her everything.
“Lucky me,” she murmured while Ellen snickered at her.
And then off they all went in a giant pack of giggles to do their fun run, which bore no resemblance to any kind of run Bethan ever did on her own.
“Zoe runs a 5K every two years and thinks she’s a marathoner,” Ellen muttered under her breath as they all ran about the property like a herd of prey.
“Amazing,” Bethan said in return, trying to fit in, but her sister only smirked at her.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re a badass and you probably run six marathons every morning.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Ellen retorted with a laugh. “Your entire body says it all for you.”
“I do not, in fact, run marathons. Any morning, thank you.”
“How many miles do you actually run, then?” Ellen asked, and Bethan recognized the competitive look on her sister’s face. As it was so often the same look on her own.
She thought of Isaac’s hideous workouts. “I don’t only run.”
Her sister tilted her head slightly. “All right, then. Let’s race.”
Bethan let out a laugh before she thought better of it. “I’m not racing you.”
Ellen snorted. “Are you afraid I might actually be better at something than you?”
Bethan nudged her with her shoulder. “You’re better at a lot of things, El. But probably not physical things.”
“Coward,” her little sister threw at her, and then took off.
And for a moment, Bethan was torn. She didn’t want to race Ellen. Well, that was a lie. She was highly competitive, especially with her sister, and would enjoy nothing more than kicking her butt. But was it worth it? This was Ellen’s weekend.
“Who’s the badass now?” Ellen yelled over her shoulder.
And that decided it.
Bethan took off. She rounded the bridesmaids and went after Ellen, who was running full out down the side of the vineyard toward the house they’d left earlier. When she got closer, she realized her sister was laughing maniacally as she ran. And when Ellen glanced back over her shoulder, her face was filled with glee.
It was like toppling back in time. Bethan picked up her speed, catching up to Ellen easily and then keeping pace with her. But she found that she was grinning ear to ear herself, because she could remember a thousand races like this one. Ellen, who so often looked ruthless and severe, was lit up.
Bethan was, too. And she found she didn’t have it in her to crush her sister the way she knew she could have.
Maybe knowing was good enough.
She stayed at Ellen’s side, laughing louder the closer they got to the house. It wasn’t the kind of run that should have challenged Bethan at all, but at the same time, she didn’t spend a lot of her time laughing this hard while she was running.
Bethan checked her pace right at the end, almost as if she’d stumbled. Ellen screamed out her victory, her arms up in the air, as they both staggered to the door of the old stone house.
For a long moment, there was only panting, laughing, and Ellen grabbing her sides.
“That was amazing,” Ellen managed to get out. “I don’t even care that you let me win.”
“Let you win?” Bethan asked innocently. “Me?”
Ellen launched herself at Bethan then and hugged her, tight.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. A little bit fiercely.
And there was too much stuff inside her. All of it a little too unwieldy. Love. Regret. Nostalgia. Hope. Stuff that had everything to do with home, her family, her sister—and nothing to do with Alaska Force.
“Me, too,” Bethan said, though it felt inadequate at best.
But the strangest part was, as the day wore on, she found she meant it.
Fourteen
That Jonas might not want to spend all day and into the evening with Matthew and his buddies did not seem to occur to anyone. It was, apparently, one of those ritualistic domestic agreements everyone else seemed to take on the chin. No one questioned it. They all went along with it because . . . that was what people did.
Jonas never felt more like an alien than when watching rational humans respond—usually in the same way—to irrational cues that bypassed him entirely. But while he was irritated with this unexpected, and astounding, wrench in his plans, he didn’t have it in him to disengage from the groomsmen the way he knew he could have.
Almost as if, somewhere inside of him, he wanted Bethan’s family to think that he really was with her. The way he was pretending he was.
That was the only justification he could come up with to explain why he trailed around Santa Barbara with Matthew and his largely boneheaded friends, engaging in activities he would normally avoid like the plague.
Thus far those had included surfing at the crack of dawn; an enormous breakfast composed entir
ely of carbs and sugar, which had led to an impromptu pancake-eating contest; immersive video games; a lunch that was more booze than burgers; and now what appeared to be a cutthroat pool competition in a questionable bar.
Jonas had voluntarily done exactly none of those things before. Ever.
He would have opted out of the whole male-bonding experience today, but once Matthew had dragged Jonas back to his hotel the night before, his friends had welcomed Jonas as if it had been their idea to have him as part of their rowdy little gang all along. They reminded him of a litter of puppies, wriggling about, all of them irrepressible and remarkably soft.
But once they incorporated someone into their group, they expected that person to stay with them at all times. Something they policed with the tenacity that would have impressed some battalions Jonas had observed.
“I had to see it for myself,” Rory said, grinning widely at Jonas in a dive bar outside the Santa Barbara city limits. The location for the pool tournament, which Jonas could easily have won already. Instead, he was pretending to have the same level of hand–eye coordination as the rest of Matthew’s “boys,” an experience that was a lot like burying himself headfirst in wet concrete and allowing it to dry all around him. “You said you were in the wedding party now, but I didn’t believe it.”
“I’m a frat boy now,” Jonas replied with a huge grin, slapping Rory on the back. Perhaps harder than necessary, though it fit with his bigger than life, everybody’s best friend in a sports bar persona.
“Was there hazing?” Rory asked. “Templeton won’t stop texting me, asking if there was hazing.”
Jonas was entertained by the notion that Templeton Cross was handling whatever missions he was working on up in Alaska, not to mention his trooper, but was no doubt lighting up rooms with that big laugh of his as he imagined Jonas doing exactly this. Not that he showed it.
“I’m assuming the amount of drinking they do is a form of hazing,” he said.
“It’s not living unless it’s liver failure,” Rory agreed.
