Special Ops Seduction

by Megan Crane

  A debutante or an Army Ranger?

  That Ellen’s wedding was also an Alaska Force mission now made that a lot easier. She could be both.

  And for the first time in her life, she actually had civilian female friends.

  “The wedding party will be wearing tasteful, elegant gowns that we can use again and again,” she said, and pulled out her phone. “Or so my sister assures me. I’m more worried about all the other events I need to attend, apparently not dressed in fatigues.” She slid her phone onto the table with the picture Ellen had sent her of the dress she’d be wearing. “And yes, that was my mother’s fear. That I would show up to a wedding in combat attire.”

  She laughed when she said that last part, expecting the table to laugh with her, but they didn’t. Instead, the three of them gazed back at her with very similar affronted looks on their faces.

  “She said that to you?” Everly asked.

  Mariah was frowning. “And she meant it?”

  Caradine got that dangerous look on her face that usually meant she was about to start banning people from her restaurant. “Is your mother aware that you’re a grown woman who served your country and, in your spare time, made a little history? And therefore know how to dress for a formal occasion?”

  “If you did show up in fatigues, it would probably be to save their lives, but whatever,” Everly said with a sniff.

  And Bethan was taken back, not only by how outraged they all seemed on her behalf but by how her heart seemed to get a little too big and too heavy in her chest. She had the almost overwhelming urge to crack a terrible joke, say something self-deprecating, even get up and leave—anything to stop it. Or make it less emotional, less intense.

  She didn’t do feelings. But tonight she sat there and let it happen.

  Like it was a heavy carry she had no intention of dropping.

  And when Mariah picked up her phone and studied it, Bethan did not reach over and swipe it out of her hand.

  “Oh, sugar,” she said, all that Georgia in her voice making her sound a little like she was purring. “We are going to make this fun.”

  Six

  Bethan and Jonas made it down to Santa Barbara two weeks later with the rest of an Alaska Force mission team. But when the others headed away from the private airfield in an SUV to set up an on-site mission command in Santa Barbara proper, Bethan and Jonas climbed into the waiting convertible sports car instead.

  If the bright and gleaming Aston Martin wasn’t enough, the fact they were in civilian clothes certainly helped remind Bethan that they were really going for it—playing the parts they’d decided on in a series of awkward and tense meetings back in Fool’s Cove.

  Each more awkward and tense than the last.

  Bethan could not say that she was having as much fun as her friends had made her believe she might over beers that night in the Fairweather. Then again, the outfit she was wearing—one of a selection handpicked by Mariah and subject to ruthless critiques by the rest until a consensus had been reached—made her feel amazing.

  But then, Bethan had never been good at the serious girl stuff. That had been her sister’s place to shine, and Ellen had. Bethan had expected to feel as if she were wearing a Halloween costume, all dressed up in clothes she would never have worn if left to her own devices, but instead it felt like armor. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt as if she were actually pulled together in a way her family would understand.

  They might even approve, a notion that carried a little more weight than it might have otherwise since she was back in Santa Barbara, where she had always felt that she only ever seemed to expose her belly—no matter how many tactical maneuvers she had under her belt. Here she wasn’t a woman who had made history, a woman of integrity and strength. Here, she had only ever been the disappointing Wilcox sister.

  Jonas shot her one of his patented brooding looks as he started the engine of the car, but didn’t follow it up with one of his dark comments. She resented the fact it felt like a gift. But her resentment wouldn’t program her family’s address into the navigation system, so she did it with stiff fingers. Then sat back as Jonas drove her straight on into her past.

  Downtown Santa Barbara was choked with college students and the usual tourist traffic. And the storefronts might have changed, but the general air was the same. Upscale boutiques on the same street with head shops, the buildings white with red roofs, and the Santa Ynez Mountains in the background. As they started to climb into the hills, Bethan was struck by the graceful dance of the palm trees, the deep blue Pacific forever in the distance. The road narrowed as they climbed, winding around typical Southern California mansions crammed into small hillside lots, with lush vegetation almost hiding the dryness of the land. There was a breeze today, but that didn’t take away from how sunbaked these hills were already, on the upward slope toward fire season.

  She breathed in deep. The hint of citrus and jasmine, rosemary and dirt, with salt and pine threaded through it all. The bougainvillea climbed here and there in flashes of glorious color, like the memories that teased her as Jonas drove. Road trips with high school friends farther up into the mountains, to Ojai. Excursions down into Los Angeles. The year she’d had a crush on a surfer and so had haunted places like Rincon and El Capitan every spare moment she had.

  Bethan couldn’t remember the name of that crush, but she could recall with perfect clarity what it felt like to harness the power of the ocean’s waves and that sweet rush of riding them, so fast it felt like flying.

  By the time Jonas made it to the long drive that led off the main road to her parents’ house, Bethan was surprised to find that she was actually filled with nostalgia. Two days ago—even this morning when they’d left Juneau—she would have said she never looked back, because she hadn’t. Because what was ahead of her was what mattered.

  She took that as a reminder that what was ahead of her wasn’t memory lane but a mission.

  “We’re approaching the house,” Jonas said into the phone she’d been too busy excavating high school to see him pick up. “We’re going into radio silence. Maintain positions until otherwise indicated.”

  She didn’t have to hear the people on the other end of the line—Rory Lockwood and Jack Herriot, part of their California team—because Jonas wouldn’t have ended the call if he wasn’t satisfied.

  He slid a glance her way as he took one of the curves that wound through the vineyards, getting ever closer to the sprawling white house that waited at the end of the drive. “They’re in position and ready to run point and take queries. They’ll stay in town until we need them. If we need them.”

  Bethan held out one hand to catch the warm California afternoon in her palm, the other in her lap so she could keep enjoying the buttery feel of the dress she wore. “There’s a part of me that would actually really enjoy watching an Alaska Force team infiltrate my father’s house and possibly ruin my sister’s wedding. But that is a mean, jealous, petty part of me that I’m not proud of.”

  “The world is built on mean, jealous, petty people. That’s how it turns.”

  “You’re a ray of sunshine, as always. I put it out there because now it’s said, I fully accept that I’m that person, and now we can all move on.”

  Jonas grunted. “Everybody’s petty.”

  She shot him a look, grateful that it was sunny and they could both hide behind dark glasses. “Yeah? What are you petty about?”

  He didn’t laugh because he was Jonas Crow, and a stray laugh might turn him to stone.

  “Everything,” he muttered.

  Or maybe she only imagined he said that, because, Lord knew, Jonas was a great many things, but none of them petty. He’d reached the final approach and sat back in the driver’s seat as the road before them straightened. And she was paying far too much close attention to him if she noticed the faintest twitch of his mouth.<
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  She wrenched her gaze back to the marching column of cypress trees and the house that rose there at the end of it, all that glorious, gleaming white beneath red tiles, as if it were floating up above the vineyards and gardens.

  Think about the mission, she ordered herself as her stomach dropped. This is about the mission, not your memories.

  “Do you need to go over our backstory again?” she asked, shifting her attention back to him. In a tactical, strategic, professional manner, she assured herself.

  He was playing a version of himself she’d certainly never met. The same Jonas Crow with the extraordinarily classified background in various levels of special ops, but instead of Alaska Force, Oz had made him a different background. This one far more high-flying. An office in Seattle and the kind of slick, private-security shingle that the men they were here to interrogate would understand. He’d dressed the part. No more regular Jonas, who might or might not disappear into the woods forever at the drop of a hat. This Jonas was downright sleek. He wore what should have been a totally unremarkable outfit. A sport coat over a button-down shirt and jeans over boots. The recognizable uniform of a certain kind of man.

  But this was Jonas.

  So instead of looking like any old guy, he looked dangerous. Delicious, a problematic voice inside her whispered. He’d cut his dark black hair so that it looked more CEO and less Delta Force. He wasn’t entirely clean-shaven, though he’d made that look deliberate, which lent him a certain manicured ruggedness, as if he could be anything from a Hollywood actor to an off-duty king.

  She had seen this man in a variety of roles. But all of them had been in combat. Bethan was forced to acknowledge that she was woefully underprepared for Jonas . . . undercover.

  “I’m good on the backstory.” He was driving like a different person now. Kicked back in his seat, one wrist hooked over the wheel. “We met through friends almost a year ago at a charity event. I fly you down to Seattle as often as I can. I’m traditional, though I would argue about it if anyone actually called me that, but privately think that the more serious we get, the less you should be doing the work you do. Anything else you want to add?”

  She realized that even his voice was different now that he’d slipped into character. But it took her a moment to understand why it poked at her the way it did, and her stomach fell a bit more once she did. She’d heard this voice before. Filled with warmth. Life. In other words, not ice-cold Jonas.

  This was the man she’d met in a far-off desert. Or a version of him, anyway, long ago.

  There was absolutely no reason this should feel like a betrayal.

  “Great,” Bethan made herself say, no matter what it cost to keep her voice even. “Backstory is locked in.”

  And then Jonas was pulling up in front of the house in the wide, circular drive with a fountain in its center, and there was no putting it off any longer. Bethan needed to treat this the way she would any other op. And you definitely need to ask yourself why that’s a problem, she snapped at herself.

  As soon as Jonas put the gorgeous little car in park, she threw open her door and got out, the dress swaying after her like a new kind of shadow. For a moment, the sense that she was a terrible fraud washed over her like a sudden spate of illness, but she fought it back, forcing her lips into a smile she didn’t feel.

  Because there were eyes everywhere in her father’s house. There always had been.

  “Welcome home, Bethan,” said a smiling woman Bethan had never laid eyes on before in her life as she bustled down the wide front steps to greet them. “I’m Charlotte, the housekeeper here. If you leave your bags and keys in the car, I’ll sort it all out. Let me take you and your guest to your room.”

  “Your childhood bedroom, I hope,” Jonas said, with a low sort of laugh, very male and suggestive and not him.

  But Bethan hardly had time to process before he slung an arm over her shoulders, hauling her up against his side as they walked.

  “Oh my God,” she said, which was her actual reaction to both the display of Fake Jonas, who was some kind of a frat boy, apparently, followed quickly by her body’s insane reaction to the feel of him.

  First of all, he smelled good, which felt a lot like a personal assault. His arm was very heavy, though deceptively lean, and the way he was keeping her against his side meant she could feel entirely too much of that brooding power of his that informed every muscle and sinew, no matter how languid he was pretending to be.

  It was like being surrounded by him, drowned in him, when she had done her level best to stay as far away from him as possible since she’d moved to Alaska.

  But she remembered his scent. It was like getting walloped all over again, with memories she refused to entertain. Not here. Not now. Not ever. Still, the hint of something evergreen and spicy tugged at her, and beyond it, him.

  If safety had a scent, it was Jonas.

  Damn him.

  Her heart was turning somersaults in her chest, and Bethan almost disgraced herself entirely. She almost pushed away from him, jolted as if he were attacking her, or otherwise did something that would indicate they were faking intimacy—but she remembered herself in the nick of time.

  Because the housekeeper watched, still smiling so politely. And maybe she really was just a housekeeper. Then again, maybe she was something else.

  “I sincerely hope that I no longer have a childhood bedroom here,” Bethan managed to say with a light laugh. “How embarrassing.”

  Jonas laughed again, and Bethan ordered herself to concentrate on her job, not scents.

  Charlotte beamed. “Your parents have asked me to place you and your guest in one of the suites. It will be so much more comfortable for a party of two. If you’ll follow me.”

  “Where are your parents?” Jonas asked in an undertone he didn’t do a whole lot to keep just between the two of them.

  “The general will be flying in from Washington tonight,” Charlotte said briskly as she led them in through the front doors, then into the foyer. “Mrs. Wilcox will be ready to greet you in the greenhouse once you’ve settled in.”

  Bethan was far too busy trying to focus on the job at hand with that arm still slung over her shoulders to do much more than make what she hoped was an assenting sound. Then, as they walked, she tried to imagine what this house looked like to Jonas. Whether in a tactical sense or otherwise.

  It had always been fancy, and she didn’t try to convince herself otherwise, but it seemed to have grown exponentially more fancy in the time she’d been away. She’d seen her parents and her sister at various holidays over the years, but those gatherings usually took place at the family home in Virginia. This house was the one they liked to call their beach house, when instead, it looked like something that belonged in a coastal magazine. As a hotel.

  There was the sound of things happening in different parts of the house, but though Bethan and Jonas exchanged a look, they didn’t investigate. They followed Charlotte down one hall, then outside along a porticoed walkway that provided shade but basked in the sea air. This was one of the newer parts of the house, built after she and her sister had graduated high school, but it matched so seamlessly with the rest that Bethan had to keep reminding herself that it hadn’t been here when she’d lived here. The Spanish-style architecture flowed inside and out as they walked past a garden here or a gathering space around a fire pit there. And each and every part of the house was specifically designed to take in as much of the sweeping views as possible.

  “Here we go,” Charlotte said when they were inside again. She stopped at a door and opened it with more brisk economy than flourish. “Everything is ready for you. Please don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, from either me or any other member of the staff. Just dial zero.” She smiled again and stepped back. “I’ll have your bags brought right along.”

  Once she left, Bethan wandered farther into th
e suite as if she really were in a hotel. Except the art here was significantly more impressive than anything you might find in a Hilton. There was an expansive sitting room that spilled out onto its own patio, with rolling hills and Santa Barbara below and the Pacific a dark blue presence far in the distance. To one side, through an arch that opened up into a short hall that seemed to exist purely for the purpose of letting in the sun through a skylight, was the bedroom. It contained a California king, a grand fireplace—as if it ever really got cold here—and two separate potential seating areas. The attached bathroom was suitably grand, including both a freestanding tub inside and a private hot tub outside. On the other side of the living area was a cozy little den, outfitted with all the entertainment devices a person could require and a small kitchenette besides.

  When she turned back to the living room, Jonas was watching her. “You didn’t tell me you were raised in a resort.”

  “That might just be the whole wedding thing.” He only stared back at her. “Okay, I think the intensity of the hotel experience today is thanks to the wedding, but yes, Jonas. If you’re asking, my father always had staff.”

  “Maybe someday you and I can visit one of the places I lived as a kid,” Jonas said, and he was smiling, but she knew it was a fake smile. A fake smile he’d still made sure was edgy. “One time, when there was no money for food because they drank it away, my parents made us sleep in the car until payday. It was winter in Wyoming. Good times. Just like this.”

  She wanted to jump all over that, but she didn’t. Because it was the first time he’d given her even a sliver of personal information since their doomed mission. And she saw the exact moment he was aware of it. His eyes got darker, which shouldn’t have been possible. He stopped pretending to smile.