by Megan Crane
Bethan didn’t pretend she knew how to process any of that.
“This is the general’s world, Jonas,” she said softly. “We just live in it.”
There was a rap on the door to announce their bags, and she was happier than she should have been for the interruption. Happy to put a little space between her reactions to him, her extremely visceral memory of that arm over her shoulders, and how vulnerable it made her feel that he was here. Jonas. Here. In this world she could barely tolerate herself, no matter how much her parents had changed the house.
“Well,” she said when they were alone in the room again, with bags, and her heart was still thudding. “I guess we should go find my mother.”
“In the greenhouse,” Jonas said, as if he’d previously thought greenhouses were myths.
“Birdie Gaines Wilcox is an avid gardener,” Bethan told him as if she didn’t hear his tone. “She’s won awards for her roses all up and down the Central Coast, and she takes them as seriously as my father takes his military career. Mock her at your peril.”
Jonas looked offended. “I would never mock your mother.”
“She’s mostly oblivious,” Bethan warned him. “Until she’s not.”
She led him back into the main part of the house, past the lovely reception rooms that had all been designed to pour one into the next. She took him out into the back, where a green lawn eventually gave way to the slope of the hill. Below lay the pool and its guesthouses, then farther on, the vineyards. But she took him in the other direction, down a path lined with a trellis bursting with bougainvillea, to the greenhouse at its end.
Inside the glass building, it was as humid as she remembered, especially compared to the dry air outside. And her mother was there, right where Bethan had left her, repotting something with those elegant hands of hers that had always seemed too aristocratic for the dirt.
Birdie Gaines Wilcox had never been called her legal name of Elizabeth a day in her life. She had been raised in Marin and gone to school in Claremont, as befit the daughter of a sixth-generation Californian. Bethan looked at her mother and saw all the usual things. The serene fall of her mother’s silvery hair that never took away from her elegant carriage, much less the steel beneath. She wore a pair of gold bracelets on one arm, and the sound of them gently clanking together was woven through every memory Bethan had of childhood. Bethan knew that when she moved closer there would be the faintest suggestion of Chanel No. 5, but only if she breathed in deep. Birdie’s idea of gardening clothes was the same as it had ever been—the crisp white pants and pretty blouse she had probably been wearing all day, with a heavy sort of apron over the front, where her gardening tools peeked out.
Bethan felt all the usual things, too. A rush of complicated affection. Shock that this woman who she always imagined as larger than life and not to be trifled with by man or time was . . . older. More frail, though she knew her mother would object strenuously to the use of that word. And on the heels of all that, the usual jumble of the things she felt because she was Birdie’s daughter and doomed to never match her in style or elegance. Bethan was the brutish, boyish one. The disappointing one.
“Darling,” Birdie said, looking up. “There you are. And looking so lovely.”
That was a dig, but Birdie pulled off her gardening gloves and held out her hands, so Bethan moved forward to take them. She leaned in to kiss her mother’s cheek, and sure enough, when she breathed deep, she could smell the Chanel. She wouldn’t be Birdie without it.
Part of her felt settled and soothed, while another part tensed.
That was also typical Birdie.
“Mom,” Bethan said. “I’d like to introduce you to Jonas Crow, my . . .”
To her surprise, she faltered. Because she’d pretended to be a number of things at different points in her military career and had been given the opportunity to do some character work in Alaska Force from time to time, but this was her mother. And this was Jonas.
And none of the words that she should throw in there to describe him suited him at all.
“Boyfriend,” Jonas supplied easily. In a friendly, engaging, lively manner that about floored her.
He made it worse by moving forward with a huge smile plastered across his face, his hand outstretched.
“Such a pleasure to meet you,” Birdie murmured, taking his hand. And though Bethan was still thrown, she didn’t miss the steel-eyed gaze her mother raked over Jonas. Her boyfriend. “I know the general is looking forward to meeting you, too.”
“You have a housekeeper who led us through the house as if we were checking into a hotel,” Bethan said, incapable of keeping herself from sounding like a glum millennial. She cleared her throat. “She said Dad would be home for dinner.”
“Charlotte is a marvel,” Birdie said, which Bethan took to be a faint reproof for mentioning her. Or that the “beach house” was like a hotel these days, which her mother would surely find vulgar. “Have you seen your sister yet? She and her bridesmaids are staying down in the vineyard house. You should go say hello before drinks.” She smiled in her gracious, dismissive way. “At six. On the west patio.”
Bethan didn’t need another clue that her mother wanted her to leave, but when Birdie began to tug her gloves back on, she knew that was one. Jonas was still standing there as if he expected something else, like maybe freshly baked cookies or an inquiry into her well-being. So she did what any girlfriend would do and took his hand.
God, his hand—
But this was a moment to act, not feel. She tugged him after her, out of the greenhouse. Where she instantly dropped his hand as if she were scalded. But her fingers retained the heat of him. The strength. The fact he’d chosen to allow her to drag him anywhere.
“Does your mother always talk to you like you’re a stranger?” Jonas asked.
Mildly enough.
The breeze was rustling through the palm trees. She could smell fire somewhere in the distance, but it was hard to tell if it was the charred remains of chaparral on far-off hillsides or a threat. It smelled precarious, just like home.
“She would never comment on a stranger’s appearance.” Bethan smiled at him because that was what she would do, probably, if he were her boyfriend. “Maybe you missed that she said I looked lovely.”
“What? You do.”
She couldn’t let what sounded a lot like a compliment land. “Yes, but that was family code for Thank you for not forcing me to remember that you’re a soldier.”
“I thought this was a military family.”
“Silly summer child.” Bethan found herself grinning at him without having to force it. “This is General Wilcox’s family. We exist to cast glory upon his name. Or not.”
Jonas muttered something beneath his breath that sounded like the filthy, fluent sort of cursing that was sometimes his only form of communication in the field. Oddly, it made her feel more at ease.
Bethan could see her own reflection in the greenhouse windows. The long black dress was tied at the back of her neck and came down in front, but showed nothing her mother might consider inappropriate. Meaning only her neck. The back was open and the dress even had deep pockets. Her hair was down around her shoulders, which she knew her mother also approved of, because it wasn’t one of her on-duty slicked-back ponytails that caused Birdie despair.
“Today I look like the daughter my parents wish I was,” she said, and for some reason it was a battle to adopt the wry tone she preferred when Jonas’s too-dark gaze was on her. “That’s a huge win.”
Jonas shook his head. “I don’t understand white people.”
Bethan shrugged. “My mother and I are strangers. Sometimes more polite strangers, like today. Letting Mariah and the rest of them dress me for this mission was a good idea.”
“She’s your mother, not the mission.”
“Are we really going to talk about our personal famil
y dynamics?”
Jonas didn’t answer that. But the deep flex of the muscle in his cheek did.
“We can’t stop here,” Bethan continued, trying to refocus. She started walking, heading down the path that led away from the main house. “You might as well get the full familial picture before you commit to a level of outrage about it. I wouldn’t want you to feel you were misled.”
She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was following her. Bethan always knew exactly where Jonas was. She could feel him like he was a part of her—a notion she knew better than to share with anyone, or even indulge too much herself. The rest of Alaska Force liked to go on about what a ghost Jonas was—but not for her.
Unless it was just that he haunted her, specifically.
At the end of the path she led him down the stone steps to the little guesthouse—meaning it slept only six—set there above the vineyards.
She glanced over her shoulder at Jonas and smiled, though she couldn’t have said if she was apologizing or enjoying herself. Both, maybe.
“Remember,” she told him. “You did volunteer for this.”
She knocked, braced herself, and moments later the door was swung wide open.
And there was Ellen, looking very much the way she always did, if ever more like a whippet with every passing year. Her strawberry blond hair was longer than the last time Bethan had seen her, but otherwise, she looked like what she was. Very well maintained, ruthlessly thin, and desperately in need of stress management.
A thought Bethan decided was uncharitable when her sister smiled hugely and enveloped her in a hug, even if she could feel every single frail bone in Ellen’s tiny body. As ever, it made her feel hulking and thick.
“I really didn’t think you were going to make it,” Ellen was saying. “There were too many references to potential missions. But here you are.”
“Here I am,” Bethan agreed.
“And you must be Jonas,” Ellen said, and she didn’t actually push Bethan out of the way to get a closer look at Jonas, but she didn’t . . . not do that, either. And her tone shifted straight into prosecutorial mode. “As far as I know, you’re Bethan’s one and only boyfriend ever. She’s told me absolutely nothing about you. Care to fill in the blanks?”
Seven
The Jonas that Bethan knew would have frozen solid in dark, brooding disapproval, then disappeared. If not in a puff of smoke, by simply turning and walking away. But this was slick Fake Jonas. He burst out with a big smile and an even bigger laugh.
Then pulled Ellen into a friendly handshake.
“Not much to tell,” he said in the sort of voice the man he was pretending to be would have. Confident and confiding at once. Everybody’s best friend. Potentially also evil. “Was in the navy once upon a time, now in Seattle. Don’t see enough of your sister, excited to meet her folks, and looking forward to celebrating your happiness this week.”
He was doing his job beautifully. He was smooth. Ellen actually simpered a little as he grinned down at her.
There was no reason Bethan should want to punch him in the face.
“We just wanted to say hi,” Bethan said, horrified that her voice was rising up a few octaves, the way it always did around her family. Because they were the only combat arena on earth where she felt uncertain. Consistently. “It was a long flight, and we want to pull ourselves together a little bit before Dad gets here.”
Ellen sighed. “Good luck with that. He’s been on a roll. You would think it was his wedding, not mine.”
They talked for a few moments more. Then, finally, Ellen was pulled back inside by one of her friends. Family obligations attended to as much as possible so far, Bethan and Jonas could take their own little walk around the property, looking at the layout of the house and grounds from a far more tactical standpoint.
And the moment they did, Bethan felt better. Or more herself, maybe. Even if she was wearing a dress that swished when she walked.
“Some of the guests are here, and the rest will be coming in the next few days,” Bethan said when they’d done a full loop at a leisurely pace and were standing in the lush grass out back, far enough away from everything that no one could overhear them.
And she almost jumped out of her skin—again—when Jonas reached over and ran his hands up and down her bare shoulders above her crossed arms. Over and over.
Her heart stuttered, then stopped. Bethan thought maybe she’d died. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something undoubtably embarrassing—
But, of course, he wouldn’t touch her for the hell of it.
He wouldn’t touch you at all if he could avoid it, she reminded herself tartly.
“We wouldn’t want people to think that we were standing out here discussing strategy and tactics,” he said, his voice mild and amused and without the faintest trace of ice.
Bethan knew that her feet were planted on the ground, because she could feel them. The tickle of the grass above the straps of her sandals. The evenly distributed weight of her body. Still, she felt as if she were tumbling, end over end, deep into those bottomless dark eyes of his.
And the abrasion, however faint, of his impossibly capable hands over her bare skin taught her all kinds of things about herself that she’d managed to lock away all this time.
Things she’d known before everything had blown up—literally—on that mission long ago. Things she’d long since decided she must have been imagining, all these years later, when there’d been not the faintest trace of them.
There were so many things that she didn’t dare name, and it was as if he were rubbing them all back into existence. Or out of a deep sleep. One by one, right here on the vibrant green lawn that existed despite California’s pervasive water issues, possibly in full sight of at least two of her family members.
It was the grass that got to her, tickling her ankles. Because she knew that if she reached down and tugged on it, there would be no roots to hold it in place. It was sitting in the topsoil, something that had disconcerted her when they’d moved here from Virginia.
All grass in California was more or less fake in the same way, because it shouldn’t be here in the first place. It was fake, and Jonas was fake, and while the sensations that stormed around inside of her felt far too real for her liking, it didn’t matter. They weren’t a couple. Jonas had a head full of strategy, and she could be sure that if he was touching her, it had to do with that. Not sensation. And never him.
“Explain to me how you grew up here but ended up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Alaska,” Jonas said, more command than conversation.
“That would be courtesy of the United States Army, of course. There wasn’t a lot of staff in the barracks.”
“You’re supposed to be a debutante. Like your sister.”
“You can only be a debutante before college, according to my mother. After that, a certain number of accomplishments are expected. Pedigrees are great, but it’s much better if they come with degrees from institutions with recognizable names.”
“Most people consider the army an institution.”
“Ranger School isn’t the same as Yale,” she replied. “It doesn’t have quite the same cachet at the country club.”
“Only one is useful.”
“Not in this world, Jonas.” His hands were still skimming over her upper arms, stirring her up . . . and she couldn’t have that. Not here. She stepped back, trying to look as if she were filled with delight, and then started for the house. “But if you don’t believe me, by all means. Bring up my accomplishments tonight. See what happens.”
She thought it was a measure of her personal growth that she didn’t even sound bitter when she said that. Because what was there to be bitter about? It was reality and this was a mission and it didn’t matter in the slightest that she couldn’t stop shivering deep inside.
Back in thei
r suite, they took a few moments to sweep for listening devices. Then, when Jonas picked up his tablet and started sorting through all the pictures he’d taken of the house and grounds—all with Bethan smiling easily into the camera, as if he’d been taking pictures of her—she sat down, stared out at the sea, and asked herself why sweeping her parents’ house for listening devices hadn’t tripped a single wire in her. Was it because she wanted to believe that her family was capable of anything? Or was it that she knew they already were?
Not her entire family. That wasn’t fair. Birdie was a whole thing, and Ellen was a little like looking at the road not taken, but neither one of them was actively malicious. They were who they were, and they had relationships with her that were complicated because relationships were often complicated and because fundamentally, they didn’t understand her or her choices.
It was her father she wouldn’t turn her back on in a darkened room. Even if she’d had nothing but warm and tender thoughts about him, Henry Colin Wilcox was a four-star general of the air force. Of course he was capable of anything. That was his job.
Her job was to act like she was the highly trained individual she was. Not her father’s confronting elder daughter who had defied him at every turn.
“You seem tense,” Jonas said when they headed toward the patio right on time, because punctuality was considered a virtue in this house, and woe betide the fool who kept the general waiting.
“That’s because I am tense.”
“I’ve seen you throw yourself into situations that would drop most people flat. You never flinch. But you’re afraid of the man who raised you?”
Bethan felt her lips twist. “I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of him. But ask yourself how many generals you’ve enjoyed spending time with.” When Jonas grunted, she nodded. “Exactly. Now imagine that’s your run-of-the-mill family dinner every night when Dad’s home.”
“Point taken.”
“Do you enjoy spending time with your father?” she asked before she thought better of it.
And the Jonas she knew best slanted a look her way, his dark gaze a condemnation and a curse, and iced over besides. “We both know you already know the answer to that, Bethan. Is this really the night you want to start playing games?”