by Megan Crane
Bethan caught herself before she stumbled, a humiliation she wasn’t sure she would have survived. “Was that an acknowledgment that we have a history and have had personal conversations? Impossible.”
“I haven’t seen my father in over a decade,” Jonas said flatly. “Last I heard he was homeless in Vegas, but I can’t confirm that.”
She felt horrible for bringing it up, but she suspected that was what he wanted, so she kept her expression neutral. “Do you—”
“When the mission involves my family, I’ll be happy to discuss them in detail,” Jonas growled at her. “Until then it not only isn’t relevant, it risks blowing our cover. Is that what you want?”
“We walked around the outside of the house to make sure no one could be lurking around, listening to us talk,” Bethan said mildly. “I’ve been scanning the area as we go and have seen no sign that anyone is positioned to overhear a word. But I take your point. Feel free to stop glowering at me at any time.”
And she took a little more satisfaction in that than she should have. But then, she’d warned him that she was petty.
They rounded the corner of the house and she knew, instantly, that her father had arrived. There was that hushed anticipation in the air. Staff hurrying this way and that.
Jonas reached over and linked their fingers together as they walked toward the small crowd on the west patio. And she obviously couldn’t think too closely about that, so instead, Bethan tried to remember the last time she’d seen her father in person. Not for some time, she thought. Not since before she’d gone to Alaska. She’d worked through last Christmas, and though she’d seen her mother and sister in Washington, D.C., in the spring, her father had been unavailable.
The way he always had been.
When she and Jonas stepped onto the patio, Bethan felt a little charge that she was pretty sure was sheer relief that there were more people there, not just her immediate family. Ellen’s bridesmaids and friends were there with their dates, all of them looking like the Ivy League hedge fund managers, bankers, and lawyers they were. A collection of people she instantly categorized as Santa Barbara residents—her parents’ West Coast friends—because they looked the part, with their carefully curated effortlessness. Her mother and the women she’d gone to Scripps with, all dressed in different versions of the same outfit as they laughed and clinked their glasses together.
But Bethan’s gaze zeroed in on her father, standing apart from the crowd as he usually did, because he liked to give the impression that the Pentagon might call him at any moment. In fairness, it might.
Jonas got instantly more intense as he walked beside her—something she likely would have sensed regardless but felt in her own hand because he was still holding it.
Do not think about the hand-holding, she ordered herself.
Instead, she focused on the scene before her. Because her father had two other men with him, and both of them were on their list.
“I guess it’s go time after all,” Jonas muttered around a smile.
“Rangers lead the way,” Bethan replied automatically, because that was the Rangers’ Creed.
“All the way,” Jonas replied, giving the standard answer.
And then, suddenly, it was easier to pretend. Maybe because there were people here, some of them several drinks toward merry already, and they were a kind of buffer. Maybe because she had always pretended where her father was concerned.
Maybe because Jonas’s hand tightened around hers before he released it, and she tucked that away somewhere inside her where she kept each and every one of his very rare real smiles.
But it was go time, so she jumped into her character. The version of Bethan Wilcox who would date a man who was not only a mercenary but ran a firm filled with them, who wore flowy dresses that proclaimed her femininity instead of her lethal capacity, and who was simply here at a cocktail party with her date.
She and Jonas wore matching smiles. He laughed and shook hands and was generally impressive. And when Bethan pretended this was just an op, not her family, she found it was a whole lot easier to sparkle along with him.
By the time they got around to her father’s little power cluster, she had almost forgotten to be apprehensive.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, shrinking a little and hunching her shoulders, making herself smaller as she smiled at him.
And it occurred to her, unpleasantly, that making herself smaller and looking ineffectual was something she did when someone had a gun on her. When they didn’t expect her to fight back or mount a counterassault.
But this was not the time for unpleasant familial realizations.
“Bethan,” General Henry Colin Wilcox said warmly. The warmth would have been surprising, but she knew he was always extra chummy when friends of his were around to witness it. “Gentlemen, this is my oldest daughter. Bethan, this is General Ambrose and General Darlington. Old friends of mine. Old friends.”
“And this is Jonas Crow,” Bethan replied after greeting the generals, and made herself smile in what she hoped was a suitably giddy manner.
She watched her father and his general buddies size Jonas up, then square their shoulders, indicating they were fully aware of at least some of his capabilities.
Meanwhile, Jonas slipped into character. There were various gradations of his characters, including Bethan’s favorite: a drunken sports fan he could pull out in bars, complete with uproarious singing. The character he was playing tonight was the one he’d been leading up to since they’d arrived with his arm slung over her shoulders, that huge grin, and the careless confidence he wore like a suit tailored specifically to his body.
It was all part and parcel of Fake Jonas Crow, security expert, who maybe skated just this side of the kind of soulless mercenaries the Alaska Force team had determined were more than likely responsible for whatever had happened to the Sowandes.
Bethan knew that. She’d had her friends in Alaska outfit her with a suitable wardrobe for not only the daughter her parents wanted but the kind of woman that Fake Jonas would likely have on his arm. But that didn’t mean she was prepared for the full-force version of it.
Because Jonas was so good at playing the maybe not a good guy that it almost hurt.
She accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter and practiced her happy smile, as if she’d never been more delighted in her life than to stand around with a bunch of military men who were ignoring her service while falling all over one another to bro it up.
As usual, she found herself questioning whether or not she wanted to be mad about it. Because that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? There were always slings and arrows. The only thing that changed was her reaction.
Earlier versions of herself would not have stood for this. She would have busted into the conversation to remind everyone standing there of her accomplishments, all of which she felt certain they knew.
But happy-go-lucky Fake Jonas pivoted from the conversation he was having about impenetrable male things, with a lot of supposedly salty male humor Bethan assumed was mostly funny when the men could patronizingly apologize for it. His hand found the small of her back, and she deeply regretted the backless gown the moment his palm slid into place.
She was dressed like a woman, not a soldier.
And his hand was on the small of her back, which wasn’t the same thing as holding her hand for show, no matter what she tried to tell herself.
Her body couldn’t seem to get the message that this was a mission, too. That his touch meant nothing. There was absolutely no reason for that fire to swell in her, to dance and flicker like an open flame, making her feel molten hot and heavy in places she normally preferred to pretend didn’t exist on the job.
It wasn’t like she didn’t know that fire was there. She just never fueled it. Because there was no point.
He had always made his feelings about her pe
rfectly clear.
Except tonight, standing in a loose collection of generals— one of them her father—Jonas slid her a dark look, and her stomach seemed to topple out of the bottom of her body. It was a sudden, shocking, hollow sort of feeling, because he clearly felt it, too.
She could see that he did.
And that only made everything . . . sizzle.
Bethan had to take another, longer pull from her wineglass to get a grip.
“We’re ignoring the superstar in our midst,” Jonas said. And there were so many layers to the tone he used. A hint of pride, but laced through it, that patronizing note that she knew the men who were all suddenly gazing at her would pick up on. “Not many who can say they made it through Ranger School. And what? A handful of women so far?”
Bethan watched her father. The other generals made appropriate noises, but her father did not. She found herself standing straighter, as if prepared for combat. On some level, it shamed her that Jonas, standing there beside her with his hand literally on her back, couldn’t help but be fully aware of how conflicted she felt in her father’s presence.
Because the general was not making suitable noises. He was looking the way he always did. As if Bethan’s entire career were nothing but a bid for attention.
“Birdie and I are very proud,” he said at last. He rattled the ice cubes in his drink. “Tell us more about this Alaska outfit you’re involved with now, Bethan. Keeping you busy?”
Next to her, Jonas did nothing. He didn’t shift. He didn’t make a noise, or glare, or stiffen in any perceptible way. Yet she still knew that he was furious. She told herself it was Alaska Force’s honor he was concerned with, not hers. Because he certainly couldn’t have failed to hear that same patronizing note in her father’s voice, as if he were asking after some childish hobby of Bethan’s. Possibly finger painting.
It was her turn to flash a winning smile. “I keep my hand in,” she said, with a self-deprecating little laugh.
Because the sad truth was that the army had taught her how to handle her father. Left to her own devices, they would likely still be fighting—even here. Still, it wasn’t until she and Jonas made their excuses and left the little knot of high-ranking, practically interchangeable men that she felt that she could breathe again.
Especially since she seemed to be the only person at the party who could see the simmering fury written all over Jonas.
“Maybe your father is our guy,” he said in an undertone as they stood together at the edge of the party where the patio gave way to the rolling fields, as if they were lovers taking in the view.
“He wasn’t on Oz’s list.” Bethan smiled, not entirely for show. “That doesn’t mean he couldn’t know about it, of course.”
Jonas’s easy smile was in place, but his eyes were dark. “I like all of them for it. Pompous, smug, insufferable—”
“High brass comes with a high opinion of itself. You know that.”
“What I know is that you’re a remarkable individual.”
Bethan could still feel the place where his hand had been on the slope of her back. Like a tattoo, she thought, except now it felt alive. Throbbing like a pulse. And something chaotic was taking over her body, charging through her, that she knew she couldn’t allow to take root.
She’d spent years telling herself that it couldn’t. Ever.
But that was hard to remember with him looking at her like that. As if he were outraged on her behalf. And more, actually complimenting her.
She tried to find some kind of witty response, but she couldn’t seem to find any words.
“You were already significantly accomplished in Army Intelligence,” Jonas continued, a little too hot for the smile he was wearing. “But to take that and decide that you wanted to translate your experience into combat? And then do it?”
“They know all of that,” Bethan said lightly. “You know they must.”
“Not one of them has a special ops background. Or as much field experience as you do.”
“Rangers lead the way,” she said again, more softly this time.
Jonas didn’t give the usual answer. “I guess I’m not surprised that a woman like your mother wanted a daughter in a certain mold. But your father should know better.”
“You’re making me blush,” Bethan said, keeping her smile on her face. She was in no danger whatsoever of blushing, though that hollow thing inside her wasn’t exactly comfortable. But she was terribly afraid that this conversation might be the thing that would made her cry after all. And then she would never forgive him. “I had no idea you thought so highly of me. When you go to such epic lengths to make sure I think the opposite.”
“I do nothing of the kind.”
“Sure. Except that you do. Daily.”
He wasn’t smiling any longer. He was the Jonas she knew best, grim-faced and dark. “I’m perfectly aware of your accomplishments, Bethan. You’re a valued member of the Alaska Force team, and I take a dim view of individuals who can’t see that. It’s not personal.”
“Oh, certainly not personal,” she said in mock horror. “Never that.”
She would have sworn it was a flash of temper she saw in his gaze then, but it was gone in an instant. And then everything was cool and unreadable, as usual.
“I’m going to want serious intel on each and every one of those men,” Jonas said, and smiled, in case anyone was watching them. “Now.”
“Go call it in,” Bethan said coolly. She held her wineglass like it was a weapon, because she couldn’t handle any more of the pretend touching. “I’ve got this.”
And she took it as a personal victory that she didn’t watch him as he walked away.
Eight
“How’s life up there in the hills?” Lucas King drawled when Jonas’s call was connected, with his usual edgy ease. “Down here in the cheap seats, in Goleta, if you’re interested—”
Jonas didn’t quite sigh. “I’m not.”
“—which is Santa Barbara’s sad neighbor, we’re living it up on weak motel coffee and a deep sense of our own martyrdom.”
In the background, Jonas could hear the rest of the team—Rory Lockwood and Jack Herriot—issuing not- entirely-serious accusations about who was the biggest martyr, but he was never one to laugh it up. He scanned the area where he stood, far enough away from the house that no one could sneak up on him. Not unless he wanted them to.
“Martyrdom sounds uncomfortable,” he said flatly when the noise died down on Lucas’s side. “I want Generals Ambrose and Darlington examined on a forensic level. And General Wilcox, while you’re at it.” There was a slight pause at that, but he refused to explain himself or why he wanted Bethan’s father looked at more closely. Mostly because he wasn’t sure he could explain it rationally, and that only made his temper kick at him harder. “I don’t like any of them.”
“Are you supposed to?” Lucas asked, more edge than ease this time. “As far as I know, the entire purpose of a general is to be hated and loathed by the rank and file.”
No one in Alaska Force had been considered true rank and file for some time, even before they’d left the service. But Jonas was already provoked. He didn’t need to let it get the better of him.
“As far as I can tell, they all came in on the same transport at about sixteen hundred hours,” he said evenly, instead of debating rank-and-file status with a bullheaded marine. “I want to know where they’ve been for the past two weeks. Any questionable meetings, any suspicious moves by staffers, any tense phone calls. Anything and everything. Got that?”
“Loud and clear,” replied Lucas, with a chorus of assent in the background.
Jonas ended the call, but not before he heard more laughter, because everyone was always having a lot more fun than he ever did.
Unclench, he advised himself.
Which would have been excellent advice
if he could see his way clear to taking it.
Because he was out of control. He knew it.
And it was all her fault.
Bethan Wilcox, the only woman who had gotten to him since his mother had relinquished that position by default. Because Jonas had disappeared into the navy and never returned, putting himself beyond her reach at last.
But even as he thought that, shoving his phone into his pocket and looking at that monstrosity of a house, he knew it wasn’t fair. In his more charitable moments, he liked to think that Sabra Day Crow had done her best. It was just that her best sucked.
Hard.
Bethan’s best, on the other hand, had never been anything but impressive.
It wasn’t her fault that despite all the years he’d spent disappearing into various roles in support of whatever mission parameters he was following at the time, this one was messing with him. That was all on him.
Because the last thing he needed was the tactile, physical memory of the soft bare skin of her lower back imprinted on his freaking hand. Like he’d slapped it down on a stove, then held it there, like an idiot.
Jonas stared down at the hand in question as if it were on fire, flexing it and then straightening it again.
He had absolutely no desire to head back into that party. But since when did he pay any attention to his desires? Desires were for regular men. Jonas was about duty. And he was the one who’d volunteered for this mission.
It was on him if he was finding it a little more sacrificial than he’d imagined.
What did you imagine? he asked himself harshly then, as the plush laughter of rich men floated toward him and the last of the light flirted with the sea in the distance. Familiarity hasn’t bred contempt yet when it comes to her. It isn’t going to start now.
But that, too, wasn’t particularly helpful.
The simple, indisputable facts were these: Bethan had been attached to the same unit he was. Jonas himself had been a plant, maneuvered into place because there were concerns that that particular unit, in that particular horror of a desert, was involved in shady situations. Or situations more shady than necessary, out there where shady was just a regular Tuesday.