by Megan Crane
“I hope he does,” Bethan replied.
“Not sure what message that is, but he’s sending it.”
“I can’t wait.”
And for a second, just a stray second there in the darkness, she thought she saw all kinds of things in Jonas’s gaze. As if they were both remembering the way he’d kissed her. The wildfire that had exploded between them—
But in the next moment he was gone, melting off into the shadows like he’d never been there at all. And it took a little while for Bethan to start breathing again, much less breathing normally.
She took her time walking back to the vineyard house as the sky above her started to lighten, a band of bluer dark beginning to spread above the eastern hills. Bethan was aware of entirely too many competing emotions rocketing around inside her as she moved. She wanted to go back to Alaska, where she could sink back into her preferred routine and stop feeling all these . . . things. She wanted to go back to the person she’d been when she’d left Alaska, so absolutely certain of where she stood in this family and what they all meant to her—or didn’t. The past few days here had shifted everything around. Instead of showing her that she’d been right about her family, what she kept being shown was that her family was . . . just a family. No better or worse than anyone else’s. Just particular to her.
It was funny how she found that a whole lot harder to take than the notion that her father might be involved in something evil.
And all of her family stuff was a lot easier to consider—a lot less dangerous and far less explosive—than what had happened between her and Jonas.
She crept back into the house and crawled into her side of the bed again, so that when Ellen woke up a few hours later she would never know that Bethan had been gone.
“Hey,” Bethan said, grinning when Ellen finally blinked her eyes open. “Do you really want to sleep in today? I feel like there’s something you’re supposed to be doing.”
Ellen smiled, a slow sort of brightening that took over her whole face and made Bethan feel guilty she’d ever thought her sister was marrying Matthew for his money and status. Or only for that. “I can’t believe I’m getting married.”
“In style,” Bethan agreed.
“I guess I better get up, then.” Ellen threw her arms over her head and stretched. “I’m pretty sure I have about two hundred hours of hair and makeup to sit through.” Her smile widened when Bethan made a face. “And don’t go imagining you’re immune, big sister. So do you.”
She wasn’t kidding. Hours upon hours later, Bethan had subjected herself to more time than any human being should ever spend getting ready for anything. She had personally gotten ready for wars with less prep work.
Which only meant that it was time for pictures.
“So,” said her mother as they stood around watching the photographer arrange and then rearrange Ellen’s train beneath a brace of scenic palm trees.
“That sounds ominous,” Bethan murmured.
Birdie arched a brow. “Ellen looks very happy. I only wonder if you might seek the same sort of happiness someday.”
Bethan opened her mouth to shoot back the usual retorts but paused instead.
“Probably not the same happiness,” she said softly, after that pause. “Because El and I aren’t the same, Mom.”
“Of course you’re not the same,” her mother said with her usual brisk impatience, done up as genteel disapproval. “I think you know that wasn’t what I meant.”
And a week ago, Bethan would have shot back something about how she was perfectly happy as she was. She would have figured this was the perfect opportunity to extol the virtues of her very active, occasionally violent life, complete with its solitude and risks.
But she thought of what Jonas had said about her father. About the possibility that what she’d always seen as his disinterest in her military career was something else entirely. Was it really possible that she’d been misreading her parents her whole life?
Why not? asked a voice inside. You’ve been absolutely positive that they’ve been misreading you.
She slipped an arm around her mother’s trim waist, smiling when Birdie looked startled. “You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. I figured out a long time ago how to make myself happy, so I do.”
And if she ignored all the Jonas-shaped things in her life, that was true.
“You’ve always been like that,” Birdie said with what actually looked like a fond smile. “So determined and individual since the day you arrived. It was always Ellen who fell apart when things didn’t go her way. Never you.”
They both looked toward Ellen then. Bethan blinked a bit, because she thought of her sister as unflappable. A rock. Then again, there was all that anxiety and the obsession with her own eternal skinniness—a hallmark of control issues. Maybe the real lesson here was that no one was the same as Bethan had thought they were when she was a teenager, herself included.
“I don’t like to think about what you do for work because it’s hard to imagine you out there, involved in the kinds of things you must be involved in.” Birdie shook her head. “But it’s thinking of you all alone afterward that truly worries me.”
“But I’m not alone,” Bethan protested.
Her mother patted her hand. “Not now. Your father and I are quite impressed with your Jonas. The general says that he might walk a line or two, but never crosses it.”
Bethan wanted terribly to tell her mother that it was all an act. That the real Jonas Crow went nowhere near any kind of line and never would. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
Just like she couldn’t tell her mother that it wasn’t just Jonas—who wasn’t hers, not that way—who kept her from feeling alone. It was all of Alaska Force. Because of them she’d found a home, at last, where she could be everything that she was without apology.
But she knew if she said that, it would sound far too much like an accusation, so instead, she smiled at her mother and didn’t correct her. And knew full well that the Bethan who had arrived here a week ago would not have made the same choice.
Then, finally, Ellen was getting married.
Bethan stood beside her, there on the altar they’d created, with a perfect rolling view of the lovely Santa Barbara vineyards, hills, and sea, and for that short little slice of time, she took pleasure in being nothing at all but Ellen Wilcox’s sister.
But she was happier to see Jonas than she probably should have been as the reception began.
For purely operational purposes, she assured herself.
But it wasn’t operational oversight that had her throat going dry as she wound her way through the crowd that was already gathered under the big tent the staff had set up on the far end of the grass, up above the vineyard house, with spectacular views in every direction as the sun sank toward the sea.
Jonas was dressed in a dark suit that made the most of his stupendous form. It had obviously been made to his precise specifications, and she tried to take that on board. But it was too much. The idea of Jonas Crow submitting himself to a tailor’s ministrations, much less acknowledging that such things as bespoke attire existed in the first place, refused to come together in her head.
But however it had happened, there was no denying the fact that he eclipsed every other man there.
That dark hair of his gleamed, his brown skin making his black eyes and high cheekbones almost too beautiful to bear. And he was playing his role to the hilt, so that the sensual mouth she knew the feeling of now was curved into all kinds of improbable, smiling shapes.
Jonas and yet not Jonas, with every last inch of him shown off to perfection.
It really wasn’t fair.
Bethan was a healthy woman. She had healthy desires. And yet the only object of those desires was the one man in all the world who wanted nothing to do with her, and had still turned her inside out with a single kiss.
Good thing she’d been trained, because no matter what turmoil might be going on inside her, she knew there was a smile plastered across her face, as befit the maid of honor at this wedding.
When she arrived at Jonas’s side, that black gaze of his was hot in a way that made everything inside her seize, then shiver. He handed her a glass of wine with a certain proprietary air that played up more of that intimacy that he was entirely too good at faking.
Not so good at doing, though, she thought. Then ordered herself to stop thinking.
“What’s the report?” she asked as she lifted the glass to her lips.
“Oz is deep-diving into Carter’s past. But obviously the smart take is that no way did he stash Sowande anywhere near his base of operations in Annapolis. That would be a rookie move, and no one who can disguise his real identity like this is a rookie.”
“Agreed.” She tipped her head back, like Jonas was whispering sweet nothings her way, and smiled. “Do you think we’re going to flush him out this weekend? Seems unlikely.”
“I don’t like him,” Jonas said flatly. “Everything about him was off. If he was threatened enough to bug our rooms, I have to think that means he’s on edge.”
“On edge is something we can use,” Bethan agreed.
But in the meantime, there was the wedding reception to survive. There were all her parents’ friends who found their way to Bethan’s side to exclaim over her—and get an eyeful of Jonas while they were at it. There were her sister’s friends, from childhood and beyond, whom Bethan felt compelled to charm as best she could, as if she were a hostess alongside her parents.
She wondered how the Bethan she’d been a week ago would have handled this—without Fake Jonas as a date tonight and without her mission identity to protect her—and suspected that she would not have been nearly so gracious. She would have found it necessary to assert herself with her sister’s friends on the off chance they didn’t already know what it was she did for a living. She would have done the same with her parents’ friends, even more pointedly, and really, it wasn’t pleasant to see herself quite so clearly.
Not when it came to her behavior, and certainly not when it came to her poor heart.
“Are you nervous about your speech?” Jonas asked sometime later, when the initial celebratory cocktail hour had ended and they were all being politely directed toward their seats.
“Public speaking doesn’t make me nervous.” Bethan grinned at him. “It’s not getting punched in the face, is it? Or having a sniper lay down fire from some unreachable post.”
“Amen,” Jonas replied, the smile on his face not making his tone any less taciturn.
It was the touching she resented. He was playing a part, as she had to continually remind herself, but there she was, reacting like a real girlfriend every time he leaned too close. Every time he put his hand on her leg, or around the back of her chair, or played with her fingers on the table.
There were too many weak and desperate places in her heart, she understood. Filled with maybes. And almosts. And what abouts . . .
But soon enough this wedding weekend would end, and everything would go back to the way it usually was. Jonas would disappear in plain sight. He would speak only in the context of missions or to Isaac and Templeton. He would keep his distance from her everywhere except in the field, and even then only when under literal enemy fire.
And Bethan would have to find a way to accept that. Again.
But first she had to stand up beneath this tent and give a little speech. She and Matthew’s best man exchanged glances down the length of the wedding party’s table, pantomimed what she assumed was a schedule, and then she rose as all around her, glasses were clinked together. The smiling wedding planner handed her a microphone. A sea of faces shimmered there before her.
“For anyone who doesn’t know me,” she said into the mic, smiling broadly—and this time, not because she was playing a role, “I’m Bethan. Ellen’s older sister. The maid of honor, but you already know that because all my sister’s ladies are dressed in that glorious magenta but I, and I alone, get to wear this violet.”
She swished her dress in emphasis. Ellen was smirking at her from the center of the high table, but the rest of the crowd was laughing. Bethan let her gaze move over the nearest tables, and then stopped, because she found Dominic Carter.
Who was not laughing. He was staring straight at her with an intensity that made her entire body take notice. A prickle ran down her back, but she fought to keep herself from reacting visibly. She made herself keep looking around as if she hadn’t noticed him.
But there was something off all right. There was something wrong.
Because Dominic Carter was looking at her as if she were a significant personal threat. When all she should have been to him, at best, was a member of a team he’d somehow played—assuming he was behind the Sowandes’ abduction from Montreal.
The way her gut twisted, she had to believe it was more than that.
But she was in the middle of her freaking speech. She glanced down at Jonas, who looked like he was smiling up at her supportively, but she could see the intensity in his black gaze. He saw Carter, too. That was something, even if they couldn’t do anything about it.
“I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Ellen for my entire life,” she told the wedding guests. “But somehow, it feels as if Matthew has known her longer, and loved her so well, all that time. Which is hard to imagine, since I know they met in college, while El was in her sorority sister phase.”
Her bridesmaids broke out into one of their sorority songs while the crowd applauded. Ellen and Matthew exchanged a look, smiling brightly at each other.
And this was Bethan’s life in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Some potentially dangerous individual in front of her, her family—and the man she shouldn’t care so much about—all around her, and her forever balancing between the two things. Something she’d never done well, she could admit. She’d usually chosen one or the other. She lost herself in the army, and that had felt too immersive to come back to her family much. But wasn’t that what her father did? Maybe she didn’t love all of his methods or all of his choices, but somehow, he’d always managed to have a military career and a home life.
She didn’t pretend not to know that it was the man beside her who was making her question the way she’d compartmentalized her entire adult life. Because he made her want too many things at once. Sex, sure. But also that intimacy that she knew was the last thing in the world he wanted. Everything she saw in her sister’s smile. All the things she’d thought she didn’t want, and still didn’t—unless it was with Jonas.
And somehow, Dominic Carter giving her the hairy eyeball at her sister’s wedding reception while the bridesmaids kept singing their sorority song seemed . . . perfectly normal.
“Then there was her law school phase,” Bethan said when the singing wound down. “Which I personally thought was overkill, given that Ellen managed to win every debate that ever happened around the family dinner table.” There were more laughs. “Of course, looking back, one of the things that’s most impressive about my baby sister is that she always knows what she wants, how to lay out a path to get there, and crucially, always keeps her eyes on that prize, come what may.”
Ellen and Matthew laughed at that. All of Ellen’s friends were applauding wildly. Even their parents were looking at each other a little ruefully, possibly because there were other words to describe the kind of focus Ellen possessed, and most of them seemed to come back around to bullheaded, one way or another.
It occurred to Bethan that might be a family trait.
“I was going to stand up here and take you through a tour of embarrassing Ellen moments,” Bethan told the crowd. “That is, after all, my solemn duty as maid of honor.”
She looked at her sister, who was shaking her head as if to warn Bethan off—but smiling big and bright,
clearly not at all afraid of what Bethan would say next.
Bethan glanced at Dominic Carter to find that yes, his gaze was still on her like a nasty touch.
“But then I remembered that I’m not married yet.” Bethan grinned. “And if there’s one thing everyone here knows about my sister, it’s that she’s a very firm believer in consequences. And swift, merciless judgment rendered on any and all betrayals.”
“Old Testament, baby,” Ellen said from her place at the table, and everyone laughed.
Beside her, Bethan felt Jonas shift, though she was sure no one else could see him move. It was more a coiling of all of his power and strength, the finest weapon she’d ever seen.
Bethan raised her glass. “Please join me in a toast to my marvelous sister, her amazing husband, and all the years of happiness they have ahead of them.”
Everyone toasted and cheered as Ellen rose from her seat in an elegant rustle of white to hug Bethan, tight.
“I love you,” Ellen said fiercely in her ear.
“I love you, too,” Bethan replied.
When she finally sat down again, after more hugs to Matthew and some of the bridesmaids, she could see her parents gazing at her. Fondly, she was forced to conclude. There was no other word for it.
And the revelations kept slamming into her.
If she accepted the possibility that her parents and sister had always been fond of her, she had to accept that a huge part of the awkwardness she’d felt with them was of her own doing. So determined to make herself different. So sure that they had nothing in common.
When the reality was, this wedding, her family—these were the things she fought for. Love. Hope. The possibility of a bright future. How had she spent all this time thinking that what she was doing was no more than proving a point? Bethan knew better than that. Most of the soldiers she’d known were wild, unbridled idealists. At least at first.