Jonas was not.
“This is the most excited I’ve been about my sister’s wedding since I got the invitation,” she said. “Viewing the whole thing as a tactical endeavor can only make it more enjoyable. All I need—”
“Is a date,” Jonas said, his voice cutting through the room. And he didn’t falter when every eye in the place turned to him. He was looking at Bethan instead. “No problem. I volunteer.”
Five
Hours after the briefing had finally ended, Bethan still hadn’t managed to get herself back under control.
She was aware that they’d sat around hashing out more things about the scientist, his sister, and the confluence of jackholes that would be at her sister’s wedding, but she was unable to remember a single word of it. Much less the other scenarios and missions they’d run through afterward, one after the next, making sure that the plan they had in place—the one where she was going to basically go deep cover as herself in her family’s home—was the best.
Bethan was . . .
Well. Astonished didn’t begin to cover it.
She was perilously close to emotional, a state she avoided as if her life depended on it—because it often did. Men spent a lot of time substituting anger for fear. Bethan had learned a long time ago to do the same, because the alternative was to feel what she actually felt and cry, and she allowed that about once a year, and in private.
Though sometimes it happened more than once a year, like when she’d finally found herself alone in a hospital in Germany after the transport that had lifted her and Jonas out of that terrifying hellscape that should have killed them both. She’d crumpled, right there against the nearest wall, sinking down into a ball of anguish. Her clothes covered in stains she didn’t want to identify. Her hands smelling like him.
Sometimes she dreamed about all that and woke up with her eyes wet, but she told herself it was nothing more than a nightmare. Par for the course for anyone who’d spent any real time in the field.
Today she did not think she was at any risk of crying over Jonas Crow.
After the briefing had finally broken up, she’d avoided the subject by spending a couple of hours on the firing range, because she was sure that putting bullet holes through targets would soothe her the way it normally did.
But it didn’t.
She wasn’t any happier about things when she ran into Jonas in the lodge’s mess hall come lunchtime.
“We’ll need to sit down and hammer out our backstory,” he said after dropping down at the table where she was very clearly sitting by herself. Not that anyone could read that poker face of his, but she could have sworn he looked . . . well, not alarmed and a little shaken, the way she was. “And I’m going to need more personal details about your family that a date of yours would know.”
Bethan stabbed a forkful of the vegetables on her plate, and that, too, failed to make her feel any better. It wasn’t violent enough. She suspected nothing would be violent enough to make her feel better unless it involved punching Jonas in the face.
But that would be unwise.
Probably.
“Are we in an episode of The Twilight Zone?” she asked, quietly enough, which felt like a victory because she wanted to yell. “Am I having a psychotic break? This morning, walking down the beach with me was too much for you to bear. But now you’re volunteering to be my date?” She didn’t like that word. It didn’t seem to fit in her mouth, not when he was regarding her with all that implacable coolness, as if none of their history mattered, suddenly. “At my sister’s wedding, surrounded by my family?”
“I volunteered for an op,” he said mildly. A lot like he was attempting to control a crowd, not have a conversation. Like she was being irrational on the level of a mob. She would have snarled at him for that if she didn’t think that was what he wanted. “Is that a problem for you?”
He knew that she was going to tell him it was no problem. Bethan was fully aware of that. She was almost convinced she could see a cool little gleam of challenge in his gaze.
“No problems on this side,” she replied, trying to hit that same wow, you should calm down before your craziness infects the world tone he was using. She smiled when he seemed to stiffen just the littlest bit. “As we’ve established, I’m pretty much a problem-free zone. I’m a little more concerned about you, your feelings, and what it might do to you to be in such close proximity to me.”
He wasn’t the only one who could make a patronizing tone into an art form.
Jonas didn’t laugh. It wasn’t entirely clear if he knew how. But still, Bethan thought she saw a hint of it in that dark gaze of his then, if only for an instant.
“I appreciate your concern.”
“Alaska Force is a family,” she replied. And smiled. Kindly and with even more condescension.
That gleam in his gaze intensified. “Tomorrow.”
And then he’d left her there, fully convinced that he meant that to sound like a threat. That it was a threat.
Not that there was anything she could do about it, except fume. There was no complaining to Isaac, as that would be as good as announcing that she and Jonas really did have personal issues requiring mediation, of all things. When Bethan had no intention of acknowledging that there was an issue, much less attempting to mediate it. The very idea made her shudder.
Jonas had boxed her in pretty well, she had to admit. What she couldn’t figure out was why.
That evening, she jumped on one of the boats heading into Grizzly Harbor. Blue navigated the skiff around the jutting edge of the rocky coast, nimbly picking his way through the treacherous water like the navy man he was. And when they made their way into the main harbor on the island, Bethan forgot, for a moment, the enduring issue that was Jonas Crow.
She gazed out at the pretty fishing village that waited for her instead. Because she’d seen it almost two years ago and fallen in love at first sight. She’d stood out on the deck of the ferry as a summer day made the whole island sparkle, caught her breath, and that had been that.
Fool’s Cove was quiet, tucked away on the other side of the island. Seaplanes came and went in accordance with Alaska Force’s mission plans, but that was the only version of traffic they had. Sometimes they used the helicopter for faster response times. And there were a lot of satellite dishes around to keep them linked in despite being in the middle of nowhere.
In comparison, Grizzly Harbor was the height of civilization. There were no real streets, but there were enough people here that there were dirt paths and wooden boardwalks to connect the brightly painted, if often peeling, buildings. There was a general store, a post office, and the Blue Bear Inn. Other little shops that sold curiosities or fishing supplies or both. Tourists came here in the summers, though never in high numbers, as the island was off the Inside Passage cruise, and throughout the year the citizens threw themselves festivals, wallowed in the natural hot springs on the trail out of town, and built as tightly knit a community as was possible when everyone was a rugged individualist who liked their own company and space, or they wouldn’t be living on an island off the coast of Alaska in the first place.