Grizzly Harbor boasted a couple of restaurants, assuming a person counted the hearty, down-to-earth food in the Fairweather—the dive bar in town that was also the only bar in town. And the scenic harbor wasn’t just for show—it was used by the fishermen who lived there and was a stop along the Alaska Marine Highway, where a person could catch a ferry that could take them all over the state’s coastline and down into the Lower 48, too.
Blue moored the boat at the docks and then they made their way up the hill toward the community center, where Blue headed up the weekly self-defense class. Bethan loved that the local women had taken to it. Rumor was, some of them had even used the techniques they’d learned in class when necessary, which just . . . made her happy.
Bethan had taken intensive training in self-defense methods on a much higher level and had a smattering of martial arts in her background, but she loved nothing more than teaching regular women that they weren’t helpless. That they could fight back. And more, she loved that civilian women were always filled with what-ifs. That they typically had no trouble whatsoever stopping class to ask about the various scenarios they imagined, so Blue could show them what they could do to fight off their nightmares.
It was fun. And just the kind of fun that Bethan liked most, rough-and-tumble and dangerous besides.
She sometimes wished she could go back in time and tell the little girl she’d been that despite what her mother told her in tones of despair, it was okay to play rough. It was okay to be a girl who wanted to be tough and physical like the boys.
It was okay that she’d always liked playing with guns better than dolls.
“We’re all going to the Fairweather,” Everly said when self-defense class was done. She nudged Caradine with her elbow when she said it, and Bethan was surprised that the deeply aloof owner of the Water’s Edge Café not only allowed it but didn’t actively scowl. Was that what taking her relationship with Isaac public had done for her? Made her more approachable?
But though she didn’t scowl, Caradine did step out of range of Everly’s elbow, restoring Bethan’s faith in her famously bad temper.
“We’re all,” Caradine echoed, her eyes gleaming with what looked a lot like said temper. “We’re a big we now. A group. What fun.”
“She loves it,” Everly told Bethan.
“Does she?” Bethan wasn’t convinced.
“That’s how she shows affection,” Everly said with a grin. “The more outraged she pretends she is, the more filled with love she actually is.”
“Or dead inside,” Caradine countered, though she didn’t walk any farther away. “And praying daily for deliverance.”
Everly only laughed, her gaze on Bethan. “Come get a beer. Eat a burger. It’s Friday night.”
And that was how Bethan found herself sitting at a table of civilians, listening to Everly, Mariah, and Caradine laugh about what it was like to be in relationships with Alaska Force men.
“Baby. Got to go,” Caradine was saying in a credible impression of Isaac.
“Wheels up in thirty,” Everly said gruffly, as Blue.
“Briefing at oh nine hundred,” Mariah added, sounding remarkably like Griffin.
And that cracked them all up to such an extent that Everly cradled her face in her hands and Mariah wiped at her eyes. Caradine got so carried away she actually smiled.
“All of those are valid statements,” Bethan said into the lull, but that only set them off again.
Bethan was grinning despite herself, but she wished Kate were here. Kate Holiday was an Alaska State Trooper as well as being in a relationship with Templeton. That wasn’t the same as what Bethan did, but it meant she wasn’t a civilian, either. And best of all, she had a certain no-nonsense, refreshing matter-of-factness about her that always made Bethan feel comfortable.
Because it was different when you were a woman doing what was historically a man’s job. That was just a fact.
“I wish I could relate,” she told the group, though she did not, in fact, wish anything of the kind. Sex with a coworker was a risky proposition in any job, but in hers? It had always been catastrophic. Bethan had seen too many good women go down thanks to some guy who never seemed worth the fall, to her mind. She shrugged. “But I only work with them. I don’t date them. Seems like a better plan.”
“Here’s my question,” Everly said. She leaned across the table, shoving her beer out of the way. “Do you actually not notice that they’re all ridiculously gorgeous? Or do you have to accept on some level that yes, they’re remarkable male specimens, but yet somehow remain functional anyway?”
“If it’s the first,” Mariah drawled, “I salute you. But also have follow-up questions.”
“And if it’s the second,” Caradine said, her gaze considering, “you’re even more badass than I thought you were.”
“I can’t possibly answer that question.” Bethan looked around the table. “We have more interesting things to talk about than my job, don’t we?”
“Yes, yes,” Everly said, and patted her hand. “What a trial it is for you to have a job like that, anyway. Constantly in the company of a legion of gloriously good-looking men who can also perform feats of skill and endurance on command, and you get to do it all with them.”
“In fairness,” Caradine said after a moment, “that does sound a lot like hell to me.”
Bethan sat back in her chair and looked around the Fairweather, which she’d first seen almost two years ago when she’d come to meet the myth that was Isaac. It looked the same. The rough-looking regulars who were, for the most part, sweethearts beneath all their bluster. The pool table that was always in use. The jukebox that was usually tuned to classic rock or country and was currently blaring out Creedence Clearwater Revival. The neon sign outside that flashed in the window, and the matching ones over the bar.
She’d come here chasing a story people in the service told one another but that she hadn’t really believed was real. Oh, she knew Alaska Force was real. And she’d assumed Isaac was—whatever real meant for a man of his skill and background. But the idea that this place could actually be a kind of sanctuary for special ops soldiers? Or that it could be a group of the good guys—instead of some of the individuals she knew from all her years in the service, who she was never surprised to hear went into the kind of private security firms that everyone knew made them straight-up mercenaries.
Because Bethan might have been furious at the army. Or brokenhearted, maybe, and ready to leave. But she was no mercenary. She had always wanted to do good in the world. If she dug down beneath the skin of the eighteen-year-old she’d been, so determined to thumb her nose at her father by joining a different branch than his, that had been at the root of it.