That was still what she wanted.
But she was with civilians tonight. She could worry about doing good in the world tomorrow—with or without the looming complication of Jonas Crow.
“My personal hell is different,” she said. “It involves big family weddings. Ones I have to be in, I mean, as the maid of honor, when my entire life has proven to me and my entire family that given the opportunity, I will shame them all.”
“You’re the maid of honor in a wedding?” Everly asked, as if Bethan had announced she was, in fact, Santa Claus.
“Like a real person,” Bethan said, biting back her grin. “I know. I’m as thrown by it as you are.”
“Have you tried not agreeing to appear in people’s weddings?” Caradine asked. “That would be my first choice.”
“Says the woman who catered mine,” Everly retorted.
Caradine shook her head. “Food is not the same thing as all that matching-dresses-and-giving-speeches nonsense, and it’s all such a hard pass I can’t even think about it.”
Mariah sat up straighter in her chair, the light of battle in her eyes. “When is this wedding, and who is getting married?”
“Two weeks,” Bethan replied. She took a big gulp of her beer. Then a bigger one. “And it’s my sister.”
“Is she also in the military?” Everly asked.
Bethan laughed. “God, no. Imagine if a Disney princess became a corporate lawyer and lived in San Francisco. That’s Ellen.”
“Please tell me the wedding is Disney-themed and princess dresses are required.” Caradine’s smirk was evil. “And if there’s a God, let there also be pictures.”
Bethan smirked right back. “I have actually worn dresses before, Caradine.”
“But a Cinderella dress?” she asked. Hopefully.
It occurred to Bethan that this was an opportunity. She really had been hoping that she’d be unavoidably called away on a mission. For the entirety of April, if possible. She loved her family, but it was never easy or relaxing to be around them. Or much fun, either. And part of that was because she never knew which version of her they wanted. The daughter they’d imagined she’d be or the daughter she was?
A debutante or an Army Ranger?
That Ellen’s wedding was also an Alaska Force mission now made that a lot easier. She could be both.
And for the first time in her life, she actually had civilian female friends.
“The wedding party will be wearing tasteful, elegant gowns that we can use again and again,” she said, and pulled out her phone. “Or so my sister assures me. I’m more worried about all the other events I need to attend, apparently not dressed in fatigues.” She slid her phone onto the table with the picture Ellen had sent her of the dress she’d be wearing. “And yes, that was my mother’s fear. That I would show up to a wedding in combat attire.”
She laughed when she said that last part, expecting the table to laugh with her, but they didn’t. Instead, the three of them gazed back at her with very similar affronted looks on their faces.
“She said that to you?” Everly asked.
Mariah was frowning. “And she meant it?”
Caradine got that dangerous look on her face that usually meant she was about to start banning people from her restaurant. “Is your mother aware that you’re a grown woman who served your country and, in your spare time, made a little history? And therefore know how to dress for a formal occasion?”
“If you did show up in fatigues, it would probably be to save their lives, but whatever,” Everly said with a sniff.
And Bethan was taken back, not only by how outraged they all seemed on her behalf but by how her heart seemed to get a little too big and too heavy in her chest. She had the almost overwhelming urge to crack a terrible joke, say something self-deprecating, even get up and leave—anything to stop it. Or make it less emotional, less intense.
She didn’t do feelings. But tonight she sat there and let it happen.
Like it was a heavy carry she had no intention of dropping.
And when Mariah picked up her phone and studied it, Bethan did not reach over and swipe it out of her hand.
“Oh, sugar,” she said, all that Georgia in her voice making her sound a little like she was purring. “We are going to make this fun.”
Six
Bethan and Jonas made it down to Santa Barbara two weeks later with the rest of an Alaska Force mission team. But when the others headed away from the private airfield in an SUV to set up an on-site mission command in Santa Barbara proper, Bethan and Jonas climbed into the waiting convertible sports car instead.
If the bright and gleaming Aston Martin wasn’t enough, the fact they were in civilian clothes certainly helped remind Bethan that they were really going for it—playing the parts they’d decided on in a series of awkward and tense meetings back in Fool’s Cove.
Each more awkward and tense than the last.
Bethan could not say that she was having as much fun as her friends had made her believe she might over beers that night in the Fairweather. Then again, the outfit she was wearing—one of a selection handpicked by Mariah and subject to ruthless critiques by the rest until a consensus had been reached—made her feel amazing.
But then, Bethan had never been good at the serious girl stuff. That had been her sister’s place to shine, and Ellen had. Bethan had expected to feel as if she were wearing a Halloween costume, all dressed up in clothes she would never have worn if left to her own devices, but instead it felt like armor. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt as if she were actually pulled together in a way her family would understand.
They might even approve, a notion that carried a little more weight than it might have otherwise since she was back in Santa Barbara, where she had always felt that she only ever seemed to expose her belly—no matter how many tactical maneuvers she had under her belt. Here she wasn’t a woman who had made history, a woman of integrity and strength. Here, she had only ever been the disappointing Wilcox sister.
Jonas shot her one of his patented brooding looks as he started the engine of the car, but didn’t follow it up with one of his dark comments. She resented the fact it felt like a gift. But her resentment wouldn’t program her family’s address into the navigation system, so she did it with stiff fingers. Then sat back as Jonas drove her straight on into her past.
Downtown Santa Barbara was choked with college students and the usual tourist traffic. And the storefronts might have changed, but the general air was the same. Upscale boutiques on the same street with head shops, the buildings white with red roofs, and the Santa Ynez Mountains in the background. As they started to climb into the hills, Bethan was struck by the graceful dance of the palm trees, the deep blue Pacific forever in the distance. The road narrowed as they climbed, winding around typical Southern California mansions crammed into small hillside lots, with lush vegetation almost hiding the dryness of the land. There was a breeze today, but that didn’t take away from how sunbaked these hills were already, on the upward slope toward fire season.