“This is what I’m talking about,” Jonas growled, and he threw his sandbag on the ground, next to hers. It thudded against the rocky beach loudly.
And it took Bethan a moment to realize that the thing buzzing around inside of her was a very particular kind of high-octane anticipation. A hit of pure adrenaline, like when she was on a mission and things were about to go down.
It took her another moment to realize that she was pretty sure she’d just seen Jonas Crow display his temper. Imagine that.
“I don’t like the reference.” His voice was that same cold growl, his dark gaze stark. “I don’t need anyone on this planet knowing what happened on any of the missions I’ve been on. I don’t talk about them, Bethan. And here you are, referencing one of the worst ones.”
“No one is here. No one is listening to what I reference or don’t reference.”
“I’m here.”
“Both Templeton and Isaac have been on missions with you, and I don’t see you maintaining boundaries and border walls to keep them at a distance.”
“That’s different.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why, I wonder? What do both of them have that I don’t? Oh, right. Penises.”
Something flared in his gaze, and that muscle in his jaw flexed, but he only stared back at her. “If you want to believe that I have an issue with women, go ahead.”
One of the most maddening things about Jonas was that Bethan did not, in fact, think he was one of those who couldn’t handle female soldiers. She was intimately acquainted with the type. She knew overbearing males inside and out, and no one in Alaska Force had that particular stench around them.
Especially not Jonas Crow. She had no idea why he wanted her to think otherwise.
“Catch me up here,” she said after a moment, folding her arms over her chest and resenting him. For . . . everything, including this interruption to her workout, because she could feel the cold again, biting at her in every place she’d sweated. “You’re on a voluntary sandbag carry with me because . . . what? You thought you’d throw in a show of friendship to prove we don’t need mediation?”
“I don’t put on shows.”
“Good, because rule number one of a performance is to make sure there’s an audience,” she shot back at him. “Maybe you can tell me why you sought me out, in private and off mission, for the first time since I came to Alaska, to deliberately be obnoxious. What’s your endgame? Do you think that if you freeze me out long enough, or whatever it is you’re doing, I’ll leave?”
He studied her, and she doubted that she was the only one who felt that kick between them. It had always been there. She suspected it always would. But if he was going to act like he didn’t feel it, she was, too.
“The window for peak physical performance at this level is small,” Jonas said.
“Thank you for that non-answer,” Bethan replied. “You’ve had over a year to get used to my presence here. You clearly haven’t. That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.”
He took an audible breath, which from a man of his talents and skills was akin to watching him crumble. Bethan froze a little.
“I never expected to see you again,” he said, clearly surprising them both. “All things considered, I think I’m handling it pretty well.”
She couldn’t let herself care that this was a huge admission for him. She couldn’t let herself care. It never led anywhere good. “Do you.”
Her sarcasm hung there between them, like more fog.
“Bethan.” And the few feet between them seemed charged. Bright, when there was only fog and the crash of waves against the beach. “You know and I know what happened. That’s more than enough.”
“And here I was, hoping that I could write a book about it. Maybe make it into a Hollywood movie. Definitely do the talk show circuit.”
“If that means I have to change my behavior, fine. I’m happy to do that.” He didn’t exactly glare. He didn’t have to glare to slice a person in half. “That’s why I’m out here on the beach, carrying two hundred pounds for no reason.”
She opened her mouth to snap at him, but paused. Considered.
Jonas was a master strategist. He could manipulate the sun into thinking it was the moon and then thank him for it.
This did not strike her as an effective strategy, unless . . .
“Is this . . .” She tilted her head a bit to one side. “Is this your form of an apology?”
That muscle in his cheek worked overtime.
“Okay. Wow. I think it is.” There was a fizzy thing inside her then. It seemed to dance around, taking up more space than it should. “I don’t really know where to put that.”
“I’m not apologizing. I have nothing to apologize for.”
Jonas eyed her sandbag, then picked his up, letting out a grunt at the effort to haul the thing up off the ground. Bethan made sure to pick up her own bag while making absolutely no sound, because he might or might not have considered this an apology, but there was always a pleasure to be found in petty victories. Another seemingly small truth that had served her well along her chosen path.
But standing around holding a heavy sandbag was even less fun than talking with him, so she turned and kept going toward the far end of the beach. Because she refused to cut her carry short because he was here, apparently dead set on annoying her even more than usual.
The next time she dropped her bag, because she literally couldn’t hold on to it another second more, they’d made it down to the end of the long beach and halfway back again. Jonas dropped his, too, and they both stood there, panting.
And Bethan honestly couldn’t tell if that racket inside her chest was from exertion or from him.
She definitely wasn’t pleased that after a year and a half of hard work to keep herself from noticing that Jonas was a man, she seemed to have backslid. Right back into that traumatic space she didn’t like to think about, right after that mission where she’d first met him but before she’d decided on a path of action to do something about those memories.
“This is great,” she managed to get out, still trying to catch her breath. “Is this what friends do?”
“Pick up your bag,” he growled.
And the last, long trudge was the worst yet, but she did it.
Because it was like most things. Or most things in her life, anyway. Sometimes Bethan ended up completing horrendous tasks not because she had such a stellar strength of will, much as she might like to think she did, but because she was entirely too competitive for her own good. And given that the people she was forever competing against were men of Jonas’s caliber, that meant that if she wanted to compete at all, she had to force herself into levels of intensity she would obviously prefer to avoid.