Page 21 of Special Ops Seduction

But then, Bethan had never been good at the serious girlstuff. 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.

She breathed in deep. The hint of citrus and jasmine, rosemary and dirt, with salt and pine threaded through it all. The bougainvillea climbed here and there in flashes of glorious color, like the memories that teased her as Jonas drove. Road trips with high school friends farther up into the mountains, to Ojai. Excursions down into Los Angeles. The year she’d had a crush on a surfer and so had haunted places like Rincon and El Capitan every spare moment she had.

Bethan couldn’t remember the name of that crush, but she could recall with perfect clarity what it felt like to harness the power of the ocean’s waves and that sweet rush of riding them, so fast it felt like flying.

By the time Jonas made it to the long drive that led off the main road to her parents’ house, Bethan was surprised to find that she was actually filled with nostalgia. Two days ago—even this morning when they’d left Juneau—she would have said she never looked back, because she hadn’t. Because what was ahead of her was what mattered.

She took that as a reminder that what was ahead of her wasn’t memory lane but a mission.

“We’re approaching the house,” Jonas said into the phone she’d been too busy excavating high school to see him pick up. “We’re going into radio silence. Maintain positions until otherwise indicated.”

She didn’t have to hear the people on the other end of the line—Rory Lockwood and Jack Herriot, part of their California team—because Jonas wouldn’t have ended the call if he wasn’t satisfied.

He slid a glance her way as he took one of the curves that wound through the vineyards, getting ever closer to the sprawling white house that waited at the end of the drive. “They’re in position and ready to run point and take queries. They’ll stay in town until we need them. If we need them.”

Bethan held out one hand to catch the warm Californiaafternoon in her palm, the other in her lap so she could keep enjoying the buttery feel of the dress she wore. “There’s a part of me that would actually really enjoy watching an Alaska Force team infiltrate my father’s house and possibly ruin my sister’s wedding. But that is a mean, jealous, petty part of me that I’m not proud of.”

“The world is built on mean, jealous, petty people. That’s how it turns.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine, as always. I put it out there because now it’s said, I fully accept that I’m that person, and now we can all move on.”

Jonas grunted. “Everybody’s petty.”

She shot him a look, grateful that it was sunny and they could both hide behind dark glasses. “Yeah? What are you petty about?”

He didn’t laugh because he was Jonas Crow, and a stray laugh might turn him to stone.

“Everything,” he muttered.

Or maybe she only imagined he said that, because, Lord knew, Jonas was a great many things, but none of thempetty.He’d reached the final approach and sat back in the driver’s seat as the road before them straightened. And she was paying far too much close attention to him if she noticed the faintest twitch of his mouth.

She wrenched her gaze back to the marching column of cypress trees and the house that rose there at the end of it, all that glorious, gleaming white beneath red tiles, as if it were floating up above the vineyards and gardens.

Think about the mission, she ordered herself as her stomach dropped.This is about the mission, not your memories.

“Do you need to go over our backstory again?” she asked, shifting her attention back to him. In a tactical, strategic, professional manner, she assured herself.

He was playing a version of himself she’d certainly never met. The same Jonas Crow with the extraordinarily classified background in various levels of special ops, butinstead of Alaska Force, Oz had made him a different background. This one far more high-flying. An office in Seattle and the kind of slick, private-security shingle that the men they were here to interrogate would understand. He’d dressed the part. No more regular Jonas, who might or might not disappear into the woods forever at the drop of a hat. This Jonas was downright sleek. He wore what should have been a totally unremarkable outfit. A sport coat over a button-down shirt and jeans over boots. The recognizable uniform of a certain kind of man.

But this was Jonas.

So instead of looking like any old guy, he looked dangerous.Delicious, a problematic voice inside her whispered. He’d cut his dark black hair so that it looked more CEO and less Delta Force. He wasn’t entirely clean-shaven, though he’d made that look deliberate, which lent him a certain manicured ruggedness, as if he could be anything from a Hollywood actor to an off-duty king.

She had seen this man in a variety of roles. But all of them had been in combat. Bethan was forced to acknowledge that she was woefully underprepared for Jonas... undercover.

“I’m good on the backstory.” He was driving like a different person now. Kicked back in his seat, one wrist hooked over the wheel. “We met through friends almost a year ago at a charity event. I fly you down to Seattle as often as I can. I’m traditional, though I would argue about it if anyone actually called me that, but privately think that the more serious we get, the less you should be doing the work you do. Anything else you want to add?”

She realized that even his voice was different now that he’d slipped into character. But it took her a moment to understand why it poked at her the way it did, and her stomach fell a bit more once she did. She’d heard this voice before. Filled with warmth. Life. In other words, not ice-cold Jonas.

This was the man she’d met in a far-off desert. Or a version of him, anyway, long ago.

There was absolutely no reason this should feel like a betrayal.

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