Page 35 of Special Ops Seduction

“Unlikely.”

She glanced back to see Jonas frowning down at his tablet as he flicked through it. “Blue’s favorite, General McKee, has an empty space in his schedule that can’t be accounted for, but there are a lot of rumors that he’s having an affair with one of his staffers. Oz is pretty sure there will be no love there, either.”

“I know you wanted it to be one of them,” Bethan said, and again, she was back in that desert. The pounding of her heart the only thing she could hear, and the heat all around. The terrible heat. The dizzying flash of something that made her look off into the distance only seconds before the explosion hit—

She rubbed her hands along her arms, willing the goose bumps to go away. “I guess I have enough of the army still in me that I’d rather not be forced to believe that they’re all evil. That some of them might be bureaucratic, sure, but do their jobs.”

“I always forget how idealistic you are.”

Bethan turned, very slowly. Jonas was sitting back now, as close to lounging as she’d ever seen him, as he was such a precise, contained man. There was a dark, hawkish sort of look on his face that made everything in her freeze.

That wasn’t quite the right word. She went still, but it was a highly charged stillness. A charge that was sparked straight through with all the things she never let herself feel.

Or never wanted to let herself feel, anyway.

“Why, Jonas,” she said softly, taunting him, because the desert was in her head and Santa Barbara was in her throatand if she didn’t hate her family, who was she? “Are you acknowledging that we share a past?”

His dark eyes gleamed. “I guess we all were idealists, once.”

“Oh, sure.” She didn’t snort. Exactly. “Your idealism is what people notice first about you. It shines from you, like a beacon.”

“If the generals aren’t who we’re looking for, that leaves the two CEOs,” Jonas said, all business again, and she knew that she was supposed to see only that coolness. That armor of his that he wore so well.

But she’d known him for a long time, and more, she’d spent day and night with him here, not embroiled in a conflict with weapons. Or not their usual conflicts with her usual weapons, anyway. She’d seen him acting like one of the boys. She’d felt that hand against her lower back, and more, she’d seen the awareness in that black gaze.

More than once.

He wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be.

And that made her feel something like... giddy.

She schooled herself to keep that giddiness under wraps. “I’m assuming this means you cozied up to Stapleton today, as planned.”

Pharmaceutical bigwig Lewis Stapleton had arrived the night before. On their run this morning, Jonas had said his plan was to feel the other man out. Over another game of golf, which Jonas talked about as if it were literally torture. This from a man who had likely experienced the real thing.

“The major takeaway from my afternoon with Lewis Stapleton was that he takes great pleasure in describing himself as thehead drug dealer.” Jonas’s voice was not quite disgusted. “I want to find that horrifying, but I’m impressed in spite of myself. He’s got the Texas accent, the big voice, and if I wasn’t looking for a reason to distrust him, I would think he was exactly what he appeared to be on paper. Rich as hell. The CEO of a pharmaceutical companythat doesn’t pretend to give a crap about anyone. The head drug dealer, son.”

“That almost sounds like you admire him.”

“It’s difficult not to admire, on some level, a person so deeply unconcerned with the opinions of others.”

Bethan was smiling at him, and they were alone. She shouldn’t let herself do that. “I would have said you didn’t care much for anyone else’s opinion yourself.”

“We’re all drawn to the monsters we carry around inside, Bethan.” Jonas’s eyes flashed, dark and too watchful. “Aren’t we?”

This time, her smile hurt. “And here I thought we were the monsters. We just happen to be the ones the bad guys fear.”

“Every bad guy is the hero in his own story. Remember that.”

There was a lump in her throat. She swallowed, hard. “I don’t know how concerned I ought to be that playing golf with a man who was probably personally responsible for a wide swath of the opioid crisis has made you philosophical.”

Jonas moved then, rolling up from a seated position to his feet in one of those impossibly graceful moves of his that were the reason he was half ghost. And the reason she, personally, had felt haunted by him for too long now to count. Too long to believe.

“I’m always philosophical,” he said, an undercurrent in his voice she didn’t understand. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Bethan laughed, more in surprise than in any real amusement. “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that I know you. Not after the seven hundred other times you schooled me on that topic. I wouldn’t dare.”

“If you didn’t want friction, you shouldn’t have joined Alaska Force.”

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