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That was how he knew that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. If she was going to have all the trappings of a Hollywood movie as a life, surely a little support from a father who was basically in the same industry should be part of the deal.

“I don’t want to see my daughter chasing her ego until it’s too late,” Henry Wilcox told the man he thought was his daughter’s lover. Jonas knew without asking he didn’tdiscuss these things with Bethan herself. “Her mother worries about her staying safe, but not me. Every report I’ve ever read makes it clear she can handle herself. But I hate to see her miss out on life while she’s out there trying to prove something no one needs proved.”

Jonas had to remind himself that he wasn’t, in fact, himself. He was the mercenary version of Jonas Crow. A version of himself who’d bailed on his friends, who’d sought glory and money instead of what was right, and most important, who was at heart the kind of man who would be at his ease playing golf with blowhards.

And more than that, at ease in this conversation about a woman he was with.

“I hear you, sir,” he said with a wide grin that made all kinds of announcements. That he thought Bethan’s life choices werecute. That he wasn’t going to tolerate the cuteness forever. That he was in charge of her choices. Announcements he knew the general read, loud and clear. “And don’t worry. I don’t intend to let Bethan miss out on anything.”

Next to him, the older man seemed to relax. He nodded, and even reached over and clapped Jonas on the arm.

Which was about as stellar a review of Jonas’s performance as he could possibly have received, because the general might be a blowhard, but he wasn’t a fool. And if Jonas had been presenting as dangerous as he actually was, no way would Wilcox have dared touch him.

“Birdie and I couldn’t be happier that Bethan has found someone with a good head on his shoulders,” the general said. “Couldn’t be happier.”

Jonas wanted to point out that Bethan was one of the most powerful and lethal individuals on the planet. That she did not stumble. That she did not need someone else’s good head because hers was stellar. That he could not recall, in fact, any scenario in which she had been anything but fully on her game and performing at the highest level.

He wanted to knock the general back a few steps, or inthis case, straight off the side of the golf cart. He wanted to protest, at the very least.

And really, he should have let it go. He should have stayed in character. But he couldn’t hit the older man, so he took what he could. “She has a pretty good head on her own shoulders, sir.”

The golf cart was stopping near yet another hole, but the general didn’t get out. He gazed at Jonas instead.

“I understand that, son,” he said, and there was a different note in his voice. Jonas couldn’t quite place it. Wilcox looked almost... resigned. “If she was any other woman, I’d try to recruit her. But she’s my baby girl. And it doesn’t matter how many combat zones she’s capable of infiltrating, in my head she’ll always be my baby girl. I can’t help imagining that sooner or later she’ll meet someone that makes her want to stay safe. Is that you?”

Jonas did not feel anything. He was incapable. His throat wasn’t tight. There wasn’t any steel band wrapped around his chest, making it impossible for him to breathe.

He felt nothing at all.

But he had to clear his throat as he met the general’s suddenly too-canny gaze. “I believe so, sir.”

The general nodded decisively, as if they’d settled something. Then he swung himself out of the golf cart, already calling out to his friends.

Jonas followed behind him, because he was playing the part of a man head over heels in love with Bethan Wilcox.

So it was lucky he didn’t feel a thing. That he never had and he never would.

He told himself that over and over again as the afternoon wore on. As he assured himself that he was nobody’s safe space, that he didn’t have that capacity. That love was for people who knew what to do with the good things they found.

When all Jonas had ever been good for was war.

He was lucky straight on through.

Nine

Two days before the wedding, Bethan found herself sitting at a table of women at a ladies’ luncheon hosted by one of her mother’s oldest friends in the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. It was a bright afternoon, a clear blue sky above, a faint breeze scented with salt and flowers, and beautiful in every way.

The sunshine was like a caress all over her face, but Bethan missed Alaska.

She smiled brightly and made small talk, because that was the job, but she was finding herself... homesick.

When she’d never been homesick. Not when they’d left their various homes over the years to follow her father’s postings. Not when they’d left the semipermanence of Virginia to move here. Not when she’d gone into the army. Bethan liked to look ahead, not behind.

But she would have given anything to be in Grizzly Harbor right now, keeping a straight face in the Water’s Edge Café while Caradine cooked and made snarky remarks, and outside everything was wreathed in grays, deep greens,and blues. She would exchange the California sun for a foggy winter morning in a heartbeat, and she suspected that said things about her she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge. Or even admit.

“It issobeautiful here,” said the woman to her right. Lauren, she thought. Or Lori. Something along those lines. “I swear, if it weren’t for the kids, Brent and I would leave Chicago tomorrow.”

Bethan already knew more about Brent, Laurel, and their three kids than she wanted to know. Among the things she knew was that they would never leave Chicago. There had been entirely too many supposedly casual comments about Lara’s mother’s houseon the lakeshore.