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“Not if he didn’t have military service,” Jonas said flatly. “There are a lot of would-be washouts who take it upon themselves to sell their guns and wannabe Delta Force egos to the highest bidder.”

Bethan didn’t waste her breath condemning that course of action. Her views on mercenaries should have been perfectly clear. Because she wasn’t one, when she could have been. They all could have been.

“Okay,” she said instead. “Ellen grew up with a military dad. I don’t think it’s going to be too surprising to her if I have stuff to do that isn’t about her wedding day. Kind of par for the course around here.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Jonas replied. Gruffly,Bethan thought, but she was ignoring that. She was ignoring anything and everything that wasn’t the job, because if she didn’t, she thought the fact that they’d actually, finally, kissed and had sex might kill her. “You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“What I’m doing is killing time being a part of the bridal party, Jonas.” She was not remembering what it had felt like when he’d driven himself inside her. She wasnot.“That’s not exactly following the operational handbook.”

“It’s your sister’s wedding.” And Jonas looked unduly fierce when she frowned at him. “We already have a team on the ground here. It would be unnecessarily risky to infiltrate the house during the wedding—but even if they went ahead and risked it, I find it hard to believe they could find anything we didn’t. If Carter is our guy, I have to think that the cameras in the room were only a part of it. He went out of his way to let me know he knew who I was. I expect he’ll do the same to you.”

“I hope he does,” Bethan replied.

“Not sure what message that is, but he’s sending it.”

“I can’t wait.”

And for a second, just a stray second there in the darkness, she thought she saw all kinds of things in Jonas’s gaze. As if they were both remembering the way he’d kissed her. The wildfire that had exploded between them—

But in the next moment he was gone, melting off into the shadows like he’d never been there at all. And it took a little while for Bethan to start breathing again, much less breathing normally.

She took her time walking back to the vineyard house as the sky above her started to lighten, a band of bluer dark beginning to spread above the eastern hills. Bethan was aware of entirely too many competing emotions rocketing around inside her as she moved. She wanted to go back to Alaska, where she could sink back into her preferred routine and stop feeling all these...things. She wanted to goback to the person she’d been when she’d left Alaska, so absolutely certain of where she stood in this family and what they all meant to her—or didn’t. The past few days here had shifted everything around. Instead of showing her that she’d been right about her family, what she kept being shown was that her family was... just a family. No better or worse than anyone else’s. Just particular to her.

It was funny how she found that a whole lot harder to take than the notion that her father might be involved in something evil.

And all of her family stuff was a lot easier to consider—a lot less dangerous and far less explosive—than what had happened between her and Jonas.

She crept back into the house and crawled into her side of the bed again, so that when Ellen woke up a few hours later she would never know that Bethan had been gone.

“Hey,” Bethan said, grinning when Ellen finally blinked her eyes open. “Do you really want to sleep in today? I feel like there’s something you’re supposed to be doing.”

Ellen smiled, a slow sort of brightening that took over her whole face and made Bethan feel guilty she’d ever thought her sister was marrying Matthew for his money and status. Or only for that. “I can’t believe I’m gettingmarried.”

“In style,” Bethan agreed.

“I guess I better get up, then.” Ellen threw her arms over her head and stretched. “I’m pretty sure I have about two hundred hours of hair and makeup to sit through.” Her smile widened when Bethan made a face. “And don’t go imagining you’re immune, big sister. So do you.”

She wasn’t kidding. Hours upon hours later, Bethan had subjected herself to more time than any human being should ever spend getting ready for anything. She had personally gotten ready for wars with less prep work.

Which only meant that it was time for pictures.

“So,” said her mother as they stood around watching thephotographer arrange and then rearrange Ellen’s train beneath a brace of scenic palm trees.

“That sounds ominous,” Bethan murmured.

Birdie arched a brow. “Ellen looks very happy. I only wonder if you might seek the same sort of happiness someday.”

Bethan opened her mouth to shoot back the usual retorts but paused instead.

“Probably not the same happiness,” she said softly, after that pause. “Because El and I aren’t the same, Mom.”

“Of course you’re not the same,” her mother said with her usual brisk impatience, done up as genteel disapproval. “I think you know that wasn’t what I meant.”

And a week ago, Bethan would have shot back something about how she was perfectly happy as she was. She would have figured this was the perfect opportunity to extol the virtues of her very active, occasionally violent life, complete with its solitude and risks.

But she thought of what Jonas had said about her father. About the possibility that what she’d always seen as his disinterest in her military career was something else entirely. Was it really possible that she’d been misreading her parents her whole life?

Why not?asked a voice inside.You’ve been absolutely positive that they’ve been misreading you.