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“Consider it a number one priority,” Isaac said.

Then the three of them left Oz to it, walking back out into the hall that led to the command center, Isaac’s office, and down around the corner to the kitchen and mess hall.

“I have a developing situation.” Isaac inclined his head in the direction of the command center. “Is there any reason we can’t postpone our debrief until tomorrow?”

“That depends on how quickly Oz finds something,” Jonas said.

“But in the meantime, there’s no reason we can’t take a closer look at Carter’s legitimate enterprises,” Bethan added. “I think it’s pretty unlikely that he mixes streams, but you never know.”

“I’ll call you all in when my situation resolves itself,” Isaac said. “But I have a feeling we’re looking at tomorrow.”

Jonas only nodded.

And Isaac slid a look his way then. That was all he did. He didn’t throw Jonas back against the wall. Jonas didn’t take a swing.

Still, Bethan tensed as if she were suddenly in the middle of a bar brawl.

“You enjoy that wedding?” Isaac asked him.

“I always enjoy observing rituals,” Jonas replied. “From my usual distance.”

Bethan laughed as if that could dispel the tension. “Except you weren’t distant. You were my date. My parentsapprovedof you.”

Jonas merely shifted that dark glare of his from Isaac to her. But all she did was rock back a bit on her heels and smile wider.

“They approved of him?” Isaac asked. “Ouch.”

“I executed the mission parameters,” Jonas said. Fiercely, for him, when he was in stone-cold mode. “Appropriately.”

“It’s true,” Bethan told Isaac. “He was so charming that my brother-in-law considers him abro.”

Isaac laughed at that, reaching over to wallop Jonas on the arm, something Bethan was fairly certain would get anyone else killed. “Good thing we’re debriefing tomorrow, then. You can run back into the woods, freeze that leftover charm right out, and beat all the humanity right out of you.”

He was still laughing as he wandered off down the hall, his too-smart border collie, Horatio, emerging from his office as he passed, eyeing Bethan and Jonas suspiciously, then following him.

Bethan stayed where she was, there in yet another hallway with Jonas glaring fire at her.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” he replied.

It was tempting to read a whole lot into that. But all she saw was that wall coming down, as if there’d never been anything else.

But she couldn’t help herself. “I know that if I say anything at all you’ll fall all over yourself to tell me that you were in character. That none of it meant anything more than aiming at your mission parameters, like you said.” She held up a hand when it looked like he was going to speak. “I want to thank you, that’s all.”

That muscle in his lean cheek flexed. “You have nothing to thank me for.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” She wanted to reach out to him. To take his hands in hers the way she would have this morning. The way she had yesterday.

The way she had again last night when they got back to their suite and made sure there were no cameras on them, when she’d led him into that big wide bed.

And she could tell that he was remembering the same thing.

But this was Alaska. They were back at work, back to being themselves, and there were no blurred lines in Fool’s Cove.

No matter how blurry she, herself, might feel.

“I expected my sister’s wedding to be an inconvenience,” Bethan told him. “But it turned out to be a complicated sort of wonder, all its own, and a large part of that was having you with me.”