A SEAL's Struggle

by Cora Seton

  Both of them had lied to her.

  “I can’t believe this!”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosa said. “We weren’t sure if we should tell you.” She and Maria braced themselves as if afraid she could explode.

  Win thought she might. Her hands were shaking. Her head pounded as she tried to understand. All those months—all those prayers for her mother’s health. “I’m glad you told me. I gave… I gave up Angus for her.” Her voice rose.

  “I never wanted to create bad feelings between you and your parents,” Rosa rushed to say. “Your family has been through so much. But you were in my care for years. You are the child of my heart even if not of my body. I couldn’t let you lose a man you so obviously loved. I couldn’t let them hurt you like that.”

  Win gripped the armrests of her chair. She’d already lost Angus. And for what? For her father’s political career?

  “Your mother loves you,” Rosa began again.

  “She loves manipulating me!” Win exclaimed. Shame at how easy she’d been to fool washed over her, leaving her cheeks burning.

  “No one can manipulate you unless you let them,” Lenore said, coming around the corner into the living room sheepishly, hands clasped in front of her.

  Maria gave a gasp. “I thought you left,” she accused.

  “I forgot my purse out back,” Lenore said unhappily. “I didn’t mean to listen in.”

  “But you did,” Win’s shock at the young woman’s reappearance quickly turned to anger. “And you’ll use what you heard against my family.” She hadn’t let herself be manipulated; she’d believed her parents. Like any daughter would.

  “I want to win on my own merits, thank you very much, not tell tales out of school to get my opponent in trouble,” Lenore said.

  Win wasn’t listening to her anymore. She was thinking of the hours she’d spent waiting for news from her mother, the long days she’d spent running Manners Corp in her mother’s place. The nights she’d lain awake wondering what Angus was doing, missing him so badly—

  “Win.” The pity in Rosa’s voice nearly broke her. Win dropped her face into her hands. “How could my parents do that? How could they lie?” she asked through her fingers.

  Rosa came to sit beside her and rubbed her back.

  “Now what?” Win’s head hurt. Her eyes stung. She’d given up Base Camp and Angus for this? “If I leave, they’ll disown me. I’ll have nothing.”

  “Mija! You’re a strong, smart woman. You’ve got two hands, a brain and a strong back. You can work,” Rosa pointed out. “And you’ve got Angus. That man loves you.”

  “Who cares about love?” Win caught herself as her voice spun wildly upward again. She’d loved her parents—look what that had gotten her.

  “You do,” Rosa said firmly. “And you’ll get plenty of it if you return to Base Camp. Real love, not the manipulating kind.”

  Win thought of bustling, friendly Base Camp with its sweet little houses, its cramped bunkhouse, the chickens, goats, horses and bison. The singalongs and dances. The B and B. Angus. Her friends. All the other babies that would soon be born—

  Rosa was right. At Base Camp she had the family and community she’d always longed for and never found at home. But would she have the protection she needed—for herself or her child? Just because she turned her back on her family wouldn’t mean she’d stop being a target.

  “I’m pregnant. If I leave, they’ll cut me off. What will I do then?” she began. Could she survive without her parents’ safety net? She never had to consider it before.

  “Winifred Octavia Lisle,” Rosa said firmly, as if reading her mind. “You really think if you go to Montana, your parents will stand by and watch you or your child suffer? They’ll cut off that big allowance of yours, sure, which will be good for you,” she admonished, “but they’d step in if the situation involved a hospital. Just you wait and see. Besides, you have friends. You have a billionaire behind that community of yours. You think every single one of them will let you down in a crisis?”

  Win shook her head. No. Of course not. She was the one who’d let them down. Why was she seeing that only now?

  Shame flooded her all over again. Rosa was right; she hadn’t trusted herself or Angus or anyone else she’d been building Base Camp with. Instead, she’d trusted people who’d lied.

  “This is what independence feels like,” Lenore said approvingly. “Standing on your own. Knowing who your friends are. Ask yourself: What do you want to do? When you support yourself, you get to do exactly as you please.”

  “I want… to go home. To Base Camp.” Tears pricked her eyes. Would Angus take her back?

  Rosa leaned forward and patted Win’s knee again. “That sounds like the right choice for you and your baby.”

  Win nodded again, grateful for Rosa’s presence as her world disintegrated. “I’ve missed you,” she said honestly.

  “I missed you, too.”

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  “Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?” Angus’s stepmother, Maureen, asked late that afternoon. “You’ll draw straws before Greg marries Renata?

  “That’s right.” Angus could picture her in her cozy farmhouse kitchen in upstate New York. His father would still be at work, lectures over by now, probably seeing students in his cramped office on the Cornell campus. “What’s for dinner tonight?” He’d always loved Maureen’s cooking. Loved everything about his stepmother, actually. He’d been crushed when his father had first brought a strange woman home when he’d just turned thirteen. A year had passed since his mother had left, but at that time he still harbored hopes she’d return someday.

  “Manicotti. You getting enough to eat over there?”

  “Yes, but not near enough carbs,” he admitted. The wheat crop they’d planted the prior year hadn’t done well, so they were eating a steady diet of vegetables and meat. They were beginning to harvest some potatoes now, but there had been months when they’d lacked even those after their root cellar had been raided.

  “Just wait until that show of yours is over. You can come home, and I’ll cook you up a feast.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “Are you worried?” she went on, her light tone falling away. “About drawing the short straw?”

  He considered lying, but this was Maureen, and she’d been privy to his secrets ever since she came into his family’s life and very patiently and kindly picked up the pieces of his heart and made it almost whole again. Angus’s sisters had been devastated, too, of course, and she’d dealt with their rebellious teenage outbursts with a wisdom he deeply respected now. They, too, had become close to her over the years.

  It was Maureen who’d assured him a hundred times it wasn’t his fault his mother needed to pursue her happiness elsewhere. Maureen who’d put a thriving nursing career of her own on hold for several years to be there when Angus and his older sisters came home from school and his father pursued the tenure track at Cornell.

  “I’m your rock,” she used to tell him. “Here I am and here I’ll stay.”

  “Yeah, I’m worried,” he admitted to her now. “I’m not ready to marry.”

  “Will you ever be if it’s not Win you’re marrying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re caught in a hard place between your heart and your word.”

  She always had a way with summing up a situation. “That’s right. I’ll go through with it whenever it’s my turn, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Wish I had some advice. All I can say is be truthful with the woman in question. Make sure she knows the score. You might find you can love again in time, you know.”

  “I suppose.” It didn’t seem likely, though, and the woman in question—Leslie—didn’t spark any kind of tender feelings in him. When he looked at her photo he felt… nothing at all.

  “I’m proud of you for being a man who keeps his word,” Maureen said. “If I’d known ahead of time what you were agreeing to, I’d hav
e cautioned you against participating in this show, but that’s water under the bridge. You’re facing up to your commitments. Not everyone would in your shoes.”

  “I know.”

  “This is going to work out okay,” she assured him. “I feel it. Stick to your principles and the truth, and you won’t go wrong, Angus.”

  “Sure thing.”

  She sighed. “Try to focus on your friend tomorrow. It’s his big day.”

  “Of course.” Angus didn’t know what he’d hoped for from this conversation. Her permission to flee Base Camp and let all his friends down? He’d never do that regardless. Still, he roused himself from his sour mood. “You really think there’s some way I can fix this mess I’m in?”

  “I do. If you keep your eyes open for the good, the good will find you.”

  He hoped that was true.

  “Call me tomorrow, after the wedding. Tell me what happens. Don’t keep me waiting all week until the episode comes out.”

  “I won’t.” For the first time, Angus smiled. “Tell Dad I said hi.”

  “I will. Love you, Angus.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Win was hurrying to pack when she heard the front doorbell and the quick footsteps of the housekeeper moving to answer it.

  When she heard the housekeeper ascending the stairs, Win shoved her suitcase out of sight behind her bed and moved to the door of her large bedroom.

  “Leif Dunlevy to see you.”

  Leif was here? She didn’t have time for this if she wanted to face down her folks and still make it to the airport on time for the flight she’d booked.

  She considered sending the housekeeper back to inform Leif she was indisposed, but she figured she might as well get this confrontation over, too. If he’d come back from Europe thinking she’d changed her mind about marrying him, he was dead wrong.

  Two bodyguards followed her downstairs. “I’d like some privacy,” she told them, looking forward to leaving them behind again when she left California. It was stifling having them follow her everywhere.

  Leif was pacing the living room when she found him. He’d changed since they last were together. He was tanned, his light brown hair almost bleached to blond. He was standing straighter than he used to. Was he more muscular, too?

  Win wasn’t sure.

  “Win.” Leif came to meet her and gave her a familiar hug. “Good to see you.”

  “You look well.”

  “Turns out a little hard work suits me.” He smiled.

  “I thought you were in Europe making connections so you could open more pathways for your father’s company.” That was a direct quote from Evan Dunlevy when he’d come to dinner a week or two ago.

  Leif grinned sheepishly, and she knew she had him. “No,” he admitted. “I’ve been in India building houses for the homeless.”

  “Really?” That was the last thing she’d have imagined. Since when had Leif started thinking about anything past the little cocoon of his family’s existence?

  “You took off to go on a reality TV show about sustainability,” he said, shrugging. “How was I supposed to top that?”

  “So it was a competition.” She took a seat on a plush love seat. Leif chose an easy chair opposite.

  “At first, but after a while, the house building became something more. I… liked that kind of work. Even after I moved up the food chain in the NGO, I made sure to get my hands dirty once a week or so. There’s something really satisfying about being able to see what you’ve been working on. When you’re done building a house, you can step back and look at it. There it is. You know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” She felt the same way about working in the greenhouses. She tended plants, and they grew vegetables she could eat. It didn’t get more real than that.

  “And the freedom. Heady stuff getting my old man off my back. Doing things because I want to do them rather than because he told me to.” He chuckled. “I’m surprised you came back. I got the feeling you felt the same way at Base Camp.”

  Now they were getting to the heart of it. Win clasped her hands together in her lap. She couldn’t wait to get back to it. “I did.”

  Leif surged to his feet again and took a turn around the room.

  “Something on your mind?” she asked finally.

  He stopped in front of a large porcelain vase containing a huge bouquet of cut flowers. “So… you really want to get back together?”

  “Me? No,” she said slowly. “I meant what I said when I left. I don’t think we’re right for each other.” She leaned forward. “Did someone tell you I wanted to get back together, because from what I heard, you’re the one who wants to go back to being engaged.”

  Leif shook his head and turned to face her again. “Not me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Mom and Dad said they had it on good authority from your parents. They said it’s why you came home.”

  “I came home because my mom was sick.”

  “And not because you were pining for me. God, they had me fooled. And here I’ve been wondering how to let you down easy. Sounds like I’ve done a bunch of flying for nothing.” He grinned at her. Good old easygoing Leif, Win thought.

  “My parents are consummate liars. I learned that myself today.” She relayed what Maria and Rosa had told her. She thought Leif would be surprised, but he simply nodded. She was convinced she was still in shock. She’d known her parents were cunning adversaries in the business and political world, but she’d never thought them capable of putting her through so much just to get her home.

  “Both our parents are good at manipulating people. Look, Win, I’m glad we got a chance to talk no matter how long a flight I had to take to be here. I wanted you to hear from me first that I found someone else.”

  “You did?” Relief surged over her. One person she hadn’t disappointed, then. “I’m so happy for you! I want to hear all about her.” But then she remembered the time and the flight she’d scheduled to Montana. “I need to get going, though. I’d hoped my parents would be home by now so I could tell them exactly what I think about what they’ve done, but my priority is getting back to Base Camp.”

  Leif nodded. “That’s right. Tomorrow is Greg and Renata’s wedding. Angus and Walker will be drawing straws. You’ll want to be there.”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise. “You watch the show?”

  “Everyone watches the show,” he said affectionately. “Yes, of course I do. We’re old friends. I want to stay up-to-date on your life. I’ll tell you what. Want a lift to the airport? I can tell you all about Isabel, and you can fill me in on the past few months.”

  “Sounds perfect. Thanks!”

  “Almost time,” Angus said the following afternoon as he and Greg checked their old-fashioned uniforms in the mirror in one of the guest rooms at the manor. Greg seemed over the moon about his impending marriage. Angus was trying to focus on him, like Maureen had suggested, but he was having trouble keeping his mind off Win.

  “That’s right, and you know what that means.” Boone came into the room, holding up a fist with two straws poking out of it.

  “Hell, I’d hoped you’d forgotten,” Angus said. “It had better be your turn,” he warned Walker.

  “Not ready,” Walker grunted.

  “Someone better get over here and draw a straw,” Boone said.

  “After you,” Angus said.

  Walker made an ushering gesture as if to waft Angus across the room.

  “No. You first.” Angus held firm.

  Walker crossed his arms and didn’t budge.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Boone snapped. “Get over here, both of you!”

  Angus and Walker eyed each other. One of them would have to break, and it wasn’t going to be him, Angus vowed. Finally, just when he thought Boone would come over and thump each of them over the head with the fist that held the straws, Walker growled with impatience, strode over to Boone’s side and yanked a straw from his grip.

&n
bsp; Held it up.

  It was definitely long. “Ha,” he said and left the room triumphantly.

  Angus’s heart sank, and for the first time he wondered if he could really go through with this. Boone held up the short straw and waggled it at him.

  “Come on,” Angus protested. “Are you serious?” He wasn’t ready.

  But what did it matter if he was ready? Win had made her choice—she was probably saying her vows to another man right now. He hadn’t been good enough for her. She needed someone with wealth. Power. Ambition.

  “I’m always serious,” Boone answered him. “You’re up, Angus. Sorry, but you’re going to have to get over Win and move on.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “I’m not just saying it.” Boone looked uneasy. “Your backup bride will arrive tomorrow, and she’ll stay here for the next thirty days. You’re going to need to pull it together.”

  “What if I don’t like her?”

  “It’s just thirty days,” Boone reiterated. “Give her a fighting chance, that’s all they’re asking for. You going to be able to handle this?” he asked with concern.

  “Guess I have to be,” Angus said stiffly.

  Boone clapped him on the back and moved away. “All right, people. It’s wedding time.”

  “You never know. Maybe she’ll be the woman of your dreams,” Greg said when Angus came to take one last look in the mirror.

  “The woman of my dreams is in California,” Angus retorted, then took a calming breath. This was Greg’s wedding day, and he wasn’t going to ruin it. Like Boone had said, he needed to get it together.

  “I’m ready,” Greg declared.

  “Me, too.” Angus led the way out of the front parlor, across the hall and into the ballroom, which had been set up with folding chairs and an altar. Walker joined them.

  The chairs were filled, Greg’s father, mother and sister sitting up front. Angus took his place near the altar to one side of where Greg stood. Reverend Halpern, who’d presided over almost all the Base Camp weddings, took his place nearby.