A SEAL's Consent (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 4)

by Cora Seton

  Unwillingly, her thoughts returned to the picture Jericho had painted of Yemen—of those children in the school. In a world where you could lose a loved one in an instant, shouldn’t you think through all your actions? Shouldn’t you at least take a breath before you stepped in and tried to destroy what mattered most to that person?

  She turned her back on her mother, and with a pang wondered if Jericho had felt this bad the day she’d told him about commuting to California twice a month. Had it seemed like she was taking aim at Base Camp and trying to thwart their progress through her thoughtlessness?

  She hugged her arms across her chest. He had to know that wasn’t it at all; she was working to further her career—not hurt his.

  Looking back, she saw her mother had turned away. Lines of fatigue etched her face. Was she thinking the same thing even now? That Savannah should understand she was only trying to forward her businesses’ interests, not undermine Savannah’s desire to be a pianist?

  If so, Savannah was perpetuating a loop after all.

  So now what should she do? How could she prove anything to anyone with the way it had all gotten tangled in knots?

  Giving up, Savannah paced away to find a drink of water before the concert started. She wished she was back at Base Camp now, doing something simple—like calculations for Jericho, laughing at him when she reached the answer more quickly than he did, shrieking when he tried to snatch a kiss. Mucking around in Pittance Creek measuring water flow and counting fish. Tracking the path of the sun over various positions of their settlement. Sharing meals at the fire pit, doing chores with her friends, making plans for the next batch of guests at the B&B.

  Anything but playing this concert.

  Not because she didn’t love music—or getting that applause.

  But because she didn’t know anymore what she was trying to prove.

  She looked at her hands. She’d thought she’d known exactly what they were for, but so many varied projects and tasks fulfilled her these days.

  She’d thought she wanted her parents to understand—

  But that was impossible, wasn’t it? It was never going to happen.

  “Ms. Edwards? You’re on in a moment.” A woman whose name tag proclaimed her to be Carla motioned her to hurry. Savannah followed her back toward the circular concert hall. First things first, she supposed. She’d said she’d play and she’d follow through with the obligation.

  “Nervous?” Carla asked as they waited in the wings. Savannah’s mother had taken a seat between her father and Charles in the front row. The camera crew had positioned itself close to the stage but off to one side. The corners of Savannah’s mouth tugged up at the way this moment echoed her dream of playing in Carnegie Hall. There was her family—front and center as she waited to take the stage. There were the cameras.

  There was the grand piano waiting for her to play.

  Just as it had been the day before, the fluttery, jittery feeling that always sent her into fits of nerves right before a concert was absent. She had nothing to lose. She’d put her heart and soul into preparing for the audition with Redding, and then had realized he was nothing but a fake. She’d realized nothing she could do now would change the way her family thought of her, either.

  As for the rest of the audience, she didn’t know them. She’d do her best to entertain them, but it wasn’t like playing for her friends back home.

  Savannah lifted a hand to her mouth as understanding crashed over her. How could she have missed it before? Why hadn’t she realized it wasn’t fame she was after—or even approval?

  It was connection.

  Playing Carnegie Hall would be a great honor. Gaining her parents’ approval might have healed so many past hurts. But playing for her friends at Base Camp—watching them dance to her music—listening to them sing along with her—

  That was everything.

  She’d built a life for herself back in Chance Creek that she loved. With friends she cared for truly and deeply—who saw who she was and accepted her for it. With a man who loved her despite his flaws and fears—and despite hers, too.

  Even if she crashed and burned today—if she was booed off the stage—she had something to go home to.

  This was abundance, she decided. Having multiple options, multiple talents. Knowing that no matter what befell her she could make a way in the world for herself and her child. Knowing already that her music brought pure joy to those she loved.

  “It’s time,” Carla said, touching her arm. Polite applause from the gathered crowd signaled she had been announced. As Savannah crossed the stage, she took in the formal arrangement of the seats and the position of the piano and the audience. As she sat down on the bench and adjusted it to fit her needs, she remembered the crowded venue of the bunkhouse. The whirling dancers. The shouted, off-key show tunes. Her heart warmed at the memory, but as throats cleared and feet shuffled in the silent concert hall, Savannah met her mother’s eyes and saw the worry there, quickly masked by the lift of her chin.

  What was worrying her? That Savannah would embarrass her? That the event wouldn’t be the hit of the social calendar? That she wouldn’t make exactly the right connections to seal the latest round of funding one of her ventures required?

  As Savannah lifted her hands to place them on the keys, compassion flooded her heart. She felt…sorry for all the people in this room. Every one of them carried his or her burden of pain and fear. Most of them were probably here because they had to be, not because they wanted to be.

  Many hoped to be seen—and be counted as important enough for others to cultivate.

  What was this life?

  And what role did music even play in it?

  Did it matter?

  Savannah decided it didn’t. She decided the only gift she could give her audience today was transcendence. She could offer them a few minutes in which to forget their fears, forget themselves—and simply be.

  But in order to do that with such a sophisticated crowd, she was going to have to knock their socks off.

  Savannah brought her hands down in a crash of notes that made every member of the audience jump, and she continued to play with the vivacity and fury of a woman possessed by Valkyries. No soft, tender interlude for these movers and shakers of modern society. Let them remember what really counted: passion. Vigor. The daring it took to truly be oneself.

  Not once did Savannah glance at her audience. She played as if her life depended on it. Played as if she could pour her heart into the silent, precise, hemmed-in vessel that contained these people’s lives and break it wide open with the splash of her chords.

  The small hall rang with sound, and as her fingers ran over the notes releasing an avalanche of sound, Savannah stopped being a woman who played piano and simply became music itself. The rest of the piece passed smoothly. Only when it ended again in another crescendo of chords did Savannah come back to herself. To her body. To the hall, where silence reigned absolute.

  Until a man leapt to his feet and began to clap. In a moment the whole audience joined in, and this time she wasn’t the one creating the thunderous sound; she was the recipient of it.

  “Bravo!” a woman in the back called out. A man on the far side of the room echoed the word. Savannah bowed her head in the face of the wave of approbation that flowed toward her. Maybe she still needed a little of it to heal all the wounded places in her soul—because it felt good.

  When she looked up again, her mother, father and Charles were all on their feet, too. All of them sharing the same dazed expression, so shocked she almost had to laugh. They began to clap, too, slowly at first, but speeding up.

  A smile broke over Charles’s face—a truly open smile she hadn’t seen since the beginning of their relationship, before their marriage somehow became fait accompli.

  He nodded to her and Savannah’s heart eased. He’d forgiven her. That was clear—and he’d done it because he finally understood what he’d missed for so long: her true passion.

/>   She thought back to the days when they’d first met. The way they’d hung out together at the get-togethers they’d both found so boring and stilted. She remembered the time they’d snuck into the basement at one of their parents’ friend’s parties and discovered an old boom box and a stash of mix tapes from the eighties. The party upstairs had been so crowded and loud no one had heard them crank up the old tunes downstairs. They’d belted out the lyrics and gyrated around like they’d seen in the movies from their parents’ childhood.

  Savannah smiled back at him, turned back to the piano despite the continuing roll of applause and began to play a new song.

  A pop song.

  Charles’s favorite eighties ballad.

  The audience quieted with a few confused titters and exclamations, but they dutifully dropped into their seats to listen.

  Savannah wasn’t having that. Her singing might not match the quality of her playing, but this seemed to be a day for taking chances. She hummed the opening line of the song to get her bearings, then quavered through the first couple of words, found her voice and sang it louder. At first she thought no one would understand—but suddenly Charles’s baritone rang out and backed her up.

  Heartened, Savannah sang louder and, pretty soon, a third voice joined in, and then a fourth and fifth. When a few bars later the entire room began to sing along, Savannah couldn’t help the grin that spread over her face. First she’d surprised them. Then she’d engaged them.

  No one would forget this concert.

  Which was good, Savannah decided, because who knew when she would play at another public event after the way she’d walked out on Redding. She wasn’t going to let her mother buy her concerts anymore.

  That didn’t matter, though. Because in the last twenty-four hours, she’d realized it wasn’t her parents she needed to impress. It wasn’t Charles—or Jericho, either.

  The only opinion that really mattered was her own.

  And she liked doing this: playing. Singing. Entertaining.

  She didn’t need a mentor to do this. She already knew how.

  Just like the evening not so long ago in the bunkhouse, one song led to another and another and another until the afternoon ended in more applause. All around the hall, Savannah saw audience members laughing and talking to one another and she understood that not only had they connected with her, by singing together they’d connected with each other.

  As Savannah stood up, received her ovation and walked off the stage, Carla was waiting to escort her.

  “That was amazing,” she gushed. “I’ve been here two years and I’ve never seen anything like that. Nothing you played was on the program for the evening.”

  “I improvised,” Savannah told her.

  “It was awesome.”

  “Savannah! Savvy!”

  Savannah turned around when her mother called out the nickname she hadn’t heard since she was a girl.

  “It’s Redding!”

  Her mother held up her cell phone, and finally caught up to where Savannah and Carla stood. “He couldn’t get through to you, so he called me. He wants to take you on. Can you believe it?”

  No, she couldn’t. What did he want? More money? “Tell him no,” Savannah heard herself say. “I’m not interested anymore.”

  “Savannah!” Her mother stared at her openmouthed. “What on earth? Where are you going?” she called as Savannah whirled away and kept walking.

  “Home.”

  Chapter Ten

  ‡

  “Donovan?” Kara asked before Jericho could say a thing. “Is that really you?”

  “It’s really me. And look at the both of you—only took you guys twenty years to come find me.”

  Jericho braced himself. Here it came—the recriminations. But Donovan only crossed the room, kissed Kara on the cheek, shook Jericho’s hand and sat down on the edge of the couch. He nodded to the cameramen who had filed into the room behind them. “Go ahead and film,” he said to them, as if this happened every day. He turned back to Jericho and Kara. “Well, what was the hold up? You obviously knew where to find me.”

  “You’re walking!” Kara blurted.

  “Actually, I’m sitting right now, but yes, I can walk.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Is that what this is? A guilt visit?”

  “No!” Kara said.

  “Yes,” Jericho said more slowly. Because that’s exactly what it was. “We thought you’d been injured severely when you fell out of the treehouse.”

  “I was—or so Mom and Dad tell me. Had a bunch of operations over a couple of years. I don’t remember all of that.” Donovan sat back, as if settling in to tell the story. “I remember rehab more—took a long time to get fast enough to keep up with the other kids. Jackie here, especially.” He smiled and took his wife’s hand.

  “We met when we were both seven,” she told them. “I beat Donovan in the fifty-yard dash. He was the only boy I knew who wasn’t faster than me, and I didn’t let him forget it. Compassion wasn’t my strong point back then.”

  Donovan squeezed her hand. “Back then I didn’t want compassion; I wanted to run circles around you. Which was good; I got a lot more focused on my rehab after that. Blew everyone away with the way my coordination improved. Didn’t make a full recovery, but good enough.”

  “Why…why didn’t anybody tell us?” Kara asked.

  “Why didn’t you ask?” Donovan returned. For the first time his face fell. “Why did your whole family turn your back on me when I got hurt?” He looked at Jericho. “I waited for you to come see me, you know. In the hospital and at home.”

  Jericho wasn’t sure how to answer him. He was still trying to figure out the sequence of events in his own mind. Didn’t his parents know Donovan had made a full recovery? Why had they kept away when it was clear things weren’t so dire after all? He glanced back at the camera crew, saw Craig’s grin and understood; Renata had done exactly what he and Kara hadn’t. She’d researched Donovan, and knew exactly what to expect.

  “Your family left town. Your parents made it clear they didn’t want us in their lives. They never got in touch—not once,” he sputtered.

  “It was like I lost everyone all at once,” Donovan went on as if he hadn’t heard Jericho. “You were like my big brother, you know. And even if we didn’t get along all the time,” he said to Kara, “I thought of you as my sister.”

  Jericho rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “I don’t understand. If Mom and Dad knew you were fine, why didn’t they say so? Why all the secrecy? Did they feel responsible—?”

  Donovan snorted. “Drunks don’t feel responsible.”

  Jericho’s throat constricted. “Drunks?”

  “Come on. I’ve known my parents were lushes since I was ten. Yours are, too, from the looks of it. I found a photo album my mom hid in her closet back then. All those photos of Mom and Dad and your parents playing cards. And drinking. Man, they did a lot of drinking.”

  Jericho nodded slowly. “I guess they did.”

  “You guess?” Kara huffed. “There’s no guessing about it. Remember going to the bottle depot?”

  He did. Remembered all the change he’d received when he dragged his weekly haul there. It had been hard work carrying those bags of bottles on his bike.

  “It slowed down after your parents left,” he told Donovan. “A lot,” he added as he thought about it. Gone were those hauls to the bottle return depot. He’d gotten a paper route instead when the money went dry.

  “And then it stopped altogether a few years back. They’re in AA now,” Kara said.

  Donovan sat still for a long time, lost in thought. “You guys were lucky then. Mom and Dad never did sober up.”

  Kara exchanged a look with Jericho. “They didn’t?”

  “No. Kept right at it. They still get drunk a couple times a week.” He tapped his finger on his knee. “God, I’ve been a fool, haven’t I? I’ve been angry at the wrong people.”

  “What do you mean?”
Jericho asked.

  “I always thought your parents were hard hearted—that’s why they stayed away. That’s what my folks always said—that they thought they were too good for us. Now I know why.”

  “I don’t think I follow.” Jericho didn’t like the pain in his cousin’s voice.

  “They were protecting you. But they didn’t think to protect me, did they?”

  “Donovan—” His wife put her hand on his arm.

  “Protect you…?” Jericho trailed off, as it all came clear. He remembered again the nights when his parents had drunk themselves silly, the heavy tread on the stairs as they’d gone to bed and passed out cold. What Kara said about trying to wake them up, and returning to her room alone.

  Back then he’d been there to keep his cousin company. After the accident, Donovan had been on his own.

  “How bad…?” Jericho trailed off again, far too aware of the cameras.

  Donovan followed his glance and shrugged. “They can film this; I don’t care. How bad was it to grow up with a couple of drunks? It sucked, what do you think?” He surged up from the couch and paced the room, while the rest of them watched. Kara was pale. Donovan’s wife bit her lip, tracking his movements around the room with her eyes. “Hell, it could have been a lot worse, I suppose. Dad held on to his job. They took me to rehab. I got through school. I didn’t like to be at home a lot, so I joined every club and after-school activity I could. Got into finance, which turned out to be an interesting line of work. I’ve done well for myself so far.” He flopped back down on the couch and took his wife’s hand.

  “I see that.” Jericho relaxed a little.

  “And when things got tough, Jackie was always there. Once we stopped competing all the time we figured out we had a lot in common.”

  “We never stopped competing.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “It kept going right through high school. We both got full scholarships to the college of our choice—which just happened to be the same one. We were married sophomore year at business school and haven’t looked back.”