Issued to the Bride One Marine (Brides of Chance Creek Book 4)

by Cora Seton

  Cleaning out a house or an old shed, Logan figured. He’d done that once or twice with his uncle as a kid. Some people were worse than pack rats. He couldn’t blame Harley for protesting. Sorting through years of accumulated crap—especially if it had been sitting in a leaky outbuilding—was an awful job. The perfect job for a pair of troublemakers like them, as far as he was concerned.

  Logan went to talk to the owner of the store about his project, wondering where the Ellises had settled. He hadn’t heard about them buying a house yet, but there were several small communities nearby that used Chance Creek as a hub. They could have bought a place out of town.

  Later, having found everything he needed, he walked to Linda’s Diner, ordered a coffee and a Danish, and when the waitress brought them, asked, “You know a couple of new guys in town. Twins? Harley and Ray Ellis?”

  “Can’t say that I do.” The woman’s name tag read Christie, and she seemed a sociable type.

  “Late twenties. Husky guys.”

  “Sorry,” she told him. “I’ll keep my eyes open for you. You holler if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks.” That clinched it; they hadn’t settled in town. Christie was young. She didn’t have a ring on her finger. She’d probably know if two new bachelors had moved in.

  Silver Falls, maybe? He’d heard it was easy to hide up there.

  When Lena entered the kitchen just before noon, Cass was the only one around, and Lena caught her resting her hand on her abdomen with a soft smile on her face that stopped Lena in her tracks.

  Most of the time she didn’t think about Cass being pregnant. Her sister had so far sailed through her first few months with the serenity of a swan floating on a lake. No morning sickness, no signs at all that she was growing a new life in her womb, but when pressed, Cass said she felt different—whatever that meant.

  “Hey,” Lena said awkwardly.

  Cass turned around. “Hey, yourself. Glad you got some rest this morning. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends.”

  “Still should’ve been up on time.” Lena found it hard to meet her sister’s gaze. Did Cass know what she’d been doing? Did they all know?

  Probably.

  “All the chores got done,” Cass assured her. “Logan headed to town. Said he’ll be back for lunch.”

  “I know.” Lena wasn’t sure what else to say—or to do for that matter. Usually her chores kept her so busy she didn’t have this problem.

  “Set the table?” Cass asked.

  “Sure.” Grateful for the task, Lena got busy. She didn’t know how Cass stood it here in the house day in, day out.

  “Lena.”

  Lena looked up to find Cass pulling more leftovers from the fridge. From the looks of things, they’d be eating casseroles for days.

  “It’s okay, you know. To be attracted to Logan.”

  “I’m not marrying him.” Why did it hurt to say that? Lena forced herself to continue laying the plates down one by one, then went to fetch a handful of silverware.

  “That would be okay, too.”

  Lena set down the last plate with a thump. “Like hell it would. I see what’s happening here, even if you don’t.”

  “What I see is a bunch of highly trained, grown men—men who’ve led other troops in situations neither of us can possibly imagine—stepping back to let you call the shots. Who else would do that, Lena? You might never meet someone like Logan again.”

  “Ask yourself why,” Lena demanded. “Why are these highly trained men stepping back to let me call the shots? Huh? Why would they do that?” She didn’t give Cass a chance to answer. “Because they want our land. They want Two Willows. They’re just waiting until we’re all trapped—”

  But she couldn’t finish that sentence, because it didn’t ring true to her anymore. Brian, Connor and Hunter might have relished the idea of becoming ranchers, but they also loved her sisters. No one could deny that. And Logan… Logan seemed to want her this morning—a lot. He’d seemed to want to marry her, too.

  She couldn’t deny she’d loved every minute of being with him, which made reality that much harder to bear. She couldn’t fall for the man her father sent. That was just too—horrifying.

  “Brian married me because he loves me,” Cass said bluntly, echoing her thoughts. “Because he can’t live without me. That’s what it means to stand before the altar and pledge your life to another person. If you don’t feel that way about Logan, then yeah—you’d better stay away from him. But if you do feel like that about him, don’t let him go. No matter how he got here.”

  Lena looked down at her hands. “What if I don’t want to feel that way about someone?”

  As Cass’s expression softened, Lena realized what she’d revealed. Suddenly it was all too much. She needed to move. Needed to do… something. Lena left the dishes, crossed the kitchen, grabbed her coat and burst out the back door.

  “Lena!” Cass called after her. “Lena, where are you going?”

  “Out!” She had no idea where. All she knew was she had to leave before she thought too hard about why love scared her so badly.

  And how she could possibly protect her heart now that Logan had come to Two Willows.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Logan said when he finally tracked down Lena in the barn late that afternoon. “How’s Atlas doing?”

  She didn’t answer, and Logan’s stride hitched. Shit, was she mad? He tried to get a look at her face.

  She looked mad.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not in love with you,” she ground out and kept working on the saddle in front of her, rubbing the leather with saddle polish.

  Ouch. A quick thrust of the knife to his heart. “Who said you were?” he managed to ask.

  “That’s what you thought, going to bed with me.”

  “Jesus, Lena—I don’t expect you to—”

  “To fall head over heels for you? Good, because I haven’t, and I won’t.”

  She was an expert at twisting the weapon in the wound. He struggled to come up with an answer. Something that wouldn’t increase her ire but would let her know he was taking this seriously, even if she didn’t want to.

  “Maybe it’ll take a couple more go-rounds.” Shit. That wasn’t going to help anything.

  Right on cue, Lena tossed aside the saddle polish, picked up a nearby rake and brandished it at him.

  “This ended badly for you last time,” Logan reminded her, swiftly grabbing a straw broom.

  “It’s going to end badly for you if you don’t watch out.”

  “Lena, come on. I was teasing. Trying to lighten the mood. You know I care about you.” He felt like he was wearing a neon sign when it came to his feelings for her. He wasn’t used to this, and she didn’t seem to realize that.

  “I know you want to fuck me.” She brandished the rake again. The metal teeth at the end of it could take out an eye if he wasn’t lucky. Logan knew he had to fix this fast.

  “Yeah, I want to fuck you. And I admire you. And I know you’ve worked your butt off your whole life to keep this ranch going. All I want to do is help. What’s the issue?”

  “The issue is—” Lena swung the rake. “Everyone thinks my marrying you is a done deal. They think it’d be… good for me.”

  Uh oh. Logan thought fast. “Then they’re blind. You’re fine just the way you are. I’m the one it’d be good for.”

  Lena wavered. He’d surprised her.

  That was something.

  But when she pulled the rake back into a batter’s stance, Logan braced himself.

  “No matter who it’s good for, I can’t marry you.”

  “Because of the General,” Logan guessed. “Is that it? You hate him so you have to hate me?”

  The rake lowered several inches. “Pretty much.”

  “You know, I don’t have all of the story here. Why do you hate him?” He had to keep her talking until she dropped the rake altogether. Her temper had caused enough trouble between them al
ready.

  “Because he hates me,” she said simply.

  Logan’s heart contracted. He recognized that look on her face, because he’d seen it in the mirror plenty of times when he’d known he’d let his parents down.

  “He doesn’t hate you.” At least that much was true. He’d never met a man more desperate to win his daughters back over—even if the General’s tactics were misguided.

  “He wanted a son.”

  There it was. Lena couldn’t change her gender any more than he could change his desire for women. He couldn’t be a priest.

  She couldn’t be a man.

  For which he was eternally grateful.

  “What if I said I think you’re perfect?” he asked her quietly. He wished she could see into his heart and know how much he meant it. She was feisty and smart and funny and a little wild—everything he liked in a woman. He didn’t want her to change at all.

  “That just makes it worse.” But she lowered the rake. He took it from her and set it aside, turning back in time to see Lena’s shoulders slump. She scowled. “God, I’m pathetic.”

  “You’re human,” he corrected. He took a chance and gathered her into his arms.

  “I don’t want to be human anymore,” she grumbled, but she didn’t push him away.

  “I’m glad you are. It makes being with you fun.” He lifted her chin with his finger, amazed she let him get away with it. “You’re better than any son could have been. You’ve kept this place going all these years. You got the stable built and the roof put on before the weather got too bad. We’ll finish the interior soon and get those horses moved back in. Atlas will be pleased, won’t you, boy?” He turned to the big stallion.

  “I guess he will. And I guess I did. Is it ever going to feel like enough?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said with a wisdom he wished he really had. “Just as soon as you decide it is.”

  Pity he couldn’t seem to apply that wisdom to his own situation. He’d spent the last few days ignoring phone calls from his brother and parents. He wasn’t going to become a priest; that much was clear.

  He was simply going to disappoint them.

  Again.

  Lena couldn’t understand why the interior work on the stables seemed to take longer than the exterior. The electrician dragged his feet, and it took several days when she’d thought he’d be done in one. Brian and Conner pitched in with the finishing work, and Logan did his share, but she began to feel like he was taking every opportunity to slip off to town on errands of his own.

  She had no idea what he was doing. Whenever they were together he focused on her and seemed happy to be there. She didn’t think there were any issues between them, except a certain hesitance on her side to be intimate with him again.

  With most men, she’d worry he’d be angry she wasn’t living up to some unwritten sexual bargain, but Logan didn’t seem to be avoiding her out of anger.

  He was simply… busy. With what, she wasn’t sure. He evaded her questions. Kissed her when she asked too many. Joked around all the time and soon got her laughing, took her on hikes when the chores were done and kissed her again. But he never definitively answered her queries—and she was beginning to think he was reconnoitering in town without her. If he thought another attack on Two Willows was imminent, she wanted to know about it, but when she confronted him, he shook off her worries and said he’d tell her if he thought they were in any danger.

  The day Jo and Hunter arrived home was a happy one for them all. Jo was over the moon when she saw how far they’d progressed on the new stables and could hardly be dragged away at dinnertime. Her dogs were so frantically overjoyed to see her they couldn’t contain themselves. Once she’d oohed and aahed over the new building and played with Champ, Isobel—and Max—until the dogs were wriggling with happiness, she and Hunter joined the others around the big table, where they swapped stories and looked at the photos the newlyweds had taken from their trip back east.

  Marriage suited Jo, Lena realized with a pang. Her sister was positively glowing, and while she was raring to get back to all her animals, she was constantly touching Hunter. Snuggling against him. Tilting her face up to meet his kisses.

  Watching the way her sisters acted with their husbands, Lena wondered for the first time if she had this whole marriage thing wrong. None of them seemed hemmed in by their men. Brian and Cass complimented each other in a traditional way. Connor and Sadie seemed to have found salvation in each other. Hunter and Jo were simply purely, madly in love.

  Lena couldn’t deny the affection evident in each couple’s relationship was heartwarming, but there was something else there, too.

  Trust, she realized with a squeeze of her heart. Each of her sisters trusted her husband through and through.

  Had she ever trusted someone like that? Besides her mother?

  She couldn’t help think of Logan’s surreptitious trips to town. No man had ever earned her trust. Certainly not Logan, as much as she’d enjoyed his company lately.

  She turned her attention back to Jo’s photographs, swallowing her disappointment at the realization.

  “No trouble here?” Hunter sounded like he hardly believed it, and Lena couldn’t blame him. There seemed to always be trouble at Two Willows these days.

  “No trouble,” Logan told him.

  “Except a couple of accidents,” Cass put in wryly.

  “Which were just accidents,” Lena countered.

  “Maybe we’ve seen the end of it,” Jo said happily, but Lena caught the look the men exchanged. They didn’t think so.

  She didn’t either.

  Was there something they knew that she didn’t? She was beginning to think it more than likely, and over the next few days her suspicions grew. One of the men always seemed to be missing at any given time. There was never a full complement of trucks in the parking area near the carriage house, never enough hands working on jobs down at the barn or stables. And sometimes trucks she didn’t recognize came and went up at the house, but when she asked who’d been by, Cass and her other sisters just shrugged.

  “Someone for Sadie,” was the invariable answer, and it was true her sister made herbal cures that people came to buy from several counties around, but it seemed to Lena that something was going on—something she was being kept in the dark about.

  Sooner or later she’d figure out what it was.

  Chapter Eleven

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  “She’s catching on,” Cass murmured to Logan the following morning. “You’d better wrap up your project quick.”

  “At least all the parts are done that require outside help.” It had been a bear to keep Lena from the house when the electrician, insulation and dry-walling guys had come by. There was no way he could hide from her long enough to get those jobs done, so he’d hired them out, but that required the workmen to slip in and out while Lena was down at the barn. More than once he’d had to send a tradesman packing before their work was done. It would be a miracle if the hideaway ever got finished.

  “Thank goodness. She keeps asking about the strange trucks. That girl has eyes like a hawk,” Cass complained.

  “She wants to keep you all safe,” Logan told her. “That’s a good quality in a sister.”

  “I guess, but it’s annoying when you’re trying to get one over on her.”

  “All I need is an afternoon to finish up the woodwork and shelves,” Logan said, keeping an eye on the door. Lena could appear for breakfast any time now.

  “She’ll hear you if you’re up there banging around. She’s so suspicious she’ll come looking for you if you leave her down in the barn.”

  “We’d better send her into town, then. Doesn’t she have any friends who’d want to spend the afternoon with her?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Cass said and pulled out her phone. She typed a message into it. Waited a moment and then smiled. “Perfect. The ladies over at Westfield are going to invite her to go look at horses with them. They’re expanding th
eir business and need another pair to pull a carriage.” She laughed at his surprise. “That’s right; you haven’t met them. They had guests at their B&B when you arrived for Jo and Hunter’s wedding, otherwise they would have come. They run a historically themed bed and breakfast, and they always dress like they’re characters from a Jane Austen novel. They’re adding another carriage. That means more horses. Of course, they could pick them out fine without Lena’s help, but that’s all right. I told them to keep her until dinnertime, and they’ll probably ask her to stay to eat, so you’ll have plenty of time.”

  “Thank you. You’re the best sister-in-law ever.”

  Cass’s eyebrows shot up. “Sister-in-law? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Whoops. He was getting ahead of himself. “Not yet.”

  “Are you sure you won’t stay to dinner?” Avery Lightfoot asked when Lena opened the door to her truck late that afternoon.

  “I’m sure.” Actually, she could have stayed for hours given how much help she had now back at the ranch, but Lena was ready to end the visit to Westfield.

  She’d enjoyed her time with the women who ran the Jane Austen B&B and had appreciated the chance to catch up with a few of the men who lived on the property, who ran a sustainable community there. Several of them had grown up in Chance Creek, so their paths had crossed before, and it was interesting to hear about all their travels since then and learn about what they were doing now.

  Still, by the end of the afternoon, the fluttering and rustling of the women’s 1800s-style gowns had begun to drive her wild, and there were simply too many people at Westfield. For weeks now Lena had dealt with what seemed like just as many people at home.

  She needed some time alone.

  In the spirit of taking the chance that was handed to her, she said goodbye to the inhabitants of Westfield, drove into town and decided to eat by herself at Fila’s—a fusion Afghan/Mexican restaurant that had the best butter chicken nachos.

  She’d barely been served her meal when Harley and Ray walked in, accompanied by their uncle. They spotted her just as quickly and swerved toward her, but their uncle stopped them with a word, and she had the feeling he was cautioning them. Still, the minute he waved them on, the twins made a beeline for her table. Their uncle followed more slowly. Lena’s heart sank. She didn’t know what to make of what had happened on the stable’s roof, and she didn’t even want to think about the possibility Ray had done something on purpose to hurt her.