A SEAL’s Desire

by Seton, Cora

  And kicked a folding chair when Renata won the game handily.

  “Give one hundred bucks to the lady,” Avery crowed, getting in Clem’s face.

  Clem pulled out his wallet and tossed a hundred-dollar bill onto the floor. “You cheated,” he snarled at Renata.

  “How could she possibly cheat?” Avery demanded. “We all watched her toss her coins.”

  He gave Avery the finger and flounced out of the bunkhouse. Avery picked up the money and handed it to Renata. “Good job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What did I miss? What was all the cheering out here?” Greg asked, coming back from the kitchen.

  “Renata just handed Clem his ass on a platter,” Avery said.

  Greg frowned.

  “Pitching pennies,” Renata explained.

  “Got it.” He hesitated. “Boone suggested you help me today since Clem’s taking charge as director. I’m working on the design for extending our energy system when the community grows in the future.”

  “Is that really something I can help with?” she asked skeptically. “Sounds pretty specialized.”

  “I’d still enjoy the company.”

  “Maybe I should help Avery with the animals,” she suggested. “You can update me on your progress later this morning,” she added diplomatically when it looked like he’d protest. The truth was, she wasn’t ready to spend time alone with Greg, and this was the perfect excuse to hold him at arm’s length. It was hard enough to keep her head around him when they were with everyone else.

  “I guess energy systems are pretty boring.”

  “It’s not that.” Now she’d gotten herself into a corner, Renata realized. She couldn’t very well say she didn’t want to spend time with him because she was afraid he’d wear her down into agreeing to marry him. “I’m interested in your work—just not enough to take it on myself.”

  “What would you want to work on if you stayed—”

  “Avery, we’d better go,” Renata cut across him. She wasn’t going to indulge in any fantasies about staying—especially not as his wife. The maternal pangs that kept overwhelming her meant nothing. Just her internal clock ticking. She had another clock to worry about—her career clock. If she wanted to tackle Hollywood, the time was now. In any case, she couldn’t have a baby until all the girls in Peru graduated. And she’d be thirty-nine by then.

  She swallowed against an upwelling of panic. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if she didn’t have kids. Success was the important thing.

  “We’ll catch you later, Greg,” Avery said decisively and took Renata’s arm, leading her toward the door.

  “Byron, William, come on. You’ll want to film this,” Renata ordered. “Adrienne, you keep an eye on things here.”

  “Will do,” Adrienne said.

  “Hey, I’m the director here,” Clem said.

  “Did you hear someone talking?” Renata asked Avery as they headed outside.

  “Nope, didn’t hear a thing.”

  “See you later,” Greg called after them.

  Chapter Five

  ‡

  “Figured you could use this,” Clay said later that evening, setting a folding table down by the chair Greg occupied by a window in the bunkhouse. Greg was glad to be back inside after his evening chores—it was cold out there.

  “What for?”

  “Your scale model.” Clay gestured to the little buildings lined up on the bunkhouse windowsill. “That’s what you’re doing, right? Building a model?”

  Greg nodded, trying to hide his surprise. He hadn’t said anything to anyone, had just started whittling replica copies of the structures here at Base Camp. Clay was right: he didn’t have anywhere to put them yet.

  Clay unfolded the table’s legs and set it upright. He reached over and picked up the model of the bunkhouse. “If we start with this…” He put it down in the middle of the table. “Then the barn goes here.” He picked up another model and plunked it down. “And the tiny houses go here.” He spaced them out and frowned. “You need a base that’s topographically correct or you won’t be able to tell much.”

  Greg had thought of that, too. “Near as I can figure, I’ll have to do with a flat map with the topography indicated on it.”

  Curtis drifted over. “Why not build a base?”

  Greg held up his carving tools. “That would take a long time with these.”

  “I could do it,” Curtis told him. “Wouldn’t take long. I’ll build a table for it, too. A sturdy table.”

  “That would be great.” The folding table wobbled a bit.

  “What’s going on? Why isn’t someone filming this?” Renata demanded. Greg hadn’t seen her come in, although now that he had, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her hair, usually wound into a tight updo, was loose around her shoulders. Her old-fashioned gown rustled when she moved, as she did now, coming to bend over the tiny buildings Clay had placed on the table. “You made these?” she asked.

  He flicked his gaze up from where it had rested on her cleavage and met hers. “Yes.” He hoped like hell she hadn’t caught him staring. When she lifted a hand to smooth it over the neckline of her dress, he knew she had.

  “And you’re going to build a proper base for them?” she asked Curtis, not acknowledging what she’d seen.

  “That’s right,” Curtis said.

  Renata scanned the room impatiently. “Byron, get over here,” she snapped. “Why aren’t you filming this?”

  Byron hurried over. “I don’t know.” He spent a moment fiddling with his equipment and waved at them to keep talking.

  “Who taught you to carve, Greg?”

  Renata had slipped into interviewer mode. Greg supposed it was better than nothing, although he’d prefer a real conversation with her.

  “Jason Wheeler. One of the men who lived at Greenfield. He told me the best cities—and towns, for that matter—grow up around the needs of the people who live in them. ‘People will walk where it makes sense to walk,’ he used to say, and he’d show me parks and other places like that where there were paved pathways—and then dirt shortcuts where people stepped off them to get where they needed to go. ‘Whenever you see a dirt path, some planner valued his own vision above the needs of the people he built it for.’”

  “Guess that makes sense.”

  Greg rearranged the little carved buildings on the folding table. “I figure if we make a model now, we can talk about it before Base Camp grows. We can think about the whole, not just the separate parts. Try things out and adjust them before we commit to everything.”

  “That’s a really good idea.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No.” Renata seemed flustered. “It just shows how much you care about Base Camp.”

  “Of course I care about Base Camp.” She had to know that. This was his life now—the life he wanted her to share.

  “Enough to marry a stranger when the time comes?” she probed as if she wasn’t the woman in the equation. That burned him.

  “Are you really going to make me marry a stranger?” he countered.

  She rolled her eyes. “Cut.”

  “I don’t think you should cut. I think you should answer the question,” Clay interjected. “Are you going to marry Greg? Because if you’re not, I don’t get why you even stay here, the way Fulsom and Clem are treating you.”

  Greg restrained himself from telling Clay to shut his mouth. Was he trying to sabotage his chances with Renata?

  “I’m staying for the money,” Renata snapped. “I get paid well—very well—to be here, despite what Clem says. I’m going to collect that paycheck as long as I can. Byron, film!”

  “I’m filming,” Byron assured her.

  Greg thought she was going to snatch the camera right out of the young man’s hands. “Film the model,” she said between clenched teeth.

  “Right. Okay.” Byron swiveled the camera to pan over the models set up on the table. It looked like Renata was counting t
o ten.

  “What do you need the money for?” Clay asked. Even though Greg had wondered that, too, he wished Clay hadn’t asked. The other man caught Greg looking and shrugged. “If she’s getting paid so well, and she’s been working for Fulsom for years, she must have a bundle squirreled away,” he said. He turned back to Renata. “Far as I can tell, he pays all your expenses, too, right? Don’t you have enough already?”

  “I have responsibilities.”

  “Responsibilities? Like what?” Clay asked.

  “You know what, Byron?” Renata turned to the cameraman. “Let’s go find something interesting to film.”

  “No, stay.” Greg reached for her. “Film the model. Clay was just leaving.”

  “But—”

  “Leav-ing.” Greg was firm.

  Clay looked from him to Renata. Seemed to get it suddenly. Shook himself. “Yeah, I was just leaving,” he said. “Sorry, Renata. Curiosity got the better of me.”

  Greg let out a breath of relief when he left. Renata plucked at the neckline of her gown, as if making it less revealing could somehow shield her from being exposed on the show.

  “This sucks,” she said finally.

  “Being filmed?”

  “All of it.” She must have caught his expression. “I mean—” But she didn’t finish what she was going to say, and why should she?

  “You didn’t ask to be put in this position,” he said stiffly, letting his arm drop again.

  “No.” Her gaze lit on Byron, still filming, and then the table. “Byron, come on. Focus in on these buildings. Look at the detail.”

  Greg understood why she’d changed the subject. He was glad she hadn’t simply left, like Clay had, and he supposed if he wanted her to stay, he’d better give her a reason. He knew the kind of footage needed for the show, so he turned to Byron’s camera and waved at the table. “I’m building a scale model of Base Camp to better understand how we can maximize efficiency.”

  “In powering it?” She moved closer.

  “Efficiency of the power grid, yes, but also other systems. Look, right now we live here, the barns and outbuildings are here, the gardens and greenhouses are there…” He set it all up, then traced a finger over the table. “And the manor is here. Nearly all the women travel up to the manor on a daily basis, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So what do you notice about the layout?”

  Renata looked it over. “All the men’s chores take them in one direction, and although some of the women join them, most of the women’s chores take them in a different direction. Is that a problem?”

  Greg shrugged. “Not necessarily, if that’s what people choose after thinking about it. None of us thought about it, though, did we? Spreading out over the property in this way means if we hadn’t decided to take our meals together communally, and if the women hadn’t been assigned certain chores because of Fulsom’s rules, the men and women wouldn’t see each other much, especially those not paired up in couples.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Sometimes it takes an eagle-eye view of a place to really see it.” He shifted one of the tiny houses. “Angus is right. We need a sturdier base. One that shows the topography of the place.” He caught her pensive expression. “What are you thinking?”

  “About an eagle-eye view of my life. I grew up in Britain. Traveled to South America before I came to the United States to work for Fulsom, and then zigzagged all over the world.”

  “Peru,” Greg said, then realized his mistake.

  Renata frowned.

  “You traveled to Peru after film school,” he blustered on, cursing himself for the slip.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I… looked it up,” Greg hedged. He had looked her up when he’d discovered she was directing Base Camp. “When I applied to join this place, I checked out who was going to direct the show. I was curious,” he explained. “I saw you did a documentary there.”

  He wondered if he should simply tell her he’d been there that awful, rainy day and night after the mudslide and helped her search for information about the girls’ families. He didn’t blame her for not recognizing him. Back then he was thinner. Far less muscular. His hair had been long and shaggy, always falling into his eyes. He’d worn a scruffy college-boy beard, and he’d been covered in mud from erecting tents and hauling supplies in the pouring rain. She’d been in shock, too busy searching for news of the girls’ families to even notice him dogging her steps, trying to help.

  Some stubborn part of him wanted her to remember him for herself. Wanted his presence there to have meant something. Besides, if he told her now she’d think he was some kind of stalker, and he hadn’t joined Base Camp to stalk Renata. He’d come—

  Hell, he’d been interested in joining the group because of the chance to show people how sophisticated green energy systems had become, but the truth was he’d never have joined another… commune… if Renata hadn’t been the director. Some part of him had always been convinced she was the one who got away. Now he was here and so was she—why wouldn’t she make the connection?

  Renata shrugged. “My first film. Outside school, that is.”

  “I wonder what ever happened to those girls.”

  Something flashed in her eyes. Of course, Greg realized. She would have kept in touch with them—or at the very least followed their progress from afar. It pained him now to realize he hadn’t. As much as he’d tried to help, he hadn’t connected to anyone involved in the disaster—not even Renata. When the other women with her had finally convinced her to get a little rest in the bus the following morning, he’d returned with the others in his contingent to Lima. In all the chaos, there’d been no chance to hit up Renata for her phone number, and later he’d rejected the idea of trying to hunt her down. That twenty-four hours had been a sort of adventure to him, but he’d known it was devastating to Renata. He’d returned to the whirlwind of finishing school and graduating. By then, it felt like the moment had passed.

  “They’re doing all right,” she said softly. “Most have graduated from high school and are getting on with life.”

  “I don’t suppose you ever get over losing your parents, though,” Greg said.

  “No,” Renata said shortly. “You don’t.”

  Too late he remembered what she’d said about foster homes. “How old were you when you lost your folks?” he asked softly, knowing most likely she’d tell him to mind his own business.

  “Six,” she said. “Car accident. I was at school. First grade. The headmistress came to tell me. Everything changed like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  Guilt suffused Greg as he thought about his own childhood. Always surrounded by family—and the extended circle that made up the commune. One hundred eighty acres of agrarian paradise. A loving adult everywhere you went. That was what had driven him crazy—all those adults in his business. Every decision made as a group. The slow process that accompanied implementing any new idea—

  “You lived in foster homes,” he said.

  “Until I was sixteen. I had a job by then. Supported myself. Put myself through school.”

  “You must have busted your ass.”

  “I suppose you broke a sweat once in a while yourself in the Navy,” she countered.

  “Once in a while,” he agreed.

  He was rewarded with a grudging but genuine smile. “What made you join up?”

  He gave a quick and what he hoped was humorous description of his childhood, knowing Byron was filming it all. He didn’t intend to get into the desperate restlessness he’d felt during his high school years. His craving for the anonymity of a wider world. “My parents hoped my sister and I would settle at Greenside, like they had. We both got the hell out of there.” He realized how that would sound on television. “Don’t get me wrong,” he hastened to say. “Greenside isn’t a bad place. We just wanted something different.”

  “A different kind of commune,” Renata said dryly.


  “Yeah.” He acknowledged the irony of ending up here. “A different kind of commune. But one with the distinct advantage of being filmed,” he ended.

  They grinned at each other.

  Greg didn’t realize he was edging closer to her until Renata glanced at Byron and broke the spell. He’d have to try another time, he decided. When they were alone.

  If they were ever alone.

  Two days later, Renata was beginning to feel like she’d always been in front of the cameras instead of behind them. As director, it had been her job to keep her subjects under constant surveillance. As a participant on the show, she found being surveilled exhausting.

  Clem was making her his personal victim and made sure to follow her everywhere she went, Byron or one of the other cameramen in tow. Her only consolation was that he was making it impossible for Greg to make a move on her. She knew he wanted to, and his impatience was a kind of an aphrodisiac, if she was being honest, but she knew that if Greg tried anything, she’d have a hard time resisting him.

  He’d nearly kissed her when she’d talked about her parents. She’d wanted him to, she admitted to herself now. Thank goodness for Byron and his snooping camera. Greg had understood she couldn’t let herself be filmed like that and had backed off.

  They’d had several close calls since then, and a constant ache of wanting accompanied her everywhere, letting her know that even though she’d long told herself she’d shut down the part of her that wanted a connection with a man, it wasn’t true—

  Not one bit.

  In off minutes, when there was nothing to do, Greg tended to pick up a bit of wood and pull out his pocket knife and start whittling, which always caught her attention. She found herself watching his hands, imagining them doing other things—to her. She’d experienced kissing him already. Now she wanted more.

  Clem made that impossible, which made it easier to tell herself she’d get through these forty days, watch Greg marry someone else and keep on with her life—

  But she didn’t believe it. Watching Greg marry someone else was going to be harder than she’d ever expected now that her lazy daydreams about him had turned into something far more real.