A SEAL's Pledge (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 3)

by Cora Seton

  Harris had kept that revolver near to hand until rescue finally came.

  On the fourth morning, he must have been sleeping just as dawn broke, because it was as if he had stepped out of his body and watched himself watching the hushed, watery world that surrounded him. In that instant, he’d known this was his fate—not just for those few days, but forever. To be the watcher. The man on the edge of the roof, the man who saw danger before anyone else.

  The man who took care of it.

  In his dream or vision, or whatever it was, he’d seen himself on one end of the roof, everyone else on the other end, and he’d known that was the price of his family’s safety. His country’s safety.

  He would be alone.

  “Do you think those early experiences led you to become a sniper?” Renata asked, as if reading his thoughts.

  He met her gaze. Nodded. Of course it had.

  “Not much need for a sniper around here.” Renata gestured to the bunkhouse and the little, sustainable community taking shape on the hillside a stone’s throw away. “This is Chance Creek, Montana. Pretty safe country here.”

  Harris swallowed. Renata knew damn well that wasn’t true. “Tell that to Nora.” Guilt flooded him, the way it did every time he thought about the stalker tracking Nora down, playing with her, leaving clues they’d all been too stupid to acknowledge, and then snatching her out from under their noses.

  The truth was that when Harris arrived at Base Camp he’d told himself his vigil on the rooftop was over, and he’d behaved like it was. He’d looked forward to being found a wife, marrying her and starting his family. Finally getting to be one of the crowd at the other end of the roof.

  And three people had nearly died.

  Harris wouldn’t make that mistake again. Trouble was, he didn’t know what to do. Keeping vigilant meant keeping apart from other people—and in order for Base Camp to succeed, he would have to marry when he drew a short straw.

  The way this game went, ten male inhabitants of the sustainable community had to marry within the year. Three of the wives needed to be pregnant before next June. If he left the community, they’d be up shit’s creek. If he stayed, he’d be going against the future fate had obviously picked for him. As soon as things calmed down around here he meant to take his conundrum to Boone and sort it out.

  Renata sighed. “You don’t want to talk about Katrina? Let’s talk about your nickname. Hawk, isn’t it? So, Hawk—tell me. What kind of woman are you hoping to marry?”

  Harris stood up, unable to take any more questions. He’d always hated that nickname, and he’d left it behind when he’d left the Navy. “I’ll marry who I’m assigned to marry,” he said tightly. “Now I’ve got to go.”

  Renata’s face lit up. She obviously sensed an interesting development. “Where?”

  Hell, he couldn’t tell her. She’d drag her film crew along to the airport and the last thing Harris wanted was to break the news on camera to the backup bride she wasn’t getting married today. Renata would love it, though. She’d make sure to get a close-up of Samantha Smith’s disappointment. She’d pray for tears.

  Harris wouldn’t be any part of that.

  “Nature’s calling,” he said bluntly. “Want to film that?”

  Renata rolled her eyes and made a chopping motion with her hand. The crew stood down and Harris headed for the bunkhouse, which held the only flushing toilet in Base Camp. He bypassed the restroom, though, walked straight through the kitchen and out the side door. Five minutes later, he’d managed to take a circuitous route to the main road, where he called a cab on his cell phone.

  He walked along the country highway toward Chance Creek, knowing sooner or later he’d meet up with the cab coming to fetch him, and mulled over the irony of the situation. He’d wanted to stop looking out for everyone and here he was taking charge again. Solving another problem. Keeping an eye on things as if he was the shepherd of this operation rather than just one of the sheep on the comfortable end of the roof.

  He didn’t know why he fought against fate. He was meant for vigilance.

  Meant for being alone.

  When her plane landed at the Chance Creek Regional Airport in Montana, Samantha Smith found she couldn’t make herself leave her window seat. She let the other passengers file by until the plane was empty and the flight attendant made her way over to her.

  “Everything all right?” A blond woman about ten years older than Sam, the flight attendant’s expression was kind, but tired, and Sam felt bad for holding things up.

  “I think so. I’m making a big change,” she confessed. “I guess I’m nervous.”

  “What kind of change?” The woman helped her gather her things as Sam finally stood up and made her way into the aisle.

  “I’m getting married. Today.” Sam still couldn’t believe it. She’d always been the steady one in the family, now here she was taking a flying leap into matrimony with a man she’d never met.

  “Congratulations! I hope you two will be very happy!”

  “Thank you.” Reluctantly, Sam moved up the aisle toward the exit. So far things hadn’t exactly gone smoothly. She’d made the decision to join the sustainable community at Base Camp without telling any of her family, and she had to admit she was more than a little concerned with the fact the first man she’d been matched with—Clay Pickett—had turned out to be in love with someone else. She’d gotten a phone call from Boone Rudman, the SEAL who seemed to head the community—who’d matched her with Clay to begin with. He’d apologized profusely and explained the whole story of Clay’s rocky relationship with his new wife, Nora, but told her another man was ready to take Clay’s place.

  She still felt strange she’d been matched to a second man in such a short period of time, but since all she had to judge the men by was their photographs and bios on the show’s website, and what she’d seen of them when she’d watched them on TV, she’d decided the friendly, stocky Curtis Lloyd seemed just as likely a partner as the slimmer, more serious Clay Pickett.

  But the switch had dampened any flight of fancy she might have had that her marriage was ordained by fate, and she was having trouble maintaining her original excitement for this mad adventure.

  “Have a wonderful wedding day,” the flight attendant said when they reached the top of the stairs. “Watch your step going down and kiss your husband for me!”

  Sam nodded, her nerves twisting tight in her belly. She gripped the railing, shifted her purse and carry-on bag into her other hand and began to descend to the tarmac.

  It had all started with her mother’s craving for hummus. They’d been halfway across Kansas in the big, twelve-sleeper bus they’d long-since dubbed the Evermobile—an amalgamation of her parents’ band’s name and the fact they never seemed to leave it for very long. Sam had been driving, as usual, when her mother rushed up the aisle waving an empty container in her hand.

  “Sam? Sam, we’re out of hummus again! I told you at our last stop we needed more!”

  Sam pressed on the accelerator and tried to block out the sound of her mother’s voice. It wasn’t hard to do since the noise level in the 1998 sleeper coach had just hit a high mark. She’d been driver, tour manager, advisor and den mother to Deader Than Ever, a popular 60s hippie-esque cover band, for the last seven years, and she’d grown up on this bus—and its predecessors—since she was a baby in her mother’s arms. She would have been born on one, but they’d made it to the hospital on time.

  For someone who’d been surrounded by music since she was conceived, the irony was she hadn’t been gifted with a drop of musical talent. Her parents, Rachel Flick and Henry Smith, had passed her instrument after instrument, sung her song after song, allowed their friends to try various methods of imparting musical knowledge, and finally had given up, much to Sam’s relief. Her sister, Melissa, had talent enough for both of them, and the same stadium-sized ego their parents had. That was enough of both for one family, Sam always thought.

  Besides, some
one had to have their head on straight in this zoo.

  “Sam? Did you hear me?” Rachel reached the front of the bus and waved a plastic container in Sam’s face. “There isn’t enough in here to spread on a rice cracker. We need to stop.”

  “We’re in the middle of Kansas, Mom.” Sam pointed out the window at the fields of knee-high cornstalks spreading in every direction around them. “When there’s a place to stop, I’ll stop.”

  Rachel huffed out a breath and turned back toward the kitchenette.

  Sam kept driving, pressing down against the discontent that sizzled inside her all the time these days. She was sick of the bus. Sick of being on the road. Sick of the temporary gigs and housing they parked themselves in between tours. She didn’t understand how the rest of her family could ride along, day after day, their enthusiasm for the life and the road unflagging. Her parents had toured for years before she’d even been born.

  “It’s the best life,” Rachel always said when she asked.

  “It’s the only life,” Henry always added.

  “Everyone’s equal on the road. There’s no patriarchy out here,” Rachel liked to insist. “Just a whole lot of freedom. What more could you want?”

  Freedom.

  Sam didn’t define the word the way her family did. Her parents seemed to think it meant a lack of commitments of any kind. A lack of responsibility, too. Never married, and never exclusive to each other, either, as far as Sam could tell, they’d met when the band formed and Rachel had signed up as a backup singer, while Henry played guitar. They’d loved each other, brought two daughters into the world in two years and raised them together while each pursued a number of dalliances and relationships that left Sam bewildered, Melissa wild and both of them cynical far beyond their years.

  Sam had never been able to play those games, and her dating life could only be summed up as a disaster. She spent her days in the company of musicians, roadies and fans, but none of them were interested in long term or stable, the only things she wanted from a relationship.

  Now she was twenty-seven. Single.

  Fed up.

  “Don’t suppose anyone’s going to deliver us a pizza out here.”

  Sam glanced over her shoulder and saw that Chris Castle, the lead singer, had taken the nearest seat.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll whip something up in back. That should help keep the grumbling down.”

  She nodded. Chris always read a brewing situation right, whether in the bus or in a stadium, and always worked to diffuse it. He was the opposite of a diva, she thought. There should be a word for that.

  “Everything all right, Sam?”

  She knew he expected her to say yes, like usual, but she couldn’t. Not anymore. Things weren’t all right. This was never the life she’d wanted for herself and she didn’t know how she’d gotten here. Time was slipping by like the cornfields outside her window.

  “Sam?” He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s not. I’m going to leave pretty soon.” She didn’t know when, or where she’d go or what she’d do. She’d never had any life except on this bus.

  “I know, honey. I’ve been wondering for a while what you’re waiting for.”

  “I need a plan. I don’t know what to do first, or where to go.” She tried to keep her eyes on the road. She couldn’t take chances driving a rig this big. Chris squeezed her shoulder and stood up.

  “Stop overthinking it. You don’t need a plan. You need to throw yourself into the mix and let the universe sort it out for you.” He patted her shoulder a couple of times. “I’ll bring you dinner in a few.”

  Let the universe sort it out for you, Sam thought when he was gone. Far easier to say than to do. At least for her.

  But she was willing to try it if it got her off this bus.

  Two hours later, after the night driver took over, Sam was sitting on a bench seat with her laptop perched on her lap, sending follow up texts and e-mails to all the upcoming venues on this leg of the tour when everyone else piled into the bus’s media area. She was only halfway through her list when Rachel turned on the big-screen television and turned up the sound.

  Sam tried to concentrate, but as music blared into the small space, she lost her place and had to re-read what she’d written so far before she could finish the sentence she was trying to type.

  A narrator’s rich tones overlaid the quasi-patriotic song ringing out from the television. “Welcome to Base Camp, where ten men must pit themselves against time and technology to build a model sustainable community. They must build ten houses that consume a tenth of the power of a normal North American home. They must create a renewable power grid from which to run all their appliances, lights and machines. They must grow all the food they’ll need to last through the winter. They must each marry before the year is up, with three babies on the way, or risk losing everything.”

  By the time the announcer finished the ridiculous list of goals, Sam was watching the screen with as much concentration as everyone else. “What is this?” she asked her father.

  “It’s Base Camp.” There was no mistaking his contempt. “Apparently the US Military is going to solve global warming, if you can imagine that. Ten Navy SEALs getting together to form a sustainable society.”

  “This show is the Patriarchy’s wet dream,” her mother called over from her seat. “Just watch the way these men give each other orders. And see what they’re making the women wear! It’s straight out of the dark ages.”

  “Out of the 1800s, you mean—and they’re wearing those clothes because they want to. Now shh!” her sister told them. “This is the best part!”

  “Meet the men of Base Camp,” the announcer intoned. One by one, men flashed up on the screen, their images subtly enhanced to make them look like comic book super-heroes. “Look at them,” Melissa said. “No one’s that buff. The military probably got them all hopped up on steroids.”

  Sam ignored her sarcastic tone. Those men were something, she had to admit. Each more handsome than the next, although it was the fifth man they showed—one named Harris Wentworth, of all things—who made her breath catch. It wasn’t his bulging muscles, she told herself. It was something about his eyes, the way they seemed to scan the distance for trouble. That’s what she always had to do, whether it was scanning the road ahead for actual danger, or thinking about the future to avoid potential pitfalls on tour.

  When the announcer had tolled through all the men, he said, “Meet the women of Westfield!” The background, which had showed a cluster of tents and a building or two on a Montana ranch, now changed to show a beautiful old stone house perched on a rise of ground.

  “Wow,” Sam said. That was some house. She could only imagine what it would be like to live in a place like that. Everyone would get their own room—a room with a lock. They could shut the door, turn the key and be blessedly alone for hours.

  Her mother turned on her. “Can you imagine how wasteful it is to live like that? Just a handful of women in that great, big pile of stone? Can you say white privilege?”

  “I can say privacy, white or otherwise,” Sam told her.

  “You might as well dig up all the coal and oil in the world and set it on fire if you’re going to live like that,” Rachel said.

  “Wait a minute. You got mad at the Army guys living in tents and tiny houses a minute ago. You can’t be mad at the women for living in that house, too.”

  “Navy guys,” the drummer put in. “They’re Navy SEALs, not soldiers.”

  “Whatever. You can’t have it both ways, Mom.”

  “I’ll have it anyway I want to. They all should be ashamed of themselves.”

  “Shh!” Melissa said again. “Watch.”

  “Wait—why are they dressed like that?” Sam asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the women appearing on screen one by one. Each of them wore clothing like a character in one of the Regency period dramas she loved to
watch, but never got to because everyone else on the bus hated them.

  “They came to the ranch to lead a Jane Austen life,” Melissa said as the announcer said the same thing in the background. “Their clothing represents their commitment to pursuing their creative passions. You’d know that if you’d watched episode one with us last week.”

  Sam made a face at her. Last week she’d been fighting with a venue operator who’d wanted to cancel their concert at the last minute.

  “Now the women of Westfield must divide their time,” the announcer intoned. “They spend mornings at chores in the manor, then help the men with their projects in Base Camp, before returning to the manor for an afternoon of reading, writing, painting and music, much like characters in a Jane Austen novel.”

  “They host paying guests at the manor—and Regency weddings, too,” Melissa told her.

  “Trussed up like Vienna sausages in the corsets they wear under those gowns for the enjoyment of the men,” Rachel put in.

  “It is rather enjoyable.” Henry waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  Rachel smacked him.

  “Oh, come on. I saw you eyeing those hot young SEALs. Made you feel all patriotic for a second. Admit it.”

  “That’s as bad as saying I’d ogle the CEO of a financial institution on Wall Street.”

  Sam tuned her parents out. Despite her resolve to finish her work, the reality television show was as fascinating as it was crazy.

  “Clay has to marry next,” Melissa informed her as the cameras focused on him. She moved to sit next to Sam. “He wants Nora, but Nora wants to take things slow, and he’s only got a couple of weeks until he has to marry someone. I don’t think he’s going to convince her to go through with it.”

  “Yes, he will,” Chris said. “Come on, the dude’s in love with her. How can she resist that?”