A SEAL's Vow (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 2)

by Cora Seton

  “For a lot of reasons.”

  “Have you seen this?” Jericho approached them, his tablet in his hand again. Clay was beginning to think the thing was surgically attached to his friend. “They’ve already posted videos on the site. I didn’t think they were going to do that for at least a week.” He lowered himself onto the log between them, oblivious to the tension in the air, and Clay snatched his plate out of the way just in time before Jericho sat on it. “There are a ton of comments about you two.”

  Nora leaned in to see, and Clay fought back his impatience, knowing this couldn’t be good.

  “‘Clay and Nora, Perfect Together? Or Perfectly Awful?’” she read aloud. “What is this?”

  “It’s a poll,” Jericho said. “Visitors to the site get to vote on if they think you should be together. It’s about fifty-fifty right now.”

  Clay growled and snatched the tablet out of his hand. “Fuck them.”

  Nora grabbed it away from Clay. She scanned the site. “Listen to this.” Her brows drew together in an angry slant. “‘Nora Ridgeway just wants Clay’s land,’” she read from the comments.

  “What?” Taking the tablet back, Clay looked again and saw that Renata’s team had filled the site with new content. There were new photos, excerpts from interviews and fun facts.

  And then there were the pop quizzes and opinion questions, such as, “How Sustainable Are You?” There was a ten-question quiz to get an answer. “In a Tent, Or Under the Stars?” That one had elicited a number of dicey responses. “Who’s the Hottest Navy SEAL?” Clay scrolled quickly by when he noticed Jericho was winning.

  He found the post Nora had referred to and scanned through the comments. Some of them were nice enough, with people pulling for them to be together. Others took sides. “Clay’s too good for Nora.” “Nora should find a man who owns a real house.”

  Interspersed among them were nasty comments that set Clay’s teeth on edge. “To hell with Nora. What about Savannah? She’s hotter.” “Clay’s just using her.” “Good on ya, Clay. The quiet ones are the best in bed.”

  What kind of people wrote things like that? Who even cared what happened on a television show? For all they knew, the whole thing was staged.

  None of that mattered; if it bugged him, he could only imagine how Nora felt. “Jesus.”

  Nora kept quiet. Jericho, finally taking in the atmosphere between them, took back the tablet and stood up awkwardly. “Sorry. Guess you didn’t really need to see that.”

  “They’re just a bunch of idiots,” Clay told Nora when he walked away. “Who gives a shit what these people think?”

  Nora set her plate down on the log with a thud. “I do. I’m a teacher, for God’s sake. Have you thought about that? And now people are talking about my personal business on the Internet. Anyone can look in and make a judgement.”

  “They’re talking about whether or not we should marry. You know my answer.”

  “That’s never going to happen.” Nora turned away.

  “Why not?” He glanced up, became aware that one of the camera crews had approached them during their conversation and wondered how much of that last bit they’d captured. The boom dangled over Nora’s head. The cameraman, standing behind Nora, kept his camera focused on Clay. Clay knew he should warn Nora. Knew, too, if he did he’d be up to his ears in hot water with Renata and Fulsom.

  Besides, he wanted to hear Nora’s answer. He held still and waited.

  “I don’t know you well enough to marry you,” she said, finally meeting his gaze. “And you have a deadline to marry someone, so I’ll never know if you really want me, or just a random body to fit the bill.” She stood. The crewman yanked the boom higher so she didn’t hit her head.

  Clay stood, too. “You know I want you. And if you don’t know that, I’ll gladly prove it any time, day or night—”

  “Stop it,” she hissed.

  Had she noticed the cameras? No, not yet. She was concerned with the people around them. Clay continued. “I can’t make it any more clear how I feel about you.” He reached for her hand.

  She pulled hers back. “Why me?” she said.

  “Why do I want to marry you?” He chuckled. “Hell, women talk about romance, but I’m starting to think they don’t know anything about it. You all pick and choose when it’s the right time to fall in love, you decide how much time has to pass before you know if you’ve met the right man. You think about how much your potential husband will earn. You consider whether he’ll be a good father, and on and on. Men just see a woman and—” he snapped his fingers “—that’s that.”

  For the first time she hesitated. “So you saw me. And now you want to marry me. It’s that simple?”

  “That about sums it up.” He willed her to understand. Sometimes you just knew, and that’s how he’d felt the first time he’d seen her. She was the woman he’d been searching for without even knowing he was looking.

  “That’s… crazy. You know that, right?”

  “No, it’s not. It’s just a fact. It’s how I feel.”

  Nora was quiet for a long time. “I don’t buy it.” The bleakness in her voice said she wished she could, though.

  Clay grabbed onto the possibility that opened. “I know you don’t,” he said. He reached out and this time succeeded in taking her hand. He wished he could do more, but first he needed to earn her trust—and her love. “That’s why I’m going to prove it to you.”

  Why was she letting Clay hold her hand?

  Nora wasn’t sure. She’d been furious with him—and Fulsom—and herself—all day, but in these last few minutes he’d reminded her of the man she’d fallen for when she’d first arrived at Westfield. In those first moments of knowing Clay she’d felt like he understood her almost better than she did herself, and now she couldn’t help wondering how their relationship would have progressed if it wasn’t for Fulsom’s interference—and her past. Suddenly she wondered if she could even be with a man given the way her fears kept flaring up.

  She refused to think that way, though. She wouldn’t let a teenager with a sick, twisted imagination affect her so deeply. After all, the touch of Clay’s hand didn’t frighten her now. Instead, it awakened a trace of the desire she’d felt last night. For one second she remembered a time in which love, lust, want and need were part of her emotional vocabulary—before her mother’s death, her stalker’s verbal attacks. Nora ached to have that back.

  Then Clay’s words sank in. Prove it to her? How?

  When you’re my student, I’ll teach you things you’ll never forget. Her stalker’s distorted voice insinuated itself into her thoughts again, and Nora tugged her hand away.

  “Nora—”

  “I don’t want you to prove anything.” Certainly not when she knew what had spurred his pursuit of her. That damned short straw. She spun away from him, needing distance from the onslaught of emotions tangling around her heart, came face to face with one of Fulsom’s cameramen and realized he’d been filming the entire conversation.

  And Clay had known it all along.

  “Nora—”

  She didn’t wait for his explanation. Anything Clay said now would only twist the dagger his actions had already plunged into her heart. Last night he’d made her feel… something. He’d kissed her. He’d made her want more before common sense came to her rescue.

  And it was all for the show.

  “Nora!” Clay scrambled after her as she shoved her way past the cameraman.

  “Fuck you!” Not very mature, but maybe this scene wouldn’t make it into the show if she dropped a few blue words. The young man who held the boom stepped into Nora’s path, and she almost ran into him. Clay caught up to her and took her arm.

  “Just wait a minute. Let me—”

  “What’s going on here?” Renata came running, a neat trick on her high heels on this uneven ground. Nora wished she felt nearly as in command of herself as Renata always seemed to be. Even now, not a hair on the woman’s head was out
of place. In contrast, Nora could feel her updo slipping down. Her bonnet hung from its strings around her neck, and she was breathing hard, her face hot with anger. She wanted to keep running but now she was surrounded.

  Renata faced Clay and Nora and put her hands on her hips. “Get. Over. Yourselves.” She looked pointedly at each of them. “Got it? We’re here. We’re filming. You agreed to it. No more screwing around.”

  Angus, passing by, laughed long and loud. “And here I thought screwing around was the whole point of this show.”

  The cameraman smiled. Renata rolled her eyes.

  Nora had had enough. She pushed past the cameraman and headed for the manor at a dead run.

  Chapter Six

  ‡

  “Are you ready to be the next matrimonial victim?” Curtis Lloyd asked when Clay approached the building site the next morning, still smarting from his confrontation with Renata and the way the film crew had botched his attempt to change Nora’s mind. Despite Renata’s continued shouted threats, Nora had refused to turn around. She’d dashed off back up to the manor, and he hadn’t seen her since.

  “I guess so. Unless you want to beat me to it?”

  Curtis chuckled. He was a burly ex-soldier whose thick build belied a man capable of producing the finest finish work Clay had seen—except for that done by Clay’s own father. He looked forward to having the man’s help to build the ten tiny houses Fulsom had demanded. He’d shown Curtis his plans for the homes weeks ago, and they’d worked together to hammer out details and problem-solve, buy the lumber and hardware they needed, and even prep a few of the more complicated interior pieces, even though they were supposed to wait for filming to start. Even so, they’d have to work hard. Fulsom had extended the deadline, but the houses needed to be complete before the cold weather set in this fall.

  “I’d need a woman for that,” Curtis said. “So far whenever a likely one steps foot on this ranch, someone grabs her up before I even get a look at her.” His words were humorous, but his tone said he wasn’t entirely kidding. Clay made a note to tell Boone when he returned from his honeymoon he’d better step up his matchmaking.

  “Don’t panic. Boone’ll find someone for each of you.”

  “He’d better find me a bunch of them. I want a choice. I figure twenty or so. I’ll have to date them all, of course, before I pick one. Right, Harris? What do you say?” he said to the other member of Clay’s building team.

  “Boone will be lucky if he can find one.”

  “For me?” Curtis drew himself up. “The ladies love me.”

  “For me.”

  Clay jumped in to smooth over the awkward moment. “He’ll find someone for both of you.” He wondered how easy it would be to find a match for Harris, though. There was nothing wrong with the guy except the quiet, serious man held back so much. Harris Wentworth was a sniper—one of the best Clay had ever known. Unlike the other men, Harris never spoke about old missions or mentioned his time in the service. Still, even a civilian would know he’d served. There was something in his eyes that made it all too clear. Clay had been surprised at how well Harris fit in here. A man like him—a loner—might have had trouble adjusting, but he’d gone along with all the demands they’d placed on him, even when it had come time to learn the complicated Regency dances and attend a ball. In fact, Harris had turned out to be the best dancer among them. “I had lessons as a kid,” was all he’d say when questioned. He was a man who kept things close to the vest.

  Clay could appreciate that, but most women wouldn’t.

  “What about Nora and the others? Don’t they have some friends they can bring in?” Curtis asked.

  Clay knew how Nora would react to that idea. “I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”

  “I still say twenty women apiece ought to do it,” Curtis went on.

  “I just want one,” Harris said quietly. He nodded to the plans rolled up in Clay’s hands. “Ready to get to work?”

  “No one is innocent in this war, least of all the women.” Finn parried another blow with his rough-hewn ax. Its shaft was made from an ash tree. Cut down three springs ago, aged in a dry place and hardened in a complicated and interesting process, its blade was reminiscent of the Lochaber style, elongated, with a…

  Nora sighed, back at her desk that afternoon. The scene she was writing had lost all momentum. But she wanted her readers to understand the intricate process that was required to make a battle-ax, and to thereby understand how amazing it was that men could make such tools under primitive conditions back in the 1700s. The teacher in her loved those details and wanted to share them with everyone else.

  But whenever she tried, the action fell flat.

  It didn’t help that she kept thinking about Clay. About the way he’d promised to change her mind about marrying him last night.

  And the way the cameras had captured the scene, turning it into a farce.

  She’d tossed and turned far into the wee hours, trying in vain to clear her mind of Clay’s words and kisses, Fulsom’s puffed up announcements and her stalker’s threats. She’d finally fallen asleep and woken to a dawn in which she felt drained of all emotion except a helpless resignation that this wasn’t a world that thought it owed her any happiness. She’d have to be content with the scraps she could gather for herself.

  She tore out the page, balled it up and tossed it in the cardboard box Riley had set next to the little trash can for recycling, already half-full of similar sheets of paper. If only she could skip the story and just teach her readers about the way the Scottish highlands had been divided up by clans and then draw a comparison to modern-day Syria and the way family ties were driving the difficulties there, too, then maybe her readers could gain some insight into—

  There she went again.

  She wasn’t a teacher anymore.

  Nora stood up again and paced across the room, her skirts swishing as she moved. Could she ever have been a very good one, seeing the way things had ended? Besides, when she’d studied English at Boston College, she’d planned to write, not teach. Teaching literature was what people did who couldn’t write it themselves—or so she’d joked back in school.

  It wasn’t funny anymore.

  What would Jane Austen do in her position? Nora wondered. Jane hadn’t had it all that easy, either. For all the happy endings to her stories, she hadn’t found one for herself. Was that to be her lot in life?

  A spinster?

  Nora frowned at the old-fashioned word, and the barrenness it implied. This was the twenty-first century. Being alone didn’t mean being barren. She could have a full life. A wonderful career. Heck, she could have a child if she wanted one.

  But could she have any of that here, living with the friends who had become her surrogate family? Or would she have to move and start all over again?

  If she couldn’t teach—there didn’t seem to be a job for miles in Chance Creek—and she couldn’t write, as evidenced by her recycling bin, then what use was she here? Was she doomed to be a glorified housemaid in Riley, Savannah and Avery’s Regency B and B and wedding business? It had been fun to plan and execute the first two Regency weddings they’d taken on—Riley’s and one for Savannah’s cousin Andrea—but Nora wasn’t as enamored of the enterprise as her friends were. She loved Jane Austen’s books, and as much as she had resisted at first, she adored putting on her Regency gowns every morning. She especially loved that they represented her vow to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to her writing.

  If only she could make some progress.

  She sat down at her desk, wrote a line or two, but the sound of horses’ hooves clip-clopping up the driveway caught her attention, and Nora looked out the window to see Maud and James Russell pull up in front of the manor.

  “I’m off to a doctor’s appointment. See you later,” Savannah called out as she headed toward the door. Outside she allowed James to help her up in the old-fashioned barouche and took a seat opposite Maud, while James ascended to the higher driv
er’s seat right behind the horses. As James clucked to the horses and they set off, a cameraman came huffing and puffing up the hill, running as fast as he could go. Through the open window, she heard him calling out to James to stop, but James didn’t hear him—or he pretended not to—and kept going.

  Good for him. There was no reason for all their neighbors to get swept up into their reality television hell.

  She figured the Russells would get their fair share of screen time, though. The older couple shared their love of all things Jane Austen, and had been a big help since they arrived. James loved acting as a Regency-style taxi service and brought them to and from town whenever they liked. Maud had saved their bacon by organizing a Regency ball on extremely short notice for Andrea’s bridesmaids to attend the night before her wedding. None of them had expected much more than a few extra men and some recorded music, but Maud had pulled off a miracle—a full-on ball with dozens of guests, candlelight, a quartet of musicians and lovely refreshments.

  Nora liked the bluff, old couple as much as any of the others, but she found their almost daily visits too much when she needed to write, and now she would be interrupted by Renata and the cameras every day, too. Maybe the whole experiment was a waste of time, just like she’d said in the beginning.

  Maybe she should leave.

  Someone knocked at the back door, and Nora gave up. She tossed down her pen and walked briskly to the kitchen in a rustle of fabric. Avery was already opening the door when she entered. Judging by her good spirits, she must have made progress on her screenplay today.

  “Hi, Walker,” Avery said. “Come on in.”

  “Is Nora in?” As usual, the big man didn’t mince words. Nora was never sure how to take Walker. Boone at least she understood. He spoke his mind and was clear about his needs and expectations, and she wasn’t surprised Riley had fallen for him so hard. Nora was still on the fence about the others, though. Walker simply didn’t talk enough, but Nora had a feeling he didn’t miss much. Jericho was too good-looking with his blond hair and chiseled cheekbones.