A SEAL's Devotion (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 7)

by Cora Seton

  “It’s time for you to come home.”

  Anders’s grip on the phone tightened.

  “Well?” Johannes demanded when he didn’t answer. “What do you say to that?”

  “Not going to happen.” Might as well nip this right in the bud. His father’s company stood for everything he was against. Johannes wanted him for only one reason—to groom him to take it over. Johannes was the kind of man for whom legacy meant everything.

  “Of course it’s going to happen. You’ve had your fun. You’ve seen the world. Time to grow up and settle down. You’re wasting your life.”

  “Have you watched TV lately, Pop? I’m saving the world.”

  “Saving the world,” Johannes scoffed. “By being on TV? You can do better than that.”

  “How? By following in your footsteps? How much of our country’s carbon footprint are you responsible for? Do you ever think about that?”

  “My company helped this country keep its place on the global stage. You remember that!” his father snapped. Johannes must have a cold or something, Anders decided. His voice lacked its usual vigor, and he’d hesitated a fraction of a second before his outburst. His father never hesitated.

  “Your company could be leading the charge to a better future.” Anders broke off. They’d had this discussion too many times before. He wouldn’t change his father’s mind. He couldn’t help himself, though. “You’re missing out on a lot of profits by refusing to change your ways. You should look at what’s happening in Europe. Green companies are booming. Someday you’ll be sorry you didn’t jump on the bandwagon early on.”

  He braced himself for one of his father’s snappy comebacks, but to his surprise, Johannes didn’t take the bait. “Taking Hansen Oil into the future is your job, not mine. You’ve been gone more than a decade. Why don’t you get back here and do it?”

  Anders wasn’t falling for that. If he came back, he’d be his father’s lackey. Johannes had his hand in every pie at Hansen Oil, and none of those pies had anything to do with making environmentally sound choices.

  “You got something new to say to make me want to?” Anders asked tiredly.

  “I’m not going to be around here forever,” Johannes said after another hesitation. He sounded just as tired. “You’ve got a lot to learn before you’re ready to run a company this large. You need to start now—”

  “I don’t want to run your company,” Anders said. “How many times do I have to say that? Base Camp is my home now. I’m ranching bison and—”

  “Ranching bison.” Johannes’s tone was acid. “Living with a bunch of do-gooders who know nothing about the real world, or business, or how hard it is to keep things afloat—”

  “Gotta go.” Anders ended the call. He knew how the rest of the conversation would play out, and he had no time for it. The men and women of Base Camp actually listened to him. They supported him. Were helping him create a home. He wasn’t going to leave them.

  Unless he had to.

  Hansen Oil is bad news.

  Eve read the text from her friend Melissa Ryder, nodded and wrote back. Tell me about it.

  The minute she’d made it into the front door of her tiny apartment, she’d started texting. She’d known Melissa since high school, and unlike Deb at work, Eve knew Melissa would hear her out and help her figure out what to do.

  They’d met when they were fourteen while working on a campaign to put solar panels on their high school’s roof, and they’d been fast friends ever since, although Melissa had graduated from college and became a social worker while Eve had traveled the world. If Eve was a kite, Melissa was the person holding the string that tethered her to the earth, reeling her back in when storms brewed up. One advantage to living in her parents’ backyard, Eve had decided, was that Melissa lived a half mile away.

  No one ever wins against Hansen Oil, Melissa texted. What makes you think you can?

  I have to try, right?

  What about Operation Grown-up?

  Eve wished she hadn’t told Melissa about her parents’ plans for her—or about her acquiescence to them. Twenty-four hours in, Operation Grown-up, as Melissa had named it, was already chafing. Her mother kept emailing her about the tiny house plans and whether she should go ahead and place an order for bulbs for the flower garden she was sure Eve would want to plant in front of it.

  Eve wasn’t sure she was ready for a flower garden. That wasn’t just a grown-up thing to have. That was a settled grown-up thing to have.

  I have over three weeks until Operation Grown-up starts. Class doesn’t begin until mid-January.

  Can you handle classes on top of work?

  Guess I’ll have to. She was trying not to think about it. School had never been her thing. Getting things done was her thing.

  So you’re going to take down Hansen Oil in the next three weeks?

  Exactly.

  Hey—it’s time. Is your TV on?

  Eve quickly grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV. Rousing music announced the start of Base Camp, her favorite reality show, and she watched the opening sequence, which showed all the participants one by one, along with shots of the bunkhouse, pastures, gardens, greenhouses, the huge bed-and-breakfast some of the women ran and of course the tiny houses some of the inhabitants lived in.

  I’m watching, she texted Melissa.

  Good. This could be the last one if Curtis doesn’t find a wife.

  He’ll find a wife—they always do.

  Look at all that snow, Melissa texted.

  Eve was glad she lived in Virginia. Winter in Montana looked brutal.

  OMG—look, Melissa texted.

  Eve was looking. Curtis and Anders Olsen had been plowing the lane from the bunkhouse to the main road. Now there was camera footage of a car stuck in the ditch at the end of the lane. The film cut to the inside of the bunkhouse, where two women were being introduced to the inhabitants of Base Camp.

  Despite her own problems, she was sucked into the action onscreen. Hope and Raina had crashed on the way to Raina’s wedding. Now they were stuck in Chance Creek.

  Lucky women! Melissa texted. Why didn’t we think of crashing our car in front of Base Camp? You could have married Curtis.

  You know it’s Anders I want, Eve wrote back. She’d picked him way back when she’d watched Base Camp’s first episode. His Scandinavian name was belied by his dark hair and eyes, but even though he wasn’t blond, he was handsome in an intelligent, outdoorsy way that appealed to something basic in Eve. Maybe she should show her parents a photo of him and see if they could line up someone similar for her to marry, since they were already taking care of her classes and housing situation.

  With a shake of her head to clear her thoughts, Eve focused on what was truly important. She’d been researching Hansen Oil and found a site that listed court cases brought against the company over the years. Dozens of them. All settled out of court. All complaints silenced.

  The people who crossed Hansen Oil didn’t seem to fare too well. There were rumors of bankruptcies, jobs lost, houses foreclosed on, loans called in.

  Johannes Hansen, owner and CEO, was apparently used to getting his own way—and he had the kind of clout that could spell financial ruin to his adversaries. Was she putting her future in danger by crossing him?

  Would he come after her family? Her parents were quite financially secure. They owned their home outright and never bought anything on credit. They’d be hard to mess with. She, on the other hand, would be an easy target.

  She clicked on footage of him addressing an industry convention. He oozed arrogance in a way that made her hate him on principle. How could she ever stand up to that?

  Curtis to the rescue! Melissa texted.

  Eve looked at the screen, where Curtis was loading a truck full of equipment. She laughed when he got Hope and Raina into it, sent Byron, the young cameraman, back to the bunkhouse to fetch something and then drove off without him.

  The men of Base Camp were far more effect
ive in their lives than she was. She supposed self-confidence came with the territory if you were a Navy SEAL.

  If only she had someone like that to stand beside her as she confronted Johannes Hansen. Anders wouldn’t be afraid of the tycoon. She’d always noticed his quiet strength. His insistence on doing the right thing. Why didn’t she meet men like him in real life?

  Most men belittled her aspirations to do good in the world. Some told her flat-out it was pointless to care as much as she did. Others, like Heath, grew bored waiting back home for her.

  The worst were the ones who pretended they were activists, too—just long enough to try to get her in bed.

  Anders wasn’t like that, she mused. He’d given his life to Base Camp. Was willing to marry—fast—in order to keep his sustainable community going.

  She looked up again to watch a montage of daily life footage at Base Camp. Boone and Riley Rudman sharing a kiss, Jericho Cook keeping the solar panels free of snow, Kai Green working in the kitchen with his wife, Addison, Anders and Greg throwing snowballs at each other, and Nora Pickett smoothing her hands over a barely-there baby bump.

  Eve envied them. It would be far more fun to live in a community of tiny houses than in one parked in her parents’ backyard. The men and women who lived there would understand her penchant for environmental causes and wouldn’t berate her for not having a retirement plan.

  If only she could move there.

  You didn’t get a tiny house on Base Camp unless you were married, though, and according to her parents that was never going to happen to her. Too bad she didn’t have someone like Boone to find her a backup husband, the way he was always trying to find backup brides for the men on the show.

  She’d take Anders if he was available.

  Now she was being silly, Eve told herself sternly. She’d never meet Anders Olsen, and even if she did, she doubted he’d look at her twice. He had his act together, he was a true activist who was accomplishing something big and he’d want an equally accomplished partner. Not someone who’d gotten shipped home from Angola on crutches—and had worked a desk job ever since.

  A chirp from her phone announced another text.

  What if you sent the information to a newspaper? Let them do the work.

  That had been her first instinct. Then she’d looked more deeply into Hansen Oil’s past. Newspapers had reported the company’s transgressions dozens of times.

  Still Hansen Oil kept on breaking the rules.

  It would take more than a newspaper article to stop it. People didn’t care about oil spills these days, let alone other mishaps that were harder to explain or comprehend. They needed some compelling human-interest story to catch their attention. Base Camp’s directors obviously understood that. Why else would they focus so much on the participants’ social lives rather than spending whole episodes on the science behind solar panels, good ranching practices and the like?

  Her gaze flicked to the TV, where a frantic Curtis was flagging down a snow-plow operator. Somewhere along the way to Bozeman their vehicle had gone off the road—because one of the cameramen, pursuing them, had plowed into them—and now they were all on foot. She shook her head. Week after week the men and women of Base Camp met their challenges with such fortitude and togetherness. They’d know what to do with the information she’d discovered.

  Anders would know. He’d think through the problem patiently, like he always did. Come up with a plan and carry it out, even if there was a problem or two. Just like his friend Curtis was doing in this episode.

  She was really too old to have a crush on a TV star, she reminded herself. At least no one knew—

  Are you still watching? Melissa texted.

  Of course.

  Lusting after Anders? He’s not getting much screen time this episode.

  Okay, so Melissa knew, but she wouldn’t tell anyone.

  Not nearly enough, Eve agreed. They need to do an episode that’s all Anders, all the time.

  He’s got to get married sometime. Only 4 guys left to go, Melissa texted.

  Eve was dreading that. She knew her crush on Anders Olsen was just that—a crush. He was a guy on TV, and although she was a bleeding heart when it came to environmental causes, she wasn’t silly enough to think her crush would come to anything. It would still hurt to watch him marry some other lucky woman.

  Raina’s going to make it to her wedding!!!!! Melissa texted.

  Eve watched one snow plow whisk Raina to her wedding, while Curtis turned back to get Hope, who had fallen behind while he rushed ahead with her friend. A few minutes later, another snow plow gathered them up, too, and carried them to Bozeman.

  When they reached the church, and Hope raced for the door, hoping to be in time to see her friend’s wedding, Eve got a little misty. Onscreen, Curtis looked a little misty, too. It was obvious he’d already grown to care about Hope.

  He’d seized on his chance when he’d met her and done what it took to be able to woo her. That’s what life was about: taking chances. At least, that’s what she used to think. Going back to living at home, even if it meant getting a tiny house and a chance to go back to school, somehow felt like losing ground.

  Once she’d been so ready to meet life head-on. Now her goals were getting smaller and smaller. Who was she to think she could take on Hansen Oil? Maybe it was time to notify some environmental activism groups and hope they could find an effective way to blow the whistle on the company.

  Eve did another online search and confirmed what she already knew. Every time a case against Hansen Oil neared completion, the company settled—for far less than it was assumed they would have been fined in court if the ruling had gone against them.

  Eve clicked on a few more links desultorily. She supposed a grown-up would say that’s just how the world worked.

  On her TV screen, Hope and Raina were reunited.

  “You made it!” Raina cried.

  Curtis was beaming. You could almost read his thoughts: he’d done it. Gotten Raina to her wedding and Hope there in time to be her bridesmaid. It was satisfying to make a difference in someone’s life.

  She used to know that firsthand.

  OMG, Curtis is in love with Hope, Melissa texted.

  I know. They’ll definitely get together, Eve texted back.

  This is so romantic I can’t stand it.

  Eve focused on her laptop again. She typed Base Camp into her browser. Watched as the television show’s page came up. There were all the men of Base Camp—and the women, too.

  There was Anders.

  The photograph was a portrait shot, close up and clear. Anders had serious eyes and dark hair. A strong jaw and a firm expression.

  Her gaze flicked to the television screen. She’d missed several scenes. Now everyone was back at Base Camp, and Curtis was preparing to marry Hope, getting into a Revolutionary War–era uniform, the traditional outfit all the Base Camp men wore at weddings. Anders came to congratulate him, and her heart sped up. Damn, he was handsome. So composed. So sure of himself. They all were. Curtis hadn’t told Hope and Raina they couldn’t get through that blizzard—he’d simply persevered until he delivered them to the wedding—on time.

  She bet Anders was the same. He’d never walk away from a mission just because it was tough.

  So why was she prepared to give up the battle against Hansen Oil before she’d even tried?

  On TV, Boone entered the room full of men preparing for the wedding.

  “You know what time it is,” he said.

  They’re drawing straws! Are you watching? Melissa texted.

  I’m watching, she wrote back. As if she could turn away. It was her favorite part of the show—when the remaining single men found out who would marry next.

  “Let’s see who’s up next!” Boone said onscreen. “Anders, Walker, Angus, Greg, come on down.”

  All the men gathered around, the married men laughing and teasing the holdouts.

  “It’s got to be Walker’s turn,”
Clay said.

  “I bet it’s Greg. It’s the quiet ones who surprise you,” Kai put in.

  “All right, Walker, you pick first. You always hang back, and you always get away with waiting another month.”

  The big man shrugged, considered the straws in Boone’s fist and picked. Held up a long one. “Not me.”

  Groans came from all around.

  I swear Walker has to be cheating, Melissa texted. How on earth hasn’t he picked one of those straws yet?

  Eve knew what she meant, but she was too busy watching the television to respond.

  “Greg, you’re up,” Boone said.

  Greg drew, too, and got another of the long ones.

  Clay drummed a beat on his thighs. “It’s down to Anders and Angus.”

  “Hell, I’ll go next.” Angus grabbed a straw testily. Eve bit her lip. Please let it be Angus, she willed. When Angus held up his straw and it, too, was long, she let out a gusty sigh. “Thank you!” Angus called up to the ceiling.

  Damn, Eve thought.

  That was that.

  Boone passed Anders the final straw—the short one. Anders took it. He looked straight at the camera for an instant, and Eve’s breath caught. It was as if he’d seen her, but of course he hadn’t.

  EVE—it’s Anders! He got the short straw! Melissa texted.

  Anders would marry in forty days. She was going to have to watch another woman fall in love with him.

  Suddenly her future stretched out in front of her, blank and boring. Going to AltaVista every morning and pretending she didn’t know the firm was covering up environmental disasters. Going to school at night, slogging through course after course to get a practical degree. Living in a tiny house, which was great—in her parents’ backyard, which was not quite so great, even if she loved her family dearly.

  Choosing the safe path. The responsible path.

  Eve, did you see that? Anders pulled the short straw! Melissa texted again. Any minute her phone would ring, Eve knew.

  I saw, she texted back quickly. She was unprepared for the pain that squeezed her heart. Anders was just a TV personality. He probably wasn’t even like the persona he played on the show. Who knew how much of what he said was scripted?