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

by Cora Seton

  “That sounds good,” Eve said. “I’d love to go to the Night Sky Bonfire.” She remembered her earlier vow to make sure all footage of her was kept in the show and leaned toward the other women. “Will Anders go, do you think?” She could almost feel the cameraman focusing on her.

  Riley looked amused. Avery delighted. “Of course he’ll be there.”

  Eve glanced up to make sure Byron had his video camera pointed squarely at her. “Then I’ll definitely go.”

  Chapter Five

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  “So by choosing bison,” Anders concluded, “we’re ranching animals that developed in harmony with this particular landscape.” He glanced at the sun, realized he’d been talking for quite some time and stopped. “I probably lost you a half hour ago, huh?” Behind Eve the small camera crew following them had begun to shift and stir. He’d definitely lost them a while back.

  “No,” Eve said. “I mean, yes, you got a little technical, but overall, no. This is important stuff, and it interests me. I work at a satellite imaging company. Did I tell you that?” She touched his arm. Ever since she’d joined him out here, she’d stuck close to him. Maybe Boone was right, and he had made a good impression. Her focused attention on his pet causes was certainly making a good impression on him.

  Anders nodded, squashing an urge to tuck a wayward tendril of her hair behind her ear. He couldn’t remember another woman who’d lasted half as long when he got going on a favorite subject. Eve hadn’t simply listened. She’d asked questions and shared her own opinions once or twice so that he knew she’d thought about the issues at stake long before she arrived at Base Camp.

  Who knew a little conversation could be such an aphrodisiac? He was having a hard time keeping his mind on bison and off all the other things he and Eve could do—if they were alone.

  But he was putting the cart way before the horse. They’d just met, and they weren’t kids at a frat party. He was looking for a wife. Who knew what Eve was looking for? He had to take it slow.

  But not too slow.

  What had she just said? Something about satellite imaging?

  Right. She’d told Avery about her work, and Avery had told everyone else about it.

  “Our clients come from all areas of the business sector, including agriculture and the ranching industry. I’ve seen what overgrazing can do.” She sent a quick look over her shoulder at the crew, something she did every couple of minutes. Clem waved his hand at her to stop looking into the cameras. She turned back to Anders.

  Anders studied her, surprised. What were the chances a city girl like her would spend a minute thinking about overgrazing? He needed to stop jumping to conclusions and start asking her enough questions to learn who she really was if he was going to get to know her.

  “I’d like to see some of those images.”

  “I can point you to some you can see online, but unfortunately, most of what we do isn’t for public consumption. I often think it should be—” She broke off and glanced at the cameras.

  Clem made a face and waved his hand at her again.

  “You’re interested in sustainability, then,” Anders guessed, trying to recapture her attention. And his own focus.

  “I am. Sometimes people… sometimes they don’t know the trouble that’s brewing right under their feet.” Eve looked thoughtful. They were standing where Anders had loitered with Boone that morning, looking out over the herd grazing in the distance. There was something special about a herd of bison. Anders thought it was because they looked almost prehistoric. You could imagine them roaming the continent before people even existed. Anders thought they belonged to the land in a way he only wished he could.

  “True enough.” He wasn’t doing this right, was he? He was supposed to woo Eve, but until today he’d had no idea how hard it would be to get personal with a camera crew recording your every move. He’d grown used to them filming him at chores or during his interactions with the other inhabitants of Base Camp. This was different, though. Eve might very well decide she wasn’t interested in him.

  Getting dumped onscreen didn’t sound fun.

  “What exactly does your job entail?” he asked.

  “I work in quality control. I make sure the images we’re sending to the clients line up with their expectation. It’s frustrating sometimes. Our clients ask for very specific images, and we give them what they want, which isn’t always what they need—or should get.”

  “In what way?”

  Eve’s brow furrowed, as if she was wrestling with a problem she’d been wrestling with for some time. She glanced at the cameras but visibly forced herself to look somewhere else.

  “Say they want a photo of a forest that was clear-cut and then replanted, but they don’t ask us to include the old-growth forest growing around it for comparison, so you can’t see how sterile the new growth is compared to the naturally occurring woods. Or they ask for an image of a mountain whose top has been taken off to mine it—without capturing the pristine mountains around it for contrast.” She shrugged. “I know they’re getting those images to prove a point, whether it’s to satisfy their investors or government regulators or watchdog groups, and it makes my fingers itch when I have to leave out the really pertinent information, especially when I feel like those images are being used in a way that’s untruthful.” She cut off. “I can’t possibly know how they’re using the information,” she corrected herself, “and it’s not my job to wonder about it; it’s my job to provide the best images we can.”

  Anders’s heart warmed. She believed in the kind of justice that went beyond following instructions, even if she’d ended her statement by toeing the company line. He had no doubt she was parroting something she’d heard a dozen times from her superiors at the imaging company. A business like that wouldn’t last long if it editorialized on the images it made for clients.

  She was a person who asked questions, though. Someone who didn’t believe in keeping her mouth shut if it meant going along with something wrong.

  He was the same.

  “Are you a photographer yourself?”

  Eve laughed. “No. I don’t have the eye for that.”

  “Sounds like you do. Have you always worked for AltaVista?”

  “No.” Eve grew still. “I jumped around from thing to thing before that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing too exciting.” Eve shifted restlessly, and he knew she was ready for a different topic of conversation. He was curious about her past but didn’t want to irritate her.

  “Come on, let me show you the greenhouses.” He crooked his arm, and she linked hers through it gratefully.

  “I’d love to see them.”

  Anders continued to lead Eve on a tour around Base Camp, and she was suitably interested and appreciative, but more than once she grew quiet, and he wondered if she was thinking about her ex-boyfriend. Maybe Hope was right, and the Night Sky Bonfire tomorrow would distract her. The gathering sounded like a fun tradition. A science teacher from the local high school brought telescopes to a dark field, and anyone could come and look through them at the stars and moon. The booster club sold hot chocolate and held a bake sale to raise money for the sports teams. There was skating on an outdoor rink, too. Boone had told them about it earlier in the month, and they’d all decided to go.

  They lunched with the others in the bunkhouse, and then Avery came to fetch Eve. “Alice had an errand out this way, so she’s coming here to fit your gown. She’ll do it up at the manor, where there’s more room and privacy.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Anders said quickly. He’d enjoyed himself this morning and wasn’t in a hurry to leave Eve’s company.

  “No men allowed,” Avery said with a smile. “Just us girls.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’ll deliver her back in no time,” she promised him. “Ready, Eve?”

  “Ready.”

  Anders watched the women slip out of the bunkhouse.

  Clem sidled over to him th
rough the crowded room as everyone brought their dishes to the kitchen and prepared to head outside to their afternoon chores. “That’s what you call exciting? Showing your girl a bunch of bison and greenhouses?”

  “That’s what Base Camp is about. She’s got to want it if she’s going to stay.”

  “She’s got to want you if she’s going to stay,” Clem corrected. “Show some skin or something, sailor.”

  “Fuck off,” Anders told him.

  But Clem was right; he didn’t think he’d made much progress so far. He’d acted like a tour guide, not like a potential suitor. Problem was, he wasn’t sure how to get from here to there.

  “You got to put away your pride and just go for it,” Curtis advised him, getting up from his seat, balancing dishes in his hands. “That’s what I did.”

  “No, what you did was announce that you planned to marry me,” Hope said, taking a cup from Curtis’s hands before he dropped it. She smiled up at her husband before turning back to Anders. “I’m serious,” she added. “He just up and said it like it was a done deal.”

  “It was a done deal—for me.” Curtis kissed the top of her head.

  Anders didn’t think that would work with Eve.

  “Get her drunk and challenge her to a game of quarters,” Jericho Cook said, passing on his way to the kitchen. “Worked for me and Savannah.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Harris Wentworth said from his seat close by. He was working on a second plate of food. “I just picked Sam here up at the airport and drove straight to the chapel. Have no idea why she went along with it.”

  “You were irresistible.” Samantha, sitting next to Harris, laid her head on his shoulder.

  “But you came to Base Camp in order to get married,” Curtis pointed out.

  “To you, not me,” Harris baited him.

  Curtis waved him off. “Best thing that ever happened to me. No offense, Sam.”

  “None taken,” she said cheerfully.

  “Everyone ended up with the person they were meant to be with,” Riley put in. “It’ll work out for you, too, Anders.”

  He hoped she was right.

  “By the way,” Clem said, “when did you start using social media?”

  Another trick question. Clem must be struggling to find any information about his life before age eighteen, which is when he’d shut down all his old accounts and opened new ones under his new name. “When I joined the Navy, I guess.”

  “Late bloomer, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “We escape up here sometimes to get away from all the men,” Riley confessed as she brought Eve a cup of tea in the manor house kitchen. “Not that we don’t love them. We do. But it’s nice to do our own thing sometimes.”

  Eve was enjoying getting to know the women she’d watched on Base Camp for so long. Alice hadn’t arrived yet, and to her surprise the camera crew that had followed her and Anders all morning so far hadn’t trailed them up here.

  Eve was about to answer when the back door swung open, letting in a gust of frosty air. A pretty but sharp-faced, dark-haired woman walked in.

  “That’s Renata—our director. She was here first—before Clem,” Savannah whispered hurriedly, bending close. “Renata, how are you?” she said more loudly. “Come have some tea.”

  “I’m not here for tea. I’m here to work,” Renata said shortly.

  Eve sighed. She should have known the reprieve was too good to last. It was strange being on this side of things on a television show she’d watched for months. She’d never considered what it would be like for the all the men and women of Base Camp to be constantly filmed. She wasn’t surprised they got as much personal stuff done as they could during the moments when the crews were absent.

  Everyone straightened as several crew members followed Renata inside, and the easy comradery that had reigned in the kitchen a moment ago disappeared, although Avery made a funny face signifying that this was all just part of the game they had to put up with. Eve had learned that the women of Base Camp were a positive, can-do, artistic lot for the most part. They laughed plenty, teased each other often and seemed happy with their situation.

  “Where’s Clem?” Riley asked.

  “It’s just women, remember? That’s what you told the guys when you came up here so Clem couldn’t follow,” Renata said acidly. “Guess I’m still good for something,” she added as Byron, the young cameraman, slipped in behind her to set up his shot.

  “Byron’s not a woman,” Sam pointed out.

  “He might as well be,” Renata said. Byron made a face behind her back. “And it’s not like he hasn’t filmed you all a hundred times before. Relax.”

  The women laughed and got back to chatting. Avery handed Renata a cup of tea, and the director accepted it, despite what she’d said before. She sat down in a seat next to Eve, blew on the hot liquid and took a sip.

  “Have you worked in television long?” Eve asked her as Byron focused on recording a conversation down the table about upcoming Christmas celebrations.

  Renata nodded.

  “What do you think about Base Camp—really?” Eve pressed her. Now that she’d had a tour around the place and gotten to see what went on behind the show, she was intrigued. She was beginning to realize how hard all the participants worked around here.

  “It’s an interesting experiment,” Renata said. “I’m not sure how well it translates to the real world.”

  “Oh?” Eve would have thought Renata would be more of a proponent.

  “I think in the end it’s going to be consumer-driven technology that drives the way to sustainability.” Renata took another sip. “People want things to be cheap. When solar becomes cheaper than fossil fuels—and I believe that day is coming—it’ll sweep the country. Pretty soon driverless vehicles will take over shipping—because the efficiencies that make them environmentally friendly also will grant huge cost savings to companies, some of which they’ll pass on to consumers. Electric cars are cheaper to maintain than gas-powered ones, so it stands to reason they’ll eventually take over, too. It’s all about price and efficiency. If scientists and innovators can come up with green technology that saves us money, we’ll use it. If not, we won’t—unless we’re forced to by government regulations. I can’t see middle America selling their three-thousand-square-foot houses and living tiny, no matter how well we sell it.”

  “Why are you doing this, then?”

  Renata blinked. Seemed to realize she might have been too candid. “Because… it’s still interesting. The people here at Base Camp are testing technologies and practices that might be useful in the larger world. And because… it’s what Fulsom wants.”

  “The billionaire?” He was the one funding the enterprise, Eve knew. He had a way of popping up on the shows from time to time, but she had to admit she found him a little pompous and overblown.

  “That’s the one.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Renata fiddled with her teacup. “I never meant to be in TV at all. I’m a filmmaker. I wanted to work in Hollywood. Feature films. Fulsom made me an offer I couldn’t refuse early on in my career, though. He wanted a documentary made about him, and I needed a chance to shine. Now I’ve worked with him and filmed him for… years.” She sighed. “Then Base Camp came up. He put me on the project. It’s only temporary.”

  “Will you go back to filming him now that Clem’s here?”

  “Maybe.” Renata pushed her chair back. “Or maybe this is his way of showing me to the door. Who knows?” She looked as if she might stand up, and Eve hoped she hadn’t offended the woman.

  “Renata—” She searched for something to say. Remembered Anders’s question from earlier. “Do you do any camera work yourself?”

  “Not much.” To Eve’s relief, Renata settled in again and edged closer. “I do a fair amount of editing, though. I enjoy that.”

  That sounded interesting. “Could you show me? If you have time,” Eve hastened to say.
She wondered how the equipment differed from the software they used at AltaVista.

  “Sure,” Renata said after a moment’s hesitation. “I could do that.”

  “Today? After I get my gown?” Eve pressed. It wasn’t like she’d be here very long. The Night Sky Bonfire was tomorrow night.

  “Why not? Clem’s got everything under control, I’m sure.”

  “Not as good as you would,” Eve said loyally.

  “That’s enough brownnosing.”

  But Renata looked far more cheerful than she’d been when she arrived.

  Eve wasn’t the only one questioning her future, apparently. It had been interesting to hear Renata’s cynical take on Base Camp. Interesting, but Eve found she saw things differently. She thought the men and women of Base Camp were onto something. From what she’d seen of the planet through the images that crossed her desk, there were changes coming most people weren’t prepared for. Downsizing would be the least of the changes they all needed to make. People were going to need to work together more, the way Anders and the others were doing.

  She wished she could stay here long enough to learn more about the solutions they were creating, but she had her real life to get home to, such as it was. Going back to school was going to seem like a let-down after this.

  Anders didn’t see Eve again until dinnertime, and he was beginning to feel frustrated by the time she appeared with the rest of the women, dressed like them in a pretty, wine-colored Regency gown. Over the top of it, she wore a long thick coat that echoed the lines of her dress, as well as boots, mittens, a scarf and a hat.

  “Alice came through in spades,” Riley said brightly as they all filed into the bunkhouse. “Doesn’t Eve look pretty?”

  “She does.” Anders nodded his appreciation and hoped Eve could see how much he meant it. He knew the first four women who’d joined Base Camp had taken to wearing Regency garb as a way to remind them why they’d walked away from their jobs and taken a chance on the more artistic pursuits they’d studied in college. He appreciated the fact they’d continued the tradition even as they’d been dragged onto the television show and other women had come to live here, too. He knew the old-fashioned clothes could get in the way of modern pursuits, and recently he’d overheard a funny conversation and learned most of the women were wearing yoga pants under their gowns for the duration of the winter, but the truth was in those clothes they looked—