by Cora Seton
“I’ve got to take this.” He accepted the call and urged his horse a little ways away. Eve got the hint and kept going forward at a slow pace.
“Someone called this morning. Asking questions about the Terrence field,” his father said without preamble.
Someone was researching Hansen’s fracking operation? That didn’t bode well. When Anders left Texas, fracking wasn’t a major part of the family business. It had grown exponentially in the last decade, though.
“Has nothing to do with me,” he managed to say with a glance toward Eve. She was looking over the fields to where the bison were grazing.
“I doubt that very much. You’re on that show. Doesn’t matter how much money I’ve spent over the years; I can’t stop people from talking about who you are. Someone puts the puzzle pieces together. Figures they can cause a big scandal, send Hansen stock prices tumbling—”
“Is that what this is about? Stock prices?”
“Has it ever occurred to you not everyone has the legacy you have waiting for you? There are people—lots of people—who want a piece of Hansen Oil. And they’ll get it any way they can. I can’t protect you forever. Whoever you’ve got over there sniffing around the Terrence field, call them off, because if Hansen Oil stock plummets, I’m not the only one with a problem on his hands. And get your ass back here. Now. I need you.” Johannes hung up.
“Problems?” Eve asked when Anders pocketed his phone.
“Family.” Johannes was losing his cool, and Anders wondered what was happening with the fracking operation to make him so jittery. His father’s last sentence had unnerved him. Johannes needed him? Johannes never needed anyone.
“Thought you didn’t talk to your father.”
“I don’t. Usually. It’s the show,” he added. “Clem’s people, probably. Digging for dirt, trying to get a story on me. My dad’s not too happy about it.” Johannes’s comment about protecting him seemed rich. Anders didn’t own any Hansen Oil stock, and he’d long ago turned his back on the idea of coming home to take over the company. Johannes was protecting himself.
Eve stilled. “Does your family have a lot of dirt?”
She was smiling, but Anders knew he needed to tread carefully, especially after that strange question she’d asked about his name the other day. He still wasn’t sure why she’d brought that up. His gut told him she didn’t know he was a Hansen, but something had to have prompted it.
Maybe he should fess up to everything right now. Anders wished he could, but some part of him was still hoping he’d make it through this year with his secret intact. He liked being his own man. Anders Olsen, Navy SEAL. Anders Hansen was dead as far as he was concerned. He wanted him to stay dead.
“I haven’t seen eye to eye with my father in years. I don’t want to be held accountable for him, and he doesn’t want to be held accountable for me.” True, as far as it went, but there was a lot more to it than that. His father wanted Anders to be an oil man, too. That was never going to happen.
“You miss him,” Eve said softly.
Anders wanted to deny it, but it was true. “There was a time when we were close. When my mom was alive and it was the three of us. I was proud of him. We hadn’t started fighting yet.” He gazed at the bison grazing in the distance and thought about his early years in Texas. “We used to fish a lot, my dad and I. Until—well, until things went downhill. I loved those days at the river.”
Eve looked as if she’d ask another question but then shook her head and kept quiet.
“When my mom died, everything changed. He changed. He became a harder man.”
“You can’t blame yourself for anything your father’s done.”
“Can’t I? What if I’d stuck around? Talked to him—made him see the error of his ways?”
“You were a child.”
“I grew up,” he pointed out. “That’s all the past, though,” he added, realizing they were treading on dangerous ground. He was worried Eve would press further, but she glanced down, shifted her reins into one hand, pulled her own phone out of her pocket and tapped it.
“Sorry,” she mouthed to Anders. “Hello?” she said into the phone. “Oh, hi, Mary. What’s up?”
She listened for a moment and rolled her eyes. “I meant just what I texted you. I won’t be home until after New Year’s.”
Anders wanted to correct her. Until after New Year’s at the earliest.
“I already told you I wasn’t coming for Christmas. Because I had to work on the twenty-seventh, remember?” Another pause. “I know I just said I’m staying here until New Year’s. My plans changed. You’re going to be with Phillip’s family. You don’t need me there.” Pause. “I want to do something new this year.” A hesitation. “I don’t want to always be the extra person, okay? Can’t you see it from my perspective?”
She turned to Anders and made a face. “Yes,” she went on. “Everything’s fine. I’m having a good time, and I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.” Eve sighed. “Yes, I’ll take pictures. I’ve got to go. Hug the kids, all right? Talk soon. Bye.”
She ended the call and put her phone away. “Nothing like a nosy sister to make you feel ten years old again.”
“I’m glad you’re staying through the holidays,” Anders said.
“Me, too.” She perked up a little. “Beats being irresponsible Aunt Eve.”
“Is that the way your family sees you?” He couldn’t imagine it.
“Irresponsible, hopeless, ridiculously bad at planning for the future.”
“Boone said you told him you worked for a bunch of NGOs.”
Eve’s horse sidestepped again, and Anders wondered if she’d flinched. Why didn’t she want him to know about that? “You’re right. I did.”
“And that didn’t take planning and responsibility?”
“Of course it did, and I was good at my work, but Mary and the others are right about one thing. I didn’t show much staying power. I liked to take on a project, get it done, get out and move onto the next thing. Then I got hurt…”
She fidgeted with the reins, and Anders waited, his gut telling him this next bit would be important if he wanted to understand what made Eve tick.
“I had to be medevaced out of my last assignment. Broken leg. It was so expensive my parents had to loan me the money to pay for all my medical bills. I’m still paying them back. As far as saving the world goes, I’ve been sidelined.” She shrugged her shoulders, but Anders heard what she didn’t say. She’d been living her dream, and then she’d lost it. She’d had the world at her fingertips and then found herself back in Virginia.
“Sounds to me like you probably touched a lot of people’s lives, and you’ll do so again when you’ve paid back your folks.” He urged his horse nearer.
The gratitude in her expression hardened his resolve to have a word with her sister—and the rest of her family—if he ever met them. If she married him, he’d help her pay her debts. He had no doubt she’d be an asset to Base Camp.
More than that, he wanted her to be happy.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he warned her.
“I’d like that,” Eve admitted.
Anders dismounted and held Eve’s horse steady so she could get down. He held the reins of both animals in one hand, gathered her close and kissed her thoroughly.
Eve loved the way it felt when he did that. Was coming to crave it in between times. She and Anders simply worked together in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before. He understood her in a way she wasn’t sure anyone else but Melissa ever had.
“I like you, Eve Wright,” he murmured when he pulled away.
“I like you, too.”
“I’ve got to marry someone in just a few weeks. You know that, right?”
She nodded, a breathless, unsteady feeling twisting inside her.
“I’m going to ask you. Not now. Not for a little while. We need to get to know each other a lot better. But I am going to ask you. You need to know that.”
She could only nod again. Despite her attempts not to think about it, she did know it, and her heart ached because she knew he might not feel the same way if he knew what she intended to do. For one rash moment she wanted to give up trying to beat Hansen Oil and simply say yes to Anders. Why was it her responsibility to take on a behemoth no one else had managed to rein in?
If only she was the kind of person who could walk away from injustice.
She wasn’t, though. This was her best chance to make a difference to a lot of people’s lives, and she had to take it. Martin Fulsom would make sure Base Camp survived, she was sure of it, but Anders, Boone, Avery and the rest of them would know she’d balanced her need to stop Hansen Oil with the safety of Base Camp’s future and had chosen to go ahead with her plans. How could they trust her to be one of them when she hadn’t prioritized their needs?
“I think we could be happy together. I know I’d work hard at it,” Anders went on.
A fine tremor ran through her body. How unfair to finally meet the man of her dreams and know that being with him was impossible.
Anders slid a hand behind the nape of her neck and moved closer to kiss her again. The brush of his mouth over hers had her standing on tiptoe, leaning into him, wanting so much more.
“I know you want a purpose here,” he said. “I’ll do anything I can to help you find it. Maybe it will take a while to discover what you want to do, but you’re smart and creative, and there’s a lot of people here to support you along the way. What if you looked at it as a challenge? What would you do if you could do anything?”
Right now, the only thing she could think of doing was him.
Could he feel her longing?
He pressed another lingering kiss to her mouth, held her close a moment, and she could feel the evidence of his desire.
“I’m going to ask about that, too,” he said huskily. “Soon. I want you to want it as much as I do, but I don’t want to blow forever with you by pushing you for more right now.”
Eve wanted to say she didn’t want to wait another minute—that she’d be glad to do it right here. Standing up. Lying down. Whatever he wanted. But he wasn’t talking about a fling. He was talking about marrying her.
If she slept with him, he’d think she wanted to marry him.
Maybe she did want that, more than she’d ever dreamed possible. But first she had to take down Hansen Oil.
Was there any way to get everything she wanted? Stop Hansen Oil without losing her chance with Anders?
Eve made a promise to herself she’d try her best.
“Soon?” Anders asked softly.
Eve nodded. “Soon,” she said. Another promise.
One she meant to keep.
Chapter Nine
‡
“I haven’t seen her all afternoon,” Anders told Walker as they entered the bunkhouse near to dinnertime. He was frustrated. Aching to be with Eve, if he was honest. Half-hard and horny after their talk that morning, with no outlet for his desire.
Walker grunted.
“I mean it. She’s been gone for ages.”
“Ages?” Walker repeated.
“Well, hours. When we got back from riding this morning, she disappeared with Avery. They missed lunch. Something’s up.”
“Holidays,” Walker said.
“You mean… like gifts and things like that? You think she’s trying to surprise me with something?” It was a comforting thought, but it didn’t soothe his frustration. Why hadn’t he kept riding with Eve all the way to some motel where they could have been alone together? He didn’t know what he’d expected to happen after they spoke, but it wasn’t that she’d head off for the whole day with Avery.
Boone cleared his throat. He was seated at his desk in the corner, paperwork spread before him, but he half turned to face them. “I hope I’m not the problem.”
“Why would you be?” Anders asked him.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you I might have made a mistake when I talked to her.”
“What’d you do?” Anders moved closer.
“I showed her a photo of your backup bride.”
Anders was nonplussed. “Hell, Boone—what were you thinking?”
“She asked me point-blank. I froze.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t leave right then!” He couldn’t believe it. Eve knew the identity of the woman he’d have to marry if she left Base Camp? Did she think he was happy about the situation?
“Well, she didn’t. And you two seem to be getting on okay.”
Anders thought about their ride—and their conversation—again. Had he made a mistake being so gentlemanly? There they’d been—away from the cameras. Alone. And he’d let the moment slip away.
“Maybe knowing she has competition has made her want you more,” Boone suggested.
“Maybe.” He wasn’t convinced.
“She likes you. Try harder.”
“I’m trying.”
Anders got out of there and took a walk down to Pittance Creek, which had frozen over weeks ago. Once there, he changed his mind and decided to try to find Eve. When he did so, he was surprised to find her alone, hunched over Avery’s laptop, which she shut quickly when he walked in.
He remembered what Walker had said. Maybe she was working on some kind of surprise for him. He pretended not to notice.
“Where’s Renata and Avery?”
“They’re—out. I’m just finishing up—something.”
“It’s getting close to dinnertime. Can I walk you to the bunkhouse?”
“Sure.” Eve quickly gathered her things, taking a moment to open the laptop and close a few documents. Anders made a big show of looking elsewhere, then helped her on with her coat when she stood up.
She passed the laptop back to Avery when they reached the bunkhouse, and soon the two of them were seated with everyone else enjoying the dinner Kai and Samantha had created.
It was Christmas Eve, so after dinner they all piled into the Base Camp trucks to attend a candlelight service at Chance Creek Reformed Church, the camera crews following them as usual and taking their places in the back. Anders made sure to be seated next to Eve in their pew, with Boone on her other side. Boone had seemed to notice his maneuvering and had helped corral Eve into position between them before anyone else could sit next to her.
Good old Boone.
As the choir sang and Reverend Halpern took his place at the lectern, Anders took Eve’s hand and held it firmly. He wanted her to know he was serious in his pursuit of her. The last thirty-six hours had proved to him his heart was already thoroughly engaged in the idea of getting to know her.
He understood what it meant that she would consider staying in Chance Creek, even though as she said, her job and her family were in Virginia. Could he possibly ask her to give all that up for someone she’d just met? Things worked fast here at Base Camp. He’d grown used to it. She hadn’t.
Eve didn’t pull her hand away, and they stayed like that throughout the service, even though it meant juggling the hymnal a bit when it came time to find the songs. Like Anders, Eve knew the first verse of most of them, but then they both got lost and had to bend close over the book to get through the rest of them.
Anders liked that. Eve smelled good, and when she leaned into him to read the small text, he wanted to put an arm around her.
He didn’t want to get into a scuffle at church, though, should she not be ready for a public display of affection like that. He stuck to holding her hand.
When it came time for candles to be brought around, he waited patiently for an usher to light his, then turned to carefully light Eve’s.
“Merry Christmas,” he told her and kissed her cheek. “Glad I’m getting to spend it with you.”
Her lips parted, and he thought she might kiss him back, but she glanced at Boone, found him waiting for her to light his candle and busied herself doing so. By the time she was done, the moment was lost.
They sang the final hymns and listene
d to Halpern’s last words before extinguishing their candles and filing out of the church quietly. Peace filled Anders’s heart, alongside the now-familiar desire to get Eve alone.
Outside, snow had started falling.
“Eve,” Anders began and stopped. He didn’t know how to say to her everything that was in his heart. He wanted to beg her to give them a chance, but he wasn’t a man to beg. She had to want it, too.
She went up on tiptoe and kissed the bottom of his jaw—the only thing within reach to her. “Merry Christmas,” she told him softly.
Somehow Anders knew he needed to leave it at that. He did manage to steal another kiss in the kitchen later when they helped to put out a midnight spread of snacks and eggnog. Settled down in his sleeping bag afterward, he was far too aware of Eve sleeping across the room to drift off easily. He must have eventually, for when he woke up again it was Christmas morning, and judging by the sound of it, a snowball fight was raging outside.
After breakfast, everyone trooped up to the manor for the gift exchange. Husbands and wives were allowed to give each other presents. A round-robin affair had been set up for everyone else, each of them giving one gift and receiving one from their “secret Santa.”
Eve hadn’t been around long enough to be part of that, so Anders felt justified in giving her something, even though they weren’t married.
He wasn’t entirely surprised to receive not one secret Santa package but two in return.
Jericho gave him a tooled leather saddlebag that was a work of art. “Thanks,” Anders said and meant it. It was the kind of thing that could stay in a family for generations, and he’d get a lot of use out of it. He took up the second package curiously. Looked at the tag.
It was from Eve.
She smiled at him from where she sat between Avery and Riley near the huge Christmas tree that stood in the ballroom.
He looked back down at the gift; it had to be a book by the heft of it. He remembered Clem’s derisive comment about books. Riley’s defense of them as gifts.