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

by Cora Seton

  “You’ll have to be ready to whisk me out of there and get me on a plane as soon as it’s over,” Eve said. “I’m going to be like Cinderella at the ball, ready to run for it at midnight.”

  “I’ll have a car ready to go,” Melissa promised. “But Eve—would you be mad if I didn’t go back to Virginia with you? I thought I might stay in Chance Creek a little longer.”

  Eve’s heart sank, but she forced herself to answer cheerfully. “Of course I won’t be mad. You and Harry are becoming a thing, aren’t you?”

  “Eve.” Melissa sounded breathless. “I think… I think he could be the one.”

  “I’m so happy for you.” Eve closed her eyes and dug the fingernails of her free hand into her covers, sudden tears stinging her eyes. She thought maybe she’d found the one, too. Wishful thinking all along.

  “I’m really sorry,” Melissa said. “My timing sucks.”

  “It’s not like you planned it,” Eve said. “Anyway, if I’m going to destroy Anders by taking down his father’s company, someone should be happy.”

  A crash behind her made Eve scramble to her knees on the bed. Avery stood in the doorway, a shattered teapot on the floor by her feet.

  “Oh, shit,” Eve said into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Everything all right?” Curtis asked when Anders opened the door of his tiny house. “I assumed you went up to the manor with Eve, but Hope said she saw you head this way. Did you and Eve have a fight?”

  Anders shook his head and let him inside. “Not a fight,” he said. Normally he trusted Curtis to give him good advice, but this time he was on his own. They stood near the tall windows that looked out over a hillside. “I don’t think we’re going to make it, though.”

  “This morning you two looked fine. What changed?”

  Anders chose his words carefully. “I think Eve came here for a specific purpose.”

  Curtis nodded. “Tell me.”

  “Washing up here, on the run—that’s a cover story. I think she plans to use the show to advance a personal cause.”

  “That sounds pretty specific. How do you know all this? Did she tell you?”

  “No, and keep this between us, will you?” Anders said quickly.

  “Sure thing. What’s her cause? Is she against what we’re doing here?”

  Anders shook his head. “Far as I can tell, she was truthful about being an environmentalist. A passionate one. But—she might be in too deep. She’s taking on an enemy who won’t hesitate to retaliate.”

  “Against her—or us?”

  Straight to the point. Anders appreciated that. “Both.”

  Curtis moved closer to the windows and gazed outside, too. The tiny houses were dug into the hillside at various locations. Across the way, on another rise of ground, sat the manor—where Eve was.

  “She could have the best intentions in the world,” Curtis said slowly, “and still wind up being the end of us.”

  “That’s right.” And he’d be the weapon she’d point at the community he loved. Anders scraped a hand over his jaw. What a mess.

  Curtis turned. “Is there something else I should know?”

  Anders held his gaze. “There’s a lot you should know, but I have to take this step by step. See if I can salvage things somehow and not blow everything up while trying.” He thought Curtis saw through his deflection, but the man didn’t push him.

  “Tell me one thing. This cause of hers—if everything else was equal, would you back it or thwart it?” he asked.

  “I’d back it,” Anders said without hesitation. “She’s in the right. She’s also going to lose.”

  “And take us down with her. Got it.” Curtis studied him. “You like her.”

  “I love her.” Anders didn’t realize the words were true until he said them. “And I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do.”

  Curtis clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to work a miracle,” he said. “And I know who can help.”

  “Who?”

  “Renata.”

  “Anders loves you.”

  Eve’s heart was pounding so hard she didn’t think she’d heard Avery right. She was on her knees mopping up the spilled tea and teapot shards with a towel she’d fetched from the bathroom. Avery still stood in the doorway, watching her as if she’d never laid eyes on Eve before.

  “He likes me,” Eve corrected. She had no idea how she was going to fix this. Avery would tell everyone else what she’d heard. An hour from now she’d probably find herself at the airport flying back to Virginia—without Melissa.

  “He loves you. And you’re going to ruin him? Is that why you came here? What did Anders ever do to you?”

  “I was being dramatic.” Eve left the towel in a sodden heap on the floor and got to her feet. She had to salvage this somehow. “And no, I didn’t come here to ruin Anders. That’s the last thing I’d want to do.” She rubbed the back of her neck and ushered Avery into the bedroom. There was nothing for it but to take her into her confidence. She’d have to let Avery decide what happened next.

  “You’re right; I came here on false pretences.” She waved Avery to sit on the bed and climbed back to her position near the headboard. “I came here because I need to blow the whistle on Hansen Oil. It’s letting chemicals get into the water supply of a town near its fracking operation.” Short and sweet. Either Avery would get it, or she wouldn’t.

  “Hansen Oil? Jesus, Eve.”

  Eve was heartened by Avery’s exclamation and the way she sat there thinking things over. She hadn’t laughed off Eve’s assertion. That was something.

  “I know Hansen’s track record,” Avery said a minute later. “What kind of information do you have? Wait—” She shook her head. “Satellite images.”

  “That’s right. It’s plain as day what’s happening. When the images crossed my desk, I took them to my boss. I expected him to help, but…” She shrugged.

  “Let me guess. He told you to keep your mouth shut.”

  Eve nodded. “I can’t blame him. Hansen goes after its adversaries—hard.”

  “So you came here to what—show the images on the show? You thought Fulsom would allow you to do that?”

  “Wouldn’t he? The whole point of Base Camp is to change the world.” Eve gathered her thoughts. “Fulsom is rich enough to be Johannes Hansen’s equal. I don’t know anyone else who could possibly stand up to him.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Avery pleated the comforter between her fingers. “What about us, though? Stands to reason if you cross Hansen on our show, he’ll come after Base Camp.”

  “You’re right,” Eve admitted. “The longer I stay here, the harder that is to contemplate.”

  “And then there’s Anders.”

  Eve stilled. Did Avery know who Anders really was?

  “He loves you. How will he react if your actions damage this community?”

  Maybe she didn’t know, and Eve wasn’t ready to expose Anders. “He’ll hate me,” she said succinctly. Even if he theoretically agreed that what Hansen Oil was doing was wrong, he would hate her for attacking his father. She would in his place.

  “They’re really poisoning people’s drinking water?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Avery hugged herself, and Eve would have done anything to take away her misery. “If I ask you not to do it, I’m as bad as Hansen,” Avery said.

  “I’m sorry. I really am.” Tears welled in Eve’s eyes again, and she realized she’d come to know the inhabitants of Base Camp too well. She couldn’t stand up on New Year’s and make the announcement that might destroy everything they’d built. Who knew what Johannes Hansen was capable of? Eve came to a decision. “Forget it—I won’t do it. I’ll leave—tonight. I’ll find another way—”

  “There isn’t another way,” Avery said slowly. “Not like this. Coming here, getting Anders to love you—getting the audience to care for you—that’s brilliant. When everyone sees your first episode in a few days, the
y’ll want you and Anders to get together. They’ll be invested in your story. I don’t know when you planned to spill the beans—”

  “New Year’s Eve,” Eve said.

  “Of course. Clem will be all over that,” Avery added. “I bet you’re lining up news coverage, too.”

  Eve nodded.

  “You’re a natural at this—drawing attention to a cause.”

  “I’ve done it before.” Eve explained her work overseas. “I participated in all kinds of campaigns to get the word out about environmental and social justice problems.”

  “What do you plan to do on New Year’s?”

  “I’m going to interrupt the dancing and show a short movie,” Eve said. She went through the steps she and Melissa had outlined, without mentioning she had a friend in town.

  “Brilliant,” Avery said again. “I’ll help. I’ve got lots of footage you can use.”

  “Help? Why would you do that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.” Avery tilted her head. “Eve, we’re all here because we care, you know that, right?”

  “What about Base Camp?”

  “Do you love Anders?” Avery countered. “The truth,” she added. “No more bullshit.”

  “No more bullshit,” Eve agreed. “Of course I love Anders.”

  “Then let’s figure out how to expose Hansen Oil without exposing us, too.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Eve’s pulse quickened. If she could expose Hansen without losing Anders—

  But Anders was a Hansen.

  “I don’t know. But I know who’s going to help.”

  “Who?” Eve asked suspiciously. She didn’t want anyone else to know about this.

  “Renata, of course.”

  Chapter Eleven

  ‡

  If Anders didn’t know better, he’d have thought Eve was avoiding him as much as he was her. They still sat together at meals and exchanged small talk when they bumped into each other. He’d even managed a joke once and made her laugh. For one second, it had been like old times, and he’d fought the urge to pull her close.

  The awkwardness between them most of the time was unmistakable, though. A day passed, and then another, and Anders realized everyone at Base Camp had noticed the distance between them. He’d made no progress figuring out what to do about her, either. Renata had taken to staying in town, and when Clem got in his face, peppering him with questions about his obvious failure to bag Eve, as he put it, Anders knew something had to change.

  The next morning he asked Eve to join him for morning chores. She agreed after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Ready to ride? Are you wearing pants under there?” He gestured to her gown.

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet on the way to the stable. Was she wondering why he’d been so cool to her the last few days?

  Outside, the wind was blowing. Most of the snow was skimmed off the pastures and caught against fences, buildings and other protuberances in the landscape. It was cold, but it was safe to ride.

  He helped her up into her saddle, wishing he knew what to say or do to put her at ease again. She perched there a little uncertainly. “This still feels a lot higher up than I remember from being a kid,” she said, patting her horse’s neck.

  “We’ll go slow again.”

  He mounted his favourite horse, a roan mare named Wishful. It felt good to be in the saddle, something he’d enjoyed all his life and hadn’t gotten to do enough during his time in the service. Coming to this ranch in Montana had in some ways been like coming home, Anders thought, not for the first time. He’d missed his uncle’s ranch while he’d been in the Navy.

  Back when he was a kid, it had never occurred to him to make a way of life out of ranching, but now it made sense, and if he was honest, spending his days tending the bison, as little as they needed tending, brought him a profound joy. There was something so right about seeing the animals move across the pastures. A connection between bison and prairie that was ancient and that he felt he was helping to restore. Eve’s book had given him plenty to think about in that respect, however. He realized now they’d done only the most rudimentary steps to put things to rights. They had to think like the animals. Allow them to move in their ancient ways. Only then would balance truly be restored.

  At first, Eve’s horse, a black gelding named Bart, was a little balky under her rusty movements, but soon horse and rider settled down to each other, and Eve began to be able to look around her.

  Anders liked the way she scanned the horizon, glanced at the herd and scanned the horizon again. She was being aware of her surroundings, and that was important out here. Whether or not somebody might be chasing you.

  “You look like you’ve ridden all your life,” he said.

  Eve laughed. “Hardly. But it’s coming back to me a lot faster than I thought it would.”

  He set the pace, leading the way out along the closest pasture, where the herd was currently grazing, using their powerful hooves to kick away the scrim of snow and get at the grasses below it.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Eve said.

  Anders’s heart swelled in his chest before he remembered why she had come here. It took a special kind of person to see the beauty in a December landscape in Montana, on a day when the clouds had lowered so far down that he felt he could touch them if he reached up his hand. If Eve could connect to the landscape on a day like this, she would have made him a good partner. She hadn’t come here to be his partner, though.

  “More snow coming,” he said.

  “We could build ourselves an igloo out here,” she said.

  “That would be cozy.” He pictured crawling into a little structure like that with Eve. A structure with no windows for Clem to look through and film them.

  Never going to happen now.

  “I looked up Montana’s climate, and it seems you have more snow than usual this year.”

  She’d looked up Montana’s climate? Anders’s heart swelled again before he could stifle his feelings. She was digging in, in her own way. Learning about Base Camp, Chance Creek and Montana at large. If it wasn’t for Hansen Oil, he had a feeling she’d want to stay.

  For the last couple of days, he’d steered clear of conversations that touched on Eve staying or going, or anything else to do with their relationship, including whether or not they were having one. What else could he do? He had no idea how to stop her—or help her, for that matter. Meanwhile, Curtis was on him all the time to sit down with Renata and tell her everything.

  “I think you’re right.” He, too, still had a lot to learn about his new home. It struck him that he should have been doing a lot more studying. A lot more reading. He’d gotten enamored of the doing part of the job, but there was still a lot more to know. They weren’t the only ones working on sustainability issues. Why reinvent the wheel twice?

  “According to the book I gave you, ranchers are experimenting with smaller enclosures and revolving the cattle through them more quickly,” Eve said. “I wish it had more to say about bison.”

  “Bison are a whole different animal,” Anders said and smiled. He hadn’t meant to make the joke, but there it was.

  “Do you think—” Eve broke off. “Look. Someone else has been out here.”

  Anders steered his mare over to where Eve was pointing. She was right; there were tracks over here. Snowshoe tracks. Someone had walked through.

  He wondered who.

  The tracks came from the opposite direction, and he guessed that somebody had come in off the country road that led to Base Camp, parked somewhere along it and walked onto the property. They had gotten this far and stopped. Milled around a little bit. Checked out the bison, probably. Then turned and gone back the way they’d come.

  Odd.

  “Do you often get people snowshoeing on the ranch?” Eve asked.

  “Never,” Anders said grimly. And they’d been patrolling lately, ever since their food supply had been broken into and much o
f it stolen. Anders knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would be other tracks out here. Footprints and vehicle tracks from where he and the other men patrolled each night. These tracks had to have been made during the span of time that started after the last patrol went through, which had been shortly after midnight, and before he and Eve arrived. Who would snowshoe onto the property in the middle of the night? And why had they stopped here? The fences hadn’t been tampered with, so it hadn’t been someone after the bison. Instead, it looked like somebody had simply come to check things out. To get the lay of the land, so to speak.

  Recently, they’d learned Fulsom himself had instigated the theft of their food—to make the show more compelling. Now he’d sent Clem. Anders thought about Greg’s early misgivings about Eve.

  Could Fulsom somehow be behind Eve’s arrival, too? Was Fulsom upping the ante again, sending a new director who employed sneaky observation tactics and a woman determined to take on one of the biggest oil companies around—a company conveniently owned by his father?

  This was all getting way too complicated.

  He couldn’t see Eve working with Clem on anything, Anders decided, let alone planning this whole series of events together. He could see her working with Fulsom if she thought he’d help her take on Hansen Oil.

  Still, something didn’t sit right with him as far as that line of thinking went. Fulsom liked to storm in and throw them curveballs, but they were direct, hard-hitting curveballs, not tricky convoluted ones.

  He’d bet his life Eve wasn’t working with Clem or Fulsom. She was running her own mission, letting nothing stand in her way of achieving it. Not even him.

  That left him two choices. Stop her or help her. Like Curtis said, it was time to work a miracle. Time to make Eve understand that he was on her side—without letting her know what he knew about her plans.

  Talk about complicated.

  Anders knew one of the best ways to establish rapport with someone who didn’t trust you was to offer them information.