A SEAL’s Resolve

by Cora Seton

  What it would be like to leave him behind?

  “Tell me about Yellowstone,” Curtis said.

  “It’s been my dream to work there all my life.” She stroked her hand over his hard chest, feeling his heartbeat. What an amazing thing the human body was. “I went with my folks when I was little. They’re back in Ohio where I grew up. We spent a week there. I was enchanted. The wide open spaces, the campgrounds, the geysers. The bison. The wolves.”

  “Wolves?”

  “There was all this information about re-introducing wolves into the park to restore the top predator to the food chain. I was fascinated by it—by the idea that even if humans made mistakes, they could reverse them, and by the idea that we could decide to allow things—or even to reinstate them—even if we didn’t like them much. I mean, wolves are scary. They eat livestock. I know why ranchers don’t want them around. I understand why we just about wiped them out. Then we made discoveries about why it might be a good thing to have them around—at least in some places. And even though they still scare us, we helped them return. Human beings can be wonderful like that.” She traced a finger over his bicep. “So often all we hear about is the bad or the cowardly things we do. I love it when we’re brave.”

  He nodded. “I get that.”

  “Our third night there I woke up when everyone else was sleeping. I snuck out of our tent to use the bathroom, and once I was out there, I couldn’t believe how beautiful the night was. There were so many stars. The night was thrumming with energy. I could feel all the different critters around me in the darkness even if I couldn’t see them, and Curtis—I wasn’t scared. I was… alive. Then the wolves began to howl.” She didn’t know how to describe that, but she had a feeling Curtis was a man who could understand it anyway. “In that moment, I knew what braveness meant. It meant that you know all the possibilities—everything that can go wrong—and you go ahead and follow your lights anyway.”

  His arms tightened around her.

  “I want to be brave like that again.” Her voice wobbled, and she got control of it again. “I want to live like that. In nature. Outside. Striving toward an ideal. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah.” Curtis chuckled. “I absolutely understand that.”

  The desire to live outside in nature—to strive toward an ideal—was exactly what had propelled him to join Base Camp and move to Montana. He wasn’t really being brave, though, right now, was he? He’d told her he wanted her. Told her he’d marry her.

  He hadn’t told her why, though.

  “I understand because that’s the way I feel about Base Camp. I know you don’t watch the show.” At the moment he was glad she didn’t. “Do you know what we’re trying to do there?”

  “Sort of.”

  He settled in, drawing the covers more firmly around them, loving the soft weight of Hope covering his torso like a human blanket.

  “Boone, Clay, Jericho and Walker had the idea first. They wanted to find a parcel of land to develop sustainably, figure out the best way to build housing, grow food, make use of green energy and so on. They wanted to do it in such a way that other people could learn from them. They partnered with Martin Fulsom.”

  “Isn’t he a millionaire?”

  “Billionaire. Crazy as a loon. Great at getting publicity. He came up with the reality television show idea. He’s the one who made everything possible—but also set it up so we could lose everything.”

  “Lose it? How?”

  “If we don’t meet his criteria. We have to build ten tiny houses to certain specifications. Get the energy grid up and functional. Grow food through the winter. Things like that.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It is. You know I help with the tiny houses. I’m a carpenter.”

  “I liked the one you showed me, but are tiny houses practical?”

  “A single tiny house on its own plot of land might not be. But a whole bunch of them sharing a plot of land, with community gardens and a shared community space for larger gatherings, is.”

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  “Our gardens are great, and we’re working on growing food throughout the winter. The best part is the bison herd. Bison graze differently than cattle do. They’re part of Montana’s ecology, so like the wolves in Yellowstone, they help balance things out.”

  “They certainly looked like they belonged at Base Camp.” She sounded wistful.

  “They make me happy every time I see them,” he admitted. “I guess I feel like the life I’m building there is brave. People think we’re crazy for worrying about where our energy comes from and how we grow our food and live, but I don’t care, because when I die I want to know that I tried the best I could to do what’s right. I’d rather give it my all and fail than give up before I even start.”

  “I can understand that.” But she clammed up after that, and Curtis knew better than to push her. Maybe he’d made her think a bit, though.

  In fact, maybe he needed to give her more to think about.

  He turned over and spilled her onto her back, quickly fitting himself between her thighs, lifting her wrists above her head. He shifted his hips to see her reaction. When she lifted hers to meet his, he knew they were on the same page.

  Still, he wanted to hear her say it.

  “I want to make love to you again, Hope. What do you think about that?”

  “I want you to make love to me.”

  “Yeah?” He was hard again. Aching to be inside her.

  “Yeah. Please, Curtis. Hurry.”

  As he buried himself inside her, Curtis knew Hope had hold of his heart for good. It was too late to second guess the wisdom of getting this close to her.

  She’d either reel him in or toss him back out to sea.

  His fate was in her hands now.

  When Hope woke up the following morning, she made love to Curtis a third time, neither of them saying a word, their bodies working together as if they’d known each other for years rather than days. She tried to stay in the moment, pushing the knowledge that soon they’d part ways from her mind.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so good. Curtis’s hands moved over her body as if memorizing her curves, and she found herself doing the same to his, wanting to be able to remember every inch of him when he was no longer close.

  She felt ravenous for him and as awake as if she’d just drunk her very first cup of coffee. Her veins thrummed with longing for him, even as he was filling her, moving with her, bringing her once more to the kind of earth-shattering orgasm that only he could elicit from her.

  Afterward, she had to blink back the tears that collected in her eyes, and she was grateful Curtis didn’t seem to notice them as she disengaged from him and climbed out of bed.

  Brave, indeed. Was she being brave running away from him?

  Would she find another man someday who could make her feel what she was feeling now?

  Or was she making a mistake—?

  Blake and Byron’s bickering out in the main room brought Hope back to the present. There was no more time to think of herself.

  “We need to get Raina to her wedding,” she said.

  Curtis just nodded, bundled a blanket around himself and slipped out to the bathroom. A half hour later they were too busy packing and prepping for the next stage of their journey for her to give her feelings for him any more thought. Raina could barely walk, which meant they were going to be hard-pressed to continue.

  “Raina will ride on the sled, holding the basket of kittens,” Curtis decided. “We’ll store everything we can around her. Blake and Byron, you’ll take turns skiing. I’ll pull Raina. You two will take turns helping me. All of us will have to carry some gear.”

  “Are we close to the highway?” Raina asked.

  “I hope so,” Curtis said. “It snowed all night, and it’s still coming down, so it’s going to be rough going out there, but we’ll stick together and make as much progress as we can.”

  H
ope noticed Curtis left some bills tucked under the sugar canister in the kitchen and made sure to replenish the wood they’d used from the large stack on the front porch and that the door was shut tight when they left.

  As it turned out, their progress was faster, even though the snow had gotten deeper overnight, because Raina was no longer slowing them down. She was quiet today, and Hope knew she had to be despairing that they’d ever make it to Bozeman. Hope had quietly applied bandages to her own toes and was grateful to be back in her own boots today since they’d dried overnight by the fire.

  “I haven’t given up yet,” Curtis remarked about a half an hour into their excursion. Byron had forged ahead on the skis. Blake was slogging along behind them. Raina was absorbed in her own thoughts. Daisy trailed behind them, keeping close but sticking to the trail they’d tamped down in the snow.

  “On what?” She thought she knew, though.

  “On being with you.”

  She wanted that, too, but being with Curtis meant giving up Yellowstone.

  “It would never work,” she declared, aiming for a bit of levity. It was Raina’s wedding day, after all. “The commute from Chance Creek to Yellowstone is too damn long. Who’d cook dinner?”

  “You’d have to do that when you got home,” Curtis said swiftly. “I’ll be too busy running my tiny house building company.”

  Hope snorted. “I’m not cooking at midnight, which is when I’d get home.”

  “You’d have to feed the dog, too. Daisy will be hungry by then.”

  “What about the cats?” She looked over her shoulder.

  “Oh, no. I’m not falling for the basket of kittens trick. Those are going with Raina.”

  “You’d have to do all the vacuuming,” Hope told him. “I don’t hold with cleaning.”

  “At all?”

  “Too busy restocking the country with wolves.”

  “I’ll vacuum, if you take out the trash. I don’t hold with trash.”

  Hope smiled despite herself. “What kind of a Navy SEAL are you?”

  “The kind who gets women to take out his trash.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What else would I have to do?”

  “Library books. Return them. Can’t seem to manage that.”

  “If you’ll de-scale the fish. I hate de-scaling fish.”

  “You do a lot of fishing?” he asked.

  “None.” She grinned.

  “Guess I can manage that. But you’ll need to pop all the bubble wrap. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case it doesn’t come popped. That stuff is a menace.”

  “You’re lucky Byron isn’t filming this,” Raina put in. “Both of you would lose all your street cred.”

  “I’m not sure I ever had any street cred,” Hope said.

  “Mine’s impenetrable,” Curtis said.

  “Like your thick skull?” Blake asked, picking up his pace and trudging past them. “Hurry up, or we’ll never get there.”

  Chapter Nine

  ‡

  Curtis ignored Blake and slowed a little, letting the other man get ahead of them. “What made you such a planner?” he asked when Blake was out of hearing range. The question had been bothering him because Hope had proved last night she could be every bit as much the “leap-before-you-look” type as well as a buttoned-up schedule type.

  At first he thought Hope might not answer. She took her time, trudging along beside him.

  “It was prom. Junior year,” Raina prompted softly from behind them.

  Hope cast a look back at her Curtis couldn’t decipher but then nodded. “She’s right,” she said reluctantly. “It was prom. Junior year. I was going with Liam North.”

  “The boy she’d had a crush on for years.”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is,” Raina said.

  Hope’s lips thinned. “It was just prom,” she said firmly. “I got the dress—”

  “It was stunning,” Raina put in.

  “I got the dress,” Hope repeated caustically, and Raina finally subsided. “Got my hair done. Nails. Everything. It was a huge fuss. You know the way prom is. My parents were over the moon about it all—my mom especially. I didn’t date much in high school. No one wanted to be connected with a freakishly tall geek.”

  “She was beautiful even back then,” Raina asserted. “She just didn’t know it. Guys liked her, but she intimidated them. Her mom wanted her to go to prom so she would finally realize how wonderful she is.”

  “Are you going to let me tell it or not? Raina’s wrong, you know,” Hope told Curtis. “She always thought I was beautiful because she’s so damn loyal, but boys back then didn’t even see me. Their eyes just skipped past me on their way to her.”

  “That’s not true,” Raina said softly. Hope ignored her.

  “Anyway, Mom kept going on about the photos. Liam had to come early so we could get lots of photos. She’d been waiting for years to get photos of me with a boyfriend.” She swallowed hard. “She was always proud of me for my academic record and the sports and everything else I did, too, but Raina’s right: she worried about me. The week before prom was this frantic last-minute craziness,” she went on. “Appointments. Homework. Plans. I didn’t see Liam much.”

  “Where were you in all this?” Curtis asked Raina when Hope stopped. “Didn’t you go to school together?”

  Raina busied herself with re-tying her scarf. “I went to prom with Teddy Johnson,” she said softly.

  “A football player,” Hope said.

  “A football player,” Raina echoed. “Teddy’s parents rented a limo for him and all his friends. Liam and Teddy didn’t get along…”

  She trailed off, and Curtis began to understand. They hadn’t gone to prom together, and something had happened to Hope. Something Raina at least partially blamed herself for.

  “We planned to meet at the dance and spend as much time together there as we could,” Hope said matter-of-factly. “I was fine with that. Prom night came. Liam was supposed to pick me up at six to go to dinner first,” she went on. “We had reservations with a few friends at this fancy place in town. Not football players, of course. Normal kids. People like me.”

  Curtis noticed the way Raina’s shoulders were drooping. Her normally cheerful countenance was grave.

  “What happened?” he asked. This was important—Hope needed to talk about it.

  “Six o’clock came. Liam didn’t show up. Six fifteen. My mom was beside herself. We wouldn’t have time for photos before the reservations.”

  Curtis’s heart squeezed at the thought of Hope all dressed up with nowhere to go as the clock ticked on. He’d experienced it, and that was fine. It might have annihilated him in the moment, but he was strong. A SEAL. He’d made it out the other side. Someone as beautiful and wonderful and honorable as Hope should never have to—

  “Six thirty rolled around. Liam wasn’t answering his phone. Finally, my mom called his mom. They’d served on the PTA together in the past. As far as Liam’s mom knew, he was supposed to be with me, but finally she tracked down a friend of his who admitted Liam had hooked up with someone else that week. Another girl at school, Brynn, who’d broken up with her boyfriend last minute and needed a date to prom, and figured she’d steal mine. What can I say? Brynn was fun and pretty and all the things I wasn’t.”

  Curtis’s throat ached with sympathy for Hope. He knew how old hurts lingered on, even when they shouldn’t. Had Hope asked herself what she’d done wrong? How she’d fallen short of the mark? It was hard to get past that kind of question when you got left behind.

  He’d asked himself those questions for years.

  Hope’s face was a stony mask as she related the story. “My mom couldn’t fathom it. ‘What about the photos?’ she kept asking. My dad offered to take me. Or get someone else to take me, but of course I didn’t go. I cried for hours. It was so stupid. It was just a dance.”

  “That kid made a big mi
stake,” Curtis told her, his voice thick with sympathetic pain. He knew the hurt she was describing, the agony of wondering… why?

  “Yeah.” Hope’s voice wobbled, and she struggled to get it under control, blinking back tears that were collecting in her eyes. Curtis moved to touch her but held back, surprised at the rawness of her grief. Getting stood up sucked, but her junior prom must have been eight or so years ago.

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  She swallowed. Shook her head and held out a hand to stop him when he moved nearer. “Liam did make a mistake. A really big one. Liam died—” She broke off and turned away, burying her face in both hands.

  Curtis stiffened. Died?

  “He was in an accident,” Raina supplied quietly. “Brynn was driving. She’d had too much to drink. Four of our classmates, including Liam, never made it home that night.”

  “Jesus.” This was the kind of pain Curtis couldn’t stand. The pain that came out of nowhere. The deaths that were senseless. The ones that struck people down who had no reason to die. He’d seen too many of those during his time in the Navy. He should have been hardened to them.

  He wasn’t.

  He moved toward Hope again, but she waved him off, scraping away the tears that were spilling over her cheeks with the back of her hand. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her there until those tears were spent, but he recognized that need for control, too. She was holding it all in—holding herself together.

  “He didn’t deserve that. Liam was a jerk to me, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

  “No, he didn’t. You didn’t deserve your prom night to end like that, either,” he said.

  “If we’d stuck to the plan, none of it would have happened,” she burst out, and understanding crashed over Curtis. That damned planner. The way she clung to it like a lifeline.

  “You had no control over—”

  “He wouldn’t have chosen Brynn if I was prettier, or more interesting—more like Raina. He’d be alive today, and I wouldn’t be like this. I wish I’d been someone different back then. I wish he’d never asked me at all!”

  Raina made a choked sound, and when Curtis looked her way, she’d covered her mouth with her hand. Tears were bright in her eyes, too. “I’m sorry,” she cried, as if the words were torn from her throat. “Hope, I’m sorry. I wanted you to be happy, that’s all! I wanted you to go to prom! I never meant for any of that to happen—”