A SEAL's Vow (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 2) Read online

  A SEAL’s Vow

  By Cora Seton

  Copyright © 2016 Cora Seton

  Kindle Edition

  Published by One Acre Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Excerpt from The Navy SEAL’s E-Mail Order Bride

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  A SEAL’s Vow is the second volume in the SEALs of Chance Creek series, set in the fictional town of Chance Creek, Montana. To find out more about Boone, Clay, Jericho and Walker, look for the rest of the books in the series, including:

  A SEAL’s Oath

  A SEAL’s Pledge

  A SEAL’s Consent

  Also, don’t miss Cora Seton’s other Chance Creek series, the Cowboys of Chance Creek and the Heroes of Chance Creek

  The Cowboys of Chance Creek Series:

  The Cowboy Inherits a Bride (Volume 0)

  The Cowboy’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 1)

  The Cowboy Wins a Bride (Volume 2)

  The Cowboy Imports a Bride (Volume 3)

  The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire (Volume 4)

  The Sheriff Catches a Bride (Volume 5)

  The Cowboy Lassos a Bride (Volume 6)

  The Cowboy Rescues a Bride (Volume 7)

  The Cowboy Earns a Bride (Volume 8)

  The Cowboy’s Christmas Bride (Volume 9)

  The Heroes of Chance Creek Series:

  The Navy SEAL’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 1)

  The Soldier’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 2)

  The Marine’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 3)

  The Navy SEAL’s Christmas Bride (Volume 4)

  The Airman’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 5)

  Visit Cora’s website at www.coraseton.com

  Find Cora on Facebook at facebook.com/CoraSeton

  Sign up for my newsletter HERE.

  Chapter One

  ‡

  Clay Pickett snapped awake with an alertness born of long years of active duty as a Navy SEAL. But he wasn’t in the hills of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq or any of the other exotic locales he’d visited during his years of service. He was thirty feet from the bunkhouse at Westfield, a large, once-prosperous ranch in Chance Creek, Montana, where he’d come with several of his oldest friends to build a sustainable community and show the world a better way to live.

  There shouldn’t be any danger here, but Clay was as alert as if he’d been sleeping in a minefield. You never knew where trouble would spring from. He found it best to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised when disaster didn’t strike. Holding his breath, he listened for the noise that had jolted him out of his dreams, but all he heard was the normal early morning sounds in Base Camp—the assortment of tents and outbuildings that formed the headquarters of the community for now. Someone was snoring. Someone else rolled over and settled back into sleep.

  Clay quickly pulled on boxer briefs, a pair of sweatpants, socks, shoes and a T-shirt, and eased the zipper of his tent open. As he stepped out into the cool pre-dawn air, the familiar scents of the countryside made him inhale deeply.

  Home.

  He was back where he belonged. Where there was good work to be done and a future for him. As he scanned the quiet tents, the nearby fire pit, bunkhouse and barns, and the farther off pastures that rolled down to the distant mountains, Clay relaxed.

  There was nothing out of order that he could see. Just his destiny spread out before him. Life was good. Real good.

  Something snapped in a row of bushes lining the dirt lane that ran from the bunkhouse out to the highway. Clay, alert again, moved quickly to investigate, and laughed when a wren darted out of the foliage and flew so close by his head he heard the whirr of its wings. There was nothing to fear here in Chance Creek.

  Except failure.

  Clay tried to ignore that thought, but it wound its way into his mind with the tenacity of a serpent entering paradise. He and his friends had a number of tough challenges ahead of them, but only one of them gave him pause.

  He needed a wife.

  Soon.

  Clay turned around to face the large, three-story stone house perched on a rise of ground a quarter mile away. Nicknamed the manor for its grandiose style, it had sheltered Westfield’s owners for over a hundred years. Now it housed Nora Ridgeway and her friends, who’d come to Chance Creek on a mission of their own. They’d left their jobs, apartments and city life behind to come to Westfield, and had promised each other they’d spend six months devoting themselves to the artistic endeavors they had studied back in college. In order to stretch their budget, they’d sold most of their possessions. Like the men of Base Camp, they practiced a frugal way of life, but where Clay and his friends relied on the latest technology to make their community sustainable, the women had gone in an entirely different direction. Instead of focusing on the future, they had turned to the past.

  “A Jane Austen life is a beautiful life,” Nora had explained to him in the early days of their acquaintance, back when he’d thought she was falling for him as fast as he was falling for her. “By living the way her characters did—without modern distractions—we have more time for our art, music and writing. When we wear Regency clothing, it’s a constant reminder of our goals—and, as Avery puts it, we’re less likely to go gallivanting into town all the time. People stare.”

  Clay had quickly grown to like those Regency dresses. They set off Nora’s figure in a wonderful way. In fact, he had to concentrate when she was around not to let his gaze drop too often—and linger too long—on her cleavage. Whatever she wore underneath those clothes did wonderful things to lift and plump up her breasts. More than that, Nora in one of those old-fashioned gowns revved him up in some primal way he couldn’t quite put into words. Her looking so womanly made him feel like a man. He’d never say that out loud, but it was true.

  The simple, peaceful rhythm of the women’s days appealed to Clay, too. He thought the two groups had goals that weren’t mutually exclusive, but that didn’t mean all went smoothly between them.

  Far from it.

  Clay missed the days when talking to Nora was simple. They’d ended as soon as the women had heard about the reality TV show being filmed about Base Camp. Once Nora knew the rules Clay had to live by, she’d backed off fast and Clay had promised not to pursue her. That had been a big mistake, one Clay regretted the moment he’d made it.

  Still, who could blame her? He knew what had scared her off. It wasn’t that the homes they built had to consume less than ten percent of the energy no
rmal houses used. It wasn’t that their energy grid had to run exclusively on renewable resources. It wasn’t that they needed to create a closed-loop gardening system and grow all the food they’d need to last through the winter.

  It was that their financial backer—eccentric billionaire Martin Fulsom—had dictated all ten men living in Base Camp had to marry within six months, and three of their wives had to be pregnant with the next generation, or they’d lose the ranch.

  Nora refused point blank to consider marrying anyone in such a short period of time. Clay had tried to be a gentleman. He’d tried to back off. But it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t cure himself of the desire to make Nora his wife.

  Somehow he had to convince Nora he was the man for her—despite her reservations. He didn’t know how. Didn’t know if she could be convinced.

  But he sure as hell was going to try.

  Starting today.

  Someone was watching her.

  Nora came fully awake and sat up in bed, listening to the silence. She’d been on edge for months now, ever since she’d started getting disturbing phone messages from one of her students. But she’d left all that behind her when she’d come to Chance Creek. No one outside her family and a couple of friends had her address or new phone number. She hadn’t heard a word from her stalker in the two months since she’d arrived.

  Dust motes danced in a beam of early morning light that pierced through the curtains of her third-story bedroom. The old-fashioned furnishings and pretty curtains were the same as ever. Nora loved this room, but something had woken her. A sound.

  A click.

  She turned to the door but it was shut as tight as always when she went to bed. She didn’t lock herself in at night—she was paranoid about fires in this large, old house, and mindful of the two-story drop outside her window should she ever have to escape one. Had one of her friends opened the door, looked inside to see if she was awake, then shut it again?

  “Riley?” Nora whispered.

  If anyone was awake this early it would be her. It was only two days to Riley’s wedding, and Nora knew her friend was nervous about it. She slid out of bed, threw her robe around her and went to the door. She opened it carefully, looked out into the empty hall and padded over to the staircase. “Riley?” she called softly again.

  No answer.

  She must have been imagining things. Or maybe the house had settled. This old pile of stone did that a lot.

  Nora returned to her room, but although the bed looked warm and comfortable, the quiet countryside she could see through her windows beckoned to her. She seldom got time alone these days, and if she hurried, she could get a little writing in before breakfast and morning chores. She’d head down to Pittance Creek, bring her notebook and a pen. Maybe the setting would inspire her and she’d finally make some headway.

  She moved to the window, surveyed the cluster of tents down by the bunkhouse and picked out Clay’s. There was nothing to distinguish it from the others, but she knew exactly where it was. She’d seen the handsome SEAL enter and exit it a hundred times.

  Nora knew she shouldn’t watch him like this.

  She couldn’t seem to stop.

  Clay Pickett. Strong. Rugged. Six feet plus of muscles, piercing eyes and a smile that did things to her insides. A coil of energy waiting to spring most of the time. She’d met him the day he’d flown into Chance Creek. The day she’d been trying to fly out of it, trying to run back to Baltimore, back to her old life. She’d changed her mind almost the second Riley’s fiancé, Boone Rudman, had spotted her, crossed the terminal to intercept her and introduced her to Clay. She was sure Clay had felt something, too. He’d taken her hand, caught her gaze and the next thing she knew she was headed back to Westfield. She’d never admitted it to any of her friends, but on that very first day, right there in the airport, she’d seen Clay decide she was the one. She’d read it in his eyes. The answering heat that had rushed through her when he held her hand had almost convinced her he was right. That was her weakness: the way Clay touched her. Carefully. Confidently. She melted every time. Two strangers shouldn’t know they were meant for each other.

  Couldn’t know, Nora reminded herself. Who was to say her parents hadn’t felt a similar heat when they met? Attraction like that flared hot, then quickly burned itself out, leaving everyone involved nursing wounds—especially the children. She’d seen it all firsthand when she was young and her father had walked out on her family, leaving her mother to struggle to make ends meet for the rest of her short life. Nora wanted no part of it.

  Still, her gaze slid in Clay’s direction whenever he was near. But he was out of bounds, determined to marry within a time period so short it was ridiculous, because he had to for the reality television show he was starring in. Maybe that made him a man of honor since he’d vowed to do whatever it took to make Base Camp succeed, but in Nora’s eyes it made him a fool. Love took time to grow. Lots of time. Her parents were a classic example of what happened when a man and woman leaped before they looked. She wouldn’t repeat their mistakes.

  Not even with a man like Clay.

  Time to write, she told herself firmly and began to dress, struggling with her old-fashioned clothes. Several months back, she and her friends had each been saddled with dead-end jobs, high rent and low pay in their various cities. They’d met at Riley’s apartment for a girls’ weekend, and realized they all needed to make a change. Savannah Edwards, a lovely blonde and an expert classical pianist, had been the first to suggest they pool their resources, cut way back on their expenses and take six months to pursue their artistic goals.

  Riley Eaton, a pretty brunette with a passion for painting, who’d believed her family still owned Westfield, suggested they make use of the empty house and live rent free. When Nora told the others they were fooling themselves if they thought they had the discipline to pull it off, Avery Lightfoot, a talkative redhead, suggested an unusual way to make sure they kept close to home. She pointed out that since they meant to live a Jane Austen–style existence for six months, they should dress like Jane Austen heroines, too. They’d spend their mornings doing chores, and leave their afternoons free for creative pursuits. Riley would paint, Savannah practice her piano, Nora write her novel and Avery produce a screenplay.

  In the end, they’d all agreed to the plan—even Nora—and their Regency outfits became a physical representation of the oath they’d taken to see the full six months through. Each morning when she dressed it was like renewing her promise to herself to give writing a real go. To her surprise, Nora found she loved it. Putting on a Regency gown was like stepping out of time. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way. When Savannah’s cousin found out what they were doing, she asked to hold her wedding at the manor. That sparked an idea for a Jane Austen–style bed-and-breakfast—and wedding venue—that would allow them to stay at Westfield past the initial six months.

  Nora had come to love the pace of life at the manor. Here at Westfield it was easy to imagine herself in those long-ago days—until she looked out her window and saw the encampment of nylon tents down by the outbuildings. Base Camp—the only fly in the ointment. Once she and her friends had arrived at Westfield, they’d quickly learned Riley’s uncle had sold the ranch. Luckily Boone—Riley’s husband-to-be—would own it with his friends—if and when they fulfilled the requirements of the reality television show they were part of.

  Unfortunately, while Nora and her friends viewed their purpose for being here as a chance to pursue the arts, the men of Base Camp seemed to view them as wife fodder—conveniently placed single women who should be happy to marry them at the drop of a hat. She hadn’t come here to marry, though.

  Nora had come here to write—and, if she was honest, to get away from the student who’d made her life a living hell back in Baltimore. But she didn’t want to think of the increasingly disturbing and violent messages he’d recorded on her voice mail before she’d left—not when a beautiful morning was dawning outside her windo
w. All that was behind her now, and if she’d had to leave the teaching job she loved to get away from his harassment, that was just life.

  A light rap on her door startled her. “Nora? Do you need help with your clothes?”

  Nora took a deep breath, willing her heart to start beating again. Damn her stalker and the way he’d made her into this nervous wreck. She went to open it and found Riley in the hall, hair tousled, looking far younger than her years in the voluminous, old-fashioned nightgown she wore.

  “Did I wake you?” Nora asked her to cover her overreaction.

  “I’m not sure. Something did. Where are you off to so early?”

  “Down to the creek. I’m looking for inspiration.”

  A smile curved Riley’s mouth. “Pittance Creek can be inspiring.”

  Nora wondered what memory inspired that smile, but she finished pulling on her underthings and slipped her stays on over her chemise. Riley moved behind her and began to tug the laces tight. Getting into Regency clothing was not a solitary pursuit. Several minutes later, Nora was dressed.

  “What about you?” she asked Riley.

  “Go on. I want to shower. I’ll wait for Savannah or Avery to help me.”

  Five minutes later, Nora struck out down the track that led past Base Camp toward the creek. She wondered if Clay was awake. The camp seemed quiet as she walked past.

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. That wasn’t why she was here.

  But she was disappointed when she didn’t see him.

  As Clay jogged down the two-lane country highway that led to town, his earlier disquiet slipped away. These daily runs were a lifesaver to him. Always had been. Like his father before him, Clay was wound as tight as a watch. His endless energy had gotten him kicked out of more grade-school classrooms than he could count when his bouncing knee jostled a desk for the third time in thirty minutes and knocked pencils and papers flying, or his endlessly tapping fingers finally drove a teacher to lose her cool and start screaming.