Issued to the Bride One Airman (Brides of Chance Creek Book 2) Read online

  Issued to the Bride:

  One Airman

  Cora Seton

  Copyright © 2017 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

  Prologue

  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

  Excerpt from A SEAL’s Oath

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Issued to the Bride One Airman is the second volume in the Brides of Chance Creek series, set in the fictional town of Chance Creek, Montana. To find out more about Brian, Cass, Connor, Sadie, Jack, Logan and Hunter, look for the rest of the books in the series, including:

  Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  Issued to the Bride One Marine

  Issued to the Bride One Sniper

  Issued to the Bride One Soldier

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

  The SEALs of Chance Creek Series:

  A SEAL’s Oath

  A SEAL’s Vow

  A SEAL’s Pledge

  A SEAL’s Consent

  A SEAL’s Purpose

  A SEAL’s Resolve

  A SEAL’s Devotion

  A SEAL’s Desire

  A SEAL’s Struggle

  A SEAL’s Triumph

  Visit Cora’s website at www.coraseton.com

  Find Cora on Facebook at facebook.com/CoraSeton

  Sign up for my newsletter HERE.

  Prologue

  ‡

  General Augustus Reed knew better than most the way courage and cowardice raged a constant battle in a man’s soul. All his life he’d felt confident courage won out as far as he was concerned.

  Not today.

  As he sat back in his wooden chair in his office at USSOCOM at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, his gaze rested on his cell phone. Soon enough he’d have to make a call he dreaded.

  His daughter, Cass was getting married in a few hours.

  And he wasn’t there to walk her down the aisle.

  There were all kinds of reasons why not. Reasons that involved meetings, tasks, duty—hell, even national security—but he could have overcome them if he’d really tried.

  He hadn’t tried at all.

  He’d never once gone back to Two Willows after his wife, Amelia, died. That was more than anyone could expect him to do.

  Even if it meant the gulf between him and his girls had widened into an abyss.

  At least he’d done one thing right, the General assured himself. Amelia had left him instructions to send Cass a man—a good man. He’d sent her a Navy SEAL.

  Brian Lake.

  Now Cass was marrying him. That filled him with a small sense of accomplishment. It was as if he’d managed to build a slender bridge to Two Willows, the ranch where his daughters lived. That bridge wouldn’t hold his weight yet.

  But maybe someday it would.

  He opened the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk and surveyed the small stack of envelopes that remained there. His wife’s legacy to him. Drawing out the top one, he smoothed his hand over Amelia’s neat script. Cass had sent the box of letters shortly after her mother’s death—when it became clear to both of them the General wasn’t coming home.

  He opened the letter Amelia had dated for today.

  Dear Augustus,

  I wish I could be there to see Cass walk down the aisle—and you with her. I know you are as handsome as ever, and Cass will enter her married life with her father’s support and comfort through one of the most important days of her life.

  The General stiffened.

  Swallowed.

  He’d let Amelia down—again.

  But she didn’t understand; his wasn’t a job he could turn his back on easily. Trouble could crop up anywhere in the world at any moment—it was a far different time—

  The General blew out an angry breath. Did he think he could fool himself with his own lies?

  Truth was he couldn’t face the ranch. Couldn’t walk the land she’d walked all her life. Two Willows was Griffith land—not Reed ground. Every inch of that property reminded him of his wife.

  He wasn’t ready to go back to it.

  Not yet.

  He returned to the piece of paper in his hand. Up until Amelia’s death, the General had been able to wave away her hunches and suspicions as mere women’s intuition. But nothing could explain these letters. Letters she’d written before her stroke. Years of letters carefully dated—each of them prescient in ways the General could hardly believe.

  Augustus—enough bullshit. I know you’re not at Two Willows for Cass’s wedding. I’ve tried to ignore these feelings—this intuition—through all the letters I’ve written you so far, because I cannot believe a man brave enough to face death a thousand times over during his career has succumbed to a fear so irrational.

  The General stared at the page. Read those sentences again. This was an Amelia he’d never seen before—or read before. She… knew?

  Knew how badly he’d failed her?

  Augustus, treading on Two Willows land won’t make me any more dead, just as sitting there in your office won’t make me any more alive. You are a man of science—of knowledge. You know this. What are you doing in Florida when Cass is marrying the man she loves?

  The General couldn’t have been more shocked if Amelia had walked through the door and bashed him with her pocketbook, which he’d figured she’d like to have done once or twice when she was alive.

  She never had, though. Had never raised her voice to him—not like this.

  Now her exasperation spilled right off the page.

  What’s done is done. But it’s time to pull yourself together and get it right. It’s Sadie’s turn. Do you have a man for her?

  He did. Thank God. It was a small straw, but the General grasped it with all his might. Connor O’Riley was about to leave for Two Willows. He should arrive
before the reception was over.

  Send him. And while you’re waiting for the magic to happen between them, start putting your affairs in order and get ready to go home. It’s been far too long, Augustus. You know that.

  Your loving wife,

  Amelia

  He did know that. And Amelia was right; he should go home. It was time—long past time, if he was honest with himself.

  But that didn’t make it easier.

  “General?” The door opened and Corporal Myers stuck his head in. “General, things just went all to hell in—”

  “Thank God!” The General surged to his feet, startling the corporal but ready for action. For decisions. For the kind of work that would keep him up day and night for weeks handling an international crisis.

  He’d head to Two Willows when it was over.

  If something else hadn’t gone wrong in the world that he needed to fix.

  Chapter One

  ‡

  Pararescueman Connor O’Riley was standing in the large square office he’d shared at USSOCOM these past three months, when Logan Hughes walked in whistling, sat down at his desk and thunked a tall takeout cup of coffee near the monitor of his computer. A barrel of a man from Idaho, with biceps as big as cantaloupes, the marine was always cheerful, and Connor had grown to enjoy his sense of humor.

  “Hello, baby girl!” Logan kissed the palm of his hand and slapped it against the photograph of a dark-haired young woman with blue eyes that hung on the wall nearby. Then he pulled a breakfast sandwich out of a paper bag and began to eat.

  “Don’t let the General see you do that,” Connor said automatically. The photograph was of the General’s daughter—Lena Reed—and the General didn’t stand for any nonsense where his family was concerned.

  “Don’t let him see me eat?” Logan asked in mock confusion.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Jack Sanders said from across the room. “Do you two have to do the same routine every. Single. Damn. Morning?” Jack was a member of the Special Forces whose far more serious disposition was always at odds with Logan’s lighthearted joking.

  “Nope. This is the last time,” Connor said. It was true—he was due on a plane in just over two hours. He’d land in Montana before the day was done, and soon he’d see Lena Reed in person. But he wasn’t traveling to the General’s ranch to visit Lena. Sadie Reed was his mark.

  He glanced at the photograph that hung over his desk, near enough to slap a kiss on like Logan had Lena’s. He’d been staring at Sadie Reed for nearly three months, trying to come to terms with the strange twist his life had taken.

  Soon she’d be his wife.

  Of course, she didn’t know that yet.

  “Thank God,” Jack said. “Because I don’t think I could stand it anymore.”

  “Just because O’Riley’s leaving doesn’t mean I plan to stop.” Logan took another large bite of his sandwich. He chewed and swallowed. “Lena and me have gotten to be old friends.” He patted the photograph.

  Connor rolled his eyes. The General had done a fine job pairing his oldest daughter, Cass, with Brian Lake, a Navy SEAL who’d been here for the first month of their joint time at USSOCOM. Despite the fact he’d never had any intention of marrying, Connor thought he, himself, had a fair chance with Sadie, who seemed a practical—and pretty—young woman with a penchant for gardening. But he had no idea what the General had been thinking when he picked Logan for any of his girls—or Jack, or Hunter Powell, the Navy SEAL sniper who rounded out the “task force,” either. Logan’s brashness would clash with Lena’s reputed temper.

  As for the pairing of the youngest Reed daughter, Jo, with the battle-hardened Hunter? How could the General have made such a mismatch? At thirty-four, Hunter was the oldest of them. Jo, with her elfin, mischievous face, was only twenty-one. The two would have nothing in common.

  But by far the worst of the pairings had to be Jack and Alice Reed. If he hadn’t known Jack was with the Special Forces, he would have pegged him as CIA. A slipperier man he’d never come across, and he’d seen the soldier eye Alice’s photograph with similar doubt. Alice was beautiful, Connor would grant her that, but it was a beauty as otherworldly as the premonitions Brian said she had. According to the SEAL, Alice was as fey as an Irish pixie, and Connor, who’d grown up on tales of the wee folk, knew well enough not to mess with them.

  How on earth was a girl like Alice going to fall in love with a just-the-facts, cagey man like Jack?

  And what was the world coming to when an airman like himself had to be this concerned with the love lives of the men around him?

  It was all the General’s fault, of course.

  But no—that wasn’t true, was it?

  It was all his own fault. And love was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. The irony of that hadn’t been lost on him.

  Connor had given up on love a long time ago. He’d wrung it out of his system as just another lie that people believed because it made them feel better. He’d seen the way love could get two people in its grip, bring them together and then tear them apart. His own parents’ divorce had put an ocean and most of a continent between him and the mother and brother he’d loved. It had ripped him from the country he’d called his home for his first ten years. It had taken his magical, safe childhood and crushed it under the heel of the rancor and discord that had divided his family ever since.

  Connor liked women, and dated frequently, but he’d never—not once—risked losing his heart. Not to Lila, who he’d met on leave, nor to Bridget, who he’d met through a dating app, nor to the other women he’d flirted with online and met up with in person when the timing worked out.

  So he still couldn’t explain why he’d lost his head during his last mission.

  As a pararescueman, he’d made many jumps into difficult circumstances, and he’d seen things that would leave most men curled into a fetal position for days. But the last jump he’d made into Syria had touched him in ways nothing had before or since. Not because of the injuries sustained by the pilot he’d been sent to rescue; the pilot had survived, and that was what counted.

  But because during that short and successful mission, for the first time in his life he’d witnessed true love—and true selflessness.

  And had been thoroughly humbled by both.

  He’d gone beyond the bounds of his mandate to rescue two innocent bystanders in that godforsaken war. He’d thought he’d done what was right.

  Too bad the Air Force disagreed.

  So here he was at USSOCOM as one of the General’s misfits. Part of the Joint Special Task Force for Inter-Branch Communication Clarity—a bullshit title for a team that didn’t even exist. All Connor and the rest of the men who had landed here three months ago had done was kill time with busywork that accomplished nothing.

  They weren’t here to do anything but wait their turn to serve the General’s real purpose for them. One by one he’d ship them off to Two Willows. One by one he’d marry them off to his daughters. Bit by bit the man would reclaim control of his ranch after a feud with his girls that had lasted for years.

  And by following the General’s orders and playing his part in the ruse, Connor would clear his record of the big black stain that threatened to dog him through the rest of his life. In the process he’d become part owner in a jewel of a ranch in Chance Creek, Montana. He’d get a new start. Another chance.

  A wife.

  At first Connor had been as horrified as the other men at the predicament he found himself in, but as the weeks had passed and he’d followed Brian’s progress from intruder, to fiancé, to Cass’s soon-to-be husband at Two Willows, he’d come to see his fate might not be so bad.

  Connor missed ranching. It was in his blood, after all. He’d ridden as soon as he could walk, first at his mother’s family’s small holding in Ireland, and then—after his parents’ divorce—on the huge Texas spread where his father worked as overseer. Connor had always wanted his own place. Always thought it was ou
t of reach.

  But it wasn’t anymore.

  The only catch was he had to pledge his heart to Sadie Reed, whose enigmatic face had stared out of the frame hanging by his desk for the last three months. Sadie, who by all accounts was as tied to her Montana ranch as he’d thought he was tied to Ireland as a child. She had tended its extensive gardens—and its hedge maze—since she was young, and she ran a farm stand and sold herbal cures to her neighbors, according to Brian.

  He remembered the helicopter ride back from Syria. Remembered Halil’s words in the midst of all the chaos and noise. Find a wife. Make her your everything. Advice from a stranger, in a war zone, on the other side of the world.

  Exactly what he’d always sworn to himself he’d never do.

  Exactly what he had to do now.

  It was going to be all right, he told himself. Despite his past, he could make a commitment and stick to it.

  Because from everything Brian had told them, Two Willows was as special a place as his mother’s small holding, Ard na Greine, in Ireland, and he could see for himself Sadie was a special woman. If he had to marry—and he had to, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of every man in this room—he could do a lot worse.

  If Sadie would have him.

  Logan finished his sandwich, balled up the wrapper and pitched it into the trash can across the room, pulling Connor from his thoughts.

  “Ready to catch yourself a wife, O’Riley?” he asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” Connor wondered who’d take over his line tomorrow in their daily routine. Jack? Probably not. Hunter?

  Nah.

  “See you on the other side,” he told them, all too used to these kinds of unanswered questions. Someday maybe they’d all be together again on the ranch.

  But only if he succeeded at his mission.

  And married Sadie Reed.

  Her garden was dying.

  On the morning of Cass’s wedding, Sadie stood among the rows of plants, her practiced eye noting the yellow and brown shadings among the verdant green. She’d learned the art of tending the three acres that formed the kitchen garden, and the hedge maze that took up an additional acre, at her mother’s knee, parroting the Latin names and uses of each plant as her mother imparted the information she’d learned from her mother before her. She still ran the farm stand her mother had run, and her mother before her. It sat at the end of the lane, and worked on the honor system, with prices clearly marked and a tin for her customers to leave their money in.