A SEAL's Triumph Page 14

  “I don’t think she fell for him for very long.” Nora sat beside her husband, Connie in her arms. “Sounds like they spent a single night together.”

  “That’s not a marriage.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not the length of time they spent together; it’s the paperwork that matters,” Nora said.

  “And Brody’s refusal to agree to an annulment,” Renata said, as if someone had asked. “I looked into it. Those two could get it done in a matter of days if both agreed to it, but he won’t agree, no matter what Avery tells him.”

  Nora perked up at that. So did Walker. “How many days?” Nora asked.

  “Four,” Renata said.

  Four days? Walker straightened. Then there was time. He could see everyone else had the same thought.

  “I bet he’d sign if we left him alone with Walker for an hour or two,” Nora said darkly.

  “Then Walker would be behind bars,” Renata pointed out, “and he wouldn’t be able to marry anyone. We need to convince Brody it’s in his best interest—without roughing him up.”

  “Why does he want to stay married to Avery anyway?” Clay asked. “I haven’t seen him touch her once.”

  “Avery would kill him if he touched her,” Addison said.

  “He hasn’t even tried.”

  Clay was right; Brody spent far more time hamming it up for the cameras than he did trying to reconcile with Avery. If he was married to her—

  No. Walker couldn’t let himself even think about it.

  Nora was staring at him. “Come to think of it, why does Elizabeth want to marry you? She never touches you, that I’ve seen. Hardly even acknowledges your existence.”

  The group turned to look Elizabeth’s way. Once again she was standing on the outskirts of the log circle—on her phone.

  “What do you mean they changed the hearing date? Are you kidding me? After all that work?” he heard her say.

  Work. Again.

  “I thought she was quitting her job,” Nora said.

  “Not yet,” Walker said.

  Elizabeth paced up and down. “How long did they postpone it for? A couple of days?” She stopped dead. “What?” She raked a hand through her long dark hair. “No, that doesn’t work. You can’t let them push it back that far.” A pause. “Because it doesn’t work! I’m not kidding, Erin. You’ve got to get them to move it up.” Another pause. “I don’t know—talk to someone on the committee!”

  Walker spotted Gabe standing a dozen feet away. He’d been sitting on his own, bent over his phone and tapping away at it, sending messages to someone. Now his phone was out of sight, his hands were shoved deep in his pockets and he was staring at Elizabeth.

  “He’s sure got the hots for her,” Nora said.

  Walker was beginning to think she was right. At first, he’d thought Gabe latched on to Elizabeth as one outsider desperate for the company of another. There was true concern in his expression, however.

  “I can’t wait that long,” Elizabeth was saying. “I—” She turned. Caught them all looking. “Jesus, I’ve got to go. I don’t know how you make them change it. Just do it!”

  She ended the call, shoved the phone in her pocket and faced them. “So eavesdropping is just normal now, huh?”

  “Something’s got you in a dither,” Nora drawled. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  Walker didn’t think he’d ever seen Elizabeth look so flummoxed.

  “It’s just… it’s just a problem with my job.”

  “The job you’re quitting?”

  “The job where I still care about my coworkers and the effort they’re putting in to make this a better world,” Elizabeth retorted. “Surely you all understand about that.”

  “We understand about wanting to change the world,” Addison put in calmly. “But we also want to win this ranch, and you’re spending way more time talking to that coworker than you are talking to Walker.”

  “You ever tried talking to Walker?” Elizabeth stalked off to the bunkhouse before any of them could answer.

  “She’s got a point,” Clay said.

  “She does,” Nora agreed.

  “What’s going on?” Avery asked, coming out of the bunkhouse with a cup of tea a moment later. “I heard yelling.”

  Her presence focused Walker’s mind on what was important. “Your marriage can be annulled in four days.”

  “Only if Brody agrees, and he’ll never do that. Don’t think I haven’t tried to convince him.”

  “You all are giving up way too easily,” Eve spoke up for the first time. Walker had noticed her sitting nearby but hadn’t known if she was following the conversation. “We need to find footage of Avery’s and Brody’s lives from the time of their so-called marriage up to the present. We need to prove they’ve lived separately all that time, never mingled their money, never lived together, never even spoken to each other in all these years.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we put it on the show. If Fulsom won’t help us get a rushed annulment, maybe someone else will step up. We can put pressure on the Vegas chapel that married them, make it clear what an opportunist Brody is being by refusing to sign the paperwork. We can tell fans to send him hate mail. I don’t know!”

  “It’s a good start,” Renata said slowly. “Avery, pull together all the evidence you can find that you weren’t with him all this time. Statements from boyfriends, friends and family, photos from that time period, emails that reflect your single status, rental records for the apartments where you lived. Eve and I will find evidence about Brody’s life. We’ll stay up all night if we need to, right, Eve?”

  “I’ll help, too,” Greg spoke up. “We did this once before, remember. We can do it again.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” Avery said. “I don’t know if it’ll work, though. He’s pretty stuck on the idea of staying.”

  “I have another idea,” Eve said. She lowered her voice, casting a look over her shoulder to make sure Brody wasn’t in earshot. “Brody’s getting awfully close with Jess these days. I think you should ignore him, Avery. Don’t even go near him. He’ll make a play for Jess sooner or later. That type of guy can’t stand not to have an adoring woman on his arm.”

  “Who’ll get that footage?” Greg asked.

  “I will,” Eve said confidently. “Just leave it to me.”

  “What do you think?” Renata asked Walker.

  “Do whatever it takes,” he said. “Let me know how I can help.”

  If Elizabeth had been consumed with her phone before, now she clung to it like a Jack Russell terrier who’d caught a rat. She tapped at it all day long. Took calls at all hours. Grew as snappish as a wolf guarding its kill when anyone came close.

  “You planning that wedding?” Sue asked Walker one morning, calling him from her school.

  “I’m not doing anything but keeping my distance,” he told her honestly. “Elizabeth’s like a wolverine who’s been poked with a fishing rod. You want a wedding, you plan it!”

  Sue hung up on him.

  Everyone else at Base Camp was busier than ever, and he should be busy, too, but instead all he could do was wait. Wait for Avery to amass footage of her life. Wait for Renata and Greg to research Brody’s and wait for Eve to catch Brody in the act—if there ever was an act between him and Jess.

  Boone had ordered Avery to the manor, on Renata’s recommendation, telling everyone Avery was giving the building a top-to-bottom clean, a ridiculous notion since the women had just done that and closed it up.

  Since no one could be alone, Boone had assigned Angus, Win, Hope and Curtis to join her. Walker found his way there whenever he could until Boone intercepted him one morning before breakfast.

  “You’re supposed to be spending time with Elizabeth.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “There’s no guarantee Renata’s plan is going to work. You need to marry someone in two weeks. If Elizabeth takes off—”

  “What makes you think s
he’ll take off?”

  “She doesn’t look like a woman who plans to stay,” Boone pointed out. “In fact—” His attention was captured by something behind Walker, and Walker turned to see Jericho running their way.

  “It’s Montague. He’s sent his men here again. They’re staking out more mansions.”

  “Not again,” Boone exclaimed.

  He marched off to confront them, and Walker followed, knowing his friend was near the breaking point.

  “Don’t mind us,” Montague’s foreman said cheerfully when the three of them reached him. “Just bringing our beautiful housing development to life.” He unfurled a sheaf of plans. “Want to see?”

  An army of men swarmed around the sloping ground, groups of four staking out the corners of homes all over the place. They’d come with premeasured ribbon this time, he realized. Four men to a group. Each held a stake and marched as far as he could go until the ribbon went taut. Then they pounded the stakes into the ground. An entire neighborhood of rectangular houses was springing up before them, an awful vision of what was to come.

  “If you’re trying to intimidate us, it isn’t going to work,” Boone said.

  “I’m trying to show you the light, friend. Tiny houses are over. People want space and lots of it. They want to spread out. Face it, we all hate our families; why not get as far as possible from each other if we have to live together?”

  “Because it’s a waste of resources!”

  Did people hate their families? Walker hoped not.

  The foreman stepped closer to Boone. “Who cares? Dude, you’re so busy playing your little games you haven’t even noticed you already lost! Climate change is happening. Global warming is happening. The seas are going to rise, the storms are going to come, everything’s going to go extinct. Who… fucking… cares? If we’re all going down, why not do it in style? Why not make a few freaking dollars before the apocalypse?”

  Boone stared at him a long moment, then shoved him with both hands—hard. While the man stumbled backward, Boone charged past him, straight for the corner stake of the closest mansion marked out nearby. He yanked the stake out of the ground and kept going, the ribbon attached to it fluttering in his wake. He yanked another stake out and another and another until the men caught on to what was happening and went after him.

  Walker raced to stop them, bellowing for Clay and Jericho, knowing anyone who heard his voice would come running.

  They did, half of them veering off to help him prevent Montague’s men from interfering with Boone’s rampage through the staked-out mansions and half of them starting to rip out stakes on their own.

  Soon the camera crew had caught up and started filming the melee. Walker, Jericho, Kai and a couple of others were doing their best not to let the fight devolve into an all-out brawl as the rest of them laid waste to the work Montague’s men had done so far.

  “Tell Montague next time he’d better come here himself, and when he does, he’d better be ready to face me!” Boone called.

  Walker caught Boone’s arm before he lost all control, and the foreman and his crew retreated the way they’d come, muttering among themselves.

  “Feel a little better, Chief?” Clay asked when they were gone.

  Boone snorted, then covered his face with his hands. “Hell, I’ve really put my foot in it now, haven’t I?”

  “Not sure Montague can let that challenge go,” Jericho said. “Not if he doesn’t want to be a laughingstock around here.”

  “In other words, I took a bad situation and made it worse.” Boone dropped his arms and looked to Walker. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’d better expect more trouble before this is all over.”

  Avery wished she’d been there to see Boone’s rampage, as the incident was named in the days following the event, but she was pleased at how much footage and documentation she’d been able to amass and hand over to Renata and Greg. Having hours at the manor away from Brody made it easy to get the work done.

  She trusted Renata to do a good job with it but wished she’d been allowed to stitch the footage together for this episode herself. Instead, she’d get to see it for the first time with everyone else, including Brody, when their preview started in a few minutes.

  How would he take it? Last night, as usual, he’d made a big show of bedding down near her, but he hadn’t made a pass at her yet, thank goodness. She thought Eve was right and he was forming an attachment to Jess, a sweet, young thing who really deserved better in Avery’s opinion. Brody had never slipped in her presence and betrayed himself, though.

  “Ready for this?” Riley dropped down in the seat beside her. The episode would air nationwide tonight, but like usual they got to see it ahead of time. Boone was huddled with some of the other men by the bunkhouse door, assigning watch duty shifts for the next week. Everyone else was finding seats and chatting.

  “I think so. Just wish I knew if it would do any good.”

  “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  Avery looked around. “There.” She had just emerged from the bathroom and was making her way toward the chairs, studiously avoiding looking at Walker.

  “Have you noticed she seems… I don’t know… desperate lately?” Riley asked.

  Desperate. That was a good word for the look in Elizabeth’s eyes. Or hunted, Avery thought. That was an even better word. “Something’s going on. I think it has to do with her job. Remember how she was yelling at someone on the phone the other day?”

  “Something got postponed, right?”

  “That’s right. Wish I knew what it was.” Maybe she’d understand the woman and her motivations better. If Elizabeth made any pretence of being attracted to Walker, Avery would understand perfectly why she was fighting for him, but Elizabeth never did. Unless one of the crew questioned directly about her intention to marry him, at which point she declared her undying love for him in no uncertain terms.

  At the front of the room, Renata and Greg set up the laptop and screen and queued up the episode. Sometimes Avery didn’t know if it was better or worse that they got to see it before it went live on television.

  As the familiar intro music began to play, Avery clasped her hands in her lap, her fingernails biting into her palms. Walker sat down not far away but didn’t look at her. The episode began with its usual montage of activities around Base Camp, Kai and Addison in the kitchen sweaty from cooking on a hot spring day, Walker and Avery near the bison pasture—that footage must have been captured before Elizabeth or Gabe or Brody came—Jericho and Savannah sitting in front of their tiny house, Jacob asleep in Jericho’s arms.

  A recap of the events of the last few weeks came next, even though some of this footage had been shown on previous episodes. Win and Angus’s wedding and Elizabeth’s surprise arrival, caught in excruciating detail. Avery lived her anguish all over again as Elizabeth asked Walker on-screen when he meant to marry her. There was footage of Nora and Clay heading to the hospital. Everyone greeting baby Connie after she was born.

  There was an interlude that included the birth of one of the bison—a birth that had happened several days after that first magical one that Walker and Avery had witnessed alone—and then there was Gabe’s arrival.

  Next the footage changed to highlight Montague’s crew staking out mansions near where they planned to build the next set of tiny houses. Booing and hissing rose from the assembled crowd before the show flipped back to Gabe following Avery around and Elizabeth sticking close to Walker. The contrast between Gabe’s willingness to help with chores and Elizabeth’s obsession with her phone was played up to comic effect.

  “What about Brody?” Avery hissed to Riley.

  Riley shrugged, but there he was on screen, arriving with his guitar case and cowboy hat.

  “There’s a handsome devil,” Brody called out. There was a polite titter, but only Jess laughed.

  In the show, Brody strummed on his guitar and sang a song by the fire pit, footage Avery was sure he loved because i
t showed him at his best, but before any of them could settle in to enjoy—or endure—the song, the scene changed to show a much younger Brody playing with a band at some club. A date flashed on-screen, one perilously close to when she’d met him at eighteen. He was lankier back then with a hat so pristine and new it nearly glowed. A montage flipped by of his life: his tours with his little known band. Photos of his apartments, family reunions he’d attended. “I hope he settles down one of these days,” a woman labelled “Brody’s Mom” said into a camera. “But my son dates a new girl every week.” A date flashed up on the screen. Five years ago—well into his supposed marriage to Avery.

  The footage changed to start including clips from Avery’s life. She’d kept a video diary for years, and it had been easy to coordinate footage with dates. On-screen, images of Brody at shows, Brody kissing other women, Brody on vacation and more flashed up with pertinent dates, alternating with entries from Avery’s video diary, showing her in other locations, at other occasions, with other men in other homes and with her own family.

  The message was clear: she and Brody were never in the same place at the same time, even within days of their marriage. They never talked to each other, never called each other—Avery’s phone records flashed on-screen—were never photographed or caught on camera together despite both of them spending considerable time being filmed. The episode ended with Renata interviewing Avery.

  “Tell me about your marriage to Brody,” she asked.

  “I danced with him at a club, went to some chapel, went to some motel and fell asleep. When I woke up, he was gone. All in all, I spent less than six hours with the man. I’ve never heard from him since until he showed up here. Is that what you call a marriage?”

  The footage switched again. Here was Brody playing a song at the fire pit, Jess watching avidly from a few feet away. Brody going for a walk with Jess. Brody eating dinner with Jess. Brody leaning in close to talk to Jess. Leading her behind the bunkhouse.

  Brody and Jess locked in an embrace.