A SEAL's Triumph Read online

  “She’s skipped about ten steps between the wind turbines helping to power our energy grid and the recipes I make on the show, which do involve cooking by the way, most of the time in regular ovens.”

  “We know,” Addison said soothingly.

  “As for his wife, Addison?” Paul said. “What kind of a name is Addison, anyway? Sounds foreign to me.”

  “Sounds like a woman trying to be a man,” Marla said.

  “She always said ‘yes,’ remember? No matter what you asked her, she always said yes. You think she still does that? Must make her husband awfully happy!”

  “Eww,” Addison said. “That gross man is talking about us having sex!”

  “And how you say yes to me no matter what.” Kai leered at her, and she smacked him away.

  “Stop it! I’ll never be able to be with you again if you keep that up!”

  “Kai! Curtis! Come on—there’s someone down at the creek!” Harris yelled, racing past them.

  “Get inside,” Curtis barked at Avery and the other women. “Lock the doors!” He and Kai pounded after Harris, Daisy loping alongside them, all the men disappearing with them around a bend in the track that led to Pittance Creek.

  “Inside,” Renata snapped from the bunkhouse door. “Everyone inside—doors locked!”

  Avery hated the feeling of being herded inside like a bunch of useless cattle, but Renata was right; they were sitting ducks out here. They peered out the windows, talking quietly among themselves. Avery wondered what they’d do if a stranger appeared outside, with the men all gone.

  In the end, it didn’t come to that. Soon the men trooped back again, Montague walking sheepishly among them.

  “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss!” he cried when they reached the bunkhouse. “I was just doing recon. Getting to know my property.”

  “Someone’s been skulking around our ranch at all hours—someone we think is armed. We’re patrolling night and day,” Jericho told him.

  “And we’re armed, too,” Curtis growled. “Want to get killed?” Daisy sat alertly beside him.

  Montague paled. “You wouldn’t shoot someone, would you?”

  Curtis just looked at him. Daisy did, too.

  Avery lost her temper. She was sick of being afraid all the time. “Ten Navy SEALs,” she spelled out for Montague. “That’s the whole basis for the show, remember?”

  “I… was just checking things out,” he repeated feebly.

  “Down at Pittance Creek? Why? Are you planning to build creekside mansions now?” Nora snapped at him.

  “Creekside mansions.” Montague straightened and smiled, rolling the phrase around his tongue. “Now that’s a good idea. Has a real ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “Get. Out. Of. Here,” Curtis said.

  “My car’s that way.” Montague pointed the way they’d come. “I parked at the old schoolhouse across the creek.”

  “You’ll have to take the long way around, then. You aren’t setting foot on this ranch again today.”

  Montague looked like he’d argue, but then he sighed gustily. “Fine, I’ll take the long way.” He walked on to the lane that led to the main road. He soon had his phone out, and Avery figured he was calling a cab.

  “You think he’s the one who’s been sneaking around?” Eve asked.

  “Definitely not,” Boone said. “We’ve had more than one sighting, remember, and it wasn’t Montague. Back to work, everyone. And stick together.”

  Chapter Eight

  ‡

  By the time Sue arrived just before dinner, Walker was beginning to feel the fatigue like a crust of rime covering his normal good sense.

  Elizabeth had shadowed him like a ghost all day, followed by Gabe, who seemed to have stopped talking in the last twenty-four hours. Avery came and went, her joy at being free of Brody unmistakeable. If he hadn’t had such a gloomy entourage, he would have pulled her into his arms and kissed her several dozen times already, but Elizabeth looked ready to scratch out Avery’s eyes whenever she got too close.

  Sue called ahead to let him know she was on her way, so he and Elizabeth met her at the parking area. Walker had asked Avery to stay behind, knowing Sue wouldn’t like any interference in what she thought of as family business. Gabe wasn’t in sight, either. Elizabeth must have told him to back off.

  “I’m here,” Sue announced when she got out of her car.

  “You’re here,” he confirmed.

  “So make your important announcement.” She stood with arms crossed, daring him.

  “I’m not marrying Elizabeth. I don’t love her. I never have. I never wanted to marry her in the first place. Elizabeth made up the whole story of our being engaged.”

  Sue turned to Elizabeth, whose eyes glittered with frustration and anger.

  “Is this true? You made it up?”

  “I—Fine, it’s true,” Elizabeth admitted, surprising Walker. “I did make it up. Netta was dying. I wanted to see her happy. Is that so wrong?”

  “So you lied. Both of you. Because you thought a ghost wouldn’t care whether you followed through on your promises.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Honestly, Sue, how about taking responsibility for your part in all of this!”

  Sue blinked. Walker didn’t think anyone had spoken to her like that in years.

  “My responsibility?” she asked slowly. Walker knew that tone of voice. If Elizabeth was smart, she’d back down now.

  “We were teenagers when I said we were engaged. Far too young to know our minds, anyway,” Elizabeth said. “If Grandma hadn’t been sick and we’d come and asked you for permission to marry right then, the two of you would have been up in arms! I can just hear what she would have said. ‘Not until you’ve finished school. We don’t want to hear another word,’” she mimicked in a very Netta-sounding voice. “So what’s your rationale for holding us to that promise now?”

  “Because you need looking out for! Because it made Netta happier than I’d seen her in years. She worried about you being alone in the world after she was gone. It kept her up nights!”

  “Are you sure that wasn’t the pain keeping her up?” Elizabeth countered. “Come on, Sue. You know if Netta was standing here today she wouldn’t try to force Walker and me to marry.”

  Sue threw her hands in the air. “If you don’t want to marry him, why are you even here? I’m doing all this for you!”

  Walker had been wondering that himself. He’d assumed Elizabeth would fight him every step of the way, given how she’d acted all day.

  “Look,” Elizabeth said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “You can say that again.” Walker couldn’t help himself. “You were supposed to come home months ago and tell Sue what you said tonight. None of this would have happened. You would have been here and gone before Avery or anyone else even knew you existed. You know how badly you’ve hurt the woman I love?”

  “How badly I’ve hurt her?” Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “I think you’ve got that turned around. You’re the one who made her wait months with no explanation. You could have told her all of it right from the start.”

  “Why didn’t you come sooner?” Sue demanded before he could protest. “Why string us all along when you knew you’d break your word in the end?” She was holding it together better than Walker had expected, but then she’d watched last night’s episode. She’d known this was coming.

  “Because I’m fighting for something bigger than all of us—and I need your help!” She had their attention now. “I didn’t get here sooner because I’ve spent the last year touring arctic areas to study the effect of climate change on wildfires above the arctic circle.”

  “And?” Sue asked pertly.

  “And the situation is getting worse year by year. I’ve been studying tundra fires. You’ve never seen anything like it. They don’t burn on top of the tundra—they burn underground, sometimes for years. There’s no way to put them out,” she went on. “You ca
n’t reach them with traditional firefighting equipment, so they just smolder away, sending tons of carbon into the air that used to be sequestered in the ground, and that carbon adds to global warming, and global warming sends higher temperatures and storms into the arctic, and those storms spark more fires.”

  “You’re working to stop the fires?” Sue asked. She looked confused. Walker knew he was. What did arctic fires have to do with him?

  “I’m working to stop carbon emissions. Seeing those fires in person brought it home like nothing else. We’re in trouble—big trouble. And no one’s stopping it.” Elizabeth took a breath. “Look, there are so many things we need to do to halt global warming, but the first and most important is to keep as much carbon in the ground as humanly possible. That’s a concept that’s easy enough to explain to anyone. Or it should be, anyway.”

  “Keep the carbon in the ground. By stopping the fires,” Sue repeated.

  “By stopping the expansion of oil fields,” Elizabeth corrected her. “We need to cut our use of oil and gas, not increase it. We need to shut down oil fields, not open new ones, but that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

  Walker struggled to follow her explanation. She was trying to keep carbon in the ground. Trying to limit the tundra fires. Trying to stop global warming altogether—by shutting down oil fields.

  Or stopping new ones from opening?

  “What I saw changed me.” Elizabeth tried again. “It made it impossible for me not to do something—something important.”

  Walker remembered the phone call when she’d been pacing and yelling about a postponed hearing. She’d been so distraught. He was missing something here, some link that put it all together.

  The hearing.

  She’d been angry because a hearing was postponed.

  “The Renning field in Alaska,” he said. It had been on the news a lot lately that Congress was debating whether to allow drilling there. “Isn’t there a hearing or something coming up about that?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “That’s right, and I’m a key witness testifying at that hearing. It’s my job to spell it all out. How more drilling leads to more oil consumption, which leads to more emissions, which leads to more climate change, which leads to more fires, which leads to more carbon emissions—”

  “Which leads to disaster in the end,” Walker finished for her.

  “We’re heading for a world of heat and storms. More disease, fewer resources, more war, more famine—”

  Walker knew exactly where it would lead: a world into which no sane person would bring a child.

  And he wanted children—with Avery.

  “So why come to Base Camp?” She still hadn’t explained that.

  “I never meant it to be like this,” she said again. “I did mean to come last spring and tell Sue that I lied. Let you off the hook. But then talk about opening the Renning field started. And I… I found out some things. I had to pursue that.”

  “Why didn’t you break off things when you finally did come home?” Walker pressed her.

  “I’ve had… death threats,” she explained. “Credible ones. The government offered protection, but honestly, I wasn’t sure I could trust that offer.”

  “Death threats?” Sue breathed.

  “And you came here?”

  “Ten Navy SEALs,” she explained. “What better security crew could a girl ask for?” She tried for a smile, but it fell short, and Walker suddenly realized how terrified she really was. He thought back over her time here. The way she’d stuck to him like a burr on a shaggy dog’s coat. Everything started to make sense.

  “Why pretend you wanted to marry Walker?” Sue demanded. Walker knew she was finding it hard to get past the affront to her beloved Netta.

  “Because I’ve watched all the Base Camp episodes, and I know what happens when people appear on the show. Fulsom makes them marry someone, or he kicks them off. I figured it was only temporary—only until the hearing.”

  “When’s that?” Walker asked.

  “Yesterday,” she said ruefully. “Or it was supposed to be. I was going to tell you everything right before I got on the plane to Washington.”

  Walker thought back again to that phone conversation, the one where she’d been furious about a change of dates. “You thought you’d be gone by now.”

  “Leaving you plenty of time to marry Avery after I left. I never meant to screw things up for you, Walker,” she went on. “I can tell you and Avery are meant for each other, and I’m happy for you. But I need more time.”

  Sue’s eyebrows met in the middle over the bridge of her nose. “Why?”

  “When is the new date for the hearing?” Walker asked.

  “May twenty-fifth. I’m on at four thirty in the afternoon. I’ll leave first thing in the morning to catch my plane. You’ll still have plenty of time to marry Avery after I go. Look, when we’re done here, you can tell her everything I’ve told you, but you can’t tell anyone else. Everyone else has to think our wedding is still on—for real.”

  “No one thinks your wedding is on,” Sue said. “I’ve read the forums,” she answered Walker’s surprised look. “You two don’t care a fig about each other. Everyone’s sure it’s a ploy to get ratings up. And now that Avery’s marriage to that… cowboy… was annulled, they know you’ll dump Elizabeth and marry her.”

  “We’ll have to change their minds, then, and that’s mostly on me, I guess,” Elizabeth said. “I mean it, though. No one but Avery can know. I still need you to keep me safe. I need you to remember what’s at stake. Things are bad now, Walker, but if more oil fields are opened, I don’t think there’s hope for any of us. It’s too much carbon. Too much warming. We’re already at a tipping point. We can’t recover from that.”

  Walker knew what she meant. They were pushing the world past its limits already. “Boone and the other men have to know. Everyone does. That man Harris saw—he’s here for you, isn’t he?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “He’s dangerous. We need to protect you.”

  “I’ll keep sticking close to you,” she countered. “If you tell everyone else, there’s no way Fulsom won’t find out. He’ll kick me off or interfere in some way. I’ve watched the show—I know he will. It’s only a few more days. Then I’ll be out of your life. I promise.”

  Conflicting duties warred within him. She was right; there were too many people at Base Camp for secrets to last long, and Fulsom used every opportunity to mess with them. He weighed his options, not happy with any of them.

  “Avery needs to plan our wedding,” he pointed out. He knew she loved pageantry and parties, and she’d once confessed that she’d been planning her wedding day since grade school. It wasn’t fair that she was the loser in all of this.

  “She can plan our wedding,” Elizabeth said. “And then take it over when I’m gone. It’s only five more days, Walker.” When he hesitated, she added, “Please. I wouldn’t ask if everything wasn’t riding on this. Literally everything. I’ll play along and give her cover so she can set up things the way she wants them. I’ll keep a low profile. Make it impossible for someone to get to me.”

  Could he do this? Help Elizabeth, appease Sue and keep Avery happy, as well?

  While keeping his friends in the dark?

  “You should come to the reservation,” Sue said. “We should be the ones to keep you safe.”

  “No.” Elizabeth shook her head. “I won’t bring this kind of trouble there. That’s the last thing our people need.”

  “But it’s fine for us here at Base Camp?” Walker said.

  “Only because of the cameras. Think about it. No one can get to me while I’m being filmed, and I’m always being filmed. By the time the crew goes home, I’m tucked away in the bunkhouse, safe for the night.”

  It sounded almost reasonable when she put it that way, but it wasn’t reasonable.

  “You’re leaving on the twenty-fifth?” Walker hedged.

  “I promise,” she assu
red him.

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll tell Avery what’s happening. She’ll keep your secret.” He didn’t like it, though. Didn’t like any of this.

  “What about me?” Sue said. “What about the promise you made to your grandmother?”

  Elizabeth softened. She took Sue’s hands. “I have nothing but gratitude and honor for you both,” she said. “The two of you taught me what’s important in this world, and you taught me to fight for what I believe in. I believe in this. I’m sorry Walker and I don’t love each other the way you’d like us to, but we don’t. We never have. You know that.”

  She held Sue’s gaze until Sue was the one to look away first.

  “I hope you’ll give me your blessing,” Elizabeth said softly. “It would mean the world to me.”

  “I hope you give Avery and me your blessing, too,” Walker said.

  Sue shook her head. “We dreamed about your wedding day, Netta and I. We hoped for our families to heal together. My child and Netta’s looking out for each other all their lives.”

  “We’ll look out for each other,” Walker assured her. “We know how precious friendship is.”

  “That’s right. Whenever this troublesome grandson of yours gets in a fix, I’ll be there to bail him out, don’t worry,” Elizabeth said.

  Sue wasn’t placated. “My son, Walker’s father, wronged your family,” she said. “I’d hoped a wedding would heal that.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. “Nothing any of us does will bring back my parents—or your son. Joe paid a price he didn’t deserve to pay for my parents’ deaths. The slate is clean, Sue. It’s time for us all to move on.”

  Avery’s heart sank when Elizabeth came with Walker to talk to her after their meeting with Sue. Even when they explained what was going on, she didn’t feel much better.

  “Five more days?” she asked. “That means I’ll have to do everything in a rush at the very end to prepare for our wedding. There’ll be only five days after you’re gone to get everything together.”