A SEAL's Triumph Page 32

  These days he knew a peace that had always evaded him previously. He had someone he could depend on and knew that she depended on him, too. When he woke up in the morning and saw Win’s sweet face beside him, he fell in love with her all over again.

  As part of a large community, they’d taken care to develop their own habits and rituals. They ate breakfast together every morning at home. Every other Saturday night was date night, made possible by swapping overnight child care with Savannah and Jericho. Once a month they drove into town to spend a few hours away from Base Camp altogether. It made coming back home to all their friends that much more special.

  “Little girls should be in bed,” Win murmured against his cheek as he held her.

  “Just a few minutes longer. Let’s watch the sun go down.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She didn’t pull away, and he didn’t let go. This was what he loved best about his life now. Win in his arms, his little girl in hers. A circle of family that was all his.

  As the sun went down, Win wondered how she could ever have considered returning home to California for good. Base Camp was her true home in every sense of the word now. She didn’t hear from her parents often, but she was okay with that. They were struggling to clear their names of wrongdoing. Sleeping in the bed they’d made for themselves. She didn’t worry that they wouldn’t be okay. They still had a fortune, after all, and could remake themselves a hundred times over until they found a new way to be happy.

  She kept closer touch with Rosa and Maria and their daughters, the beginning of a new family of her heart, as she put it when she thought about it.

  That family encompassed all her friends here at Base Camp, both old and new, a circle that kept growing bigger as Base Camp expanded.

  In the past year, she had learned that her early interest in design wasn’t a passing thing, and it surprised her how long it had taken her to realize that’s where her talents lay. She had fooled around with the hand loom she bought in town until its limitations began to pinch and Curtis made her an even bigger one. It was fun to weave textiles. She classed that as a hobby, creating wall hangings and bedding for the home she’d made with Angus, but it was designing patterns that could be reproduced en masse that really brought her to life.

  She was currently in negotiations with her parents to take over Manners Textiles, the original company her grandfather had founded, which had expanded wildly over the years. Her parents were more amenable than she’d expected to letting the division go, but they communicated with her through their lawyers, so the deal wasn’t bringing them any closer together.

  Win was all right with that.

  Since marrying Angus she’d realized she didn’t want any forced relationships. His love was all-encompassing, and Iris loved her with an abandon so wild it was healing all the little tears in her heart. Her husband would never allow someone to kidnap her for publicity. Iris would always adore her simply for being her. It put to shame the transactional love she’d known from her parents, and she had no desire to experience that again.

  Her love of design had expanded to the gardens, too, where she was helping Leslie and Boone look at their setup in a more wholistic way. All three of them had participated in a permaculture design course the previous summer, and now they were putting a number of practices they’d learned into play. Boone had taught himself many of the principles in earlier years, but even he admitted he’d learned more than he’d thought he would from the experts who taught the class. Win liked thinking of Base Camp as a whole, linking all the different parts together, following the inputs of sunshine, labor, rain and so on as they blossomed into outputs of food, compost, friendship and more.

  There was so much to think about each day. So many new things to learn.

  So many people to love.

  She breathed in the familiar scent of her husband. Looked down into the shining eyes of her daughter.

  This had to be paradise, she thought.

  And she was going to stay right here.

  “He’s asleep,” Avery whispered.

  Walker leaned over from where he was sitting in bed and peeked into their son’s bassinet, tucked between the bed and the wall. Joe Walker Norton was breathing softly, his tiny chest going up and down, his expression serious even now.

  Avery liked to tell him their three-and-a-half-month-old son was like a little man.

  “He’s already solving the world’s problems,” Walker would say.

  “How about we solve those problems so he can just be a kid.”

  Soon enough he’d be crawling and walking and running around with the other children here at Base Camp. Walker was enjoying this quiet stage when he could snuggle his son on his chest at night and let him fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat. During those times, he let all his problems slip away and took long, deep breaths to calm them both. It worked every time.

  Joe wanted his mother most of the time, but Walker was the king of bedtime.

  He lifted the covers so Avery could snuggle in beside him, amazed as usual at how natural it felt for her to be there. Probably since they’d been denied the chance to be together so long, they tended to stay close. Walker figured he touched his wife a hundred times each day. Held her hand when they walked places, touched her leg when they sat next to each other at meals, guided her through a door, stealing a kiss.

  He couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  Luckily Avery was similarly minded and leaned into him whenever he reached for her. They cuddled their way through the days, laughing and talking. People remarked that he smiled more. He supposed that was true. He’d grown up in a household marked by loss. Now he lived in one marked by joy.

  “What are you thinking?” Avery asked, running a hand over his chest.

  “I’m thinking I couldn’t have built a better life for myself if I tried.”

  “I know. I keep waiting for something bad to happen,” she admitted.

  “Things will happen, and we’ll get through them together.

  “I guess so. I think it’s going to be another hot summer.”

  “Are there any other kind these days?”

  She shook her head. “I think it’s going to be pretty hot right here in our bed in a few minutes.”

  “That’s a prediction I can get behind.”

  When she was done making love to her husband, Avery lay on her back, holding his hand. “We should have added a skylight up here.”

  “Not too late for that.”

  “Really? Would that work with a green roof?”

  “We can ask.”

  “I love that about you, you know,” she told him, giving his hand a squeeze. “You don’t shoot down my ideas.”

  “It’s my job to lift you up, ideas and all.”

  She thought about that. “You’re good at it.”

  “I hope so.” He turned over and curled around her. “That first day I saw you charging down the hill from the manor ready to tear Boone a new one, I knew you’d be the love of my life.”

  “So it was my righteous anger that hooked you?” she teased.

  “It was everything about you. I was trying to convince you to stick around, and the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about lying in bed with you just like this.”

  “That first day?” She pushed up to her elbows. “Really?”

  “What did you think when you first saw me?”

  Walker talked a lot more these days than he had when she’d first met him, but this was the type of personal question he didn’t often put into words. Avery knew it deserved a serious answer.

  “I thought, there’s a man I could worship.”

  Walker stilled. After a moment, she lifted a hand to touch his face. “You are amazing. You don’t know that about yourself, but you are. I would follow you anywhere, Walker Norton. I’d do whatever you told me to do. I trust you not only with my life but also with my heart. Utterly.”

  When he reached to pull her close, burying his face in her hair, Avery wrappe
d her arms around his neck and held him. And when they came together minutes later, making love all over again, she gave herself to him heart and soul.

  This was what it meant to be with Walker.

  This was what it meant to find her true home.

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  Read on for an excerpt of Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL.

  Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  By Cora Seton

  Prologue

  Four months ago

  On the first of February, General Augustus Reed entered his office at USSOCOM at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, placed his battered leather briefcase on the floor, sat down at his wide, wooden desk and pulled a sealed envelope from a drawer. It bore the date written in his wife’s beautiful script, and the General ran his thumb over the words before turning it over and opening the flap.

  He pulled out a single page and began to read.

  Dear Augustus,

  It’s time to think of our daughters’ future, beginning with Cass.

  The General nodded. Spot on, as usual; he’d been thinking about Cass a lot these days. Thinking about all the girls. They’d run yet another of his overseers off Two Willows, his wife’s Montana ranch, several months ago, and he’d been forced to replace him with a man he didn’t know. There was a long-standing feud between him and the girls over who should run the place, and the truth was, they were wearing him down. Ten overseers in eleven years; that had to be some kind of a record, and no ranch could function well under those circumstances. Still, he’d be damned if he was going to put a passel of rebellious daughters in charge, even if they were adults now. It took a man’s steady hand to run such a large spread.

  Unfortunately, it was beginning to come clear that Bob Finchley didn’t possess that steady hand. Winter in Chance Creek was always a tricky time, but in the months since Finchley had taken the helm, they’d lost far too many cattle. The General’s spies in the area reported the ranch was looking run-down, and his daughters hadn’t been seen much in town. The worst were the rumors about Cass and Finchley—that they were dating. The General didn’t like that at all—not if the man couldn’t run the ranch competently—and he’d asked for confirmation, but so far it hadn’t come. Finchley always had a rational explanation for the loss of cattle, and he never said a word about Cass, but the General knew something wasn’t right and he was already looking for the man’s replacement.

  Our daughter runs a tight ship, and I’m sure she’s been invaluable on the ranch.

  He had to admit what Amelia wrote was true. Cass was an organizational wizard. She kept her sisters, the house and the family accounts in line, and not for the first time he wondered if he should have encouraged Cass to join the Army back when she had expressed interest. She’d mentioned the possibility once or twice as a teenager, but he’d discouraged her. Not that he didn’t think she’d make a good soldier; she’d have made a fine one. It was the thought of his five daughters scattered to the wind that had guided his hand. He couldn’t stomach that. He needed his family in one place, and he’d done what it took to keep her home. That wasn’t much: a suggestion her sisters needed her to watch over them until they were of age, a mention of tasks undone on the ranch, a hint she and the others would inherit one day and shouldn’t she watch over her inheritance? It had done the trick.

  Maybe he’d been wrong.

  But if Cass had gone, wouldn’t the rest of them have followed her?

  He’d been able to stop sending guardians for the girls when Cass turned twenty-one five years ago, much to everyone’s relief. His daughters had liked those about as little as they liked the overseers. He’d hoped when he dispensed of the guardians, the girls would feel they had enough independence, but that wasn’t the case; they still wanted control of the ranch.

  Cass is a loving soul with a heart as big as Montana, but she’s cautious, too. I’ll wager she’s beginning to think there isn’t a man alive she can trust with it.

  The General sighed. His girls hadn’t confided in him in years—especially about matters of the heart—something he was glad Amelia couldn’t know. The truth was his daughters had spent far too much time as teenagers hatching plots to cast off guardians and overseers to have much of a social life. They’d been obsessed with being independent, and there were stretches of time when they’d managed it—and managed to run the show with no one the wiser for months. In order to pull that off, they’d kept to themselves as much as possible. He’d only recently begun to hear rumblings about men and boyfriends. Unfortunately, none of the girls were picking hardworking men who might make a future at Two Willows; they were picking flashy, fly-by-night troublemakers.

  Like Bob Finchley.

  He couldn’t understand it. He wanted that man out of there. Now. Trouble was, when your daughters ran off so many overseers it made it hard to get a new one to sign on. He had yet to find a suitable replacement.

  Without a career off the ranch, Cass won’t get out much. She might not ever meet the man who’s right for her. I want you to step in. Send her a man, Augustus. A good man.

  A good man. Those weren’t easy to come by in this world. The right man for Cass would need to be strong to hold his own in a relationship with her. He’d need to be fair and true, or he wouldn’t be worthy of her. He’d need some experience ranching.

  A lot of experience ranching.

  The General stopped to ponder that. He’d read something recently about a man with a lot of experience ranching. A good man who’d gotten into a spot of trouble. He remembered thinking he ought to get a second chance—with a stern warning not to screw up again. A Navy SEAL, wasn’t it? He’d look up the document when he was done.

  He returned to the letter.

  Now here’s the hard part, darling. You can’t order him to marry Cass any more than you can order Cass to marry him. You’re a cunning old codger when you want to be, and it’ll take all your deviousness to pull this off. Set the stage. Introduce the players.

  Let fate do the rest.

  I love you and I always will,

  Amelia

  Set the stage. Introduce the players.

  The General read through the letter a second time, folded it carefully, slid it back into the envelope and added it to the stack in his deep, right-hand bottom drawer. He steepled his hands and considered his options. Amelia was right; he needed to do something to make sure his daughters married well. But they’d rebelled against him for years, so he couldn’t simply assign them husbands, as much as he’d like to. They’d never allow the interference.

  But if he made them think they’d chosen the right men themselves…

  He nodded. That was the way to go about it.

  In fact…

  The General chuckled. Sometime in the next six months, his daughters would stage another rebellion and evict Bob Finchley from the ranch. He could just about guarantee it, even if Cass was currently dating the man. Sooner or later he’d go too far trying to boss them around, and Cass and the others would flip their lids.

  When they did, he’d be ready for them with a replacement they’d never be able to shake. One trained to combat enemy forces by good ol’ Uncle Sam himself. A soldier in the Special Forces might do it. Or maybe even a Navy SEAL…

  This wasn’t the work of a moment, though. He’d need time to put the players in place. Cass wasn’t the only one who’d need a man—a good man—to share her life.

  Five daughters.

  Five husbands.

  Amelia would approve.

  The General opened the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk, and mentally counted the remaining envelopes that sat unopened in another stack, all dated in his wife’s beautiful script. Ten years ago, after Amelia passed away, Cass had forwarded him a plain brown box filled with envelopes she’d received from the family lawyer. The stack in this drawer had dwindled compared to the opened ones in the other drawer.

  What
on earth would he do when there were none left?

  Click to read more of Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  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

  The Brides of Chance Creek Series:

  Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  Issued to the Bride One Airman

  Issued to the Bride One Sniper

  Issued to the Bride One Marine

  Issued to the Bride One Soldier

  Issued to the Bride One Sergeant for Christmas

  The Turners v. Coopers Series:

  The Cowboy’s Secret Bride (Volume 1)

  The Cowboy’s Outlaw Bride (Volume 2)

  The Cowboy’s Hidden Bride (Volume 3)

  The Cowboy’s Stolen Bride (Volume 4)