SEALs of Chance Creek 01 - A SEAL's Oath Read online

  “What are you going to do in your sustainable community?” She made the term sound like a dirty word.

  “Create a home, tend a garden, produce my own food, generate my own power, make a community that can sustain itself without input from the outside world.”

  “We’re going to do most of that, too,” Riley said. “We’ll tend the manor”—she waved a hand at the house behind them—“garden, cook, and pursue our passions while sticking to a budget that most people couldn’t live on. That will give us a chance to paint, play instruments, write and act; all the things that increase beauty in the world.”

  “The world doesn’t need beauty,” Boone said, suddenly exasperated. “The world needs practical solutions to its problems.”

  A heavy silence greeted this pronouncement.

  “Go on back to your commune, Boone. Forget you ever saw me here. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.” She turned away, but not before he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. His gut tightened and he grabbed her hand instinctively. He wasn’t ready to lose her again.

  “Come on, Riley.” He felt like he’d kicked a puppy, but good intentions and pretty dresses weren’t going to solve anything. The world needed people who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and work on its problems. He’d made a promise to dedicate his life to finding some of those answers. She should, too.

  He assessed her again. She was intelligent. Caring. She was here in his own backyard. Practically in his arms.

  He could teach her to care about sustainability the way he’d taught her to ride and hunt.

  He knew he didn’t want to watch her walk away again.

  Boone told himself it was because he had an impossible deadline, and he’d already figured out how to coerce Riley into marrying him. It was only practical to make use of an opportunity put right in front of him. Any man would do the same.

  The truth was, practicality had little to do with it.

  Faced with Riley again, he ached to take the opportunity she’d once offered him. From the moment he’d seen her, she’d taken his breath away, captivating him from the curve of her cheek to the swell of her breasts under that ridiculous gown, to the way the breeze caught at the tendrils of her hair and sent them dancing. She was so much more beautiful standing in front of him than she’d been in her photograph. So much more… alive. He wanted to get inside her head and know what she was thinking—know if they could still connect the way they once had.

  Most of all, he wanted to share his life with a woman who mattered to him, and no one he’d met in the last thirteen years had ever mattered the way Riley once had.

  She tugged at his hand, trying to break free.

  “Uh-uh.” Boone didn’t let go. “We’re not done here.”

  The night he’d watched Riley walk away he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

  Now he’d been given a second chance. He’d taken a leap of faith many times in his career. Time to leap again.

  “Why aren’t we? Done, I mean,” she demanded.

  “Because I need a wife and you need a home. We’re going to make a deal.”

  RILEY WASN’T SURE she’d heard Boone right. “You need a… wife?”

  “That’s right. And I’m looking at her.”

  Riley swallowed in a suddenly dry throat. Boone had lost his mind. Maybe he didn’t even own Westfield. Maybe he’d gotten a brain injury during one of his missions. Was he packing a gun somewhere on that long, lean frame?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a simple trade. You can stay at Westfield—for free—as long as you agree to marry me.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  Boone’s quick grin transformed him from formidable to sexy as hell. “Because I can’t think of any woman I’d rather marry.”

  Her body responded to that smile with a rush of desire, but Riley clamped down on her overactive libido. He had to be pulling her leg. She wished she understood what kind of twisted joke he thought he was playing. “What is this all about, Boone?”

  He held his hands out in a placating gesture. “I get it. This is pretty strange. Confession time. Fulsom—the man funding us—wants our community to be realistic. A bunch of single men won’t do the trick. We need couples. Families. I’m supposed to set the tone.” Boone waved the details away like they weren’t important, but a muscle twitched in his jaw. Riley remembered that tic.

  Boone was keeping something back.

  “Who’s going to care if you’re married or single?”

  “The audience watching our reality television show.”

  Riley blinked. “You’re going to be on TV?”

  “That’s right. That’s how Fulsom is going to help us increase awareness about sustainable living.”

  “You’re nuts if you think I’m going to marry you.” He hadn’t bothered to contact her since the day he’d left Chance Creek. He’d stood by and watched her crash and burn in front of all his friends. If it weren’t for infrequent updates passed along via gossip, she wouldn’t even have known he was still alive.

  “More like desperate,” he confessed. “I’m in a jam, too, Riley. I didn’t know about the marriage part until it was too late. Come on, let’s help each other out. Think of it as a temporary solution with a possibility of permanence. If it doesn’t work out we can divorce when it’s over. But I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Riley couldn’t keep up. How could Boone leap from recognizing her to wanting to marry in less than a few minutes? She understood he needed to for his sustainable community thingy with Fulsom, but still, wasn’t that jumping the gun?

  “From June through November—that’s all I’m asking. Just until the show wraps up.”

  November? She’d already planned to stay at least through October. Was that a coincidence, too? Or was Boone right—was Fate at play here?

  “Listen,” he went on. “You just told me you sold everything, gave up your apartments, your jobs. I could boot you all out of here right now. Are you going to let your friends go homeless?”

  His jab hit a target and Riley winced. She’d do just about anything not to let her friends down. But marriage—to a man she hadn’t seen in years? To… Boone? That wasn’t a good idea, fake or not. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  “I just got out of the Navy, remember? Haven’t had much time to date.”

  “You said the Fulsom Foundation owns this place,” Riley tried. “So you don’t actually own—”

  “The house is mine to offer. Or to take away.” He leaned closer. “Did you really sell everything?”

  “Everything a woman in Regency times wouldn’t have. We thought we’d found a way to step out of the rat race for a minute.” She explained about her friends. “Can you blame us for wanting something different?”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?” She hesitated to tell him too much about herself. “I just want to be part of a bigger conversation about life. About what’s beautiful, what’s wonderful, what’s meant to be treasured. I want to slow down and think about things rather than rushing from job to job, filling my days with meaningless work.”

  “Musician, actor, writer. Didn’t you get a degree?”

  “Yes. Bachelor of Fine Arts. I’m a painter,” she said. That was a side of herself she hadn’t shared with the Horsemen—or even Boone.

  He didn’t seem surprised, though.

  “If you stayed at Westfield with me, you’d have all the time you wanted to paint.”

  “Would I? I’d expect you to think it was as much a waste of time as reading.”

  “I never said reading was a waste of time.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Boone frowned. “I didn’t mean to. Sustainable living isn’t just a hobby of mine. It goes deeper than that. I can get… single-minded.”

  Riley knew all about the ways Boone could focus on something to the exclusion of everything else. It had been frustrating at times when they were kids and she’d f
elt he’d forgotten about her while tinkering with an engine or doing his chores. But when he’d focused exclusively on her—those had been the most breathtaking moments of her life.

  “I’ve overwhelmed you. Don’t feel like you have to make up your mind tonight,” he went on. “Let’s talk about it again tomorrow.” He slid his hands over her arms and for a brief, heart-pounding moment she thought he might kiss her. When he didn’t, she couldn’t fathom why she felt disappointed. Hadn’t she learned anything over the years?

  “This feels like a setup—like someone’s going to jump out and tell me I’ve been tricked on camera.” She pulled away from him.

  “No tricks, Riley. I couldn’t be more serious about this.”

  If it was anyone else, she wouldn’t have believed him, but even though Boone had hurt her feelings badly, he’d never once lied to her. “It takes more than a day to know if you want to marry someone.”

  His gaze held hers. “We were good friends once, you and me. We could make this work. I know you’ve had a shock—” He glanced at her friends still grouped around the fire. “But you love Westfield, I know you do. If you help me, you can stay.”

  “Boone—”

  “Think about it for twenty-four hours. I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow night. We’ll go on a date. Maybe it’ll be fun.” With a wicked smile, he caught her wrist and pressed a kiss into her palm. “If you ask me to dance, I’ll say yes this time, Riley Eaton.” Riley gasped and tried to pull away, but he merely pressed her hand to his chest. She could feel his heart thumping, a strangely intimate sensation.

  She snatched back her hand. Her palm tingled from the contact with his shirt. Boone gave her a salute and turned to stride off into the shadows.

  Riley held still a long time before returning to her friends, still clustered around the fire.

  “Who was that? What did he say?” Savannah asked.

  Riley had no idea how to answer her.

  Chapter Three

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  BOONE’S MIND WAS reeling as he picked his way through the dark along the rutted dirt track that wound down the hill to the cluster of outbuildings. The last thing he’d expected when he’d charged up that hill to see who’d set the fire was to find Riley—and propose to her. Maybe he should have waited and wooed her first, but a courtship could go wrong in all kinds of ways. He needed a wife. Riley wanted Westfield. And he hadn’t felt this interested in a woman in a long time.

  Why chance it?

  He could probably have strong-armed her into agreeing to the marriage idea tonight, but that would be winning the battle in order to lose the war. One glance at her told him she must have her choice of men these days. He had to make his offer too good to turn down—and then use the time he’d gained with her to see if they could connect enough to make their marriage real. Boone was prepared to do whatever it took to satisfy Fulsom, and if he only had to marry he could have suffered through a fake relationship in order to fulfill that requirement. But Fulsom wanted pregnancies and that was a whole other matter. Boone refused to bring children into the world unless he loved their mother.

  Could he love Riley? The question nearly made him stumble, but he recovered his footing quickly, and the answer came just as fast.

  Yes.

  He’d loved her once, in his way. He’d never put it into words when they were young. Back then she was simply part of his existence. Someone he took for granted until those last few minutes before he lost her for good.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  This time around he’d get to know all about her and hope the connection that had once wound between them could tighten into the kind of relationship that stood the test of time.

  He didn’t know how to convince Riley to give him a chance, though. Her whole demeanor told him she hadn’t forgotten or forgiven what he’d done when they were teens. He had to turn things around before she dug in her heels. Maybe if he talked to her about his interests he could prove he wasn’t the thoughtless teenager he once was. It seemed like they’d taken different paths to reach similar conclusions. She might talk about beauty while he talked about sustainability, but in the end they had in common the desire to improve the world. When she learned what he was doing, wouldn’t she become interested in sustainability—and him—too?

  Giving her too much time to think it over wouldn’t be smart. First thing tomorrow he’d head back up to the house, take her on a tour of the ranch and explain his intentions for the place. Something about him had attracted her to him when they were young. He hoped like hell he still possessed that quality. He’d emphasize the community aspects of his plan and the way everyone involved would work together to build a harmonious whole. She craved beauty, so he’d give her beauty. He’d show her the way the spare lines of his houses and communal buildings wouldn’t block the view of the natural world that surrounded them. He’d talk about the cycle of life they would tap into and the way they would emulate it in their planting, reaping and replenishing of their gardens, and the closed-loop systems they’d put in place to harvest natural energy to fuel their homes.

  He’d gamble on the possibility she was as lonely as he’d been these past few years. Fulsom was right—he was ready to settle down. Did Riley want a partner, too?

  Did she want kids?

  He did.

  Suddenly uncomfortable, Boone pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Jericho, who picked up on the third ring.

  “You at the ranch?” Jericho asked by way of greeting.

  “I’ve already surveyed it and found a home site.”

  “That was fast.”

  “You want to hear about fast, check this out. I found a wife, too.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Jericho chuckled. “Even you couldn’t pull that off.”

  “Well, my ring’s not on her finger, but it will be soon.”

  “You must have pulled out the charm.”

  “Something like that. It’s Riley.”

  After a pause, Jericho dredged the name up from his memory. “Tagalong Riley?”

  Anger gripped Boone. “Call her that again—ever—and you and I will part ways. Got it?”

  “Fuck, man. Yeah—I got it.”

  Boone didn’t care if Jericho thought he’d lost his mind. That nickname ceased to exist now.

  “She didn’t know her uncle sold the ranch,” he went on, “so she arrived here with some friends today to stay at the house. Apparently Russ has been gone a long time and she comes and goes as she pleases. Or she used to, anyhow.”

  “Shit. What’d you tell her?”

  “That if she wants to stay she has to marry me.”

  Jericho chuckled. “You’ve got balls. You’d better watch your back, man. I wouldn’t want a pissed-off Riley on my tail. Remember the time she hit Walker with a two-by-four?”

  He’d forgotten that. It was an accident—mostly. Walker had a way of getting under Riley’s skin. He’d been the only one of them who tried to watch out for her and she didn’t like being reminded she was younger and less experienced than them. “She’s not pissed off. She’s… intrigued.” More like stunned and horrified, but Jericho didn’t need to know that.

  “You think she’ll go for it?”

  Boone hesitated. He should have known Jericho would ask difficult questions. “Maybe. There’s something else. She’s into all that Pride and Prejudice crap now.”

  “Heck, if she’s got two X chromosomes, that’s a given.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Well, it’s true for a lot of them. Just how into it is she?” Boone heard the creak of a desk chair. Jericho must be doing paperwork again.

  “As in, she dresses like one of them—one of those women in the movies.”

  “Like—all the time?” Jericho sounded alarmed.

  “As far as I can tell. She and her friends were all dolled up like that when I met up with them. She said they’d sworn an oath to live a beautiful life for six months. Somethi
ng about taking time off from the real world to rediscover the things they’re passionate about.”

  “An oath, huh? Well, I guess it could be worse. They could have decided to rob banks.” Boone heard a tick, tick, tick sound, Jericho’s pen tapping against his desk. Boone wished the others were here already. One day on the ground had brought too many complications for him to deal with alone. “I know you hung around with her more than I did, but do you really like Riley enough to marry her?”

  Another hard question. “I think so,” Boone said. “I’m… attracted to her.” This was an uncomfortable conversation. “She’s still Riley. Beyond that, I’ve got to spend time with her to answer your question.”

  “It’s hard to picture her grown up enough to be a wife. She looked pretty hot that last night before we left town, though.”

  “Yeah.” Boone’s answer was short. He didn’t like Jericho thinking about her that way. And he didn’t like remembering how that night had turned out.

  A silence. “We were shitheads to her at the end,” Jericho said.

  “You got that right. I don’t know if she’ll forgive us, either.”

  “We were pretty young. She’ll take that into consideration.”

  “I hope so.” Boone reached the outbuildings and began to build a fire in the old fire pit several dozen yards from the bunkhouse. He needed to eat and he was a long way from ready to sleep.

  “Do you think she’s into you?” Jericho asked after a pause.

  “I don’t know,” Boone said. “She kept her distance. She has friends,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Interesting. So what’s your first move?”

  “I’m going to take her on a date.”

  “You’re a brave man, Chief.”

  “Either that or very, very stupid.”

  “OUT WITH IT,” Savannah said. “Who on earth was that man?”

  “That was our landlord,” Riley finally said, struggling to process everything that had happened in the last few minutes. For one thing, she needed to present this new development to her friends in a way that wouldn’t send them running for the hills. For another, she had to sort through her feelings for Boone. Their conversation had been so strange she didn’t know what to believe.