A SEAL's Devotion

by Cora Seton

  But they were giving up on her.

  “A tiny house. A chance to go school. A way to get ahead in life. What do you think of that?” her father asked.

  “It sounds… great,” she managed to say, but it didn’t sound great at all. It sounded like they no longer expected her to achieve… anything.

  Did they really think she’d spend her life alone?

  Eve had the sensation of standing on sloped ground and losing her footing, beginning to slide down, down, down.

  “There’s one more condition.” Her mother adjusted the position of her plate again. “Valley Community College starts up again the third week of January. If you want that tiny house, you need to be enrolled and ready to go to class.”

  “That’s… barely more than a month from now,” Eve protested. “I’m not even registered at Valley.”

  “Actually”—her father cleared his throat—“you are. Here’s a course catalog.” He handed her a slim brochure, and she took it, stunned. They’d been planning this awhile, hadn’t they?

  “And here’s a company that specializes in tiny house plans. You can buy materials and your frame from them. Just pick which one you like. I’ve circled three that fall within the proper square footage.”

  Eve took a second brochure from her mother.

  “School. Home ownership. The first steps on your way to a settled, proper life,” her father said. “It’s all set. All you have to do is say yes.”

  “And stick to your decision,” her mother said firmly. “No backing out when times get a little tough, okay?”

  “That’s right. No backing out. You make a commitment to us, and we’ll make a commitment to you,” her father said. “When we get back from Europe in February, we expect you to be hitting the books hard. We’ll get your tiny house going as soon as winter ends. In the meantime, you can stay in your old room.”

  “Well?” her mother prompted. “What do you say?”

  The slide down the slippery slope began to feel more like a tumble. Eve didn’t want to disappoint her parents, but she hated being tied down to plans. Her ability to pivot was one of her best characteristics.

  And her worst, she admitted. Her parents were right; she didn’t tend to stick with things, and they were currently paying the price for her pivot to Angola. Back when she’d ended up on their couch, they’d almost cancelled their big trip to Europe, unsure how long her recovery would take. Thank goodness she’d convinced them to move forward on it.

  Eve took a deep breath. It wasn’t like she had a better option. No one had offered her a new position abroad, and she’d been feeling at loose ends ever since she’d come home. She liked her job at AltaVista okay, but her parents were right; it wasn’t really a career.

  Time to make a decision and stick to it, as her father liked to say. For once, she’d buckle down, and she wouldn’t change her mind three weeks in. She would act like a grown-up. Plant her feet and grow some roots.

  “Okay.”

  “Clem, got a few words you want to say?” Fulsom gestured for him to take his place.

  The sandy-haired man took center stage, his smugness still rankling Anders.

  “You heard Fulsom. We’re going to shake things up around here. Starting tomorrow morning.” He stood before them with his legs spread, his hands behind his back. Did he think he could fool them into thinking he was their superior officer?

  “What an ass,” Curtis murmured.

  “Expect the unexpected from here on in. We’re going to give the audience what they want—juicy, exciting information about you. That’s my specialty, so don’t think you can hide from me. That’s all. Dismissed.”

  Everyone exchanged puzzled glances before standing up and putting away their chairs. Anders wondered if he was the only one feeling overexposed already. He knew everyone had parts of themselves they’d rather not share with a national audience, but he had more than most.

  His secrets could get him tossed off the show.

  “They could cut us a little slack once in a while.” Curtis put an arm around Hope and kissed the top of her head. “Bet you’re glad you joined Base Camp.”

  “I’m glad,” she said with a grin. “Even if I can’t hide from Clem.”

  “Renata looks pissed,” Greg said. “If I was that guy, I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.”

  “Do you think Clem’s here to replace her?” Renata was a ball-buster, but Anders was used to her, at least. They had enough problems at Base Camp without infighting among the crew.

  “Maybe.” Curtis nodded toward the door. “You and I had better do one last plow of the lane so Fulsom and his people can get out. It’s snowing again.”

  “Sure thing.” Anders crossed the room and got his outer gear back on while Curtis gave Hope another kiss.

  “…back at our house in a minute,” Anders heard him say as Curtis turned toward the door.

  Newlyweds.

  Would he feel like that about the woman he married?

  “Has Boone pestered you about backup brides yet?” Greg asked, joining him near the door.

  “We talked about them. I’d rather find my own bride.”

  “Me, too.” Greg was watching Renata talk to Fulsom. The director was gesticulating, making her displeasure clear. “I don’t trust anyone else to make a decision like that.”

  Anders didn’t answer that. If he ran out of time, he’d have to marry anyone who would have him. “See you later” was all he said.

  “Yeah, see you.” Greg pulled a jackknife and a small piece of wood out of his pocket. He was always whittling something. He dragged one of the folding chairs near a window, even though it was dark outside and there wasn’t much to see. Was he simply passing time, or was he trying to listen in on Renata, Clem and Fulsom? Anders hoped he passed along any information he gleaned.

  Curtis joined him, and together they went outside where the cold air made plumes of their breath. Snow was falling softly, a slow accumulation rather than the crazy amount they’d gotten just days ago. They’d made a habit of keeping the lane as clear as possible, though, in case of an emergency. The state plows had a way of blocking the end of the lane as they passed, and often he and Curtis had to shovel it out by hand.

  “Greg seems worried,” Anders remarked as they made their way to the truck.

  “I’m worried, too. Don’t like the look of that Clem guy, and what did he mean we can’t hide from him? We’ve got enough to do without him throwing us curve balls.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to figure out how to marry spectacularly.”

  Curtis grunted. “Let Boone get you someone.”

  “I can do it myself.” What kind of woman answered an ad for a husband, especially when a TV show was involved? Someone after her fifteen minutes of fame? Someone who might up and leave when she got bored? He wasn’t interested in a relationship like that.

  Anders was ready for something real. He wanted to plant his feet, draw a line in the sand and make his stand right here at Base Camp. He wanted a partner who could see what was happening in the world and felt fighting for change was worthwhile, even if it was hard.

  He wanted someone to love.

  Where did you find a woman like that?

  If only Fate would deliver him a wife—like it had delivered one for Curtis. A wife he could marry in a spectacular way, to appease Fulsom—and keep everyone else from finding out what he’d been hiding all this time.

  “Come on. Let’s get this done,” Curtis said.

  “Kevin? We have a problem.” Eve stood in the doorway to her boss’s office, waving a hand to get his attention. Kevin, a plump man in his sixties with round blue eyes and a habit of running his hand through his stiff, dark hair until it was mostly standing on end, was staring off into space. This wasn’t the first time she’d found him woolgathering, and Eve was beginning to think something was wrong, but she didn’t have the kind of relationship with him that would allow her to ask personal questions.

  “What kind of problem?�
� He snapped to, focused on her and tapped a finger on the desk impatiently, as if whatever had occupied his mind a second ago was far more important than anything she could show him.

  Eve wasn’t sure about that. What she’d just seen was… big.

  “I need to show you something.” She held up a printout. AltaVista Imaging created digital images taken from satellites. Its clients were generally corporations, government agencies, municipalities, farmers and the like. Many of the images were to be used as proof that they were following environmental guidelines.

  Eve crossed to Kevin’s desk. “May I?” When he nodded, she unrolled the sheet and laid it in front of him. “Take a look at this.”

  Kevin heaved a sigh but bent forward to examine the image. “This is…”

  “Hansen Oil. Tailing ponds.”

  Kevin straightened, all his previous lethargy gone. “Hansen Oil? What are you doing with the Hansen account? That’s Mark’s.”

  “He’s on vacation. Deb and I split his work, remember?”

  “Not the Hansen account.” Kevin stood and rolled up the large sheet of paper so quickly he knocked his phone off his desk. “You forward me all those files. Now. And you send me a list of the other accounts you got from Mark, got it? Tell Deb to do the same.”

  Eve was taken aback. She was still a junior member of the quality control team, but she’d been doing excellent work. “But the tailing ponds—”

  “I’ll take care of the tailing ponds.” Kevin considered her with far more attention than he had in weeks. “Hansen Oil is one of our biggest accounts. If they’ve got a problem, they have to hear it from me, not you. We can’t get this wrong.”

  I’m not wrong, she wanted to say, but Eve could see that wouldn’t help her cause.

  “I’m glad I brought it right to you,” she said instead. “They’ll want to know about the issue immediately. Looks like the runoff might be getting into the—”

  Kevin had turned to stow the roll of paper with others on a side table, but the way he snapped around to face her made her shut her mouth. Something was wrong. He’d never behaved like this before, and now he looked—angry.

  “The runoff might be getting into the what?” he asked. When she hesitated, he braced his hands on his desk.

  Instinct told her not to finish the sentence the way she’d meant to. The runoff looked like it was heading into Terrence Creek, part of the Terrence watershed, which fed into an aquifer that ultimately supplied drinking water to the town of North Run. She’d looked it up, familiar with watershed issues from her work in Angola. Something told Eve the situation wasn’t new. She’d bet her life chemicals had already leached into the water supply.

  “Into what?” Kevin asked again.

  Eve had heard that tone of voice before but never in the United States. Usually it emanated from a man holding a gun, backed by other men holding more guns, in some Third World outpost where she was advocating for people’s rights. She’d never expected such cold anger from her mild-mannered boss in his small, tidy office.

  His meaning was clear. He knew what she was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it.

  Eve thought fast. “Into an area that’s probably home to wildlife,” she amended. “I don’t know Texas well, but remember the ducks that got into the tailing ponds up in Alberta a few years back? There’s a lot of empty land around North Run. I bet there are animals and birds there, too. You know environmentalists will make a fuss.”

  Usually Kevin was on the side of environmentalists and would have taken her to task for talking about them like that. This time was different.

  Some of the tension eased from his body. “I’ll be sure to look into that right away,” he said. “Good work bringing the images straight to me. Now make sure you forward everything else to do with Mark’s accounts to me.”

  “Will do,” she said as cheerfully as she could. Back in her own cubicle, however, her mind raced. She sent a quick text to Deb, a coworker who’d become a friend and whom she chatted with outside of work as well as at the office. She didn’t want a record of their conversation through their work emails. A personal text was safer.

  Kevin’s on the warpath. He wants all of Mark’s files. We’re not to work on any more of them.

  Why not? Deb quickly texted back.

  Should she mention what had happened? Eve had a feeling Kevin wouldn’t want her to, but he hadn’t said she couldn’t, either.

  I found a problem at Hansen Oil. Showed it to him. He wasn’t pleased.

  Deb’s answer was swift. Shit, Eve. If it’s Hansen Oil, keep your mouth shut. Erase these texts, too. I mean it. Say nothing—to me or anyone else.

  But there’s a problem with the tailing ponds.

  ERASE EVERYTHING. Don’t text me again!

  Eve sat back, stared at her phone and then did as Deb asked. Deb wasn’t the kind to get hysterical over nothing. Eve thought she understood. Oil companies like Hansen didn’t operate only in the United States, after all. She’d come up against their representatives overseas, who sometimes acted like dictators when they could get away with it.

  “Eve? Where are those files?” Kevin called from his office.

  “I’m sending them right now.” She got to work forwarding everything that Mark had passed on to her, then went to erase them, but when she got to the Terrence tailing pond images, instinct kicked in again. She rummaged around in her purse until she found a memory stick, slotted it into one of the USB drives on her computer and made a copy. Glancing around to make sure no one had noticed, she dropped the USB stick back into her purse.

  There were only two reasons to hide an image that revealed a problem like the one she’d seen. One, because you didn’t want anyone to know you’d made a mistake. Two, because you had no intention of fixing it. If Hansen Oil didn’t want its reputation smeared while it worked to fix its tailing ponds, she could live with that, she supposed. But if it didn’t intend to fix them at all, she needed to do something.

  Fast.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  “I’m already on a bunch of dating apps.” Anders faced off with Clem outside the chicken coop. Despite the cold weather, a flock of chickens were clucking and scratching a patch of ground where he’d cleared the snow away in their mesh-sided pen.

  “That’s not good enough. We’ve polled the audience, and they want to be more involved in the process. We’ll put your wife-wanted ad on the show’s website, and make the responses public. People can vote on them—”

  “That’s nuts!”

  “That’s good showmanship,” Clem countered.

  “Haven’t you ever read the comment sections on the website?” Anders challenged him. “People are brutal. You let them comment on women’s responses to the ad, and they’ll tear them apart.”

  “I hope so,” Clem said happily. “If anything controversial happens, we’ll air it on the show.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t you get it?” Clem kicked at the wire mesh where a chicken was reaching through to peck something outside its pen. The chicken squawked and beat its wings, making a hasty retreat. “Fulsom’s getting bored with your show. And when Fulsom’s bored, it isn’t good. You want to do what it takes to make him happy. Got it?”

  “What if I find my own wife first?” Anders opened the door to the outside pen, stepped inside and began to scatter feed for the chickens. They crowded around him in a frenzy while Clem looked on in disgust.

  “You find your own wife, and we’ll shut down the ad, but I’m not holding my breath. You’ve been in Chance Creek for months, and you haven’t scored yet. Am I right, or am I right? And by the way—on your intake form you left the name of your high school blank. Why is that?”

  The sudden question came from so far out of left field, Anders struggled to keep up. “High school?” he repeated. He’d left that question blank because he didn’t want anyone snooping into his past.

  “Yeah, high school. Big building. Boring classes. Lots of
stupid kids,” Clem prompted.

  “I… didn’t graduate,” Anders lied.

  Clem frowned. “Didn’t graduate? What kind of a hick are you?”

  Anders’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out gratefully, then nearly groaned when he saw who it was. “I’ve got to take this.” He turned his back on Clem pointedly, wondering if it would work.

  To his surprise, it did.

  “Whatever.” Clem wandered off. Anders waited until he was out of earshot before he accepted the call.

  “What do you want?”

  “That’s a hell of a way to greet your father.”

  Anders spread the rest of the feed on the ground, exited the pen and shut the door tightly. This was the part of his past he didn’t want anyone to know about. He walked off toward the pasture where their herd of bison ranged.

  “I’m not interested in how I greet you, and neither are you. Say what you called to say.”

  Anders hadn’t had a close relationship with his father since his mother died. His father, Johannes, had always been too busy running his business to be around much, and he had spent even more time away from home after Anders’s mother passed away. A series of nannies and housekeepers had looked after Anders, and those first years had been rough. For all his faults, Johannes had loved his wife, and looking back, Anders realized that losing her to cancer when she wasn’t even forty had been a real blow. He couldn’t fault his father for grieving for his mother, but he didn’t think his father ever realized that meant Anders ended up grieving for both his parents at once.

  When Johannes eventually moved on to other women, he chose ones who were the opposite of Anders’s mother. Women who had little time for children. Who wanted expensive presents and exotic trips. Anders had learned not to expect anything from his father. They had remained cordial to each other, however, until Anders had walked away from all of it and changed his name.