A SEAL's Oath (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 1) (21 page)

“So where does art, literature and music fit in?” Riley asked.

“I haven’t really thought about them,” Boone said. “Those aren’t necessities—”

“They are to me.”

“But they come long after things like food, shelter and clothing. My community is intended to show how few things we really need. You’re talking about luxuries.”

“That explains those little hovels you’re building down by the barns. Who are you going to get to live in those boxes? No woman in her right mind would be caught dead in a cage like that!”

“Plenty of women will want to live in them.” He frowned at her. She was going to be one of them. She had to know that.

“Name one!”

As the seconds ticked by, Riley surveyed him with an air of triumph. She knew she’d caught him. He couldn’t name her—he’d promised to keep their engagement a secret. And he didn’t have any other women lined up.

“You can’t, can you?”

“Not at the moment,” he was forced to concede. “But I will soon.”

“Not if you keep calling art and literature luxuries.”

Boone reached under the table, clamped his hand down on her knee and squeezed it through the delicate fabric of her dress. Riley inhaled sharply. “There are all sorts of benefits to sharing a small space with an interested man. I bet if you try you can imagine one or two of them.” He slid his hand a fraction of an inch higher on her thigh, caressed her, and let go again.

“Sex isn’t enough to keep people happy,” she retorted. “It takes many things to make a well-rounded life.”

“Not so many things that you require a mansion in which to store them.”

Riley opened her mouth to answer, but Nora beat her to it. “Riley doesn’t need a mansion. She’s the one who came up with rule number two.
Our
rule number two,” she clarified when Boone frowned.

“What’s
your
rule number two?”

“Only possess what a moderately well-off lady in Jane Austen’s time would possess. Which turns out to be far less than what we’re used to,” Avery explained. “All four of us can live on what we each used to spend alone.”

Once again the women had surprised him. “What are your other rules?”

“One,” Riley said, holding up a finger just like he had. “Is it beautiful? Two, would a Regency lady of moderate means own it? Three, will it contribute to the enjoyment of the group? Four, does it uphold our commitment to Regency living?”

“Well, there you go,” James said, unable to keep his peace any longer. “Now you and I will have to come up with principles, Maud, my dear. It seems to be all the rage this year.”

“I already know our principles,” she replied, passing him a platter of chicken. “One, is it fun? Two, will we enjoy ourselves? Three, will we laugh? And four, does it involve Champagne?”

“By heavens, you’re right. Those sum us up quite tidily,” her husband said.

Boone joined in the general laughter and knew he should be grateful to his hosts for defusing a tense situation, but the truth was he would have liked to talk more about Riley’s stated principles. Once again he had the feeling they weren’t so far apart, if only she would take a minute to discuss the matter.

“When are your friends arriving at Westfield?” Maud asked him.

“Within a couple of weeks,” he said and noted the expressions of interest among the women around the table. Good, he wanted them to be interested.

“If the rest of your men are as handsome as you, they’ll make quite a splash in Chance Creek.” Maud raised her glass and took a sip of wine.

“We get first dibs, though.” Avery bit her lip as color stained her cheeks. “I mean…” She busied herself with the salad tongs.

Boone flashed her a conspiratorial smile. He couldn’t have asked for a better response. “I’m sure my men would be glad to give you first dibs.” He’d match Clay, Jericho and Walker with them as soon as his friends arrived.

“That’s enough. Just stop it.” Riley, who’d taken a sip from her water glass, thumped it on the table.

“Stop what?” Boone asked.

“Stop trying to weasel your way in among my friends and make them fall in love with you.”

He let the pause spin out before answering. “First of all, weaseling our way in is exactly what SEALs are trained to do. If we stopped, it would be detrimental to national security. Second, regardless of our skills, I don’t think we’re capable of making women fall in love—unless they want to.”

“You have a slick answer for everything, don’t you, Lieutenant Rudman?”

“I’ll always have an answer for you.”

“Is it hot in here or is it me?” Maud said, fanning herself. “Summer is definitely on its way.”

“It’s only going to get hotter, too,” Boone said with a wink at Riley. “This is Montana, after all.”

Avery took up the topic of the weather and soon they were taking turns predicting what kind of summer they’d have.

Boone slid his hand under the table again and caught Riley’s fingers in his. “Hey, are you all right?” he added in a low voice.

“It’s one thing to make me sideline my painting for six months, but don’t you dare let your friends drag mine into this. They’ve waited for years for their chance to pursue their dreams. It’s not fair of you to crush them,” she said in a whisper.

“I would never do that.”

She extricated her hand from his. “Prove it.”

Several days later,
Riley bent over a huge cauldron of water she’d spent the previous hour heating over an outdoor fire, and gingerly tested it with a fingertip. “It’s hot,” she said to Nora and Avery, who had come to take a break and chat with her. They had fallen into a routine of working in the mornings, then changing their gowns, eating an early lunch outside when the weather was fair and turning to their creative pursuits in the afternoons. Maud and James had picked up on their schedule, and tried to hold off until after four for their almost daily visits. Riley found those long, unbroken afternoons a revelation. She had so much time to paint… and to walk… and ponder, even if far too much of her time had been taken up thinking about Boone.

He tended to appear in the evenings with a request for her company. Sometimes they hung out with her friends, sometimes they walked and watched the sunset. Once, when it rained, they’d played cards for hours at the bunkhouse. They’d been reserved the first night after the Russells’ dinner party, but Boone had apologized for what he’d said about the arts, and Riley had forgiven him, though she still thought Boone ranked their creative pursuits far below the work he was doing down at Base Camp, as he called it. She understood why a man like Boone might think so after everything he’d seen during his time in the military, but it made it hard to trust that they could create a marriage that suited them equally.

Savannah, Avery and Nora got a censored version of her time with Boone. They thought she was doing a masterful job of making him woo her. The truth was, Boone was playing her like a fine violin.

His flirtation was subtle. A touch here, a smile there. He hadn’t tried to make love to her again, and Riley wasn’t ready to take the lead again. She found his new penchant for conversation more of an aphrodisiac than anything else he’d done so far. It was as if the years had fallen away and they were back to being kids, before hormones had made their friendship tricky. When she realized she wouldn’t get more than a good-night kiss at the end of the evening, she relaxed, let loose her tight rein on her memories and enjoyed Boone’s company more than she should.

They swapped stories about their lives in the past thirteen years, although she was sure he censored his with an iron hand. When she questioned him about the darker side of his missions, he just shook his head. “Some things should stay in the past,” he told her. But he answered her other questions willingly and she built a portrait from the pieces he gave her that led her to believe Boone had served his country honorably—and that he’d been meant to be a SEAL.

She’d also come to realize something specific had happened to make sustainability such a priority with him. He’d referred to it a couple of times, but only obliquely. Riley wondered if he’d ever share that story fully. Sometimes she thought if he did she’d finally understand his singlemindedness on the topic.

“You’re really going to hand wash our clothes?” Nora asked Riley, bringing her back to the present.

“It seems like an awful lot of work,” Avery said.

“You’re the one who inspired me with your cooking. I like learning about life during Jane’s time. Why not try laundry the old-fashioned way? Besides, I’d have to lug it to town otherwise. Between the taxi ride and several hours at a laundromat, that sounds like way too many opportunities for someone to make fun of me.”

“One of us would go with you, and James would give us a ride.”

“James has given us rides all over the place. He’s not a taxi service.” Riley wasn’t sure she could express her real reason. She’d found that without a job, she experienced time differently. Her brain wasn’t stuffed with a million details, so she had the luxury of curiosity. She’d begun to read
Pride and Prejudice
again in the evenings before bedtime and realized the book glossed over many details of Regency life, especially when it came to the way households were run. Jane Austen’s contemporaries would have known how things were done, but Riley didn’t, and when it came time to do the laundry, she’d decided to learn for herself.

“Don’t you have your own chores to do?” Riley said when Avery and Nora lingered. As hard as it would be to hand wash the dresses and linens they’d worn this week, it would be harder to do it with the two of them staring at her.

“You’re right. Good luck!” Avery curtsied, and headed toward the back of the house. Nora stayed. She’d been restless the last few days and Riley was worried about her.

“How did women do this in winter?”

“The exact same way, I suppose, but using the hearth inside.”

“What a waste of time.” Nora paced away, then came back. “Think about it, Riley, all those women over the years slaving over household chores rather than using their minds. What a complete and utter waste.”

“When you think of how hard it was, it was valuable work, don’t you think? Without them life would have been so uncomfortable.”

“When has women’s work ever been valued?” Nora flung back at her.

Riley’s heart sank. She’d known this moment was coming. While the rest of them were enjoying their break from the twenty-first century, Nora was at loose ends. She’d been writing during the afternoons, but she never looked happy while she did it. Riley wondered if Nora still felt guilty for not completing the school year.

“I value your work.”

“No, you don’t! You persuaded me to give it up and come here.”

“I persuaded you to escape from a job where someone wanted to kill you. How can you complain about that?”

“I loved that job! Why can’t any of you understand that? I loved my job and some stupid kid ruined it for me. I was helping people! I was changing lives. I’m not doing that here. I’m just… playing dress up.”

Riley, who had picked up the basket of their dirty clothing in order to carry it closer to the cauldron, dropped it again. “I’m doing a hell of a lot more than playing dress up! I can’t speak for the others, but this past week has been amazing. I’ve reintroduced art into my life. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in years!”

“So where’s all your art? You haven’t finished a single piece.”

Stung, Riley raised her voice. “We’ve only been here a week. This isn’t a contest—it’s a life. I value the silence and the hours free to experiment, and if it takes me time to finish a painting, that’s all right.”

“The thing is, time is all we’ve got here. Do you know how it feels to watch it tick away and know someone else is teaching my classes? I failed, Riley. I did the worst thing a teacher can do—I walked away.”

Her words tripped Riley up, because there was a kernel of truth there; some of Nora’s students might feel abandoned. But in a life-or-death situation like that, what was she supposed to do?

“I can’t stand wasting my days like this,” Nora went on.

Riley’s sympathy fell away in tatters. She might be doing a lot of things, but she wasn’t wasting her time here. “Are you saying writing is a waste of time? Or have you found out already that your literary pretensions were just that? Pretensions?”

She knew she’d gone too far the minute the words left her mouth. Nora stiffened, then whirled around and stalked off.

Riley went after her. “Nora, stop! Come on, I didn’t mean that.”

“Why not? It’s probably true.”

Nora kept going. Riley followed her. “If you’ve got writer’s block, take the day off. The words will come, you’ll see.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Nothing worth fighting for is easy. Look, it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you go for a walk and clear your head? You are an amazing teacher and I know it was hard for you to leave your class behind, but I also know I love you too much to let you remain in danger. If writing turns out not to be your thing, you’ll find another way. I know you will.”

Nora stopped and faced her. After a moment, she nodded. “A walk. That’s a good idea.”

“Do you want company?” Riley followed her another few paces, glancing back at the cauldron of water.

“No. I need to be alone to sort this out.”

“Okay.” Riley let her go on ahead reluctantly. She’d never seen Nora look so defeated. She was afraid of what Nora would do next if she couldn’t come to terms with life at Westfield.

They needed her, Riley realized. It took all four of them to make the perfect team, and she hoped that Nora knew how much they all loved her and wanted her here. It was so hard to see her once-vivacious friend become so cynical and unhappy. She’d hoped that a slower-paced existence on the ranch would soften Nora’s sharp corners over time. Instead, the past week had whittled them into lethal points.

When Riley returned to the fire, still wondering what she could have said to make things better, she maneuvered the iron arm that hung the large cauldron over the flames to the side, wrapped rags around her hands, lifted the huge metal pot off and set it on the ground. She used a pitcher to transfer hot water from it into another large pot that was partially filled with cold water until the mix was right. She added biodegradable soap flakes to the water and picked up the first work dress in the pile. It was Savannah’s and despite her care, it had several stains. Riley had researched old-fashioned cleaning methods, but she soon found the job to be hot and strenuous.