Free A SEAL's Vow (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 2) by Cora Seton

of you.”
    “He’d better find me a bunch of them. I want a choice. I figure twenty or so. I’ll have to date them all, of course, before I pick one. Right, Harris? What do you say?” he said to the other member of Clay’s building team.
    “Boone will be lucky if he can find one.”
    “For me?” Curtis drew himself up. “The ladies love me.”
    “For me.”
    Clay jumped in to smooth over the awkward moment. “He’ll find someone for both of you.” He wondered how easy it would be to find a match for Harris, though. There was nothing wrong with the guy except the quiet, serious man held back so much. Harris Wentworth was a sniper—one of the best Clay had ever known. Unlike the other men, Harris never spoke about old missions or mentioned his time in the service. Still, even a civilian would know he’d served. There was something in his eyes that made it all too clear. Clay had been surprised at how well Harris fit in here. A man like him—a loner—might have had trouble adjusting, but he’d gone along with all the demands they’d placed on him, even when it had come time to learn the complicated Regency dances and attend a ball. In fact, Harris had turned out to be the best dancer among them. “I had lessons as a kid,” was all he’d say when questioned. He was a man who kept things close to the vest.
    Clay could appreciate that, but most women wouldn’t.
    “What about Nora and the others? Don’t they have some friends they can bring in?” Curtis asked.
    Clay knew how Nora would react to that idea. “I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”
    “I still say twenty women apiece ought to do it,” Curtis went on.
    “I just want one,” Harris said quietly. He nodded to the plans rolled up in Clay’s hands. “Ready to get to work?”
    “No one is innocent in this war, least of all the women.” Finn parried another blow with his rough-hewn ax. Its shaft was made from an ash tree. Cut down three springs ago, aged in a dry place and hardened in a complicated and interesting process, its blade was reminiscent of the Lochaber style, elongated, with a…
    Nora sighed, back at her desk that afternoon. The scene she was writing had lost all momentum. But she wanted her readers to understand the intricate process that was required to make a battle-ax, and to thereby understand how amazing it was that men could make such tools under primitive conditions back in the 1700s. The teacher in her loved those details and wanted to share them with everyone else.
    But whenever she tried, the action fell flat.
    It didn’t help that she kept thinking about Clay. About the way he’d promised to change her mind about marrying him last night.
    And the way the cameras had captured the scene, turning it into a farce.
    She’d tossed and turned far into the wee hours, trying in vain to clear her mind of Clay’s words and kisses, Fulsom’s puffed up announcements and her stalker’s threats. She’d finally fallen asleep and woken to a dawn in which she felt drained of all emotion except a helpless resignation that this wasn’t a world that thought it owed her any happiness. She’d have to be content with the scraps she could gather for herself.
    She tore out the page, balled it up and tossed it in the cardboard box Riley had set next to the little trash can for recycling, already half-full of similar sheets of paper. If only she could skip the story and just teach her readers about the way the Scottish highlands had been divided up by clans and then draw a comparison to modern-day Syria and the way family ties were driving the difficulties there, too, then maybe her readers could gain some insight into—
    There she went again.
    She wasn’t a teacher anymore.
    Nora stood up again and paced across the room, her skirts swishing as she moved. Could she ever have been a very good one, seeing the way things had ended? Besides, when she’d studied English at Boston College, she’d planned to write, not teach. Teaching