Thanksgiving Daddy

A one-night stand between a SEAL and an air force major results in a holiday baby in New York Times bestselling author Rachel Lee’s new addition to the popular miniseries Conard County: The Next Generation!

Honor, duty and loyalty drove Major Edith Clapton to risk her life flying Combat Search and Recovery in Afghanistan. Hunger, desire and lust drove her into the arms of Seth Hardin, a gorgeous navy SEAL she had airlifted to safety. Their epic one-night stand in the shadow of the Afghan mountains has left Edie facing the most important mission of her life: motherhood.

After sharing her news, Edie is stunned by Seth’s insistence on being a father to his child—and the bewildering feelings this practical stranger has stirred within her. This wasn’t part of her life-in-the-navy plan! Should she flee back to military life for a desk job and single parenthood? Or give thanks for this unexpected family?

“Am I still a challenge?”

“You’re carrying my son inside of you. How could you not be a challenge? But you’re still sexy as hell.”

Edie swore quietly.

“Sorry,” Seth said. “If you don’t like peeks inside my head, don’t ask.”

She faced him then. “You know, Seth Hardin, you’re driving me nuts. We can’t have a discussion like this on a public street.”

He pointed. “Half a block that way.”

She started marching quick time, looking for all the world as if she were on parade, back stiff, strides even and firm. He kept up without difficulty.

“Don’t get breathless,” he said.

“Oh, shut up.”

He almost grinned. No more eggshells, at least for now. The gloves were off.

Conard County: The Next Generation

Dear Reader,

For many, many years now I’ve been asked to write a full book for Seth Hardin. He first appeared in Point of No Return a very long time ago and even though he had a romance as a secondary character in a Conard County single title, then another in a Christmas novella, I still get a lot of requests.

It tickles me that so many readers wanted him to have his own book, but achieving that had become difficult. When I wrote his first romance with Darlene, I had no idea how many readers wanted him to have his own book. After that, the requests started to come in and I did the novella. Well, here we are two marriages down the road and the requests still come regularly. I had to find a way to work around that, but I finally did.

So here it is, Seth Hardin as the hero in his own book. I hope you enjoy what ensues after he has a one-night stand with an air force pilot in Afghanistan. Things get complicated quickly, but love is rarely easy, especially with an unexpected baby on the way.

Hugs,

Rachel

Thanksgiving Daddy

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

To my babies, all grown now. I’m so proud of you.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Prologue

Flying with the air force combat search and rescue team had given Major Edith Clapton nerves of steel. At least when she was in the middle of all hell breaking loose. This op had been like many other ops, flying into enemy territory to pull out a recon unit, this time a group of navy SEALs. She didn’t want to know their mission. None of her business. Her job was to fly that Pave Hawk helicopter in and pull them out no matter how dangerous it became.

This time there had been gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, enough to put her teeth on edge, especially during the part where she had to hover over a cliff top that simply didn’t seem big enough, getting far closer than she would have liked, given her rotors.

It had been close, but there had been wounded in the team she was picking up, one of whom needed a litter, and under fire there was no way she could use a rope lift. They needed to be in and out as fast as possible, with minimal exposure to those attackers on the surrounding mountains.

So trying to hover while nearly scraping the ground of a nearby cliff, holding perfectly still while fire came her way...well, it might take some time to calm down completely. The nerves of steel that helped her on missions never failed to desert her back at the base.

After showering, she headed to the officers’ club, looking for a good meal and an illicit drink or two. Illicit because legally no alcohol was allowed in Afghanistan, but somehow it made its way in to the bases anyway.

She drank only after a mission, and only a couple of drinks. There were too many others around her to remind her that alcohol could become a crutch. She didn’t want any crutches, but she did want to wind down. Every nerve and muscle in her body seemed to be shrieking.

She nodded to the people she knew, which was nearly every officer at this base, and found herself a rickety table in the corner. They were supposedly at the rear of all the fighting, but that could change at any moment. In the meantime, this clone of the U.S. tried to pass for normal, with hurriedly built structures, a few fast-food joints and an exchange.

It didn’t quite deceive anyone, but it was sure better than some of the firebases she had seen. For some, spending time here almost amounted to a vacation.

She saw the SEAL team walk in just as she was being served a steak. Yeah, a real steak. It hardly seemed fair when so many of her fellow troops would be dining on barely warmed freeze-dried rations tonight. It was, however, one of the perks of being stationed at a permanent base. Well, semipermanent. She let the politics of it all fly by her.

She was on her second drink and halfway through her steak when one of the SEALs she had rescued pulled out a chair and sat across from her.

“Mind?” he asked.

“We’re not supposed to hang,” she reminded him. Like many of his type, he seemed to be all hard angles and planes encased in muscle. Short dark hair, brown eyes that held flecks of green. Just sitting there, he looked dangerous.

“No one knows you pulled us out today. Besides, if we can’t trust the people in this room, who can we trust?” He stuck out his hand. “Seth Hardin.”

She shook it, taking in the subdued captain’s eagle, which was stitched into the collar of his camouflage uniform. His rank was the naval equivalent of the air force’s colonel. “Edith Clapton.”

“That was some flying job you did out there,” he said.

“Thanks. Your guys okay?”

“One just got winged. We’re still waiting to hear about the other. Your medics probably saved his life.”

That was the other part of the job: she extracted, but in the rear of her helicopter she carried the bare bones of an emergency medical team when it was needed. Today it had been needed. They’d done some stripping in the cabin to make room. “That’s what we do.”

He smiled faintly. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be grateful.”

The waiter, a civilian working for a contractor, came over to take his order. He wanted a steak, too, and a couple of beers.

“Time to forget,” he said.

She couldn’t agree more. There’d be another mission, tomorrow or the next day, but for right now it was time to play the mental game of “everything’s normal and okay.” And maybe it was, as much as it could be in the middle of a war.

“Let me buy you another drink,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

“I usually limit myself to two.”

A sparkle came into his green-brown eyes. “Usually. Maybe tonight is different. It’s just one more. I don’t want to give you a hangover.”

She hesitated, then said, “Thanks.” Another whiskey. More wind-down. Just this once. Maybe it would quiet the tingling awareness of Seth’s masculinity. A need, probably adrenaline-fueled, to have wild sex with him and make the world go away.

Damn, she’d avoided that through her entire career. She knew what some of the men whispered behind her back and she didn’t care. She just knew how badly getting involved with a fellow officer could mess up her career, and her career was everything to her. One little misstep and her promotion would never happen. Or she’d be accused of ugly things she never wanted to hear. The other whispers were preferable.

As for getting involved with a civilian? Well, who the hell had time? On her stateside rotations, she was usually buried in training. Either her own or that of others. Catching up, keeping up and honing her skills, not to mention getting the master’s degree the air force had demanded before her promotion to major. And the war college courses. She didn’t have time for much else, and joining her comrades to hang out at a bar looking for quickies didn’t appeal to her at all.

She had a few good friends, people she preferred to get together with for cards or some other pastimes. No men, no sex. It kept things clean.

So why was she sitting here wondering if she’d been making a mistake all this time? Because one handsome dude had sat across from her and bought her a drink?

Damn, she needed to unwind. Her thoughts were a little messed up.

“That was some flying you did,” he repeated. “I can’t imagine maneuvering a bird that big into a keyhole like that and holding it steady, and you did it under some pretty heavy fire. You must have amazing nerves.”

She shrugged her shoulder. “It’s what I do. I’ve done it a lot. The reaction waits for later.”

“Yeah. It does.” His gaze said he knew exactly what she meant. Maybe he did. SEALs had nerves of steel, too, but maybe when they got back from a mission they needed to come down from it. Well, hell, yeah, she thought. She’d heard about more than one brawl involving them. Fighting out the tension probably worked as good as sex. How would she know?

Halfway through the meal, he asked something that nearly sobered her up. “You find it hard to talk to civilians now?”

“Yeah. They don’t know.”

His gaze grew distant. “They can’t know. I don’t want them to know, but even if we try to talk they haven’t been here.” He shook his head and came back to her. “I honestly don’t want them to understand. Why should they? Bad enough we have to.” He looked at his hands, fisting them then unclenching them. “But we know, don’t we, Major? We know what we’re capable of.”

He probably more than she, she thought. Oh, heck. “Call me Edie.”

“Seth,” he responded. Then he shook off the mood and gave her a smile so charming it almost took her breath away. “Birds of a feather and all that. Who else can you talk to?”

“I don’t know where you’ve been,” she reminded him.

“You don’t want to. I don’t want to tell you, either. I just want to have some fun tonight. It was close today. We’re damn lucky you got there when you did. So I’m feeling grateful to you, grateful to be alive and grateful my team is alive. That’s a lot to be happy about.”

He lifted his beer in toast. “To life. Wouldn’t want to be without it.”

She had to laugh, and as the sound escaped her, she felt the last of her tension evaporating. She raised her own glass then sipped the whiskey.

Things seemed to become a blur after that. Later she would think she should never have had that third whiskey, even while she was eating. Or maybe she’d had a fourth?

She vaguely remembered somehow sitting at the bar with Seth as the place started emptying out. Sort of remembered him walking her back to her quarters, nothing but a tiny room, shoddily built. She remembered laughing, remembered him steadying her a bit.

Remembered him apologizing for buying her too many drinks. “I should have been able to say no.” It was true. And she really wasn’t that drunk.

She remembered clearly, though, waking in the wee hours. Finding him lying beside her. A quick panicked check told her she was fully clothed and so was he. They were just sleeping it off.

But as soon as the panic eased, something else surged. Wild after years of self-denial, it rose violently, like an erupting volcano: desire.

God, he was good-looking. She ran her eyes over him in the dim light from the shaded lamp across the room. Not much to see in his BDUs, but she drank him in anyway. Just once she wanted to know, and for some reason she wanted to know with this man.

Stupid, she tried to tell herself, but her body continued to grow heavy with hunger, and a deep throbbing began between her thighs. She could die tomorrow or the next day. Why did she keep putting off something so important? Because of her career?

Reasons that had made sense for a decade now all of a sudden weren’t making any sense. She’d seen men and women die out here, and knew how it could come without warning, despite every sensible precaution. Life was short, and the longer she was out here the more it felt like she was riding the edge of it. How many more missions before she bought it? How many times could she cheat death?

His eyes opened and saw her looking at him. “You’re a beautiful sight to wake to.”

She doubted it. Living out here had made her relinquish the last female trappings. Her red hair was short, well shy of being bald the way a lot of the men went for, but short enough to be boyish. No perfume, no makeup, and messy and grungy from sleep.

But he saw something else. Flames seemed to dance in his eyes. “Me, too” was all he said.

Every last thought flew out of her head. She never thought about her own lack of protection. She didn’t care that he actually pulled on a condom. She was simply past thinking.

He assumed she had done this before, and she was vaguely glad. He didn’t hesitate, or question, or wonder. He just took, and that’s exactly what she wanted right now.

Getting their uniforms and boots off might have been funny if they hadn’t been so driven. Damn, she felt like a pillar of fire, filled with need so strong she couldn’t fight it.

He tore at her clothes, she tore at his. As quickly as they could, they got naked, then tumbled onto the cot again. A narrow cot, barely making room for the two of them. Who cared?

It was fast, and it was furious. He licked and sucked at her breasts as her hands wandered naively over his back and shoulders. She didn’t know exactly what to do, but her hips rose to meet his, and that seemed to be the important thing.

She’d never felt like this before. A whole new world of sensation was opening in her, and she loved it. She hadn’t imagined being with a man could be so good.

Hot and heavy sensations filled her. Stifled cries escaped her. She was searching for something and didn’t really know what it was.

Then he plunged into her. At once she gasped. A sharp pain seared her, almost ruining the moment.

“My God,” he said.

No, don’t let it stop, not now. She needed this desperately. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed his hips and urged him on, bucking wildly in her need.

After the briefest hesitation, he bent his head again to her breast and began to move in and out of her in a steady, deepening rhythm. Carrying her higher and higher, as if she rode a rocket.

Culmination came almost too soon, as if her body had waited forever for this release. She peaked, rose up to meet him and whimpered as an almost agonizing pleasure filled her. Moments later, he drove deep into her, shuddering.

* * *

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked later.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

“I’d have been more careful.”

“I didn’t want careful. I wanted exactly that.”

He looked deep into her eyes, then nodded. “I’m leaving today. I should have told you that. Let me buy you breakfast.”

She pulled on a fresh uniform, cleaned up as best she could at the sink, aware of his gaze on her.

“Don’t be mad,” she said finally.

“I’m not mad. I just wish I could have done better by you.”

“You did just fine.” She managed a smile. “I don’t regret it, Seth, so don’t ruin it.”

At last he smiled. “Fair enough.”

They went to get breakfast at the canteen. Early though the hour was, the place was filling up. With little privacy, they could only talk desultorily. He mentioned his parents, his home back in Wyoming and how he hoped to go back there soon.

She talked a little about her life back in the States, although there wasn’t much to tell. No family left. That bothered her. She would have at least liked to have a family to go home to.

But mostly she talked about her career, and how it was the centerpiece of her life.

“I get it,” he said. “Believe me. I’m thinking about retiring, though.”

“Will they let you?”

His smile was crooked. “I’m starting to get past my use-by date. I don’t see my future behind a desk.”

“I hear you.”

Finally he pulled a pad out of one of the many pockets on his uniform, and scribbled something. “If you need me, you can reach me through my family.”

“Why would I need you?”

He just shrugged. “You never know.” He rose and offered his hand. She shook it. “I hope I see you again.”

She doubted he would. SEALs came and went all over the globe, almost like ghosts. Here then gone. She looked at the scrap of paper and tossed it on her plate as trash.

She didn’t even dream what a mistake that might be. Or that eventually she would remember that scrawl.

Chapter One

As she approached Conard City, Edith Clapton wondered if there was even a town out here. Endless miles of empty grazing land, cattle here and there and finally a couple of roadhouses were the only signs that people actually lived out here.

Her hands tightened on the wheel, and a glance at her GPS told her she was getting close. Not for the first time she wondered if she had lost her mind.

She was pregnant. Nearly five months. And she’d spent a whole lot of time gnawing around about whether she should tell Seth Hardin he was a father. She’d tried once to track him down through the military, and had been extraordinarily relieved when she couldn’t find him. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to face it, but she kept feeling she at least owed it to him to tell him he was going to have a kid.

She didn’t need child support, she didn’t want a stranger intimately involved in her life. Lots of good reasons for just keeping her mouth shut. Except for that feeling that a father needed to know he had a child. Whether he wanted to be part of this kid’s life or not.

She couldn’t seem to get around that, and God knew she had tried. Maybe the thing that had hit her hardest was the idea of having to tell this child that his father didn’t even know he existed. Boy, wouldn’t that make her feel like slime.

So okay, she’d drop the bomb on his parents—easier than telling him—and leave. Just leave. Get her duty done then forget about it. If Seth wanted to hunt her up someday and meet his kid, nothing would stop him. It wasn’t as if she was impossible to find.

Damn, everything was all messed up. Pulled off flying status, stuck behind a desk until after her maternity leave, superior officers hinting that she might want to consider some other career path with a kid to consider. She didn’t want to give up flying. She loved it. And maybe she had a hankering for the adrenaline, too.

Regardless, she was feeling an adrenaline rush as she reached town at last, and houses sprang up, most close together, most older. The time was getting close.

She wondered how she’d be received. Probably like an unwelcome messenger. Probably with anger and doubt. Well, she didn’t care. She would do what was right then shake the dust from her heels.

She would try to put back together a life and a career that had been shattered by unwelcome news. Her rise to the top had probably come to a halt. How could it not, unless she gave up the baby. She couldn’t do that, though. Those thoughts had danced around in her head, even pummeled her at times, but somehow she couldn’t bear the idea of giving up that little life growing in her, a life that had seemed real almost from the instant she learned of it, that had become very real from the first little bubble of movement she felt.

Abandon the kid so she could continue rising? No way. She might be tied to a desk from here on out, but she’d be the best damn desk jockey in the air force, if it came to that. Maybe she had enough behind her to keep her going up, but she doubted it. Kids weren’t supposed to be a factor in what assignments you could perform. You were supposed to have someone who could step in to parent while you had to be away.

She had no one. Raised by her grandmother after her mother had died of a drug overdose, she was now alone in the world. No one to turn to except herself. She was used to that. But farewell to her career, most likely. She’d make it twenty years, realize the promotions wouldn’t come again, and she’d have to pull out.

Well, she wasn’t going to abandon her kid the way her mother had abandoned her. That was the strongest determination in her right now.

And all of these thoughts had long since been worked out. All of them. She was just trying to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable conversation ahead. A conversation that she hoped would happen on a doorstep. Then she would turn and leave for good.

The town had slid into autumn. Leaves shone in brilliant gold. Those that had already fallen tumbled along sidewalks and streets in a light breeze. Here and there pumpkins, skeletons and waving white ghosts announced the approach of Halloween. Pretty place, she supposed, if you wanted to turn the clock back. Of course, she was a lousy judge. Sterile military environments had been her only home for a long time now.

The voice of the GPS, silenced so often in the empty prairies, resurrected and offered her no mercy. It told her to turn left, and she did, until she reached what she supposed was a newer subdivision. Post–World War II at least. Maybe post-Vietnam. Despite looking like it had tumbled out of a box that contained only one design, it was neat and even colorful. She guessed no one here thought about deed restrictions. Some of the houses were almost blinding in their brightness.

“You have arrived.”

“Shut up,” she said to the GPS. She slowed and stopped and looked at the house number. No escape. She was here.

The house was a white ranch-style, sprawling, set on a well-tended lawn that was beginning to fade with autumn. Rose bushes, barren of all but a few flowers, climbed a trellis beside the door. A sporty little car sat in the driveway.

She turned off the ignition and sat listening to the engine tick as it cooled. Hell, she didn’t even feel this much trepidation before a dangerous mission. The neighborhood might have been empty. Not a soul in sight, not even a moving car. Unknown territory.

Well, maybe the Tates didn’t live here anymore. If so, that would be the end of her search.

She realized she was thinking like a coward. Just do it. What was the worst that could happen? She got called a liar and a door slammed in her face? Hardly an incoming rocket-propelled grenade.

Sighing, she at last climbed out of the car and straightened her cammies. She refused to wear the air force’s ugly pregnancy jumper, and she’d just started to show enough that she had to cover up somehow. A bigger cammie shirt, a larger waistband, they’d do for now. Later? She didn’t want to think about it.