The Seal's Return. Patricia Potter

he had to consider it.

      He heard a car pull into the drive. He looked at his watch. It was nearly six. Clint, most likely. He’d probably been waiting all day for his call.

      Still, he didn’t move as Clint appeared from around the cabin. A scarred pit bull was at his heels.

      “Hey, Reb.” Clint used the nickname Jubal’s fellow SEALs had given him when he joined his first team. His grin was wide as ever.

      Jubal looked at him. Clint wore a tan uniform and carried a sidearm, but he looked relaxed. The exhausted lines Jubal remembered around his eyes were gone. He turned his gaze to Clint’s scarred companion.

      “Who’s your friend?” Jubal asked without moving.

      “Bart. He rides along with me.” Clint leaned down and whispered something into the dog’s ear. The dog came over to Jubal and looked at him solemnly with deep brown eyes.

      “I told him you’re a friend. He’s saying hello.”

      The dog was among the ugliest Jubal had seen. Like himself, the dog had scars all over his body, but the animal waited patiently for a response.

      Jubal immediately felt a kinship with the dog’s obvious brutal past. He leaned over and rubbed behind his ears. “Hello, Bart.”

      “He adopted me last year,” Clint explained. “I had no choice in the matter, but I thought he would be a good icebreaker today,” Clint said. “I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome since you didn’t call.”

      Jubal relaxed slightly. He sounded like the old Clint. “I just needed a few hours’ rest. I drove all night,” Jubal said without elaborating. Then he looked Clint up and down. “You weren’t kidding about being a cop?”

      “Nope. Some of those MPs we encountered would have strokes if they knew. Okay if I get a beer?”

      Jubal didn’t bother to get up. “Since you supplied them, I’d be a real jerk to say no.”

      “Now that’s the wholehearted ‘Hello, great to see you’ that I expected,” Clint groused good-naturedly. “But I accept the invitation.” He headed for the cabin, disappeared inside and reappeared with a beer. He slouched down in the lounge chair next to Jubal. “Like that scruff on your face,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot more civilized than the last time I saw you in Afghanistan.”

      “I didn’t want to scare the natives,” Jubal replied.

      “I don’t remember you being that sensitive.”

      “It’s only on your account,” Jubal said. “I’m your guest. I wasn’t sure you weren’t kidding when you said you were police chief. Didn’t think it would look so hot if I turned up looking like a biker.”

      Clint shrugged. “They’re kind of used to us now. Nothing bothers them much.”

      “Us?”

      “Vets occupying the cabin. We’ve kinda been adopted by the town folks.”

      “What if you don’t want to be adopted?”

      “That’s okay with them, too. The people in town don’t ask questions or impose, except maybe to quietly drop off a pan of brownies or cinnamon rolls. That’s rule number one in town.”

      “Dropping off brownies or not asking questions?”

      “Okay, rule one and two,” Clint corrected himself.

      Jubal looked at him curiously. “How did you come here? Doesn’t look like your kind of place. Seem to remember you liked big cities with lots of bars.”

      “The shrink at the military hospital where I was treated recommended it,” Clint said. “Dr. Payne. He was Josh Manning’s doctor at Fort Hood, and they became friends.”

      Clint hesitated before continuing. “This is Josh’s cabin. He inherited it—along with a traumatized military dog—from his best buddy who died saving his life. He admits to being in pretty bad shape when he arrived with a lot of survivor’s guilt and a bad case of PTSD. All he wanted was to be left alone and wallow in grief and guilt.”

      Jubal understood that. He waited for the rest of the story.

      “The town mayor somehow lured him out of hermitsville. A very pretty mayor, too. Single mom to a young son. She’s a force of nature in a soft, unassuming way,” Clint said. “Sounds contradictory, but there it is. I’m sure you’ll meet them at some point.

      “To make a long story short,” Clint continued, “Josh and Eve married and he moved into her ranch house. He asked Dr. Payne if he knew a vet who needed a temporary place to stay. That was me. Then Andy came through before moving in with her fiancé. She’d been a surgical nurse in a forward base. The cabin was sitting here vacant when I heard you were leaving the navy...”

      “I’m not staying,” Jubal broke in. “I thought to be here just long enough for a bit of hell-raising, but I guess that’s out of the question seeing you’re the law these days.”

      “The two things are not mutually exclusive,” Clint retorted. “What are your future plans?”

      Jubal shrugged. “Haven’t thought much about it.”

      “Haven’t wanted to, you mean,” Clint corrected. “Been there, done that.”

      Jubal wanted to change the subject away from himself. “You said in the letter you had a head injury. A chopper crash?” The question was out before he could withdraw it. He usually didn’t ask personal questions because he didn’t like them directed at him. He wouldn’t have with anyone other than Clint, but since the day Clint rescued his team, they’d been like brothers.

      “I did something stupid,” Clint said. “I was at Fort Hood between deployments. I’d practically rebuilt an old Corvette and wanted to try it out on a road a friend said no one used. I was going pretty fast when an old truck pulled onto the road and I had to turn suddenly to miss it. The car went into a ditch and my head hit the side of the interior. I suffered a concussion with brain trauma. I had continuing blackouts and headaches. For a while I couldn’t even drive, much less keep a pilot’s license.”

      Clint said, “I haven’t had a blackout in a month and I’m hoping to get a clean bill of health from the doctor to fly again, but this time I’ll be fighting fires. We had a bad one a few months ago. Good news is I can drive. If I do feel a blackout coming on, I can turn off the highway and call a deputy. Can’t do that in the sky.”

      Jubal heard the pain in his voice. It hadn’t been as easy as he tried to make it sound.

      “I’ll be honest,” Clint said. “It was rough in the beginning. I wasn’t very happy about coming here until I ran into a redheaded veterinarian who almost killed me the day we met, and a mayor that duped me into teaching computers to senior citizens.”

      Jubal raised one eyebrow. His mind couldn’t comprehend it. The image of daredevil pilot and woman-magnet Clint teaching elderly women the basics of computers was just too...crazy. Maybe even more crazy than being police chief.

      “Don’t you miss—”

      “Hell, yes. There’s still those times I hunger for a throttle in my hand, the lift of a chopper. Bringing guys back.” He paused, shrugged. “But I love my fire-breathing wife, and I like this town. We have a lot of veterans here and we help each other.”

      “You’re planning to stay here, then?” Jubal asked.

      Clint nodded. “Stephanie loves it here, and I have good friends, including Josh and a number of other vets. And dammit, I like my job.”

      “What does a cop even do here?” Jubal asked curiously.

      “We’ve been having some old-fashioned cattle and horse rustling. That’s keeping me busy now.”

      “Rustling? You’re kidding.”