Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (23 page)

Anderson lifted his chin. “All’s fair in love and war.”

“You’ve got that right.” Charlie turned to leave and stopped at the door. “Cancel the injunction. Otherwise you’re going to find yourself on the wrong end of a dirty fight.”

“Counterproposal. If you stand in the way of Audra’s decision to get back together with me, I’ll make sure your business license is revoked.”

As the final syllable sliced through the air, Charlie jerked to a halt and swung around to face his nemesis one last time. “Threats? That’s the best you can do? How about letting Audra make her own choices?”

“I am.” Jared showed his teeth. “I’m just giving you a little extra incentive to clear the way for her to make that choice.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because you want what’s best for her,” he fired back without missing a beat. “I was there for her. I held her when she cried. I stood next to her as she laid a rose on Isaac’s casket. Where were you?”

Pain, sudden and brutal, exploded in Charlie’s chest. His mouth dried up so fast he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, as he processed what he’d like to mock as fabrications, half-truths, something other than what it was: reality.

Jared had done what Charlie couldn’t.

Anderson was challenging him to not only recognize that but to also step back. Remove himself from the equation so Audra’s choice wouldn’t be hampered by the premise that Charlie might someday have the capacity to be what Audra needed.

That was the lie. He might never get there. Anderson had already proven he could fill that role. Why not take the offered solution to all of his problems and let Audra go? Aqueous would be back on solid ground. And in case Charlie wasn’t prepared to do the right thing, Anderson was going to help him along by threatening to shut his business down permanently if he didn’t.

Jared Anderson could go to hell before Charlie would give up his shot at paradise a second time.

“Do your worst.” Charlie cracked his knuckles in case his former friend decided to toss out any more insults. Anderson’s looks might be improved with all of the bones in his face broken. “You were there for her when I couldn’t be, and I’ll always be grateful she had someone. But you lost Audra for a reason. Manipulating her isn’t going to win her back.”

“You’re correct about one thing,” Anderson said quietly. So quietly that Charlie had to lean closer in order to hear, which he suspected had been the man’s intent. “As long as I have Audra, I don’t care about you. The injunction is as good as gone.”

He should leave. Turn and walk out the door. But he couldn’t resist asking the million dollar question. “What happened to make you hate me so much?”

Anderson’s mouth lifted. “I don’t hate you. You should ask instead what you have that I want. And the answer to that should be fairly obvious.”

Audra
.

“There are thousands of women in the world. Hundreds of thousands. Why her?”

Anderson’s smile turned genuine. So much so that Charlie did a double take as the man he’d once been friends with surfaced for that brief second.

“She makes me better. And you’re in my way.”

The flash of humanity vanished, and Jared Anderson turned back into the soulless spawn of the devil Charlie had been dealing with all along.

He nodded once. “Then you’ll understand when I say same goes.”

Charlie stewed about Anderson’s parting shot the rest of the day as he waited at Audra’s apartment for her to come home. He’d almost gone to FARC three times to talk to her, but there was no reason their conversation couldn’t wait.

The nerve of that arrogant ass was legendary. Audra was not getting back together with Anderson. She might even be pregnant with Charlie’s child right now. They were working through things one hurdle at a time. It was going to go exactly as he’d told Anderson. He and Audra were going to be laughing about this very soon.

Except when Audra walked in the door, he didn’t feel like laughing all at once. His senses tingled like he’d just seen an Iraqi villager with a suspicious lump under his caftan. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but her spine was too straight and her expression too blank.

To top it all off, Anderson’s smug comments sat just under his skin, prickling at him.

“Hey,” she called as she put her purse down on the counter in her kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

Yeah, okay. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Couldn’t a guy stop by to see his girlfriend without getting raised eyebrows? He
did
have a key. “Jack took my shift at the dive shop. I thought we could have dinner.”

“I’m in favor of dinner.”

The tension stretched, and the questions swirling through his mind weren’t getting answered any faster by sitting there on the couch just looking at her. So he nodded to the space next to him. “Sit down. Tell me about your day.”

A wary look sprang into her eye, but she complied, perching on the cushion like she might take flight again at any given time instead of settling in against him, torso to torso, like she couldn’t possibly touch him enough. Which was what she normally did when they watched TV or talked or basically any time they got within two feet of each other. He tried not to read into it, but the funny little squiggle in his stomach wasn’t helping matters.

“What do you want to know? Like what I had for lunch?”

“Sure.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Or, you know, you could talk about any unexpected appointments you might have had this morning with an ex-lover.”

Guilt sprang into her gaze, and a long, sick wave upended his heart. Guilt? Why? Because there had been much more to the conversation she’d had with Anderson than he’d been privy to?

Edgy all at once, he shifted, fully facing her so he couldn’t be surprised again. Every time in the past that he hadn’t had all the information, it had caused unspeakable agony as the situation went to hell in a handbasket.

“How do you know about that?” she asked cautiously.

“How do you think? He told me.”

“You went to see Jared?” Her stricken face sliced through him. “Why would you do that?”

She hadn’t seen that coming. And now he wondered if she’d have even mentioned that she’d seen her former lover today if he hadn’t brought it up. After all, she’d known he was back in town if she’d gone to see him. Somehow. Were they still in contact?

Secrets and lies weren’t his favorite look on her. But, he reminded himself, he didn’t have all the facts. Yet.

“I went to see him because I needed to fight that battle.” He crossed his arms and opted to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Apparently we think alike. We both went there to talk him into canceling the injunction. Which he told me he would be happy to do.”

“
If
I agree to his insane proposal to get back together with him,” she shot back. “I laughed in his face, by the way, if that’s where you’re headed with all of this.”

The admission didn’t make him relax. She was too keyed up, too nervous about this for him to consider relaxing. “Yeah, it came up. He seemed pretty confident that when I talked to you, I’d be the one who was surprised by the outcome.”

She scowled. “I don’t know why he’d say that. I have no intention of getting back together with him, especially not with such a dictatorial mandate attached. I’m not a fan of being manipulated. Or told what to do.”

But she wouldn’t look at him, and one foot bounced against the carpet. She’d yet to let her back hit the couch. And he had to know. “Did you tell him that your relationship meant a lot to you?”

Instantly, a guard snapped down over her face. “Yes. And it’s true. He was there for me at a time when I needed someone.”

Truth
. And it riddled his chest like a machine gun with a stuck trigger. She’d needed someone because he’d been too messed up to handle anything more than crawling free of his nightmares on a daily basis. Guilt and about a thousand other things crowded into his already-full chest.

“But him?” Charlie practically spit out the words in a purely deflective move that immediately shamed him. “He’s poisonous.”

“There’s a lot about Jared that’s unpleasant, I readily agree. But there’s good in him,” she argued. “I thought maybe I could surface it.”

The silence grew taut as she trailed off. But what was he supposed to say to that?
Sorry you failed at finding the nonexistent humanity in a billionaire with no soul?
Or
please tell me more about how he was there for you. How he held you and—

That was dangerous territory, and his agitation was already high.

“Maybe you should have tried harder,” he said with less sarcasm than the comment deserved. “Is that why you stuck around so long after…”

Isaac
. He let the blank fill in itself because it was a hard barb to the heart, for both of them. But it didn’t change facts. Audra and Anderson had stayed a couple for nearly a year. For a smart woman, she’d certainly taken her sweet time to clue in that her boyfriend was a lost cause.

Unless, of course, she was lying. The comment about her coming on to Jared wouldn’t stop replaying through his head. He’d been putting Anderson in the role of villain for a while, but Audra did still have some blame for their relationship continuing.

Her expression closed in. “If you have a problem with the fact that I was with Jared, now would be the time to say so.”

Deflection was the best she could do? A good bit of his composure slid away as he contemplated the woman who might be carrying his child. But who had also betrayed him by sleeping with a man who had been his friend. The same one who had done his best to destroy Charlie.

He’d long made a habit of cutting people out of his life who’d betrayed him—like his father. Why had he given Audra a pass?

Because he loved her
. And he had a bad history of letting a woman he loved hurt him before cluing in that she was in it for herself and herself only. Audra had made a choice to be with Anderson and a choice to stay with him and a choice to not talk about their relationship.

He watched her as he fought to keep his temper on an even keel. “I have a problem that you were with him for far longer than makes sense. Assuming that what you told me about your reasons for being with him are true.”

“Are you asking me if I lied about it?” Hurt and no small amount of shock pinched her mouth together. “What did he say to you? Jared is poisonous, Charlie. On that we can agree. Don’t let him come between us.”

“I’m not—” He took a deep breath because of course he was. “Yeah. He said some things that made it seem like the conversations you and I have had weren’t the full story. We’ve done a fantastic job of avoiding this subject. I guess it’s apparent why.”

“Because neither of us is good at saying what’s going on inside,” she said flatly. “What’s new? I apologized for dating him. What are you looking for with this cross-examination?”

I want to understand why the thought of Anderson’s hands on you infuriates me so much.

He scrubbed at his face and reeled back the blackness seething through his chest before he said something he couldn’t take back. Distress didn’t mix well with his triggers, and all sorts of warning signs started firing off: The easiest way to avoid meltdown was to leave.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered as he shoved off the couch. “I can’t do this.”

“No, Charlie.” Her voice rang out, stopping him in his tracks in the middle of her living room. “You can. Stop running away from the hard parts of us.”

“All of it is hard.” Bleakly, he turned to meet her stricken gaze. “There’s a reason we said no promises the first time around. Neither of us was in a place where we could make them. And it feels a lot like we’re still not.”

That was the bottom line. She had her secrets. He had his. Never the two shall meet.

Her chest rose and fell as she processed that. The gulf between them stretched to roughly the size of the Milky Way, and he had no idea how to bridge the gap. It would take a herculean effort, a time machine. More grace on her part than he deserved.

They’d both done their share of messing up what they’d had once, and that trend continued.

“We’re getting there, Charlie. Or at least I’m trying to. I went to see Jared because it’s my fault he started this feud,” she admitted. “I needed to fix it.”

Shutting his eyes, he sucked air into his lungs. Her secrets were far more explosive than he’d guessed, apparently. Never would he have assumed that he could feel even more betrayed. But that one sentence had done it. It
had
been her fault all along that Anderson had targeted Aqueous Adventures. He’d talked himself out of believing that. If she hadn’t confessed, he’d still be sure she wasn’t involved. And she hadn’t even apologized.

He’d dragged his guys to the Caribbean on the premise that they’d build something real and solid where they could heal. Thrive. Charlie wasn’t the only one who’d brought home extra struggles from Iraq. It had been difficult, and he’d questioned his sanity every day, especially as he’d been doing it in such close proximity to Audra for so long.

Not only had his former friend turned on him, Audra had instigated the vendetta that threatened Aqueous Adventures. His business might never recover, and she’d
caused his problems.