Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (4 page)

Over the last two years, she’d had a lot of time to reflect and that was definitely the moment when she’d started to fall for him.

That was the hardest part of seeing him again. She’d expected to have a completely different life, one with Charlie in it, and that hadn’t happened. Instead, he’d broken her heart into tiny unrecoverable pieces. Maybe it was a good thing that he’d waited so long to confront her—she wouldn’t have been able to handle it a year ago.

“You flatter yourself. Ilhota Rosa should never be privately owned. The injunction I filed had nothing to do with us.”

The ice in his blue eyes stole the little bit of warmth she’d been clinging to. This chill between them was new. Horrible. She hated it. Hated the circumstances that had put them here.

Hated the way he said
us
without a sliver of an undertone that hinted at a possibility that
us
could still be a thing. That’s fine. She’d had over a year to get used to that.

The problem was that she hadn’t reconciled that she and Charlie were over
at all
. Neither did she understand
why
they were over.

“It doesn’t. You’re right.” She rounded the desk, desperate to put a barrier between them, and sank into her chair. “And I agree. The island is special or I wouldn’t have filed the report.”

She was paying for it too. Jared had been in Singapore for weeks, which she’d hoped would give her breathing room when he got word of what he’d consider a betrayal. But being halfway around the world didn’t prevent him from sending her nasty text messages demanding she retract her report. Which wasn’t happening.

Then he’d started calling, but she didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t own her, and besides, their conversations had been tense enough lately.

That tended to happen when you broke up with someone who wasn’t on board with the relationship ending. But there hadn’t been much to end, frankly. Not from her perspective, when he’d gone from being her rock in the aftermath of the accident to being far too insidious into every aspect of her life. His autocratic personality was only one of many reasons she’d finally gotten the courage to tell him she was done.

Charlie crossed his arms, bunching up his biceps against the sleeves of his Aqueous Adventures T-shirt. “My tactics were strictly designed to stop Anderson in his tracks while I scrambled to undo the damage his resort project would do to my business. Speaking of dragging someone into the middle of things, surely you realized your report was going to affect me. Affect my team. Did it never cross your mind to maybe reach out beforehand?”

He’d always had amazing arms. He’d definitely retained the ability to boost her up against the wall in a clash of bodies and heat as he drove her to shattering climax. Heat flooded her core. God, why had she envisioned that?

Crossing her legs against the rush of need that should not have happened, she blurted out, “That’s rich, Charlie. You’re the one who called it off between us. I…”

Was so sick with grief and confusion, and you never responded to the dozens of times I asked why…
But of course he hadn’t cared about that. Then or now.

And she’d just brought up the past, despite being totally on board with ignoring the elephant in the room. She folded her hands into her lap, staring at him as she struggled to breathe.

His expression blanked, and instantly she made the unsettling realization that she’d yet to discover just how frozen those blue eyes of his could get.

“That was over a year ago.” His voice had gone soft and lethal. “Surely we can leave that in the past where it belongs.”

Audra pressed a thumb into the center of her forehead, right where the icepick was trying to stab its way through her brain. “Actually, I can’t, Charlie. It’s my present, because you’re making it relevant by being here. I don’t understand why you didn’t have the balls to at least call me and explain.”

“The reception between Iraq and the Bahamas is iffy. I warned you of that.”

She could not help but laugh. “That’s your excuse? Technology? Sometimes we went for a month without any contact until you got within range again. I don’t recall giving you a second of grief over it either.”

Why would she? He’d been stationed in Iraq, doing covert operations, and she’d been thrilled to get what few scraps of his time and energy he could spare. When they did finally hook up, those had been the best times. Anticipation always made for truly hot long-distance Skype sex. Sometimes just the sound of his voice commanding her to come had been enough to set her off.

And she’d gladly endured the difficult parts because she’d—naïvely—thought that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, that he’d come back to her and they’d make up for all the lost time.

Charlie didn’t even blink as his jaw flexed. “It was a war, Audra. One we didn’t win. Things change, and sometimes we have no control over them. Trust me when I tell you that you’re better off.

“Oh? Things change? Thanks for the memo,” she shot back sarcastically to cover the ache in her throat as she registered the pain threaded through his voice. “Guess what. That happened on both sides. We have different lives now that don’t intersect. So no, it never occurred to me to reach out.”

She’d reached out and reached out until he threw her hand back in her face. That was a lesson she’d never forget, especially when he’d followed the same script as her dad after she’d
trusted
him to be different, to be the one guy in her life who’d stick around. She didn’t do a whole lot of reaching out these days.

With one glaring exception when she’d been so shattered by her brother’s death, there’d been no choice but to crawl toward the one person who’d been there—Jared. But Charlie didn’t need to know about how weak she’d been, how after making a lifetime habit of never needing anyone, the one unthinkable thing that could have broken her happened.

He wasn’t her lover anymore. She couldn’t fall into his arms and weep the way she’d once ached to after Isaac had shuddered through his last breath.

Oh, God
. She shut her eyes for a second. Bad, bad subject, one she did a pretty good job of avoiding, but Charlie had scraped her insides raw, and the barriers she’d built to deal with the horror of the last year crumbled, swallowing her whole.

“I have a meeting. You need to go.” She inhaled before she sobbed the words.

Her brother was gone, and nothing she could do would bring him back.

If she hadn’t invited Isaac to move in with her, he’d still be home in Miami. Alive. She’d held his hand as he slipped away after his body had been crushed in a boating accident. And only Jared had been there to keep her from drowning in grief. The man she’d wanted to turn to had vanished into his job. Just like Charlie had promised her he would.

He blinked and then nodded once, disappearing through the doorway. His heavy footfalls faded, and the hollow feeling in her chest expanded as all her internal organs burned.

Head to her desk, she let hot, angry tears fall until she’d counted to thirty. And then she pulled herself together to go into a very long budget meeting that she was already late for. Besides, she’d spent months crying over Isaac, and it had never changed the fact that her brother had left her too, just like every other man she’d counted on.

She had too much to do to dwell on the past.

Working for FARC had little glamour, but she loved every last part of her job. The research center was doing amazing things with dolphin cognition, and some of the theories she’d developed for her thesis had landed the foundation a huge grant. It was only later that she’d learned Jared had been behind it. By then, she’d already enmeshed herself deeply with both the project and the man, clinging to the lifeline he’d provided far longer than she should have. And then she was too afraid she’d lose her job if Jared pulled his funding.

She was weaker than she pretended. Weaker than she’d ever admit to someone strong and true like Charlie St. Croix. She wasn’t the same woman he’d met two years ago. Hell, he’d probably never glance twice at her if they’d met for the first time today.

Audra sank into a chair between Gilly Thrake from Accounting and Carl Mbango, the head of Public Relations. Jonna Self, FARC’s director, started up the discussion in her island lilt, and Audra squinted at the PowerPoint over the woman’s shoulder.

Two hours later, she left the meeting and got all the way back to her office before realizing she hadn’t registered a word of what had been said.

Fifteen minutes in the presence of Charlie and her whole world had turned upside down. Funny, he’d done that to her the first time too. The difference here was that she couldn’t fall into him like she once had. There was way too much water under that bridge.

The problem was that her heart kept reminding her that she and Charlie were both excellent swimmers.

S
eeing Audra once today hadn’t been enough of an evisceration, apparently, or Charlie would have gone back home like he should have.

But they weren’t done. Not by a long shot.

He never should have engaged when she’d brought up why he’d broken things off with her. The minefields surrounding that period of his life… he couldn’t let any of it out of the box. Guilt gnawed at his insides nonetheless. Why, he had no idea. He didn’t owe her any explanations, not after she’d fallen into Anderson’s bed so easily. Not when the betrayal still felt raw and bitter.

This time, he’d avoid that subject to a fault. There was no room for emotions, a mistake he wouldn’t make twice. Aqueous was his primary concern, and Audra hadn’t given him enough time to lay out his education proposal. She could at least grant him five more minutes since her report was causing his current problems. But instead of letting her work schedule dictate the circumstances of their discussion, he’d try this a different way.

He leaned against the bus stop sign and waited for Audra to emerge from FARC. When she finally strolled through the glass doors just after five o’clock, it took her approximately two seconds to notice him and even less time than that for a wary guard to snap down over her expression.

“Are you waiting for me?” she called over the street noise of babbling tourists, ancient cars, and the clop of mounted law enforcement on horseback.

“Maybe.” Did that seem overly stalkerish? “Or maybe it’s a public street and I was enjoying the view.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. We don’t have anything else to say to each other, so for your sake, I hope you are here for the view.”

The little purple dress she wore swirled around her knees as she jammed her hands down on her hips. Red hair fanned across her shoulders as the color in her cheeks bloomed, and yeah, he was definitely enjoying the view.

God, she was so gorgeous. His tongue went numb as the file folder of images with her name on it fell open in his head, spilling out every one. Naked, clothed, laughing, eyelashes at half-mast as she peeked up at him, dolphins, sand, parasailing—all of it whirled through his senses, enlivening him, heating his blood.

And therein lay her danger. The moment he smelled her, he forgot about the name Jared Anderson and remembered only that he’d left a chunk of himself with Audra when he’d gone back to Iraq after two weeks’ leave in the Bahamas.

“Not true,” he murmured as he stared at her. “I still have plenty to say.”

A couple of tourists on bicycles nearly sideswiped them as they barreled down the sidewalk, horns honking, as if that was enough of a warning for pedestrians to get out of the way.

Instantly, Charlie shielded Audra from harm and whirled her to safety in a small alleyway between FARC and the next building. His fingers did not want to uncurl from her arms, but he did it. Somehow. Tingles danced across his flesh where he’d connected with hers.

The street sounds faded as they stared at each other, their new, closer proximity a very distracting addition to the party. He should be focusing on Aqueous. Only. Not her and how much he’d liked touching her, even for that brief second.

“Are you okay?” he asked and she nodded.

“Not that I was in any real danger,” she said wryly. “Bicyclists are not known for their killer instincts.”

He almost laughed and then remembered they weren’t friends, lovers, acquaintances, or really anything to each other. Not anymore. Sudden sadness crushed down on his chest, and that was worse than anything.

“Am I cleared to exit the premises, lieutenant?” she asked.

“No,” he fairly growled as she took a step toward the waterfront, also known as the opposite direction he wanted her to go. “Can you take five minutes out of your busy schedule to hear me out?”

She made a big show of firming her lips and circling her finger in a smart-ass, get-on-with-it motion. It was harder to keep from grabbing that finger and sucking it into his mouth than he would have liked. The sounds she made when he pleasured her had laced his dreams often enough that he could recall them with perfect clarity, even in a thin, shadowed alleyway in Freeport.

But he’d given up his right to put his mouth on her. She’d found someone else.