Ruined by the SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 2) (2 page)

It was that or just fall over where he stood, which would feel like shit on his leg. He moved to step
around her.

She matched his step.

He propped his hands on his hips.

She crossed her arms under her breasts.

Not the time to ogle her tits, man.
Whatever. His filter had vanished somewhere over the Caribbean Sea.

“You can’t stay here.”

“I can, and I will.” He glanced around, smirking. “Who am I bothering by being here?”

She blinked at him. “Me. You’re bothering
me
.”
 

TWO

C
ARA
COULDN
’
T
GET
OVER
THE
NERVE
OF
THIS
GUY
. Six-plus feet of rudeness. No way was she letting him saunter onto her estate.

And it was, very much,
her
estate. She’d been a breath away from being fired as the director of the Historical Society when they’d received notice that they’d been bequeathed Villa Sucre. The property was a feather in the cap of the Society, but more to the point,
it had finally given her a chance to show the board of directors just how capable she could be when given real work to do.

So there was no way that Mr. Chiseled Right Angles was going to saunter in here and blithely blow that all out of the water for her. And there was sure as hell no way she was going to let him then go
swimming
. The nerve.

She shook her head, feeling her curls bounce all over
the place. Good. Let him think she’s a crazy voodoo chick or something. “You can’t just walk in here, drop this news bomb on me, and then go in search of the beach!”

He gave her a bland look that said she didn’t scare him. “Why not? I’m exhausted and nothing’s going to get sorted out until after the weekend, so….”

“You can’t
stay
here! Go back to town and get a hotel room.”

“No.”

The muscles
up and down her right leg twitched. She desperately wanted to stomp her foot for emphasis. She clenched her fists instead and took a deep breath. “Mr. Frasier—”

“Mick is fine.”

“Mr. Frasier, I must insist that you vacate the property.”

He gave her a slow, surprised blink, then crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her stance. “Ms. Levasseur, I in turn must insist that
you
vacate the property.”

She glared at his passive expression. He was trying to get her goat. It wasn’t going to work. She was a professional. University-trained, board-of-directors-hazed, island-hardened professional. She didn’t take any crap from contractors, construction workers, or bitter senior citizens, and she wasn’t going to let this man best her either.
 

She stepped back and let her arms swing loose at her side.
Something about his aura threw her off-balance. Distance would be good. Calming. Reason and logic-restoring. “That is not going to happen.”

Except it was nearly the end of her workday and she had to meet her friends Daphne and Arielle for dinner.

As if he could read her mind, he said, “You aren’t planning on going home for the night?”

“Of course I am.” Her mind started to spin with the beginnings
of a plan. “As you say, nothing will happen over the weekend. Good luck finding the beach. It’s terribly rocky and the tide is vicious.”

“Sounds delightful.”

She smirked and grabbed her phone. “See you on Monday.”

Her purse was…somewhere. She walked, head held high, toward the hallway, hoping—a-ha. It was hanging on the doorknob. Without a backwards glance, she slung it across her body and
headed for the side entrance, where her old hatchback was parked.

Come Monday, Mr. Chiseled Right Angles would be long gone.

There was no functional bathroom anywhere on the estate. He’d take a dip in the ocean—if he survived, she hadn’t been kidding about the current—and quickly realize there was no way to rinse off the salt.

Sucked to be him.

~

“Y
OU
’
RE
NOT
EATING
.” Daphne said this
a little louder than necessary, making a few people around them in the outdoor cafe turn around and look. She shrugged unapologetically when Arielle shushed her. “What? She’s not and she’s also ignoring us.”

Cara glanced down at her untouched grilled fish and sighed. Then she gave her friends an apologetic smile. “I know. I’m terrible company tonight.”

“We don’t mind,” Arielle said softly.

“Yes we do,” Daphne said, not softly at all. “And not because it hurts us, you dork, but because something’s clearly wrong and you aren’t sharing.”

She thought about telling them about the unexpected visitor to the estate. They’d heard all about her drama getting the board to agree to the renovation project.

So why didn’t she want to tell them about this new hiccup? They’d have her back if it
turned into a fight, and God knows, with the board of directors, she could always use a couple of allies, even if it was just for moral support.

They were all in the same boat, after all. All young and just getting started in their careers. Kind of broke and two bad luck breaks away from needing to leave the island in search of a better opportunity elsewhere.

But Arielle’s father had recently
disappeared, so she had that drama going on. It wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t change how scary it was for her friend. And Daphne was job hunting in between pulling bartending shifts at the fanciest resort in Petite Ciotat and fending off pervy tourists. Compared to their problems, Cara having to put up with a sexy beast arriving on her doorstep hardly
sounded like a real problem.

Sexy beast?
What the ever-loving hell? No. He was…tall. Too tall. Bossy.
Way
too bossy. And incredibly off-putting.

If he was also incredibly good-looking, that just added to the annoyance, because why weren’t good-looking guys like that ever
nice
?

“You know what’s wrong?” she finally said, setting her jaw in determination. This would be a lie of omission, sort
of, but it was really at the root of her frustration. Not a violation of the friendship trust that expected honesty. “I don’t think the board of directors takes me seriously.”

Daphne groaned. “Still?”

Would they ever? She sighed and stabbed her fish with her fork. “Right? It makes everything I do fraught with doubt, you know?”

Daphne shook her head, her blonde shaggy bob swinging wildly as
she crossed her arms. “No! We talked about this. You rock at your job. And they need you. They just want you to think that you need them more than they need you. But that’s not true.”

“It is true. I need them to keep me employed so I can pay rent and keep going out for fun dinners with you guys.”

“This isn’t that fun,” Daphne said dryly. Unlike Arielle and Cara, Daphne didn’t have the lilting
island accent. She’d been born and raised in the States and moved to Miralinda a few years earlier, right around the same time Cara came back after going off-island for university.

They’d met through Arielle—Cara’s childhood best friend, and Daphne’s new roommate. An instant three-way friendship was formed over coffee one morning as they shared hard-luck stories.

“You’re right,” Cara said, laughing
for the first time in what felt like days. “I should move off island and get a real job. Find some real friends and—” She shrieked as Arielle launched herself around the corner of the table and squeezed her tight.

“Don’t you dare,” her best friend whispered.

She wouldn’t. Ever, because she loved Miralinda. But especially not now. Not while Arielle needed her. “You’re stuck with me,” she whispered
into the smooth, straight fall of Arielle’s black hair.

They were so different looking, but as they held each other, Cara was reminded that Arielle and her were the same from the inside out. They both carried in their blood the mosaic DNA almost unique to the Caribbean—a little of this, a little of that, a lot of the heart and soul that came from the sea and mixed it all together.

Where Cara’s
parents went back generations to ancestors in North African slaves, French colonists, American pirates, all colliding here on Miralinda before the turn of the last century, Arielle’s mixed heritage was…fresher. Her mother hadn’t been an island girl. She’d come to the Caribbean as a poor nanny from the Philippines, working for a British ex-pat family. When she’d fallen for a local bad boy, and “gotten
into trouble,” the Brits had left her behind.

Arielle was six when her mother took her own life.

Cara’s parents hadn’t had a lot—her father had been a fisherman, her mother cleaned rooms at a resort. But what they did have, they shared readily with their widowed neighbour and his grieving daughter.

And when Cara’s father was killed in a car accident when she was sixteen, Arielle and her father
repaid the kindness.

They were family.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

But that didn’t mean that her job was safe. With Mick Frasier’s arrival, her job was anything but safe.

God, she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to have to come up with a Life Plan B.

Maybe that’s why she wasn’t telling them about Mick. She was hoping she’d show up on Monday and the six-foot-something problem
would be gone. Poof.

You’re not that lucky
, she reminded herself.

True story. But that didn’t mean anyone else needed to know about the problem before she knew for sure it
was
a problem.

She’d stopped at her apartment on the way to the cafe and sent an email to the lawyer’s office in New York. Hopefully some overworked associate would look into it over the weekend.

Daphne reached across the
table and snagged some of her fish. At least one of them would enjoy it. She pointed her fork in Cara’s general direction once she’d finished chewing. “You know what we should do? We should go to Freeport for the weekend. Get our freak on.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“Not until Sunday. Come on. It’ll be awesome.”

It sounded awful. Club music and sweaty bodies, groping hands and constantly watching
her drink… Why was she the only person whose idea of getting one’s freak on consisted of staying up late and spending too much money on Etsy?

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She nibbled on her lower lip. She liked dancing.

“Come on…” Arielle cajoled. “We’ll take Daphne’s boat.”

Cara hated flying, even though that was the easiest way to hop island to island. But when Arielle moved back into
her father’s house—in part to keep an eye on him, and to take care of the house when he did his disappearing act every few months—Daphne had bought a boat instead of looking for a new roommate.

So now they had options.

She was trapped. “Okay. Fine.”

Both of her friends squealed and threw their hands in the air.

Cara rolled her yes and tried to join in their enthusiasm. A girls’ weekend was
a good idea. If she wasn’t feeling that down to her core, that just underlined the fact that she needed this. Staying in a funk all weekend wouldn’t do her any good.

“I’m sorry,” she said, forcing a more legit smile onto her face. “Yes. Let’s do this. This is a good idea.”

“That’s the spirit,” Arielle said with a wink. “And now…dessert!”

She almost said no, but then her stomach growled. What
the hell. She hadn’t eaten dinner, but she was a grown-up and she’d had the most frustrating—and apparently secret—afternoon. And tomorrow would be for her friends. The least she could do for herself was have a damn sundae. “Yes, please.”

~

W
HEN
THE
CALL
CAME
IN
FROM
THE
CHAIRMAN
of the Historical Society’s board of directors the next day right before noon, Cara had just stepped onto Daphne’s
boat. She gave her friends an apologetic smile and hit the button to answer the call.

Two seconds later, she held up her hand, signalling that Daphne maybe shouldn’t cast off just yet.
 

“Slow down, Bill, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” But the sinking feeling in her gut told her exactly what this call was about.

The chairman took a deep breath and started again. “The electrician went
out to Villa Sucre this morning and was barred from entering the premises by a naked man.”

Cara’s eyebrows shot sky-high.
Naked?
An unbidden image of the calm, infuriating giant—now without clothes—slid into her mind. She squinted and tried to pretend it wasn’t there. “Right.”

“Right? Ms. Levasseur—”

“Jesus, Bill, call me Cara. If you’re going to ream me out, do it as equals, okay?” She took
a deep breath. She’d pay for that, and have to put up with weeks of huffing and concern. It was worth it. She hated playing games.

“It is imperative, Cara, that the trust we’ve placed in your hands is not…abandoned.”

How could she explain to him that the day before, a strange man had shown up at the villa and she’d just let him
stay
? That she’d scooted out of the way, even, and kept it all to
herself, hoping that he’d just disappear by Monday?

She hadn’t lived up to that trust, not this weekend.

Pressing her hand to her forehead, she took a deep breath and made a solemn promise to herself that she’d fix it. Then she repeated it to her boss. “I’m sorry, Bill. I’m…listen, I’m at the marina right now. I need to go home and grab a few things, then I’ll head out to the plantation and
make it all right.” Before he could interrupt her, she headed off his next question. “And as soon as I excuse myself from here, I’ll call you right back and explain everything.”

“Five minutes, Cara.”

“I’ll call you in four. Promise.”

Daphne was holding out her bag even as she disconnected the call. “Work trouble?”

“I’m sorry. You’ll need to head off without me.”

Her friends gave her matching
understanding smiles.

“You want us to stick around?” Arielle asked.