Ruined by the SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 2) (7 page)

She wouldn’t get a third shot at a kiss. She knew that to her very core.

It was for the best, she told herself, but the way her body felt cleaved in two,
a raw tear right down her centre, she wasn’t convinced.

Worse, she’d insulted him. It was a knee-jerk reaction to having been treated poorly in the past, and when she thought about it, maybe in the present, too. Every interaction she had with Mick set her past so-called relationships with men in stark contrast.

No man had never commanded her to kiss him. Had never teased her or even made her
dinner. Never made her feel a fraction of the crazy roller coaster of emotions that Mick had created in her.

God, what a mess.

She stared out at the sea. It looked like this storm might blow past. They’d get some rain, though, so painting was out. With a sigh, she headed back inside. She triple-checked that the work orders were posted outside each door, just in case anyone came by to work, then
stuck a note on the front door that she’d gone into town.

With any luck, she’d be back before Mick returned and he’d never be the wiser that she’d left.

A hot flush of anger flooded through her body. She did too leave. Just because she was staking an active claim on the plantation didn’t mean that she was psychotic.

Maybe she would stay away for the afternoon. Show him that she didn’t care.

What was the worst he could do in a few hours?

Well, he repaired the bathroom…

Right, so he fixed something. Where was the damage in that again?

There were too many voices in her head. “Stop it!” she said out loud, which wasn’t any less crazy. She tossed her book into her tent—another sign of probable insanity—and grabbed her purse.

She needed to track down the lawyers in New York. And it was
time for her to confess her secret to her best friends, because she couldn’t figure this out on her own.

~

“T
HERE
’
S
A
GORGEOUS
MAN
ORDERING
YOU
TO
KISS
HIM
AND
YOU
’
RE
HERE
…
WHY
?” Arielle blinked at her.

“Because he’s also a threat to my job.” Cara groaned and took another long sip from her drink.
 

On the other side of the bar, Daphne clucked her tongue in that way she did, warning a talking-to
was about to happen. For once, Cara didn’t mind. Her friends could see the situation clearly, she hoped. She definitely didn’t have that ability right now. “You have to…” Daphne trailed off, then rolled her lips together. “Do something.”

“Wow. I wish I’d thought of that,” Cara said, reaching for her glass again. Drowning herself in the rum cocktail seemed wiser and wiser with each passing second.

“Well give us a second.” Arielle laughed. “We’re still trying to process the fact that you’re hiding a sexy beast at the plantation.”

“He’s here in town somewhere,” she muttered. “Maybe the internet cafe.”

Arielle hopped off her stool. “Then I’m going—”

“Nope!” Daphne pointed to the vacated seat. “Sit your butt down. We are not spying on the man. Not until we have a plan.”

Cara snorted. “That
rhymes.”

Daphne grabbed her drink. “And you’re drunk.”

“That’s Arielle’s fault.” Cara had downed two of the cocktails in the time it took Arielle to arrive at the resort where Daphne was working an afternoon shift.

“Excuse me for not leaving school children unattended,” Arielle snorted. She taught history and social studies at the town’s only high school. “With storms threatening, I needed
to make sure everyone left the building before I rushed to a bar to drink with my friends. It’s called job security.”
 

“They’re teenagers. They can fend for themselves. And job security is exactly the topic at hand.” Cara sighed. “I’m only tipsy. Give that back.”

Daphne slid the glass back into her hand, and Arielle sat back down.
 

Daphne leaned both hands on the bar. “Okay, so the plantation
might not belong to the Historical Society after all. Let’s assume that’s the case, and plan for worst case scenario. What are your options?”

Cara eyed her phone. She’d called the law offices in New York. If they’d just call her back…right now…and tell her there was nothing to worry about, they wouldn’t need to have this conversation.

Her phone didn’t ring.

“I don’t know,” she said miserably.
“That’s why I’ve come to you guys.”

“So right now it sounds like you guys are working under the same assumption—that whoever gets the estate can do whatever they want with it. And if that’s you, then that’s probably true. But if it’s him…” Arielle trailed off, her forehead wrinkling. “Can’t you intervene or something? Protect the building?”

Cara shook her head. “The board is pretty set against
anything that requires legal action. That gets expensive really quickly.”

“It’s a shame there isn’t a lawyer
on
the board,” Daphne mused.

There were a lot of problems with the board makeup. Cara groaned. “Tell me about it. There’s been an empty seat for months, too. But the nomination process—”

“What?” Arielle interjected. “There’s an opening on the board? Let’s fill it.”

“With a lawyer,”
Daphne added. “One who’s under the age of fifty and totally switched on.”

Cara laughed. “Just like that.”

Daphne nodded. Cara turned and looked at her other best friend. Arielle nodded. “Yep. Just like that. Well, not
just
like that. It’ll probably take a while. So you need to stall.”

“Stall?”

“The sexy man? The lawyers in New York? The will debate? Stall.”

“Uhm…” Cara blinked hard at her
drink. No more rum for her. It sounded like her friends were suggesting that she solve the problem with sex. Surely not. “And how do you think I should do that?”

Daphne cleared her throat, then pointed to Cara’s chest and did a little shimmy. “You said he liked looking at you.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what I said.” Her cheeks flamed. “And I can’t do that.”

“Do you want to kiss him?” Arielle
asked.

Yes.

“Do you like it when he looks at you?”

Like wasn’t the right word for how that made her feel. “I don’t dislike it.”

Daphne snorted.
 

“What do you think I should do? Seduce him and every time his phone rings, shove it out of his hand?”

“Just until we come up with a back up plan,” Arielle said lightly.

“That’s not going to work. You don’t understand how—” She cut herself off.
She was going to say they didn’t understand how Mick brought out the worst in her, and her in him, but that wasn’t the whole truth.

He
did
like looking at her.

She
did
want him to kiss her.

She didn’t much care for the idea of prostituting herself for the cause, and wouldn’t for any other man, but maybe…

“I don’t know if it will work,” she amended her answer. “But I guess it couldn’t hurt
to be nicer to the guy.”

Daphne cackled. “Yeah. Nicer. That’s a word for it.”

Cara groaned, but any further discussion was ended by her phone ringing. A New York number appeared on the screen.

She took a deep breath. “I gotta take this.”

EIGHT

M
ICK
HAD
TO
ADMIT
P
ETITE
C
IOTAT
HAD
A
CERTAIN
CHARM
. Wide streets, whitewashed buildings, street vendors…but also a modern supermarket and a bank, plus a few restaurants right at the centre of town. The long stretch of the main street promised even more stores, but the clerk at the supermarket pointed him down a back alley to the internet cafe and since he hadn’t yet had coffee—and Petite
Ciotat didn’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts or a Starbucks—he headed straight there.

By the time he’d found it and handed over his money for an hour of computer time and an extra-large mug of what was thankfully excellent coffee, he was feeling slightly more level-headed about the situation with Cara. She’d been right to insist on boundaries. The chemistry that sparked between them was destabilizing
to the extreme.

Distance from her was a good thing, clearly. He sorted through his pile of emails and tried not to think about the hot rub of her knuckles against his abs and his chest. Even though the fabric of his t-shirt, her fingers had imprinted on his skin.

His cock thickened against his leg. Idiot. And he was back to being pissed off. He needed to figure out a plan in more ways than one.
A plan to survive his foolish attraction to the island’s ice queen. A plan to get his retirement goals back on track.

So much for beer, beach, sleep.

That was fine. He never slept well anyway.

He pounded out a detailed email to Will, interrupted here and there by other emails. After one from Dex Riley, asking if he could borrow the plantation for a honeymoon—which took Mick some processing,
because the last time he’d seen Dex, the man had been single and on the prowl. Well, actually…in hindsight, maybe not on the prowl. But there’d been no mention of a future Mrs. Dex. And now…A honeymoon. Shit.

Too bad Villa Sucre wasn’t his to lend out just yet.

He marked that email unread, promising himself he’d come back to it just as soon as he sorted out this ownership mess.

Then he went
back to the email to Will, but hesitated over the send button. Unloading all of that into Will’s inbox wasn’t going to change the fact that Mick was the guy on the ground. He was the only one who could turn the tide of this disaster.

He rocked back in his chair.

More to the point, he wanted to do it. Will owned the property. Brayden, who was wrapping up his last session as a BUD/S instructor,
would do the heavy lifting in curriculum design. And heavy lifting in general, since before he joined the SEAL team he worked in construction for a few years.

Mick got to tag along on this new lease on life because he was a free body to stake a claim on the property. So far, all he was offering was his oversized form. Time for him to put his head in the game and stop whining about how it hadn’t
gone perfectly easy the first few days.

This wasn’t only Will’s fight, it was Mick’s as well.

He was going back to Villa Sucre to tell Cara she needed to get her gorgeous ass off his estate, once and for all.

Right after he stopped at the store. Sleep might be elusive and the storm front might rule out any beach time, but the beer thing still had a chance of happening.

When he got back, she
was still on the porch, reading, but her hair was twisted in a damp braid. She pretended not to see him. He didn’t stop to pick a fight.

Not yet.

He shoved his way into the bunkhouse as he’d started to think of it, propping the door open to get a breeze circulating. Next on his repair to-do list would be fixing the overhead fan. With a thunk, he set the beer on the table in the main room. It
was cold, but it wouldn’t stay like that for long. Shame the only working fridge was in the kitchen in the main house.

Another couple days and it would be all his. Even if he didn’t succeed in shoving her off the estate, eventually the fact that she didn’t have a functional bathroom in the main house would tire her, right?

He told himself that this would soon be over, one way or another, and
he could stop thinking about her earnest hopefulness and the way her hair curled into a million golden brown tendrils as it dried in the sun.

She’d moved out into the garden now, as the sun had peeked out between storm clouds. She was out in the open between their two declared spaces. So he was entirely within his rights to watch her, to observe her with her guard down.

He was coming to an uncomfortable
understanding that Cara really loved this place. She was invested in it, and not just as a professional accomplishment.

And he was the asshole that wanted to ruin that for her.

He twisted the top off a bottle of beer and started pacing.

The problem was, if he held himself back, he was just prolonging the inevitable. That wasn’t being kind to her. He needed to somehow push the issue, make her
see for herself that they’d overstepped or whatever, gone ahead too quickly with this project.

Maybe he could convince Will that they could…dunno. Do
something
for the Historical Society. A gimme.

No. That was his heart going all soft again. They’d do something for Cara if it made good sense for their new company. Not just for her.

But she’s worked so hard…
He didn’t know that.

He didn’t know
anything about her.

Harden the fuck up, man.

“You’ll wear out the floor, pacing like that.” He jerked his head around and found Cara leaning in the open doorway.
 

“We’ll probably tear this place down, anyway.”

She tightened up, from her toes all the way to the tiny muscles around her eyes.

Direct shot. This was going to be too easy. He took the last swig of beer, finishing the bottle, and
set it down a little too roughly on the table. Then he grabbed another one. With a rough twist, he sent the cap flying.

Another wince.

Think the worst of me, babe.
“What do you want?”

“I spoke to a lawyer this afternoon,” she said. “From New York.”

He tipped his beer bottle up in silent response.

“He apologized for the confusion.”

An empty statement. Mick wasn’t impressed. “You should sue
them. Recoup your investment in the renovations.”

She gave him a dry look.
 

Not that easy. Fine. He leaned against the wall, ignoring the protest in his leg.

“He apologized to
both
of us, and said they need more time to ascertain where the error was made. Obviously, one of us got incorrect information. But he wouldn’t give any indication as to which one of us that is.”

“That doesn’t sound
like it bodes well for you. If he thought you were in the clear, he’d probably tell you.”