Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (7 page)

She nodded, smoothing out her expression to hide the complete and utter devastation going on inside. “Yeah. Seems like that is all you want. You can hold your breath until I make that booty call.”

If he wanted something other than to rub his scent all over her and stamp out the stink of another man, that would be an entirely different story. But the Charlie and Audra ship had sailed, and he could go to hell before she’d regret missing that boat ever again.

I
t took Charlie four days, a fifth of Jack Daniels, and a call from Jace’s mom to pull him out of the black hole his alleyway confessional with Audra had put him in. Walking away had been the right thing to do, and he’d hated every step. But Audra made him insane, stole his ability to think, and definitely tested his sainthood.

Yeah, he was angrier than he’d been willing to admit. It had walloped him out of nowhere, and he didn’t know how to deal with it when, in reality, he was being forced to lie in the bed he’d made.

“Charles St. Croix, you get over yourself.” Sheila Custer’s clucking came through the phone’s speaker loud and clear, as if she was next door instead of two-thirds of the way to the Pacific in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Charlie almost hung up, but he respected Jace’s mom too much. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t you yes ma’am me. That’s what my kids say when they’re planning to ignore me. It’s placating, plain and simple. I raised two boys, so don’t think I was born yesterday.”

“No, ma’am.”

Both Jace and his twin brother Blake had been under Charlie’s command in Iraq. Mrs. Custer’s care packages and frequent phone calls had grown to be one of the best things about the Custer boys. They were hell-raisers of the highest order, but both were fierce, loyal, and fast with a joke. He’d have welcomed Blake as a partner in Aqueous Adventures, but he’d stayed in the teams when the others left.

“Jace tells me that you’re having trouble with your company. You listen to me. You’re a smart, determined boy, and you will figure this out. I have faith in you.”

The sentiment warmed him where nothing else had.

Mrs. Custer had long been Charlie’s surrogate mom once she’d found out his own mom had committed suicide when he was nineteen. It wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew Montgomery St. Croix’s wife had killed herself after finding out her husband had been banging an eighteen-year-old girl. No one knew Naomi had been Charlie’s girlfriend. Or that he’d loved her.

It had been a one-two punch that solidified the most important thing he could learn about women: those closest to him cared about themselves and themselves only, scarcely seeming to even notice that their actions affected others around them. Like Charlie, who’d been naïve enough to let himself love selfish women.

As a result, trust and forgiveness were two words Charlie scarcely knew how to spell. Survive and evade. Do the right thing—those were the concepts he lived by.

Obviously he’d forgotten his lesson, or he wouldn’t currently be in the impossible position of having his heart handed to him, still bleeding, while trying to balance the fact that he’d hurt Audra too.

Meanwhile, Aqueous Adventure, the only love of his life he should be concerned about, was still in trouble and he’d thus far done nothing to save it.

Mrs. Custer, as always, had enviable insight. “Thanks, Mama C. I’m getting over myself as we speak.”

Or at least he should be. It was disgraceful how much time he’d spent aching for Audra while nursing himself through sleepless nights that had featured some lovely flashbacks. Paradox should be his middle name.

He could pretend that he was headed in the direction of “over it.” Enough to make an honest appointment with Dr. Reed to talk through how she could help undo the damage her boyfriend—sorry,
ex
-boyfriend—had done to Aqueous Adventures. Emotional outbursts over things that couldn’t be changed had no place in his role as a business owner.

And clearly he could not be trusted to have a conversation with her in a cozy alleyway either. The subject of his educational spiel had completely slipped his mind while he’d been busy mixing it up with her.

He had to do something to get the lid closed on his black box before he confronted her again, or the next meeting was going to go down just as badly. Plus he’d do just about anything to get that kiss to stop replaying in his head. After throwing on some jogging shoes, he clattered down the front steps to the sandy walkway that passed as the street.

Evan and Rachel waved as they came out of their house across the way and walked hand in hand toward the beach, heads bent together as they murmured to each other. Evan laughed, and a crappy wave of jealousy tugged at Charlie’s gut. He didn’t begrudge them their happiness. Evan certainly deserved something good in his life. But knowing that didn’t stop Charlie from wishing for things that he had no business wishing.

When the beach came into view, he started to run. Some days he could run fast enough to leave the nightmares behind. Today wasn’t looking like one of those days. Heart pounding in his chest, he ate up the sand, churning it out behind him as he took off in the other direction from Evan and Rachel, who clearly hoped to have some privacy for their walk.

The island wasn’t big enough to avoid running into tourists. Town was on the opposite side of the resort, but guests wandered past the large boulders that marked the end of the resort beach all the time. Thankfully, none of the beachgoers hassled him as he pounded out the seemingly endless supply of energy and aggression that wouldn’t dwindle.

As an antidote for Audra, the run was a complete failure. But he did managed to generate enough endorphins to feel like he might not rip off the head of the next person who said hello.

When he got back to the bungalow, he threw himself into the shower and then tugged on a clean Aqueous Adventures T-shirt and cargo shorts. He emerged feeling almost human. As human as a saint dancing around the edge of hell could, anyway.

Jace and Miles both glanced up as he walked into the all-purpose room that held a couch and their TV. They’d been binge watching
The Blacklist
for two days, but Charlie had ignored them, opting to keep from killing either one of them by staying in his room.

Normally, Jace was good for a laugh and never ran out of juicy gossip, conquests to brag about, or inventive methods to make lemonade out of lemons, limes, hell, whatever you had lying around. Charlie hadn’t appreciated it so much lately. And probably owed Jace an apology for acting like a wounded bear.

“You know that’s not really what terrorists are like, right?” Charlie commented without an ounce of irony. Together they’d taken out their share of the real thing, which made it all the more baffling that these two meatheads would pick something to watch that was so clearly a fictionalized version of reality.

Jace held out a hand to Miles. “Pay up.”

Glaring at Charlie, Miles pulled a twenty out of his pocket and slapped it into Jace’s hand without looking. “Thanks, man. Can’t let a guy watch TV in peace?”

“You had money on whether I was going to make fun of you for watching crap shows?” Charlie shook his head. “That was a sucker’s bet.”

“Nah. The bet was on whether my mom could talk enough sense into you to get you out of your funk.” With a chortle, Jace smoothed out the bill and held it to the light as if he’d never seen money before. “This will come in handy later tonight.”

“Paying for your dates now?” Miles snickered. “I get mine for free.”

“You wish.”

Charlie left the guys to their binge fest and ate a sandwich, his mind finally clear for the first time in four days. He’d taken a lot of hits in life and had never failed to get back up in the past. This was no different, provided he held on to his temper and remembered that he’d done the right thing when he split up with Audra, no matter what the fallout had been.

After securing an appointment with Dr. Reed that he’d had to seriously sweet-talk the receptionist into making, Charlie headed into Freeport again. Funny how he’d managed to stay away from the city pretty easily for the last year, but it was his most common destination lately.

This time would be different though. He was an adult who had a business to run. To save. Dr. Reed could help with that, and he’d maintain a professional distance in order to secure it.

Since he had an appointment, the receptionist waved him right to the elevator with a smile. Audra’s office door was open, and he took a half second to watch her work at her desk, head bent over some paperwork. She massaged the back of her neck while she read, a small frown marring her luscious lips.

The feel of those lips sliding across his slammed through him without warning. Audra had been a volcano in his arms, so hot, so ready to explode, and he’d been right there with her, ready, willing, and able to pretend things were like they had been once. She’d made him feel whole, alive, clean. And she still did.

Until she’d cooled it off. And that’s when reality had intruded.

There was no pretending. He couldn’t unimagine her twined with Jared Anderson, laughing against his mouth the way she’d often done with Charlie. She’d been so unapologetic, refusing to acknowledge that she might have done something wrong, insisting that she had a right to do as she pleased no matter how hurtful it was to others. Her betrayal rode shotgun in his chest for a reason. To keep him from making a mistake.

Bad thing to recall. Charlie knocked on the door, determined to keep it civil. Unlike the last time.

Audra glanced up, her expression expectant, and then her gaze hardened. “I didn’t order a booty call.”

“I’m not here with one.”

Silently, they assessed each other, and all the unspoken things spilled into the room between them. The question she’d challenged him to ask filled his mouth, jockeying for position on his tongue.
Why
? Why Jared Anderson? Of all people she could have moved on with. Especially given that it didn’t seem to have worked out.

He didn’t care. Or more to the point, he was trying really hard not to care. Because he shouldn’t. They’d both made choices they couldn’t undo. What was the point of rehashing it?

No point. Except for the fact that one kiss had woken up things inside that were still scored with Audra’s signature, and it was fairly obvious that his feelings for her hadn’t faded one iota.

This appointment might have been a mistake. It was easy to be rational, to convince himself he could take her or leave her when he wasn’t in the same room with her, breathing in her scent. Now that he was here, he yearned to touch her, to round that desk and pull her into his arms to finish that kiss. To find out if there might be the slightest possibility that he could strip away all the bad vibes between them, even though he knew it was a lost cause.

“Go away,” she ordered and pointedly ignored him in favor of her paperwork. But her hand never left her neck, massaging it absently.

“I have an appointment.”

Audra glanced at her open laptop on the corner of the desk and swore. “How did you sneak that in there?”

He shrugged, glad he’d had the foresight to keep this aboveboard. Professional. “Resourceful, I guess.”

“I don’t have to honor it.” She crossed her arms. “It’s precious how you managed to avoid me for so long only to keep popping up. What can I do to put us back in the place where we don’t see each other on a regular basis?”

Despite everything, that stung. Was it really so easy for her to dismiss him, to cut him off as if he’d never existed, never had even the smallest impact? Obviously so. She’d walked away from him in that alleyway without a backward glance.

“The Caribbean is a small place. We’re bound to run into each other,” he acknowledged with a nod to her earlier point, carefully composing his face to avoid giving her the slightest clue that she’d affected him. “Let’s call a truce.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You want something.”

Yeah. But what he wanted was impossible. Instead of taking a seat—because the welcome still didn’t seem all that warm—he leaned on the door jamb.

The distance was probably better anyway, especially if he actually planned to cross the finish line on securing her help. “How much do you know about Aqueous Adventures?”

“Only what Jared’s told me.” Sitting back in her chair, she arched her back to presumably stretch it, but the movement did a lot for her front too, lifting her breasts prominently.

It was very distracting. That was the only explanation for why he blurted out, “And you know what I’ve told you. Before. When it was just a dream.”

Audra had encouraged him to quit the Navy and come back to the Bahamas to build a life in paradise. He’d spun that dream out in his head to keep him sane in Iraq while traversing some very dark places.

During their Skype conversations, he’d rambled on about it often enough. She’d always listened raptly, as if he’d been speaking the gospel and she couldn’t wait to become a convert. Her belief in him had carried him through some of the worst nights.

Her expression softened a touch. “Come in, Charlie. You’re here. I obviously have an opening. Sit down and tell me what this is all about.”