Revealing Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 4) (3 page)

Evan’s attention was like the sun breaking free of the clouds after a particularly gloomy day, and she basked in the warmth. Okay, it was more of a wallow.

“Like if we can get the wildlife ministry to claim Ilhota Rosa as a preserve or something. It would be protected. Then ReefCo can never buy it. Hey, I have an idea,” she said as if the impulse had just hit her. “Let’s go find a quiet corner and talk. I’ll tell you all about it.”

He blinked, his expression going decidedly uninterested.
Curses
. She’d thought she’d had him.

“No? Well, there’s not that much to tell anyway.” She shrugged. “It was a thinly veiled ploy to get you naked. Sue me.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a half grin, which was frankly striking enough that she instantly craved the whole smile. At least he was being a good sport in the midst of her epic fail.

Jace, Miles, and Jack, some of Evan’s friends and former teammates, wandered within earshot, and she willed them to keep walking. They didn’t.

“Who’s getting naked?” Jace asked, his grin a mile wide as his gaze shifted back and forth between them. “And is it a free show?”

“Totally free,” she shot back and matched his grin. “As long as you’re volunteering to be the naked one.”

“For you, sweetheart, I would in a heartbeat,” he said with an appreciative once-over that she wished came with an answering tug in her lady parts.

A guy as freaking gorgeous as Jace
should
get her lady parts going. The man had the face of an angel and a body built by hard-core training, which he never missed a chance to show off. She’d seen Jace shirtless more often than the three brothers she’d grown up with.

And Jace had a vibe that screamed “easy.” She could have a delicious, uncomplicated fling with Jace but still be friends during and after.

Alas,
nada
. She could appreciate him the same way she could stare at Michelangelo’s David for hours. But his eyes were not the ones that she saw in her head late at night when she couldn’t sleep. Her body did not crave his voice.

“Oh, that’s sweet.” She winked and put a hand on Jace’s arm. “You’re good people, Jace Custer. The ladies at the nursing home will be thrilled that you’re volunteering to be the star of their private show. It’s not often they get an eyeful of prime beef.”

“Wait. What?” The smile slipped off his face as Miles and Jack guffawed, slapping him on the shoulder hard enough to knock him slightly off balance in the sand. “What just happened?”

Evan laughed, and it rolled through her like fine wine. Rachel instantly forgave his friends for crashing her conversation.

“I’m kidding, sweetie,” she told him.

Jace was so goofy she couldn’t help giving him a hard time. It seemed to be the universal default among the guys, and she’d adopted it handily. It helped that he often walked right into their jibes.

Emma and Dex made a big show of getting ready to leave. They were honeymooning on Miralinda Island at a resort in Petite Ciotat called the Sol Sientoa that Dex’s friend Mick Frasier had recommended, and the alone time was something they were both looking forward to. Evan tilted his head toward the couple in invitation and since Rachel wanted to see them off as well, she didn’t hesitate to grab the crook of his elbow again so they could walk over together.

It was her last chance to use her maid of honor status as an excuse to stick to the best man like glue. Tomorrow she’d have to find another one. Because she was not giving up until she had Evan naked and panting underneath her as she coaxed them both to a shattering climax.

Then maybe she could figure out why such a reclusive, silent enigma had so thoroughly captured her attention.

T
he coral reef off the coast of Countess Cay teemed with colorful bodies, some dark and silver like black grouper, but the occasional blue tang or rainbow parrot fish darted between the pale staghorn coral.

Evan clamped his teeth tighter on his mouthpiece and kicked closer to the section of the reef where today’s restoration had focused. Some of the other guys hated the team’s day job of working for ReefCo, but Evan didn’t mind it so much. The fish were friendly and bright, the pay was good, and the team got to work together. While scuba diving, no one could talk to him, and that made it better than dry land any day.

What Evan did not like was the owner of the reef-restoration company. Jared Anderson. The man had more money than God and the personality of Satan. Anderson threw his weight around often—usually at the resort, which he also owned—but never more so with his latest trick of trying to buy Ilhota Rosa out from under Aqueous Adventures.

The man knew that’s where the team took snorkelers on excursions from Duchess Island. Either he wanted the reef and Ilhota Rosa to himself, or he wanted to put a crimp in Aqueous Adventure’s bookings. Maybe both. Once, the relationship between ReefCo and Aqueous hadn’t been so contentious. Something had changed, and no one on the team knew why.

The more Evan thought about it, the more pissed off he got. Which was why he shouldn’t dwell on it. Telling himself that didn’t change anything.

When Charlie motioned to everyone that it was time to go up, Evan instantly complied, kicking after their leader and clambering onto the boat second. Miles came up after Evan, then Jace and Jack. Dex was still on leave, sexing up his new wife on their honeymoon. They all felt the lack of his presence but Evan probably the most.

With everyone accounted for, the dive boat captain started the motor and shuttled the team back to the dock on Duchess Island near the beach where Dex and Emma had gotten married. It was a stone’s throw from the edge of the small village the locals all called Town, where the six ex-SEALs had set up home base.

When they disembarked, they all went their separate ways. Charlie bunked with Jace in the largest bungalow on their narrow street, and the two managed to not kill each other… somehow. They were a study in opposites.

Where Jace was happy-go-lucky despite having been in the same hellholes as the rest of them, Charlie wore authority and the weight of the world across his shoulders in equal measures. Miles, their explosives expert who naturally had the kind of dead calm necessary for such work, and Jack, the guy you called when you needed something fixed, lived in the bungalow across from the one Evan shared with Dex… and Emma. Normally.

The quiet was deafening. Evan threw himself in the shower to wash away the ocean and stood under the spray for an eternity because he didn’t have to share the bathroom with a female for the first time in a long time. Odd how he’d gotten used to having Dex’s girlfriend—now wife—around. He’d been labeling it a pain and an imposition in his head for weeks.

But that was mostly because he didn’t like change. He’d had enough of that in his life.

Pulling on an Aqueous Adventures T-shirt and a pair of threadbare jeans, his favorite uniform for sitting around the house, Evan found deli meat in the refrigerator that he hadn’t bought and bread in the pantry that wasn’t his preferred brand, but hunger didn’t question the shopping skills of his roommates. He ate a sandwich at the four-person table in the tiny nook adjacent to the kitchen and enjoyed all the silence.

For thirty seconds.

The quiet crawled on his last nerve. He flipped on the TV for some background noise. God, what was wrong with him? This should be his idea of nirvana. Empty house, no one to share a table or a shower with.

The seconds ticked by. An all-to-familiar whisper started up in his head.

A beer would be so nice right now. Goes good with a sandwich after a long day of physical labor. Just one won’t hurt.

One
wouldn’t
hurt. It was the twelve or fourteen that would most definitely follow that created the problem. If he had the capacity to stop at one, he would. Bolting down a twelve-pack with a fifth of whiskey chaser in a sitting was a numbing mechanism he’d picked up in Iraq because he couldn’t stop the anguish that writhed under his skin any other way.

The men who had died… the horrific brutality of seeing human flesh shorn from bone… experiencing the personal agony of the same. How other people lived with it, he didn’t know. Evan drank. And hated himself for it, hated the weakness, the sheer inability to handle his life without a crutch.

Which made him drink more.

And then when he got home from his last tour in Iraq, wounded and ignoring his PTSD, Carrie was gone. Jordan was gone. His wife and his daughter—
poof
. Granted, it had been an act of mercy he hadn’t deserved. Saved him from having to be the one to leave because Jordan sure as hell deserved a better father than an alcoholic with anxiety attacks he couldn’t control.

He’d looked for them at first, if for nothing more than to ensure Carrie got child support. Eventually he’d stopped. They were better off making a new life without the albatross of Evan’s weaknesses, without the coping mechanisms he’d heaped on top during his recovery.

The silence in the bungalow taunted him. When Dex was here, the whispers in Evan’s head vanished. God, when had he grown so dependent on his friend? It was its own kind of weakness, and that drove Evan to his feet. He was not that guy.

Before he thought better of it, Evan picked up his phone and texted Charlie, offering to take the last parasailing excursion for the day. Jace had drawn partner duty with their former commander, and there was no doubt in Evan’s mind that their resident party boy had a date tonight. He’d gladly give up his slot to Evan.

Predictably, Charlie texted him back a moment later, informing him that Jace had already turned the boat around to come pick up Evan at the dock. Evan switched his jeans for board shorts and left the whispers of his addiction behind in the too-quiet house.

Not one single day of the past year had he given in to the seductive lure of numbness and neither would he today.

Charlie gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder as Evan slid into the driver’s seat of the boat they used for parasailing excursions and snapped off a sarcastic limp-fingered salute to Jace as the kid scrambled to the dock, clearly anticipating his date. Working at a resort in the Caribbean didn’t suck under any circumstances, but Jace took extra pride in ensuring he left no tourist un-hit-on. At least once a day, he got lucky.

“Don’t do anything I would do,” Charlie advised. “Otherwise, you might end up with a nice woman who can use three-syllable words and has a job.”

Jace grinned. “Oh, you mean a grandma? No, thanks. I’ll leave the blue hairs to you, old man.”

Charlie, who only had ten years on Jace, just laughed and waved as Evan started the boat so he could drive it around to the resort side of the island. It wasn’t too far to walk, which came in handy when both boats their company owned were being used for parasailing or snorkeling excursions.

The small knot of tourists who had booked the afternoon excursion waited in the area marked by the Aqueous Adventures banner. Jared Anderson had personally made them move it from the main beach area to an out-of-the-way alcove on the opposite side of the resort from the cruise ship dock. Where no one could see it. Charlie had argued, but Anderson had put his foot down. Charlie had dropped it with a snide comment about the golden rule—he who has the gold makes the rules.

It was credit to how much respect the team had for their leader that not one of them reminded Charlie that his inheritance, which he refused to accept from his old man, would dwarf Anderson’s bank account. Charlie didn’t talk about the reasons he’d cut off all communication with his father, so neither did anyone else.

The tourists, two women and two men in their early twenties, clambered aboard the boat, chatting a mile a minute. They jabbered to each other, to Charlie, and then tried to draw Evan into their chatter. While he’d bleed for Charlie as readily as he’d gone into business with him, he did not love having to talk to parasailers. Normally whoever he went out with—usually Dex—respected that Evan’s role was to drive the boat and that was it. Everyone else had no issues being on point as the mouthpiece for the excursion.

But the customers didn’t know Evan had trouble holding a simple conversation.

The blonde woman parked right behind the driver’s seat and actually asked how the gauges on the dash worked, which was so easy anyone could have explained. Except Evan’s throat tightened as she cocked her head expectantly, eyes still bright. His fingers tingled as his body started to crave oxygen that wasn’t getting into his body due to the fact that his lungs had seized up.

Birthday cake. Big yellow dogs. Christmas
. Happy place.

Charlie took mercy on him and drew the woman’s attention to his safety-slash-instructional spiel, leaving Evan to start the boat and drive while he tried to get his racing heart out of his stomach and back in his chest where it belonged.

The taste of panic lingered in his throat for the remainder of the excursion, reminding him that he was weak. So weak and unable to control his PTSD that he couldn’t even speak to someone he didn’t know without a 2.0 blood alcohol content. Rachel being the lone exception, much to his bewilderment.

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