Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT Caribbean Nights #9) - Kat Cantrell Page 0,69

also step back. Remove himself from the equation so Audra’s choice wouldn’t be hampered by the premise that Charlie might someday have the capacity to be what Audra needed.

That was the lie. He might never get there. Anderson had already proven he could fill that role. Why not take the offered solution to all of his problems and let Audra go? Aqueous would be back on solid ground. And in case Charlie wasn’t prepared to do the right thing, Anderson was going to help him along by threatening to shut his business down permanently if he didn’t.

Jared Anderson could go to hell before Charlie would give up his shot at paradise a second time.

“Do your worst.” Charlie cracked his knuckles in case his former friend decided to toss out any more insults. Anderson’s looks might be improved with all of the bones in his face broken. “You were there for her when I couldn’t be, and I’ll always be grateful she had someone. But you lost Audra for a reason. Manipulating her isn’t going to win her back.”

“You’re correct about one thing,” Anderson said quietly. So quietly that Charlie had to lean closer in order to hear, which he suspected had been the man’s intent. “As long as I have Audra, I don’t care about you. The injunction is as good as gone.”

He should leave. Turn and walk out the door. But he couldn’t resist asking the million dollar question. “What happened to make you hate me so much?”

Anderson’s mouth lifted. “I don’t hate you. You should ask instead what you have that I want. And the answer to that should be fairly obvious.”

Audra.

“There are thousands of women in the world. Hundreds of thousands. Why her?”

Anderson’s smile turned genuine. So much so that Charlie did a double take as the man he’d once been friends with surfaced for that brief second.

“She makes me better. And you’re in my way.”

The flash of humanity vanished, and Jared Anderson turned back into the soulless spawn of the devil Charlie had been dealing with all along.

He nodded once. “Then you’ll understand when I say same goes.”

Charlie stewed about Anderson’s parting shot the rest of the day as he waited at Audra’s apartment for her to come home. He’d almost gone to FARC three times to talk to her, but there was no reason their conversation couldn’t wait.

The nerve of that arrogant ass was legendary. Audra was not getting back together with Anderson. She might even be pregnant with Charlie’s child right now. They were working through things one hurdle at a time. It was going to go exactly as he’d told Anderson. He and Audra were going to be laughing about this very soon.

Except when Audra walked in the door, he didn’t feel like laughing all at once. His senses tingled like he’d just seen an Iraqi villager with a suspicious lump under his caftan. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but her spine was too straight and her expression too blank.

To top it all off, Anderson’s smug comments sat just under his skin, prickling at him.

“Hey,” she called as she put her purse down on the counter in her kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

Yeah, okay. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Couldn’t a guy stop by to see his girlfriend without getting raised eyebrows? He did have a key. “Jack took my shift at the dive shop. I thought we could have dinner.”

“I’m in favor of dinner.”

The tension stretched, and the questions swirling through his mind weren’t getting answered any faster by sitting there on the couch just looking at her. So he nodded to the space next to him. “Sit down. Tell me about your day.”

A wary look sprang into her eye, but she complied, perching on the cushion like she might take flight again at any given time instead of settling in against him, torso to torso, like she couldn’t possibly touch him enough. Which was what she normally did when they watched TV or talked or basically any time they got within two feet of each other. He tried not to read into it, but the funny little squiggle in his stomach wasn’t helping matters.

“What do you want to know? Like what I had for lunch?”

“Sure.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Or, you know, you could talk about any unexpected appointments you might have had this morning with an ex-lover.”

Guilt sprang into her gaze, and a long, sick wave upended his heart. Guilt? Why? Because there had been much