Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT Caribbean Nights #9) - Kat Cantrell Page 0,7
tried to get too close again, which chilled him out faster than anything. God, who was this jackass wearing his clothes? Had the Saint fallen so far from grace that he couldn’t be counted on to treat a woman with respect?
Survival mode. He shoved everything back in the box like he’d done so many times since landing on Duchess Island and finding out that Audra had been sleeping with Jared Anderson. After all, it was his fault that she’d moved on. His.
Eventually, she nodded. “I have a meeting in a couple of minutes. Can we cut to the chase? I didn’t file that report to designate Ilhota Rosa as a wildlife sanctuary for any other reason than because the facts support it. Don’t read into it.”
He kept the disappointment off of his face through sheer will alone. He’d half thought that she might have done it as a sign, a way of reaching out to get his attention. But clearly there was no special significance to Ilhota Rosa in her mind. She probably didn’t even remember that she’d taken him to the island on their first date. The occasion was cemented in his memory as the moment when they’d fallen into something deeper than they’d expected. Than he’d expected.
What she’d taken from their relationship, he’d never know.
“If it makes you feel any better, Jared’s extremely unhappy with me,” she said wryly, and the quirk of her lips was so familiar he almost smiled back.
But caught himself at the last minute. Because none of this made him feel better. They were all adults though, as she’d pointed out, and the right thing to do was keep acting like one.
“I can imagine,” he allowed.
Jared Anderson was a son of a bitch, no doubt. How she’d ended up with him was the billion-dollar question—of course, that was also the most likely answer. Money made people do crazy things, and Anderson had plenty of that. The man’s bank account had leeched away his soul, and it had taken Charlie longer than it should have to clue in that his high school running buddy had become someone else, someone ruthless and cunning. Someone like Charlie’s father.
Shades of Jared’s adult personality had filtered through the first time Charlie had come to the Caribbean. It hadn’t taken long for their friendship to fizzle.
Which was why he’d cut off communication with all three of them. He had no time for people like that.
“I’m sorry too, by the way. I—” She cut herself off abruptly, and the way her eyes glinted clued him in that she meant for everything.
It was too late for apologies. Forgiveness wasn’t one of his skills; otherwise, he’d have found a way to forgive himself for what had happened in Iraq. If you just did the right thing, no one had to forgive. A lesson he’d been forced to learn the hard way. Besides, they’d both committed far too many sins for any hope of redemption.
“I don’t want to talk about the past. Just the future.” With a false sense of calm he definitely didn’t feel, he surveyed her. “I’m here with a proposal.”
Audra’s pulse shot into the red as she blinked at the solid, magnificent man taking up all the oxygen in her office. He didn’t want to talk about the past? Why, because she really hadn’t meant anything to Charlie after all?
Of course the last year of silence had already answered that question in flaming ten-foot letters. But the longer he stood there watching her, the worse the bruising on her heart hurt. And she wanted to know: why now, after all this time? For over a year, she’d been braced for the confrontation, from the moment Jared had told her Charlie was back in the Caribbean after his final tour in Iraq.
Nothing. No contact. No explanation for his monumentally gutless brush-off eighteen months ago, via text message to boot. As far as she’d known, Charlie St. Croix was a ghost, a fragile memory of an idyllic period of her life that couldn’t have been as sweet and amazing as she recalled.
She’d wanted to see him. More than she wanted to breathe some days until she’d gradually had to let that dream fade. But now that he was here? So much percolated beneath the surface of this conversation that she could hardly stand to be in her own skin, let alone articulate any of the pain and anguish his mere presence had dredged up.