Still Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 10)

You’ve seen the picture. The one where the returning sailor sweeps a lovely lady off her feet, kisses her, and they all live happily ever after? That’s not what happens when I come home.

Six years ago, I met a girl, we fell in love, and we got married on the beach in the Florida Keys. Then I went back to my SEAL team and she launched a career designing lingerie (yes, I’m a lucky man). While I fought in the sandbox, she became the star of a reality TV show because her stuff’s that good. Hindi’s loud and colorful and everything I’m not. She lives for the moment and tying her down would be like forcing a firefly into a jar.

I’d like to let her go. I
should
let her go. We’re explosive when we’re together, and that’s not just the sex (which is amazing). She drives me crazy. I need to be in control and I’m too serious, too sober, and way too old for her. The problem is, she’s special. She takes my breath away, makes my heart beat faster, and I have a sinking feeling that I’m still her SEAL no matter how many miles and years there are between us.

Rohan

D
o you see that ass standing there in the mirror? The guy with his cargo pants around his knees and his best friend wielding a black marker? The friend is Finn Callahan and he looks pained as he draws big block letters on the cotton-covered backside in front of him.

The ass goes by the name of Rohan MacCarthy in everyday life. I’m pleased to meet you. Not really, but most of the time I’ll pretend I didn’t wish I was alone on a desert island. Coconuts and palm trees trump people, although I wouldn’t mind a dog or six for company. Dogs are loyal, they know how to take orders, and they don’t abandon you for a TV contract, an agent, and hanging with the pretty faces. Not that my face sucks, but I’ve taken more than one hit in Uncle Sam’s service, and multiple tours of duty as a US Navy SEAL leave a mark.

After I finished my last tour, I headed off into the sunset to lead a productive civilian life training dogs for the military and private security groups. Search and SEALs provides the best goddamned dogs in the business. Our dogs can sniff out a bomb, track targets, and take down criminals. It’s fucking meaningful. I rock it. I make a difference. I’m also the leader of our company, the CEO, and the man who makes it all happen. I’m organized, I always have a plan, and if I have a reputation as a grump or a killjoy, so be it. I’m still the guy you turn to when shit needs to get done.

I live in cargo pants and I’ve got a favorite T-shirt for each day of the week. I still run five miles a day in my boots, just to keep my hand in, and I could pass the SEALs’ PT test with flying colors. You never know when you’ll need to be ready.

Finn reaches around me and pokes my rock-hard abs.

“You’re gonna leave the ladies drooling,” he says, clearly under the mistaken impression that I need a morale booster in the body image department. My body rocks. I have six-pack abs and civilian life has
not
made me soft. I’m as hard as any man out there—which is gonna be a problem when I hit the stage. Miami Fashion Week does not need a front row seat to a dick show.

Finn punctuates his words by slapping me on the ass.

“The fuck?” We’re close, but spanking crosses a line.

He grins at me. “You’re all set, Lieutenant Commander.
Sir
.”

Fucking Finn has an inconvenient sense of humor.

I twist, trying to read my own ass, then give up and use the mirror. Where Finn is involved, it’s wise to double-check. The words are reversed in the mirror, but I count seven letters. Sure as fuck looks like MARRY ME, which is good because this is the second time I’ve asked and I’m going for two for two.

The boxers, however, are something I’d be happy to never see again. They’re formfitting and sport more bling than any engagement ring. When I step out on that stage and the lights hit me, they’re gonna be able to spot me from Mars. It cost me a thousand bucks to convince tonight’s professional male model to trade his spot in the show to me, and I’m a little skeeved out to think he may have tried on my outfit. This isn’t me. This is not the uniform that a man who kills it at Spec Ops and secret infiltrations wears.

It’s pink.

It fucking sparkles.

There is way, way too little fabric and what there is cups my junk closer than any lover.

I yank my pants up. The stage manager is already shooing the next wave of spray-tanned, buff models toward the runway. He gestures imperiously toward me. For the first time in a long and decorated military career, I feel an overwhelming urge to run.

Run back to Angel Cay.

Run back to my nice, safe, boring, perfect life on a tropical island in the middle of the fucking ocean. I mean, what’s not to like about that? I have a lifetime supply of coconuts
and
there’s a bar just down the road from me. I live on a goddamned beach and life is good.

The problem is that islands get lonely. Have you ever noticed that when people are asked what one thing they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island, they talk about company? The people, the books, the pets, the stuff they need to plug the empty spaces and fill the silence? It’s not that a steady diet of coconuts is that horrible. It’s that you need someone to share the coconuts with.

And that need to share my island is why I’m here, standing in the wings of a Miami fashion show, about to drop my pants in front of a thousand strangers wielding cameras.

It happened to me.

I came home on shore leave and I met the perfect girl.

Fuck, we had the whirlwind romance, complete with hot beach sex. And if I was a bit of an ass and more than a little overbearing, Hindi Alvarez didn’t seem to mind. Secretly, I think my Hindi likes orders.

Especially orders given in bed.

I button my pants. I have a plan. I have this. “Go time.”

Finn slaps me on the back—the man is definitely enjoying this.

She’s somewhere out there on the other side of the stage, and this is the only way to get her attention. To show her once and for all that I’m still her SEAL.

It’s show time.

Hindi

Two months earlier in Angel Cay

J
ust deserts.

Restaurants and bakeries like to play with the spelling, call it
just desserts
, dress the words up in frosting when the truth is nowhere near as sweet.

Vengeance.

Karma.

Balance.

Reward.

Punishment.

Take your own personal pick, but my favorite is
comeuppance
. That’s the point in time when life decides you get what’s coming to you in spectacular, public, and often humiliating fashion. Where life spanks you and it’s not a fun bedroom game but a moment of overwhelming exposure and pain. Worse? You had it coming to you. Today is shaping up to be one of those days. Four years ago I got a little careless—and today life’s handing me the bill with enough interest to make the last New York City parking ticket I got look modest.

Sometimes just deserts even include forgiveness, but today won’t be one of those days. Justifying your actions to your audience takes constant effort. Everyone’s a critic, and there’s no perfect choice when the TV camera’s watching. It can be exhausting and overwhelming—or thrilling because you’ve got the eyes of the world trained on you, a reason to misbehave and act out and do every last thing your audience has thought—but never done. When I go to work, I put on my game face and pretend that I’m perfectly okay with the whole television-watching world having a front seat to my life. That I have zero problems with screwing up in a public venue where others can and will record my actions and play them back over and over.

Every day is Groundhog Day in my world.

I screw up, I laugh. The cameras roll, you watch and applaud, and then I do it all over again tomorrow. I’m really, really good at screwing up—and I’m telegenic.

Hello, match made in heaven.

Six years ago, I drove to New York City in a beat-up, rusted-out van. It’s a miracle the Beast made it across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a one-way trip—the van lurched its way to the fashion district where it promptly gave out. Maybe it was the selfies I took documenting the van’s smoky curbside death. Maybe it’s because I’d been invited to participate in a casting call for a reality fashion show and there just happened to be cameras recording my ridiculous entrance. Maybe I just have a natural gift for screwing up in stupendously spectacular fashion.

Whatever the reason, the reality show producer immediately cast me. I spent a season vying with eleven other would-be fashion designers to create the sexiest, most out there lingerie. And I won.

Surprised, aren’t you?

Hindi Alvarez—award-winning fashion designer. Me being successful? You could have knocked my family over with a feather from the pink flamingo-inspired number that won me my TV crown. For one brief, shining moment, I was the best. A winner. On top of the fashion world.

It wasn’t until afterward, when I had an agent and a two-season TV contract and a film crew dogging my footsteps, that I realized something. While I’d like to think I’m an amazing designer who knows how to create lingerie that makes every woman feel like a queen, it’s not the satin, the bows, or the bling that make me successful. Just as lingerie’s the perfect frame for a woman’s body, my designs showcase
me
. And the TV-viewing world likes to watch me screw up.

So now I screw up weekly in my thirty-minute slot, and I make sure to be an overachiever because my paychecks invariably grow in proportion to the size of the scandal. With the next season of my reality TV show on the line, my producer sent me down here with the instructions
get good tape
. Did I mention I was an overachiever and really, really good at this part of my job? I’m pretty, I photograph well, and I’m entirely shameless. Okay, the last part isn’t entirely true, but I can wallow in my mistakes with the best of them—and I make
a lot
of mistakes.

Today I’m fifteen hundred miles from New York City. So, even though I’m not striding about my usual stomping grounds, I’m still doing what I do every day in the city. I’m screwing up. In fact, there’s six foot two inches of mistake gamboling around in front of me on the beach right now.