Revealing Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 4) (20 page)

“I… told you about my daughter. I don’t—” Her voice broke and took a good bit of his composure with it. “I don’t understand why you have nightmares about yours but never once thought to mention her to me.”

Because to do so would have been an admission of sins he didn’t want to share with her. If she could forgive him of that, it would be absolution he didn’t deserve. He shut his eyes against the anguish dripping from her. “I’m not a father. I can’t be. Why identify myself that way?”

Misery pulled at her mouth. “I of all people understand not being able to see yourself as a parent. But if you don’t trust me with these pieces of yourself, how can I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t.”

Short. To the point. It killed him to say it. But this was the conversation they should have had on Ilhota Rosa instead of the one designed to ignore reality. Because he was, to the core, an addict. And so, so selfish. He’d wanted her so badly that he’d been willing to accept the cost, never dreaming that he’d force her to accept it too. They couldn’t be together, not like normal couples.

“Stop being so matter of fact about this!” she cried.

The precious vulnerability that he’d long sought from her spilled over into the room, cutting him far deeper than any piece of shrapnel could touch. Because she was so real and so beautiful when she let him in, and he wanted to sink into her again and again. For as long as they both shall live.

His throat closed, and he couldn’t have responded even if he’d had something worth saying. Because he wasn’t the slightest bit matter of fact about the only plausible next steps.

Rachel needed to go. When it was only his own heart that had been compromised, that, he’d been okay with. Even though he knew she was going to be the single most difficult thing he’d ever given up—which was saying something. But then she’d dropped this bomb in his lap.

Love
. That was the ultimate sacrifice he’d had to make on the altar of his addiction. He couldn’t say it back, couldn’t even hint that her saying those words had filled him with such a precious joy. There was no happily ever after in his future.

Instead of getting mad, like she should, Rachel stood and crossed the room, barging into his space. He backed up. She followed, her scent seeping into his skin until his body wept with need.

God, he was so weak. Telling himself not to want Rachel worked about as well as telling himself not to want alcohol. His addictive personality had no problem latching onto a substitute—except he’d used alcohol as a numbing mechanism. Rachel was the opposite, enlivening him, bringing him to the surface of his darkness in a way he’d previously believed was impossible.

And he wanted to grab on to it—her—with both hands. To fall at her feet and beg her to give him a chance to figure this out, to learn how to trust himself.

He didn’t.

She backed him into the empty corner where the entertainment center used to be. “Here’s the problem, Evan. I do trust you. But you’re doing everything in your power to sabotage that. Why?”

He shook his head, but she was having none of that.

“Use your words.” For emphasis, she pinched off her glasses from her nose and presented her bare face. “This is me, no barriers. Opening myself to you. If that’s not an indicator that I’m all in after you deliberately held back telling me about your daughter, I don’t know what is. I’m not walking away, and stop trying to make me. But you have to meet me halfway.”

Her face. God above, it radiated with emotions he’d been too scared to name, but he drank them in, letting what he saw warm him. This woman he’d accidentally let into his heart was more beautiful than Ilhota Rosa at sunset.

“I can’t,” he pushed out hoarsely. How, he had no idea when his chest had gone cold as if he’d lost too much blood.

She didn’t budge. “Tell me about Jordan’s mother.”

“No.” That one was easy to verbalize. No way in hell was he opening that Carrie box, not under any circumstances.

Something altogether crafty filtered through her expression, and he didn’t like it.

“I know people. I have resources. Lawyers get special access to things.” She paused to let that sink in. Unnecessarily. He well understood the threat without additional explanation. She threw it in anyway. “I can find out everything about you in an hour. But I won’t.”

That set him back. “Then why tell me that?”

“Because.” Her hands came up on both sides of his face, and his eyes drifted shut involuntarily because her touch was like a balm to his tortured insides. “I want
you
to tell me. I’ll wait.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time,” he said gruffly.

“You’re worth it.”

How could she possibly think so? There was nothing “worth it” about him, which not so coincidentally had been one of Carrie’s parting shots. He got that it wasn’t worth the pain and disappointment of being locked into marriage with him.

But Rachel didn’t get it. She needed to. “Carrie. She was my wife. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, not while I was still overseas so often.”

“You were married?”

For some reason this seemed to shock Rachel more than all his previous revelations. It wasn’t an accident that he’d kept this stuff from her. None of it made him the slightest bit proud of himself. So he’d tell her now and pray it would thoroughly disgust her into forgetting all about her declarations of love.

“Almost six years.” She processed that. But not fast enough. “Carrie wasn’t the most supportive military wife. She didn’t like me being gone. A baby was her way of punishing me while giving her something to fill her time.”

Her mouth turned down. “I’m sorry. That’s a crappy thing to do.”

Shrugging, he turned the screws a few more times. “I didn’t get to see Jordan’s birth. I was in Iraq, and Carrie didn’t even tell me she’d gone into labor. I came home, and the baby was almost one. This little stranger was my kid, my responsibility, and I was still going through rehab for my injuries.”

The pain had still been crippling from all the skin graphs and reconstruction they’d done in that German hospital. But he’d forgotten all of that the moment he laid eyes on Jordan.

She’d been so amazing. A beautiful baby, with his dark hair and Carrie’s blue eyes. What was he supposed to do with this child he’d never wanted? Didn’t matter what he should have done, what he could have done. He’d taken one look at that sweet little face, and all the pieces of his heart that he’d tried to give to Carrie over and over went to their daughter instead.

And then Carrie had taken her away.

It was still one of the most brutal experiences of his life.

“Where is she now?” Rachel asked softly.

He shrugged. “Somewhere where I can’t ruin her life.”

“Oh, Evan.” Rachel covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes wide. “You don’t know where she is, do you? That’s why you have nightmares.”

“No fancy psychology degree needed to figure out I’m messed up.” Which he should have been telling her all along instead of seducing her simply so he could feel alive for the first time in God knew how long.

She scowled. “That’s not the definition of messed up.”

“It is!” His temper started simmering just under the surface of his skin. “It goes really well with my addiction and war wounds. I’m a walking bag of messed up, and you would do well to get out now while you can.”

“You keep right on telling yourself that. But I’m not going anywhere.”

“You should,” he muttered darkly. “Before I hurt you too. There’s a reason I don’t know where Jordan is. I’m an alcoholic, Rachel. I deal with my pain by numbing it. You gloss over my flaws like they don’t exist. At your own peril.”

She waved away his words as if he hadn’t said them, which pissed him off even more. Why beg him to talk to her and then ignore everything he said?

“Carrie isn’t allowed to hide your daughter from you,” she informed him as if he’d been railing against the unfairness of it or something, when in reality it was the only thing his ex-wife had ever done that he fully supported.

Carrie had been right to leave while he figured out how to fix himself. Which was still a daily battle, one he had no right to drag Rachel into. One of these days he hoped to look up and realize he’d won the war. Maybe then he’d feel as if he deserved her.

She smiled, which didn’t help matters in the slightest. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you what my specialty is. Family law. Care to guess how many absent parents I’ve tracked down over the years so I could get my clients the child support they’re due? A dozen or more. And we’re not talking about run-of-the-mill dickheads who jet off to Miami and get a job at the Walmart like they’re invisible just because they go to a big city. I’m talking men with money who can afford to cover their digital footprints, who have second and third homes in places without US treaties.”

He crossed his arms, mostly so he wouldn’t pull Rachel into them and absorb all that righteous indignation she’d exhibited on his behalf. It thrilled him tremendously, which wasn’t what should be happening here.

“Let me help you,” she said. “You’ve got legal rights.”

“I don’t want to find Jordan. I don’t wonder late at night whether she misses me, nor do I entertain dreams of being a father. She’s better off without me. So are you.”

“The difference is that I get a choice.” She crossed her arms in kind, staring him down. “Which means I’m not taking your crappy advice to leave. Deal with it.”

“You
don’t
have a choice,” he countered bleakly, and neither did he. “I’m not going to turn into someone stable. Someone you deserve. Stop looking for that guy. You won’t find him.”

“You can’t let Carrie color your opinion of yourself, honey.” Clearly frustrated, she gripped his forearms and shook him lightly. “Also how dare you tell me what I’m looking for. I wasn’t looking for any of this. I’m out of my depth and scared. All I want is to hold your hand, and for you to tell me you’re scared too, but it doesn’t matter how scared we are because we’ve found something worth holding on to together.”

And then she threw down the final gauntlet. Slowly she stretched out her hand, watching him the whole time with vulnerability and love washing through her expression. He didn’t mistake it for anything other than what it was—salvation, forgiveness, hope. A new deal. All wrapped in a beautiful Rachel package.

None of which he deserved.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

Story of his life. And then he walked out the door.

T
he next morning Evan took the boat over to Miralinda Island, where his friends Mick Frasier and Brayden Lucas were sitting on a pile of power tools they weren’t using.

He’d called Brayden and asked him to recommend a lumber supply store. The man had recommended his own backyard.

“I’m quickly learning that the island way is to grab any deal you’re offered because who knows when it’ll happen again,” Brayden said, swinging open the big double-wide doors on the sugar millworks at the old plantation they were squatting on. “And since we can’t actually do any renovations just yet, I’ve been collecting stuff just in case.”

Evan eyed his friend. “You sure?”

“Raid away, man. It sounds important. Grab what you want, and meet me out in the yard. I’ll get the saws set up.”

It was backbreaking work to build something completely from scratch, but by the time the sun went down, Rachel had a new entertainment center. It was the least he could do for her, and it was due punishment to think about her smile as he cut and measured. That ache in his chest wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so no point in trying to alleviate it.

At the end of the day, he had a finished product that was ten times better than the one he’d accidentally smashed. Lucas helped him load it into the boat and sent him off with a salute. Evan didn’t go back to the bungalow he shared with Rachel. Instead, he let Charlie and Jace have free rein to give him grief when he showed up at their house looking for permission to crash on their couch, where he didn’t sleep in favor of berating himself for all the crimes he’d committed against Rachel since day one.

In the morning Charlie called a meeting. Handy since Evan was already present and accounted for.

Miles and Jack trooped in, yawning and slurping coffee from travel mugs, both looking a little worse for wear, but it was Sunday and it was a sure bet both of them had been burning down Freeport until the wee hours. No one could party like a SEAL trained to be alert, precise, and inventive under any circumstances.

Eventually Dex wandered in wearing a huge grin, and it didn’t take a lot of math to figure out he’d been enjoying the benefits of being a married man on a Sunday morning. “Sorry I’m late. Emma… made muffins.”

“Is that what you kids are calling it these days?” Jace guffawed and smacked Dex on the back with enough force to send a less-solid man to his knees, but Dex’s frame barely registered the hit.

“I was being discreet,” Dex said with a head jerk at the rest of the team. “It’s not fair to brag when no one else gets muffins.”

“Please.” Jace snorted. “The muffins line up for me. They’re
begging
me to eat them by the time I’m through. Miles is the muffinless one.”