Revealing Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 4) by Kat Cantrell Read Free Book Online Page B

begin with. You’re a guy who clearly likes his privacy, and I threw all that out the window for my own selfish reasons—”
    “I want you to live here.”
    Her mouth closed and opened again, but no sound came out. It probably said a lot about how all this was going to go down that he enjoyed rendering Rachel speechless. But there was an undercurrent here he couldn’t put his finger on, and that he didn’t like.
    “Your reasons were not selfish,” he continued. “You’re helping Aqueous Adventures and need a place to concentrate. Let me give that to you.”
    They both knew she’d hoped it would lead to something more, but that wasn’t happening. Ilhota Rosa meant everything to Evan and, if giving up his empty space to Rachel helped secure the future of the island, small price to pay. If she was here under his roof, he could monitor the situation well enough. He didn’t have to be sexing her up to make sure she did what she’d promised she would.
    And well he wasn’t above admitting—to himself, not out loud—that the idea of having another person in close proximity, even one who annoyed him to no end, had its pluses. Looked like she was going to get what she wanted after all. He just hated that it felt like giving her the upper hand.
    Warily she eyed him. “You were singing a different tune yesterday.”
    He shrugged the shoulder of his non-box-carrying arm and resisted the urge to remind Rachel he was in the middle of something. “I like to eat.”
    “I see.” She crossed her arms, and the hint of vulnerability he sensed in her sometimes sprang up in her gaze.
    All at once he clued in that she’d really and truly had second thoughts about moving in here. This hadn’t been some kind of mind game designed to get her way, a thinly veiled reverse psychology tactic she’d invented because she thought he’d been born yesterday.
    It was a reminder that her bold personality hid layers he’d yet to discover. And that alone improved his mood dramatically. Rachel as a roommate suddenly seemed a lot more palatable.
    “Move in,” he insisted. “Today. I’ll help you.”
    Without any ground rules. A perverse part of him hoped the lack of them might get her to reveal why she put up such a front all the time. It was a calculated gamble, but he had a feeling she’d ignore any agreement they struck anyway, especially if the rules involved items such as no flirting and no accidentally wandering around naked.
    “Why the about-face, soldier?”
    “Sailor,” he corrected automatically because nearly everyone got that wrong. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember that SEALs were Navy.
    “Don’t change the subject. Something happened. Why are you so hot to get me here?” Suspicion clouded her gaze, provoking his temper, which was the only reason he continued this conversation that should have been done five minutes ago. She was getting what she wanted. Why the argument?
    “Anderson. He needs to be taught a lesson.”
    Getting that taken care of alone was worth an enormous amount of discomfort. She didn’t have to know about his other reasons for agreeing.
    “And that’s it?” Her dubious expression didn’t change. “You know I’m going to shamelessly flirt with you, right? All the time.”
    “I can ignore you.”
    “That’s what you think, honey,” she shot back, and their normal dynamic slid back into place, which he’d deny to the grave made him far more comfortable than when he didn’t understand her agenda.
    Under threat of packing her belongings himself if she didn’t get started, Evan herded Rachel out the door so he could deliver the rest of Dex and Emma’s stuff. And then spent the rest of the afternoon refusing to analyze why it had grown so dang critical to have Rachel as a roommate when he’d have sworn from the moment she mentioned it that living with her would happen when hell froze over.

N o matter where Rachel put the framed picture of her family, it didn’t look right. In Boston