Claiming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 1) Read Free

the next guy. Evan, Jace, Miles and Jack emerged from the water. And then Dex.
    Mask—off. Finally, blessed relief from the tight band. Dex’s tank hit the deck and, last but not least, he flipped off his fins and collapsed against the last empty seat.
    “How many more times do we have to do that?” Jace groaned and scrubbed at his too-pretty face. Jace liked women, beer and fast boats, preferably together, and reef restoration wasn’t high on his list. It wasn’t high on any of their lists.
    “What’s a matter?” Charlie elbowed his roommate in the ribs. “You afraid of a few little fish?”
    Jace glowered at Charlie but took the elbowing good-naturedly. “The only thing I’m afraid of is your mama.”
    Dex grinned because Jace was like a big goofy puppy half the time, not because his comeback had any particular humor.
    Rolling his eyes, Charlie eased his fins off methodically and purposefully, the way he did everything. “If you’re tired of making money, go be a beach bum. See how many bikini bunnies you score when you tell them you’re unemployed.”
    “Like that matters,” Jace scoffed and smoothed a flat hand down his jaw. “When you look like this.”
    That had everyone rolling their eyes.
    “What matters is that we’re in this together,” Miles interjected quietly, ever the peacemaker. “We work for ReefCo and do some good for the ocean. In exchange, they pay us well. We sock money away until we can run Aqueous full time. Same plan we’ve had since day one.”
    “ReefCo.” Jack spat over the bow into the water. “ReefCo does nothing good for the ocean. Everything Jared Anderson does is for his own good.”
    Evan nodded—they all shared the sentiment regarding ReefCo’s billionaire owner—but he didn’t contribute actual words. It took an act of congress to get the guy to speak. Evan and Dex had done three tours together, more than any of the other guys. They’d crawled under more barbed wire together, slung more mud on each other, and dressed more of each other’s battlefield wounds with chewing gum and sand than anyone else. Dex loved Evan more than any human on this earth in a way that only another brother-in-arms could fully understand. But the man had serious PTSD, and it wasn’t getting better.
    Not that Dex would say that. You didn’t utter that nasty phrase out loud. Besides, Dex had his own crap to deal with, and his demons didn’t cotton to a lot of jibber-jabber. So the silence in the bungalow Dex shared with Evan suited them both to the ground.
    When they got back to Duchess Island, the dive captain pulled up to the dock near the small village the locals just called Town and anchored, allowing the team to collect their gear and spill onto the wooden planking that led to land.
    It was rare that all six of them went out to the reef they were restoring off the coast of Countess Cay. Only on days when they didn’t have any parasailing or snorkeling excursions planned—usually they tag-teamed it. The Duchess Island resort, also owned by billionaire Jared Anderson, was between cruise ships, which always put a crimp in their bookings.
    Dex arranged his gear in the shed where they kept it under lock and key. Emma of the White Bikini had probably shipped out with high tide. Most of the resort guests came and went via the ships that arrived and sailed every couple of days. When he’d left her on the beach yesterday, he’d thought that would be the end of it. No more Emma.
    Instead, he’d dreamed about her last night.
    Since visions of the firm little body underneath those scraps of white had replaced his normal nightmares of lifeless corpses, he couldn’t find a downside. But this morning he’d had the strangest urge to tell Evan about the woman he’d met. Which was crazy. Emma had been nothing more than a small blip in his day. An easy target that had taken a considerable amount of will to avoid nailing.
    But that didn’t stop Dex from wondering what had put those shadows