Ruined by the SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 2) by Zoe York

too well to hope that Will would be similarly swayed.
    If anything, Will might even be annoyed that Mick had let a woman get under his skin. Could he choose Caraover his only viable career option? Would she want him, broken and unemployed?
    And all of this was a stupid place for him to let his head wander when he hadn’t slept for shit the night before and was enjoying a perfectly amazing mid-day nap with a gorgeous woman in his arms.
    But he couldn’t stop thinking about the look on her face when she talked about restoring the plantation to its originalbeauty. Open it to the public as a museum.
    Not that she’d ever get that opportunity—the more he thought about it, the clearer his picture became of what had happened. Someone, probably an intern, had sent a letter to the Historical Society based on an earlier will. Then they’d forgotten to retract that letter, or maybe the intern had kept that oops to themselves.
    Either way, there was no reasonfor Mick not to believe that his letter—the more recently dated one—was accurate. It was the only inheritance Will had received from his grandmother. Surely the old woman wouldn’t have forgotten to give her grandchildren something? Or if she had, she’d have realized the error and corrected it.
    Will was blood. That trumped a charitable donation.
    It was just a matter of time until Cara had toface the fact that she’d lost the estate.
    What would she do then? She obviously had a lot riding on this project—so much so that she’d moved in to maintain a claim of possession.
    A stab of fear gripped his heart. Would her job be riding on it, too?
    He couldn’t do that to her.
    Fuck.
    “What are you thinking about so hard?” she asked, her voice jarring him back to the hammock and their cuddle.

    “Stuff.”
    “The same kind of stuff I asked you if you wanted to talk about last night?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You wanna talk now?”
    “Nope.”
    She sighed. “We’re grown-ups, right?”
    “You more than me, probably.”
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    He was silent for a long while. She didn’t say anything else. Finally, he opened up, just a little. His voice caught on the words and it took a few tries to get out.“I don’t have a lot of prospects, Cara.”
    “Mmm.” She rubbed his chest, then down to his belly. “That’s a scary place to be.”
    “You know about that, maybe?”
    “A bit.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Hey, that’s life, right?” Another sigh, and she stretched her legs out as far as she could, making a satisfied sound as her toes brushed his. “I’ve got a friend. Arielle. And her father’s a successful businessman,but…he’s mixed up in some stuff. I don’t know what. Drug smuggling, maybe. I hope not, but he comes and goes, disappears sometimes without warning. It’s stressful for her. Meanwhile my mom and I have cream tea every Wednesday afternoon at the hotel where she cleans rooms. So who am I to complain about what I don’t have?”
    “I wasn’t complaining.” At least he hadn’t meant to.
    “Oh, no…I know that.I just mean…maybe this isn’t what you thought you were getting down here. But maybe it could be good anyway? No matter which way it goes?”
    “Would you still…” His eyes were hot and scratchy. Fucking emo bullshit. He squeezed her hip, then palmed her ass. The teenage boy deep inside him gave him a fist bump. It wasn’t whether or not she’d still want him. Fuck that noise. It was his job to be worthy,no matter what. “Yeah. It could be real good. I’ll land on my feet, kitten. Don’t worry about me.”
    ~

    S HE DID, THOUGH, AND EVEN AFTER HE FELL ASLEEP, she thought about their conversation over and over again, looking at it from all sides.
    When he started snoring lightly, she slipped out from under his arm and lightly twisted her way out of the hammock.
    Inside the house, she found her phoneand plugged it in. Then she pinned a note to Mick’s shirt say that she’d gone into town, and went in