Free Still Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 10) by Anne Marsh Page A

while responsibility is not a bad thing, I don’t want her freaked out about anything. I can—
    No. Bad Ro. I’m not her Mr. Fix-It and she deals with her own shit now. This is me getting smarter. Or possibly just getting older, because Christ, I’m tired of everything. Of being the one to lead the charge, to head up the rescue. Not that I’ve ever needed rescuing but still, it would be nice to know that someone would come. Hindi glares at me some more, and yes I fucking glare back. She needs to grow up and take charge of her mistake. It’s like that crap about baby birds and nests, right? At some point the parent shoves the baby out and it’s fly or go splat. Yeah. Usually I try to avoid babies. I have two sisters who reproduce regularly, and I’m the AWOL uncle who sends loud, noisy presents that go bang or explode or generally make their mommas protest loudly. I’d make a terrible father, and it’s not like Hindi’s invited me to knock her up. She’d probably cut my dick off, but I’d bet we’d make cute-ass babies.
    The fuck?
    I need to get out of here.
    “Tomorrow,” I tell her.
    She blinks up at me. She looks a little dazed. I just hope like fuck that’s she listening to me. I grab her board thing and drag it toward me. One black Sharpie and three seconds later she’s got a note. Fucking surrounded by tits, ass, and lace, but maybe then she’ll notice. Maybe she’ll remember. As added insurance, I grab her phone and add the date and time to her calendar.
    “I’ll pick you up at ten,” I tell her and then I retreat.

Hindi
    T ime doesn’t stand still. The good days fly by, slipping through your fingers like the string on a space-bound balloon. And most days, I love watching the balloon of time soar free, headed up, up, up and into the sky. Sure, the laws of something-or-other say that at some point the poor balloon pops and plummets back to Earth, but until that moment it’s one hell of a flight—and even after the bang, there’s the glide.
    I’ve always lived free; I’ve never liked strings.
    But I’ve also had my moments when everything’s come apart, even if no one heard the explosion or the bang. Those moments hurt, but I’ve always moved on somehow, finding another way, another time to soar, however briefly. But as I ride shotgun next to Ro, on the way to the family practice lawyer he oh-so-conveniently knows, I wish things had gone a little smoother. Been a little less disruptive. I can’t tell what Ro’s thinking. He keeps his eyes on the road and his sunglasses in place.
    Since he’s wearing his incommunicado Mountain Man face and he’s driving, I amuse myself by fiddling with the radio in his Jeep. Naturally, he has no stations programmed. This comes as no surprise, since I can all too easily imagine Ro driving in silence, communing with Mother Nature and the road like some kind of Zen SEAL. I stop at the first country music station I find and dial that sucker up until it’s probably audible in Miami.
    And then, yes, I sing along. The day’s sunny, I’ve got the ocean on both sides of me, and a hot, grumpy man taking me places. What’s not to enjoy? Plus, I’m a really bad singer, and we both know it, so there’s the marital torture factor as well. I might as well bust his chops while I still can. Therefore, I yodel enthusiastically, completely failing to match Carrie Underwood’s gorgeous voice in any respect. She sings about lost love in those familiar, smoky tones, and I do my worst to drown her out. There’s something liberating about enjoying something I do so badly. Since there’s zero possibility of my making a success of the song, I have permission to let loose and groove on. I sit cross-legged on the seat, beating out a random rhythm on the dashboard, and right now there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
    The Florida Keys are a string of sandy pearls laid over the Caribbean, one imperfect, lopsided, gorgeous island threaded to the next on a thin ribbon of