She had to leave.
Summer Calhoun, the woman the world knew as Summer Bartlett, was smart enough to know that this phase of her life was over. And though she wasn’t normally one to run, or to give up, even she couldn’t ignore the fact that she simply couldn’t do this anymore.
Teeth clenched, battling tears and anger, Summer threw an armload of dresses into one of the suitcases lying open on the bed. Jamming the material into the leather bag, uncaring of the wrinkles and years of careful packing habits, she added more, pushing the frothy, girly material from the sides of the bag and stuffing them in before zipping the back with short, jerky movements.
She promised herself she wasn’t going to cry.
Tears didn’t help. They had never helped in the past and they damned sure wouldn’t help now.
Nothing would help but getting away and running from the pain. Like serrated blades, the memories of the past few days sliced into her, tore at her.
God, how naïve she had been.
Four years with the CIA, two with various other agencies, and two more risking her ass in the private sector should have killed any naiveté she might have possessed long ago. Hell, she was certain it had done just that.
And how very wrong she’d been. So wrong that for eight years she’d believed an enemy was a friend, and that insults were just a brasher attitude than those Summer was used to in the South.
And because she’d let herself be fooled, she’d just spent three of the most hellish days of her life, two of them attending the funeral and burial of the very woman whose deceit and black heart had nearly destroyed far too many people Summer loved.
Easing to the padded bench at the bottom of the bed and propping her face in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees, she tried to tell herself it was the price of ignorance. Of not seeing the true nature of the woman she’d known most of her life.
The woman Summer had killed.
The funeral had been somber, saddening, and subtly beautiful. Cascades of flowers, over a hundred friends and family mourning. Tears and heartrending testimonials for a woman no one had known for a traitor and a murderer.
Summer had remained tearless through the viewings she’d been forced to attend. She’d watched, listened, and taken her turn at the gleaming cherrywood casket where she stared into the pretty, silent features of the woman she’d been forced to kill. A woman who had hated her, whose jealousy and greed had destroyed so many over the years.
Summer had remained just as silent during the burial, her head lowered, so much anger burning inside her that keeping it hidden was next to impossible. However, she had no other choice. Because she’d killed the woman they were laying to rest. Because it was her bullet, not an enemy’s, that had slammed into Gia Barrett’s black heart. And God forbid that the world should learn about the woman’s crimes, crimes that would shame her way too influential family.
Questions would be asked if Summer and the man Gia had turned her weapon on hadn’t been there for the partner the world believed was so kind and warm of spirit.
Money talked, and the Barrett family had plenty of it. Enough to ensure that the world would never know the true reason their daughter was dead.
She could have refused to be there, Summer knew. She could have found a quiet place to nurse the wounds gouged inside her heart if it weren’t for the man Gia was trying to murder when she was killed, and the man he called his brother.
Esteban Falcone, known as “Falcon,” was the wild, Spanish bad boy whose pale blue eyes could burn with laughter and fun or turn icy with danger or disapproval. The partner whom both Summer and Gia had fought alongside for two years. Playful, sometimes dramatic, always protective and loyal. So protective, he’d had Summer dragged from the chapel seconds before security arrived to find Gia’s body sprawled on the floor and Falcon holding the weapon that had killed her.
His half brother, John Raeg, had arrived with security. The half brother was nothing like his sibling. Older by only a few weeks, harder, colder, he’d handled everything and ensured the truth was buried so deep it never saw the light of day.
The truth that for eight years Gia had betrayed all of them. Friends and family alike.
Even more, she’d betrayed the friend Summer had sworn to protect years ago. A vow that had been broken when she’d failed to keep Gia and those she was helping from nearly destroying Alyssa’s life.
Because Summer had missed the signs, Alyssa had lost the two men she loved so much, and the unborn child she’d loved more than life. Because Summer had blinked and had refused to see Gia for the monster she had become.
At the sound of a quiet knock on her door, Summer jumped to her feet and quickly wiped away the dampness on her lashes. She couldn’t bear that anyone see the tears, or the hurt.
“Come on in, god-daddy,” she called out, expecting Alyssa’s father, Senator David Allen Hampstead.
It wasn’t her godfather who opened the door and stepped into the room though.
John Raeg, Falcon’s half brother, entered the room instead, his gaze going over her coolly. Cold and hard, those eagle eyes missed nothing. His golden brown gaze swept over the room, finally coming to rest on the open bags on her bed.
Closing the door behind him, he just stared at her for long moments, disapproval and censure filling his gaze as he slid his hands into the pockets of his dark slacks.
“Running away?” His deep voice was completely lacking in any mercy or compassion.
But then, when had he ever felt any mercy or compassion for her, no matter the situation?
“Seems like the thing to do.” She shrugged, turned her back to him, and laid the stacks of clothes she’d prepared the night before neatly into another case. “Besides, it’s time to go home. Daddy’s threatening to send Caleb after me and that’s just trouble waitin’ to happen.”
Her older brother would go ballistic if he learned what had happened here.
“Maybe you should try being honest with your family for a change. That usually seems to keep Caleb calm,” he suggested with such arrogant superiority it made her want to kick him.
He didn’t know her family, not really. Just because he’d met Caleb didn’t mean he knew what would work with them, or how they felt about her. Just because he disliked her didn’t mean everyone did. And her family worried about her. Keeping them in the dark about the true nature of her work was getting harder by the year. It was time to stop it. But she was going to do it her way.
“Now, why would I want to go getting all honest with him?” She snorted, pushing back the thick, wavy fall of hair that slid over her shoulder as she continued to pack. “Besides, it doesn’t matter now. I’m done. You will be happy to know I’m headin’ home for good.”
It was time.
She’d known since that debacle in Russia the year before that her luck was running out. If she kept tempting fate as she had been, she was going to end up dead. And Falcon would probably get killed as well trying to pull her ass out of some fire.
“And the fact that Falcon nearly sacrificed himself for you when he tried to take the blame for killing Gia doesn’t matter, does it?” The savage derision in his tone sliced another wound across her heart. “You’re just going to go back home and pretend none of it happened.”
What choice did she have?
“Looks that way.” She packed more of her clothing, keeping her back to him.
She didn’t dare let him see how vulnerable she was right now. It was bad enough the many ways he could unknowingly hurt her. If he ever learned just how weak she was, then the deliberate jabs he could inflict would destroy her.
What the hell was wrong with her? She couldn’t stop herself from wanting him and Falcon. Knowing they shared their women, even knowing how deeply Raeg disapproved of her, still, she ached for the experience, for the feel of both of them touching her.
“Looks that way?” he growled behind him. “I should have expected this out of you. It’s about the most selfish act you could pull right now.”
Oh, he so did not want to go there with her right now.
Turning, she flashed him a deliberately wide-eyed look of surprise.
“Well now, Raeg, I’d just love to stick around and try to see all this from your point of view, sugar,” she assured him with brittle amusement. “But I just can’t seem to get my head that far up my ass. So, if that’s all you wanted, I’ll just concede this little battle and you can get the fuck out of my room and let me pack in peace.”
She expected to hear the door slam behind him, maybe with a smart-ass curse first. What she didn’t expect was to be abruptly swung around to face him.
There wasn’t a chance to blink back her tears or to dry the single trail of dampness that fell from her lashes.
She wasn’t prepared …
* * *
Tears.
There hadn’t been a sign of them in her voice. Raeg hadn’t expected tears, so the effect they had on him was even more surprising.
Something dark and unfamiliar unfurled inside his chest, tightening the muscles there with a subtle pressure he found distinctly uncomfortable. And as he stared down at her, the deep, wounded violet color of her eyes darkened and another tear slipped free.
Involuntarily.
He knew Summer’s tricks.
He bet he’d seen every one she knew to pull, but Summer had never used tears to try to sway him. She knew better.
“Let me go.” She jerked her head to the side, blinking quickly as she tried to swallow back whatever emotion gave birth to her tears. “Please.”
He gripped her chin with the fingers of one hand and forced her gaze back to him, ignoring her struggles to pull away.
“Stay still,” he ordered her, his tone more clipped, angrier than he’d meant it to be.
