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.
Chapter 1 Bet
FIVE MONTHS LATER
Well now, it would appear he owed his brother a sizeable payout on the bet
they had, Falcon thought in disgust.
How the hell had she managed to fool him so easily?
The last time he’d seen Summer Bartlett, aka Summer Calhoun, she’d
been lying sobbing in a bed in her brother’s home in DC, long black strands
of hair lying around her, her hair a neat little cap of jagged cuts no more
than two or three inches long. All those long soft curls had been gone and
he’d felt like a part of his heart had been cut from his chest.
He’d stomped out of the bedroom after warning her to get ready for an
upcoming mission, so pissed that she’d cut her hair that he could barely
stand to breathe, and it had been a damned ruse, nothing more. A trick. A
carefully staged gimmick guaranteed to make him mad enough to stay away
from her, for a while at least, when she slipped away again.
A month later there she stood on the balcony of a beach house she’d
been staying in, nearly waist-length waves of raven black hair blowing in
the ocean breeze, her slender, petite body clad only in a short nightie,
allowing that breeze to caress tanned flesh as she tipped her head back in
sensual enjoyment.
And she had him so damned hard it was all he could do to breathe.
“I warned you,” his brother, Raeg snorted behind him. “Summer
wouldn’t cut her hair. She gets off far too easily on having you brush and
braid it for her.”
He slid a look to his brother, his jaw tightening at the scathing tone of
voice. There were moments he wondered what had made him believe Raeg
would be the best partner for this job. Perhaps he’d made a mistake in
giving his brother first choice in accompanying him to inform Summer of
the coming danger and protecting her from it. There had been other options.
Options that would not have been so critical of the agent Summer had been,
or the woman she was.
Was he wrong, he wondered, to believe Raeg’s manner toward her held
more than it appeared to on the surface? That the sensual enjoyment it
seemed Raeg had found in Summer in DC was only in his own
imagination?
Hell if he knew anymore.
“I didn’t ask your opinion on her reasons why, they are obvious,” he
assured his half brother. “Searching for a woman with short black hair,
made finding her more problematic if I continued searching for her. She
would have known this.”
“The point is, she ran, Falcon,” Raeg pointed out, quite confident he
knew Summer well enough to understand motivations that Falcon doubted
even Summer understood. “If she gave a damn either way about how her
abrupt absence affected you or anyone else, then she would have stuck
around long enough to explain it.”
Yes, she had run. Just as he had known at the time that she would do.
Evidently, Summer was serious about getting out of the covert and
security work she’d been a part of for so long. Just as she was serious about
refusing to return to the political social center that was DC.
But Raeg was wrong, she had attempted several times to tell him she
wanted out, and Falcon had been so loath to lose her that he’d talked her
into staying instead. That was a mistake he should have never allowed
himself to make. A mistake he would not make again.
I’m so tired, Falcon, the note she had left at the house in DC stated.
Tired of being shot at, tired of shooting at others, and tired of learning that
friends were enemies and tried and true enemies could be friends.
Belle was being retired forever.
And could he truly blame her? In the space of only a few years, she had
lost so much. The woman who had helped shape her as an agent and as a
person had died unexpectedly, and she’d been forced to kill someone she
had believed was a friend for most of her life.
To save him.
She had taken that life to save him, because he hadn’t believed the
woman would actually attempt to pull the trigger.
“I would be dead were it not for her,” he reminded his brother softly.
“She pulled the trigger when I could not, Raeg.”
He’d kept his weapon holstered rather than pulling it and being prepared
for what may happen.
Raeg said nothing. Instead, he lifted the water bottle to his lips and
sipped as they stared at the vision still standing on the balcony, the sun’s
rays caressing her from head to toe, loving the breeze even as it loved her.
“I didn’t say she didn’t have her good points,” Raeg finally stated with
no small amount of ire. “I said she fooled you. You let her fool you.”
Falcon pushed his fingers through his hair wearily, glancing at his
brother and wondering if he could ever convince him that the reasons he
fought so hard to find fault with Summer wasn’t because she had the faults
he wanted to see. Summer made Raeg see what he refused to acknowledge
in himself. A man who hungered for a woman so much that he could not
refuse who he was, what he was, if he was to have her. A man who knew
that, even though he would have to walk away from her in the end, having
her would be worth the agony of releasing her later.
If they could release her, Falcon thought, something he rarely allowed
himself to consider because he knew too they’d have no choice but to let
her go far too soon.
When Summer finally turned and reentered the house, Falcon hid his
disappointment and continued to watch the area. Tonight, they’d sneak into
the house and he’d have to tell her why he had chased her so relentlessly
over the past month. She was running out of time and had no idea of the
danger building with each day that she stayed out of sight. If he didn’t tell
her quickly, the consequences could prove disastrous.
“We will go in tonight,” he told Raeg, hating the fact that what he would
tell her would shatter any security she may have found in the past six
months since leaving DC.
She was serious about getting out, he could see that now. He even
accepted it, and after the past month of considering all the reasons why she
would want out, he couldn’t blame her.
She was a hell of an agent, but she was also a woman, and women did
not see the world in the same terms, with the same logical choices that men
saw it in. For a woman, friendships meant far more than they meant for a
man in some ways. The rules were different in their hearts and taking the
life of one she considered a friend would have altered everything she felt
about the life she was living.
“You’re not being logical about her, Falcon,” Raeg advised. But Falcon
heard the regret his brother tried to hide in his voice. “You know what
you’re risking. What both of us are risking.”
The bleak lessons of the past couldn’t be forgotten.
“Should I just allow Dragovich to kill her then?” Falcon turned to his
brother, watching him curiously. “He nearly did in Russia. That was my
fault because I all but begged her to take the job. Because of that, she was
betrayed by Gia, her identity sold to the bastard and now he intends to
finish the job.” He couldn’t even consider not protecting her, watching over
her, after the many times she’d saved his life. But he understood Raeg’s
concern as well. “Why do you not go back to DC? I’ll inform her of the
problem and call Lucien Connor to come out and help me with this. She
knows him, she works well with him.”
Oh, he just bet she did, Raeg thought furiously, forcing back his anger at
his brother’s offer. She might get along fine with Lucien Conner, and that
was all well and good, except for the fact that Lucien wanted nothing more
than to get Summer into his bed.
“Why don’t you just stop with the demands that I return to DC,” Raeg
snorted, “and stop making excuses for her.”
“When you stop making excuses for yourself,” Falcon stated with such
disgust that Raeg could feel his frustration level rising. “For pity’s sake,
Raeg, protecting her from this will not endanger her from our enemy.
Keeping her, loving her would. This will not.”
Raeg couldn’t convince himself of that, no matter how often he tried. He
knew far better than Falcon the cost of forgetting the legacy that haunted
them. He’d known a taste of that hell once already. He didn’t want to revisit
it. Especially not for a woman who affected him more than any other
woman ever had.
Chapter 1 Bet
18/06/2022
Chapter 2 Falcon
18/06/2022
Chapter 3 Know-it-all
18/06/2022
Chapter 4 Breathless
18/06/2022
Chapter 5 Suicide wish
18/06/2022
Chapter 6 Superheroes
18/06/2022
Chapter 7 Snipers
18/06/2022
Chapter 8 Eerie
18/06/2022
Chapter 9 Pleasure denied
18/06/2022
Chapter 10 Hunger
18/06/2022
Chapter 11 Sweetest lassitude
03/07/2022
Chapter 12 Be honest with me.
03/07/2022
Chapter 13 Looks only
03/07/2022
Chapter 14 Out of the house
03/07/2022
Chapter 15 Addictive pleasure
03/07/2022
Chapter 16 No explanations
03/07/2022
Chapter 17 No drink
03/07/2022
Chapter 18 Silence
03/07/2022
Chapter 19 A child
03/07/2022
Chapter 20 Hurry
03/07/2022
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