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Disbelief warred with self-disgust as he stared at her, realizing she believed just that. That over the years the anger and sharp comments hadn’t been because he was dying to touch her and couldn’t, but because he hated her. And nothing could be further from the truth.
“Just go, Raeg,” she demanded, her voice lowering, thickening, before she swung around to stare out at the ocean once again. “I’ll figure it out.”
And Falcon wasn’t saying a word. He was watching both of them instead, his pale blue eyes icy, all emotion or thoughts hidden as he sat, his forearms resting on the table, simply watching silently.
Raeg knew that look, knew his brother wouldn’t intercede unless forced to. Instead, he was dissecting them, and Raeg hated it when Falcon tried to dissect him.
Damn him.
“Do something,” he ordered his brother. “You’re the only one who can handle her.”
Falcon’s brows only lifted curiously.
“‘Handle’ me?” Summer swung back around then, anger filling her expression, her eyes. “No one ‘handles’ me, John Raeg, especially not Falcon. And damned sure not you.”
“I believe it,” Raeg snarled when his brother did no more than shrug when he glared at him. “I think it’s the other way around. You make damned sure you control him instead.” He flicked Falcon a disgusted glance. “She leads you around by your dick, and makes you love every second of it.”
Falcon’s lips only quirked to match the gleam of amusement that suddenly appeared in his eyes.
“Jealous, asshole?” she snapped behind him. “Maybe if you learned how to control that ugly attitude of yours, you’d be so lucky. Maybe then you wouldn’t have the disposition of a wounded gator.”
He turned to her, seeing the confrontational stance. One hand on a cocked hip, her nose lifted disdainfully, her expression so damned superior even though those tears glittered in her eyes, refusing to fall. And he wanted nothing more than to jerk her to him, lift her to the counter behind her, and fuck her until the only thing she could do was whisper his name in exhaustion.
“You are completely unreasonable,” he ground out, feeling the pressure on his molars as his teeth clenched.
She made him crazy. She refused to listen to reason, refused to listen to him.
Damn her.
He should head right back to Arlington as she demanded, but he knew that wasn’t really an option. He couldn’t let it become an option. He’d be leaving his brother and Summer to face a Russian warlord alone, uncertain of the backup they may or may not have.
They worked well together, but he remembered what happened the last time they’d gone against Dragovich without adequate backup. Their former teammate couldn’t be considered “backup,” let alone “adequate.”
Son of a bitch.
He couldn’t do this, yet he had no other choice.
Summer was chaos and she made him insane.
She was everything he and Falcon had ever wanted in a woman and everything they couldn’t have, couldn’t afford to lose. And she thought they were just going to walk away and leave her to face this alone? Leave her to trust some damned stranger to cover her back, someone Raeg had no idea if they could be trusted or not?
It simply was not going to happen.
“I need to pack.” Tension filled her voice, but at least she was no longer on the verge of crying. “The two of you need to go home. Thank you for letting me know what’s going on, but I can handle this from here.”
She could handle it from here, could she?
And Falcon simply snagged Summer’s dessert plate, and began silently eating her cake as though his brother and his former partner weren’t about to strangle each other.
As though whatever Summer decided was law.
Before he realized what he was doing, before Summer could evade him, he was in her face, nose to nose, ignoring her surprise.
“Go ahead and fucking pack,” he snarled. “We head out in an hour for Cliffton. And by God, I don’t take orders from a spoil-assed little Southern socialite I can’t seem to keep my damned brother away from. I guess you’re fucking stuck with me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You are handling that F-word far too often.” She sniffed disdainfully. “And I don’t have to worry about you staying long. You won’t make it five minutes around my family, and you’ll be stealing all Dragovich’s fun when you kill them yourself. Or they kill you.”
With that, she swept from the kitchen in a cloud of subtle spicy scent and affronted feminine anger.
