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Having her daddy actually catch her? It was so shameful she could barely face him when she’d left her sister’s room to head home and met him at the bottom of the stairs.
Thankfully, he acted as though it had never happened. No lecture. No disappointed looks. He’d kissed her cheek and called for her brother to walk her home before telling her good night.
Fog was already beginning to gather at the darkest edges of the wetlands beyond the house where swamp and marsh came together to create the unique mystery of the land she’d been born to.
Cypress dripping with moss, marsh grass growing alongside it in some areas before disappearing beneath the deeper, darker waters teaming with a variety of life. Gators bellowed into the dark, joining the other sounds of the night to create a symphony that could be found nowhere else.
Closing the door, she leaned against it for a long moment, eyes closed. Her life was simply becoming a mess, she thought, shaking her head as she straightened, her eyes opening.
She narrowed her gaze into the darkness of the living room then, her lips tightening at the knowledge of who watched her silently.
“I’m sorry, Summer.” Raeg stepped from the darkness of the living room, a drink in one hand, the other rubbing at the back of his neck. He was apologizing, but there was no regret in his voice or in his eyes.
She walked in, staring back at him heavily for long moments.
It wasn’t just his disrespect of her father and her relationship with him that bothered her. It was the fact that in all the years he’d known her, he hadn’t even suspected that she wasn’t the cold-hearted agent, the killer, and social barracuda she’d played in DC.
Even god-daddy and her dearest friend in the world, Alyssa, had known better. Hell, even Falcon knew better. But Raeg hadn’t even suspected.
Because he hadn’t wanted to know.
“Don’t worry about it, Raeg,” she finally told him, sliding her hands into the pockets hidden at the seam of her dress. “Daddy’s fine. He didn’t feel offended at all actually.” She shrugged helplessly. “I was the one who was offended.”
He frowned back at her. “How the hell did I offend you?” he demanded. “For God’s sake, Summer, what we did together with Falcon in that bed upstairs didn’t offend you, but kissing you under a tree did?”
His complete lack of a sense of decorum in such situations simply astounded her, she thought, staring back at him in disbelief.
“That’s my daddy, Raeg,” she tried to explain. Just this one time, she was going to try. “I knew that was his favorite tree, but I still let that happen. And I found it in very poor taste that you should think I shouldn’t be embarrassed that my daddy caught me letting a man handle me. That was simply unacceptable from both of us.”
His eyes widened for a second before he blinked and shook his head as though he
couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Dammit, Summer. You’re a grown woman, not a teenager,” he cursed, which just made her mad all over again.
She wasn’t going to argue with him though, she told herself again.
“In my own home, I’m a woman,” she informed him, lifting her chin and glaring back at him. “What I do behind closed doors is my own damned business. But I will always be a little girl to that man who caught you bein’ so intimate with me, and it’s simply unacceptable that you don’t understand that.”
Oh, she knew him so well.
Her arms crossed over her breasts defensively at the look on his face. She so was not going to like whatever he was preparing to say.
“The same man that let some bastard nearly rape you when you were twelve?” The glass he held slapped to the sideboard next to him, his knowledge of that shocking her. “Where was he when Margot and Davis Allen flew out here and took you out of his home because he was too goddamned drunk to protect his daughter?”
Summer flinched.
The pain that struck her went clear to her soul. It burned and razed through her with a force she didn’t bother to fight. Not because of what might have happened or almost happened. Or because her daddy might have been weak for a single moment during his entire life.
“Where he was doesn’t matter,” she cried, pointing a shaking finger back at him furiously. “Don’t you ever, ever question him again. You don’t have that right. You don’t know him and you damned sure don’t know me, and we’re both well aware you have no desire to. Why don’t you just go home instead of staying here, when everyone can tell you damned sure don’t want to be here, Raeg? Why are you putting both of us through this?”
Turning, she rushed to the stairs and ran up them, anger and pain building inside her, pride and need warring inside her until she felt it tearing her apart inside.
Reaching the top of the stairs, she came to a hard stop at the sight of Falcon standing silently, his expression somber in the doorway of the room closest to the stairs. No doubt he’d heard every word.
“You’re just as bad,” she told him raggedly. “And I’m no better. Maybe both of you should just leave. I’d rather deal with Dragovich myself than to have my heart shredded like this.”
Rushing past him, she promised herself she wasn’t going to cry. Neither one of them deserved her tears.
