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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.
And maybe that was part of it. She made him ache like nothing or no one ever had. She tugged at a part of him he hadn’t known existed and made him admit to things he had never known he wanted, and all the while she’d bat those perfect, heavy black lashes of hers, smile with such feminine charm as those oddly colored violet eyes gleamed with seductive promise, right before informing him of what a prick she considered him. She could tear a strip off his hide in a voice so perfectly beautiful it made his dick harder than hell despite the insults she’d heap on him.
The fact that she was usually right, didn’t count as far as he was concerned. He’d say he was a prick because she couldn’t decide if she was a black-hearted agent or a sweet Cinderella wannabe, and he couldn’t decide if he should make up her mind for her. The truth was, being a prick was the only way to keep her at arm’s length.
“You still refuse to even discuss this,” Falcon accused him, his voice low, his gaze still on the beach house. “Do you believe you’ll be able to live in the same house with her and not eventually give into your needs? To what we both need? That, or you will make her hate you?”
Raeg didn’t even deign to answer that question. He wouldn’t touch it until he simply had no other choice and he damned sure wasn’t going to listen to his brother lecture him on it.
“I think we should go in now.” Placing his empty water bottle on the console of the vehicle they were sitting in, he narrowed his eyes on the house again. “She’ll run again before nightfall.”
“And you know this how?” Falcon bit out, frustration edging at his voice.
“She was on the balcony, full view for all the world, playing the lazy socialite,” he pointed out. “We’ve been watching this damned place for two days, and you couldn’t even tell anyone was there. It was a distraction. Any reasonable attempt to get to her would come after dark and she knows it. She intends to be long gone before that could happen, laughing her ass off because she fooled us again.”
