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“Of your escape to town,” he snorted, knowing better.
Maybe in a way he was a little jealous of his brother’s ability to play with Summer, to pull that warmth and sweetness free that she kept hidden inside her.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Falcon advised him with a grin. “And keep your eye on that one.” He nodded to where Summer and Aunjenue were laughing on the porch. “I think we’d regret losing her.”
They both knew it would kill them to lose her.
His gaze slid to her then, lingering on the rioting waves of black hair as it fell from where she’d gathered it at the top of her head and secured it with a large clip. One heavy ringlet had fallen from the gathered waves and caressed her creamy cheek before she brushed it back absently.
She’d painted her nails the night before, he realized, glimpsing the dark red color against the peachy complexion of her cheek.
Today, rather than a dress, she wore a long, incredibly soft beige and cream pleated skirt paired with a thin vestlike top secured with tiny buttons. She wore no makeup, no jewelry. Hell, she wasn’t even wearing shoes today.
“I always knew she was the prettiest woman I’m ever going to see,” Falcon stated softly, pulling Raeg’s gaze back to him. “Tell me, Raeg, will you leave a part of your soul with her when we leave, as I will?”
His brother didn’t wait for an answer, not that Raeg had one to give him. Admitting that he suspected Summer owned the most important parts of him already was incredibly difficult. Hell, he was having trouble admitting it to himself. Admitting it meant he had to make a decision, and he knew it. A decision he’d never wanted to face. Just as he’d never wanted to face exactly what the woman meant to him, and why he’d become so damned furious every time he saw her, spoke to her.
How else was a man supposed to feel when he was faced with the woman his soul recognized as that one in a million who could accept him as he was, only to know he couldn’t have her? Not safely, not with any assurance that the darkness that waited just out of sight wouldn’t reach out and snatch her away.
Summer’s laughter drew his gaze to her again.
She and Aunjenue were out there giggling like schoolgirls, their expressions animated, their nearly identical faces side by side as they watched something on the tablet.
He’d learned they watched cute animal videos together, painted each other’s nails, and teased each other unmercifully. Aunjenue was a wicked child though. Summer could not countenance any sort of sexual references from her parents nor about her parents. She’d blush from her breasts to her hairline and stare back at the offender with scandalized anger.
Just as she had with her father the morning before when Raeg and Falcon interrupted them on the back porch.
The fact that Cal had orchestrated that little argument concerning Summer’s relationship with him and Falcon, was a “no-brainer,” as Summer called the obvious. But Raeg had seen her genuine inability to accept any sort of conversation of the like with her father.
It was kind of sweet though. Almost innocent. And he realized, very Summer.
“Daddy,” she called him, and in her love for her father Raeg saw all the innocence and warmth he’d never known Summer possessed. With her father, she was that little girl filled with wonder and a sense of invincibility. And Raeg realized her father could have never accepted that life had jaded one of his daughters.
Whatever happened that long-ago night when Summer was barely thirteen, he still wasn’t certain. What he did know was that it had to have bee
n so completely out of Cal Calhoun’s control that there could have been no stopping it. Because Cal loved his children, all five of them, but he frankly adored his daughters, cherished them. The only thing the man could love with the same dedication and soul depth was his wife.
How did a man take that kind of chance with his soul, Raeg wondered? To love so completely was to ask for fate to reach out and strike at what he cherished so deeply.
Especially wives and daughters.
Enemies always seemed to know a man’s greatest weakness. The destruction of a wife, a child, especially a daughter could destroy a man faster than anything, and Cal Calhoun had taken three chances, standing tall and daring fate to take any of them.
The other man was far more courageous than Raeg knew himself to be. More courageous than he could ever allow himself to be, he reminded himself.
The regret that slammed inside him was like a wrecking ball to his chest. Sharp, resonating with agony, it tightened his chest and had him jerking his gaze from Summer concentrating on the laptop once again.
If he didn’t get the hell away from her, then he was going to do something stupid like try to keep her. That would be the height of idiocy, because he wouldn’t be resigning just himself to a coming hell, but his brother as well.
Sharing their women was far more than just a sexual desire neither wanted to walk away from. They could walk away from it if they had to, Raeg knew, they would simply prefer not to have to, if the situation of their lives had ever changed.
The fact was, sharing their women ensured no one ever suspected that any of those women were important to either of them. After all, what man would share the woman he loved? There were many who did, he knew, but they kept that fact quiet, kept the sharing hidden for the most part. A forbidden pleasure that the world wouldn’t necessarily understand.
An enemy wouldn’t see that woman as important to him and Falcon. Their hunger for their lover’s ultimate pleasure served as the perfect smokescreen to hide any fondness they felt for their lover. It gave them a respite from the knowledge that they could ultimately be the reason a lover died.
And that one Raeg was well acquainted with. He’d smelled the horrific scent of his lover’s blood, seen the death that filled her eyes, and knew he’d been the cause of it. And he knew he could never face that again.
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