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your hair. You’ll be fixin’ your own.”
Aunjenue narrowed her gaze back at Summer, though the laughter was threatening to bubble up and explode once again.
“Oh yeah, Daddy would never lie to us,” Aunjenue agreed with mocking disbelief. “We’re all just gator babies conceived in the swamp and birthed in the marsh.”
When she’d been five and asked him where babies came from, her daddy had sworn that gators had left his and Momma’s babies on the back porch. That the momma gator had made them with spit and mud, then laid them in the marsh to dry out in the sun until they looked like real babies just before Jesus breathed life into them. And he’d kept that story going for as long as she could remember. Never, not at any time, did her daddy, or she, mention sexual relations until just the day before when her daddy had simply horrified her by implying things about her sex life.
Still, while she could have such a life, her parents simply could not. The very thought of it was too embarrassing to even contemplate.
“Summer.” Propping her elbow on the side of the chair and cupping her chin in her hand, Aunjenue grinned back at her mischievously. “You do know that if you marry, Daddy is gonna know you’re doin’ the nasty. Right?”
“I would never,” Summer gasped, blinking back at her sister as though aghast that such a thing would even be considered. “Daddy knows I’d never do that.”
At least, that was the pretense she intended to keep at all times. Even she was often amused by her reaction to anything intimate where her parents were concerned. She couldn’t help it though. It was all her daddy’s fault. If he hadn’t blushed and stammered and been so uncomfortable when she asked him where babies came from, then she herself might not be nearly so reticent about it.
“Oh Lord.” Aunjenue tried to smother her laughter. “You are a basket case. And I guess you think he was jokin’ yesterday when he implied he knows you’re doing the nasty times two with those two hunks you brought home with you?”
Summer blinked back at her sister in surprise. She denied the charge, probably a little too vehemently. “I am not! Not with either of them. Definitely not with both of them.”
And she was so lying through her teeth. She just hadn’t done it last night. Or this morning come to think of it.
She clamped her lips shut. She could feel the heat burning from her breasts straight to her hairline as the most awful blush in the world began sizzling over her skin.
Damn her sister.
Aunjenue just watched her, her expression filled with wicked amusement.
Her lips tightened. “Stop bein’ mean to me or I’m going to throw your ass in the swamp.”
Her sister shook her head back at her in disbelief, the ponytail she’d pulled her hair into falling over her shoulder.
“Have you told them about the parties yet? Or why we’re havin’ them?” she asked, glancing toward the glass doors as she kept her head lowered, ensuring whoever was in the kitchen couldn’t read her lips.
Yeah, Raeg was still in there watching them. She doubted she’d been out of his or Falcon’s sight since Dragovich’s men had attacked the day before.
“No,” Summer sighed. “And I’m not talkin’ about it right now. They’re sneaky. They eavesdrop better than I do.”
Her sister snorted at the claim.
“Raeg won’t give a damn either way why we’re havin’ the parties, he’ll just be pissed that we can’t cancel them. Falcon won’t handle the reason for them well though.” She stared down at her fingers for a moment. “It’s not that he loves me or anything. He just won’t understand it.”
Smoothing her thumb over a newly polished nail, she lifted her gaze to Aunjenue’s then, hearing the laughter retreat beneath a silent understanding.
“And you love both of them,” Aunjenue said quietly. She’d been swearing for over a year that Summer was in love with the two men.
“It’s not that…” she began.
“Lie to Momma and Daddy if you have to. Lie to Falcon and Raeg if you need to. But don’t lie to me. I’d never do that to you,” Aunjenue protested.
It wasn’t a lie, Summer assured herself. She cared for them. She cared for them deeply, that was all.
“If I loved them, then I wouldn’t be considering a life with any other man, little sister,” she assured her.
But, was it the truth?
She was scared to death of letting either of them know about the parties or the fact that they were being thrown to allow Summer to meet the men her momma, daddy, and aunts thought would suit her. She hadn’t done a very good job finding a man she found interesting herself, so they were going to give it a try.
Falcon, always the more easygoing of the two brothers, had his limits to what he called her “shenanigans,” and he would definitely see these parties as shenanigans. He’d be pure pissed off. Raeg just stayed angry anyway but she’d been known to push him to that anger as well.
