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Later.
When she was alone and they were gone. She could cry then. When she was looking at life without them, then she could give into the pain.
“Summer…”
She shook her head, fighting the trembling of her lips, the emotion clogging her throat.
“Just hold me, Raeg,” she whispered. “Just for a few more minutes. It feels good to know you’re not angry.” She forced a facsimile of a teasing little laugh past her lips. “We fought for so long, this feels really good.”
His lips pressed to her temple, but she told herself he couldn’t possibly know the pain shredding her heart.
“Why do you think we fought?” he asked, his voice soft, gentle at her ear, the husky pitch a bit thick. “I ached for you until all I could do was push you away to keep from taking you. And you knew it, didn’t you? Both of us have known…”
That they could never have more than this, Summer finished silently.
“When it’s over, and you leave, will you do me one favor, Raeg?” she asked.
“If I can.” She could feel his fingers playing in her hair, tugging at the strands gently, rubbing them between his fingers.
She swallowed against the tears again—“don’t come back, no matter what. Don’t do that to me, and don’t let Falcon do it.”
Falcon was always the wild card. He was the one who’d refused to give up, refused to let the hunger growing between the three of them be.
“As long as you’re safe,” he promised cautiously. “But get another Russian after that cute little ass of yours, and all bets are off. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she answered, a single tear slipping past one eye.
She wouldn’t have enough time with them. Dragovich moved slowly, but he didn’t move that damned slow. But she didn’t have to push him to move any faster either. She just wanted to hold onto this a little longer.
“You know, it was Falcon who convinced the senator to push you into working with him,” he told her, his voice soft, his fingers still moving through her hair. “You were going to come home then, and I swear he spent three days cussing in three different languages when you told him you were thinking about leaving DC. He swore you’d never return if you did. You’d marry and start having babies, and we’d never see you again.”
She let her fingers curl slowly into a fist.
“I was getting tired,” she whispered.
She was so tired. She was too young to be this tired, she thought, to realize she was going to lose so much and there was nothing she could do about it, there was no way she could stop it.
“When this is over, you can rest, baby,” he promised her. “When you wake up, you can put the past behind you. Find what you’re looking for.”
She nodded, but she knew she’d already found what she wanted with Raeg and Falcon.
Silence descended between them then, each immersed in their own thoughts, their own regrets.
She had Raeg and Falcon for this moment in time, she told herself, for the here and now, and she wasn’t going to spoil it by being angry because tomorrow would see it all taken away. Nothing lasted forever, she reminded herself. Well, nothing but the pain she feared, once they were gone.
* * *
Several hours later Summer sat in the heavily padded rocking chair on the back porch, its gentle motion having lulled her cousin’s infant back to sleep as she rested in Summer’s arms.
Her little rosebud lips were parted, her tiny button nose wrinkling at times to some noise from inside the house threatening to disturb her. Long black lashes rested above her rosy cheeks, fragile lids hiding bright blue eyes. A light covering of raven black hair grew over her little scalp, with the slightest hint of gold at the tips.
Her cousin Calista had dressed the baby in a frilly white dress adorned with little pink rosebuds and matching socks. A pale pink, ultrasoft blanket was wrapped snuggly around the tiny baby, keeping her warm and feeling secure.
She was a perfectly formed little angel, Summer thought whimsically as she brushed the back of a finger over the little darling’s black hair.
Calista had fed the baby, changed her, then placed her in the antique cradle in the living room to allow her to sleep. Summer had given her cousin enough time to join the others in the kitchen before promptly making away with the infant and escaping to the back-porch rocker. There, holding the baby in her arms, she marveled over the little miracle her cousin had given birth to.
The gentle rocking motion of the chair, the baby’s easy, dreamless sleep, and the warmth of the spring day all combined to calm the pain radiating through her when she had left the bed earlier and showered while Raeg went to his own room to do the same.
