Remember Summer by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online

under your arm?”
    There was a flash of surprise before his face lost all expression. He watched her the way he had when he first saw her walking the hills, winter eyes and icy speculation.
    Raine tried to smile; she failed. It hurt too much. There was no logic in her pain. It was simply there, a fact as deep as her own heartbeat.
    “So I was right,” she said, her voice flat, weary. “You’re a man like my father, and like the men who guard him.”
    A man like her father, devoting his body and soul to an uneasy combination of ambition and idealism. A man like her father, who had little time for the wife he loved, and less time for his own children.
    “Your father?” Cord asked, his voice ruthlessly neutral. He was too disciplined to reveal anything now, even interest.
    She hesitated. Ordinarily she was careful not to mention her family. But there was nothing ordinary about the situation or the man walking beside her. Or her response to him.
    It would be better if Cord knew. Better to end the attraction now, retreating behind an armor of old wealth and impeccable, powerful names.
    “My father is Justin Chandler-Smith the Fourth,” Raine said, her voice soft, empty. “You probably won’t have heard his name. He’s what they used to call a ‘gray eminence,’ a man whose life is international politics, international power. When he talks, presidents, kings, and prime ministers listen.”
    With every word she spoke, she regretted the impulse that had brought the conversation around to her family. But it was too late now. It had been too late since she had discovered that Cord, too, lived a life that put work first and everything else last.
    “My father’s recommendations make or break countries and cultures,” she continued evenly. “He lives and breathes scenarios of human savagery, betrayal, and violence. It’s a horrifying way to live, always focused on the worst side of human nature, where men are viciously evil and genocide serves a political purpose.”
    “Somebody has to live in that world or it would be the only world left for everyone to live in,” Cord said evenly.
    “Yes.” Her voice was distant. “That’s what my father says, too.”
    “You don’t believe him?”
    She shrugged. “I’m sure he’s right. He always is.”
    Cord waited, but she said nothing more.
    Neither did he. Beneath his exterior calm, anger and adrenaline prowled through his veins like tigers through a hot night. With each word Raine spoke, he sensed her pulling back from him, turning away, shutting him out.
    He sensed it, but he couldn’t stop it. He could only push ahead and find out how much damage had been done, how much he would have to undo before she came willingly to his arms. He knew she was going to end up there. He was as certain of it as he was of his next breath.
    Because he needed her as much as he needed his next breath.
    “Go on,” he said neutrally.
    “About what?”
    “Whatever it is that’s making you look like you bit into a lemon.”
    Anger shot through her, the same anger she thought she had outgrown. But she hadn’t. She had just outrun it.
    “Fine,” she snarled, turning on him. “Dad is a stellar citizen and a boon to humanity. But did he have to live with the savages all the time? Wasn’t anything else important to him? His wife? His kids? Anything at all?”
    “Maybe it’s because his family was so very important to him that he gave himself to protecting them,” Cord said tightly. “Did you ever think of that?”
    “Maybe.” Her voice was flat. “And maybe he just likes the world of adrenaline and violence better than he likes the world of family and love.”
    “Is that the question you wanted to ask me? If I like the world I work in?”
    She tilted her chin and met his pale, fierce eyes without flinching. She spoke distinctly, clipping each word. “Yes. I do believe that’s the question I had in mind.”
    For a moment he hesitated, watching the woman who so disliked being