“I’ve tried to tell him that he could be making headway with hot women if he’d only groan just a little bit,” Andrew Jessop said. “But no, he has to be all surly and macho and scare all the women off.”
Carrie scoffed. “Well, you didn’t scare me off.”
Grant grunted then nodded toward the house. “Yeah, but no offense, you don’t count. We don’t move on other men’s claims, and I reckon those two cowboys there claimed you about two seconds after they set eyes on you.”
Andrew grinned. “They must be afraid of us, though, because today they have backup.”
Carrie didn’t hear anyone come out onto the porch. She turned and grinned at Chase and Brian. Her gaze landed on the man with them. She’d never met him before, but there was something about that smirk, and the way he leaned against one of the porch columns that seemed familiar, somehow.
“Hey there,” she greeted the brothers Benedict. “I just got here. I didn’t know if you’d be here, or out riding.”
“I’d say that was good planning on our part.” Chase looked at his brother and then back at their cousins. “Did someone put in a call for firemen? I don’t see smoke anywhere, do you, Brian?”
Grant snickered. “If you ain’t seeing smoke, maybe we ought to reconsider our no-poaching philosophy.”
“You’re welcome to try, cousin.” Brian’s hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his heels.
“Well now,” Andrew said.
“Indeed,” Chase agreed.
Carrie wondered why she wasn’t choking on all the testosterone floating through the air.
The stranger on the porch said, “Seems to me if there’s going to be bloodshed, I ought to see the lady to safety.” Then he looked directly at her, tipped his hat, and said, “Ma’am.”
Chase clearly was fighting his grin. “Carrie, this is Julián. Julián, this is our woman, Carrie.”
Carrie just shook her head. She couldn’t say that she’d ever noticed before how men could be like kids fighting over a toy at times.
Or dogs fighting over a bone but eeew, I don’t like that analogy, because apparently, I’m the bone.
“It’s nice to meet you, Julián.” Then, since she preferred the “boy and toy” analogy, she looked from the cowboys to the firefighters and said, “If you can’t play nice, you’re all going to get a time-out.”
“Well, hell.” Andrew kicked at the dirt. “I hate time-out.”
Clearly that had been a dire threat. The other three would-be combatants sighed heavily and looked totally dejected.
Carrie chuckled and shook her head as she headed into the house. What the hell, I can tease with the best of them. “Please don’t make your poor, injured first-responder cousin lift the heavy stuff.”
“I’m not so injured anymore,” Grant called out to her.
“So then you’ve got medical clearance to get back to work?” she heard Brian ask.
“Of course not. Every doctor in the whole damn town is either my father or my brother. They’re as coddling as the rest of you.”
“We weren’t coddling you,” Chase said. “We were really gonna pound you for hanging around our woman.”
“I know, damn it. Would have been the most fun I’d had since I came home.”
Carrie thought that just maybe thinking of the men as “boys” wasn’t that far off from the truth, after all.
“You’ve only just come to Lusty yourself, so it can’t be in the genes only, then.”
Carrie turned at Julián’s words.
“What can’t?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”
Carrie shook her head. “No, I understand. It took me a bit to get used to the idea of the ménage relationship.” She shrugged. “The important thing you need to know about Lusty is that no one judges you, period. That extends beyond whether you have one lover or more. It’s everything.”
Yes, it was everything, and maybe she shouldn’t be so timid about opening up to the brothers Benedict.
“I can see the draw of that,” Julián said. He nodded, as if he’d decided something for himself. “I guess I should go out and lend a hand. It sounds as if they’ve finished arguing over which piece of furniture comes off the truck, first.”
Carrie wondered about that entire conversation even as she tried to put her finger on why the man looked so familiar to her.
She didn’t have any time to worry about it, however, for just then Brian and Chase came in on either end of a love seat.
“You just tell us where, darlin’,” Brian said.
For the next hour she did just that, setting not only the furniture in the parlor, but also the dining room. The décor in that room had been more ostentatious than the cowboys—or herself for that matter—had been comfortable with.
The warehouse had certainly been a treasure trove of furnishings, linens, dishes—damn near anything anyone would need to furnish a home.
There, she’d discovered a lovely oak dining room set, a rectangular table with eight chairs, a china cabinet and sideboard with a hutch. The color of the wood—a nice, warm brown—combined with the clean lines looked as if it had been made for the house. She’d repainted the walls a soft butter shade with white trim. The multipaned windows, two of them inset into the wall side by side, completely opened the room once the previous deep green paint had been eradicated.
The men generally ate in the kitchen, but she’d wanted to give them the option to seat family. Of course if their entire family showed up for a meal it would have to be sawhorses and four-by-eight sheets of wood outside.
While the men were hefting furniture, she nipped out to the kitchen to pull the casserole she’d made the day before out of the fridge. She’d brought fresh rolls to complement the hearty spicy beef and rice meal she’d prepared.
She stood back as the men brought in the last items, the dining room chairs. She noticed that they were all looking at her as if she’d done something strange.
Who knew how these men’s minds worked?
Ignoring their odd behavior was likely her best bet. “If you’re hungry, there’s food. Just give me five minutes to set the table.”
“Wait a minute,” Andrew said. Apparently he’d been elected to speak. “Are you going to feed us first before we finish?”
Carrie didn’t quite understand the question. “Is there more furniture on the truck?”
“No, ma’am,” Grant said. “We were just wondering.”
“We unloaded and you pointed where to put everything, and…that’s where it all still is,” Andrew said. “Don’t you want to rearrange things a few times? Try out different looks?”
The way all five of the men were looking at her told her that the Jessops had been elected spokesmen.
Carrie gave them the sweetest smile she knew how to give. She could explain that she had a computer program that would allow her to configure a room six ways from Sunday. She could tell them that she’d spent probably eight hours, all told, doing just that with the room dimensions and the pieces of furniture she’d selected.
She could, but she didn’t. Instead, she just said, “Nope, we’re done. Now, who’s hungry?”
Chapter 6
Carrie enjoyed the view from the porch of the ranch house, which now included a pretty glider she’d nabbed from the warehouse.
Most gliders she’d ever seen would fit two comfortably, but this one had room for four.
She grinned. A lot of the furniture in that warehouse had been larger than average. It was nearly five in the evening, and she supposed she should think about making dinner for the guys.
Butterflies had taken up residence in her stomach. Carrie told herself she was being silly. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, after all. Yet, she’d never told anyone what her life had been like when she’d gone into “the system.”
She understood that the way she was—cautious, untrusting, and tending to keep people at arm’s length—had to do with
things that had happened after that dreadful April when she’d been eleven.
Nerves nearly got the better of her and Carrie shook her head. Why was she putting herself through this, anyway?
And then Chase and Brian walked out of the barn, heading toward her, and she had her answer.
Was she in love with them? She didn’t know, not one hundred percent sure, anyway. But she wanted to find out. She wanted to get completely involved in a relationship with them, a relationship that wasn’t casual.
They’d both made it very clear that they expected her to share more than just her body with them.
Julián, whom they’d told her was their new lead hand, had emerged from the barn with them. They stood and chatted for a moment, and then the man headed toward his truck. He sent a wave her way, and she waved back.
She wished she knew why he seemed so familiar to her.
“Well hello there, sugar. Were you waiting for us?” Chase bent down, kissed her lips lightly, then sat on her left.
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Good. Thanks for your hard work today, darlin’.” Brian kissed her just as chastely as his brother had, and then sat on her right.
Both men slid in close, so she was bracketed by them, surrounded by their heat.
“The weather forecast is for the possibility of severe thunderstorms. We’ve battened down the hatches as best we can.” Chase slid his right arm around her, then took her left hand in his and just held it gently.
Brian threaded the fingers of his left hand with her right.
Because she could, she rested her head on Chase’s shoulder. This is good. This is better, if I don’t see them. Then I can just pretend I’m talking to myself.
“Have you ever had to ride out a bad storm?” The weather often could be a topic of conversation when nothing else came to mind, but Carrie thought this once, their choice was an omen.
She hadn’t known how to start, but now she did.
“We’re in Texas?” Chase’s deep voice rumbled beneath her head and settled over her skin like a warm blanket. “We’ve all had to head for the bathroom or inside a closet from time to time.”
“That happened to us, too, a couple times that I remember,” Carrie said. “I can recall thinking how silly it was that we would all huddle in the basement under the stairs. I wasn’t afraid, because my parents didn’t act afraid. They made it a game, and I never realized, then, how dangerous—how deadly—weather could be.”
“Did something happen to make you aware of that fact, Carrie?”
He called her Carrie, not darlin’. She guessed they’d heard the quiver in her voice.
“When I was eleven, and my sister Chloe was seventeen, mom and dad got invited to a wedding. They hadn’t been away together for the longest time.” She took a moment to remember the good, as she always did when she thought of her parents. It wasn’t doing them justice to only recall the end. They’d given her and her sister so much in the short time they’d had them.
“They were so much in love. Chloe remembers better than I do. She says when they would see each other they’d just light up.”
“That’s a special kind of love.” Chase stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.
“Yes, it is. It’s what Chloe wants. I guess it’s what I want, too.” Carrie took a deep breath. “Anyway the wedding was to be on a Friday night, so mom and dad left Tuesday afternoon and flew into Tennessee. They called us Wednesday morning, just before we left for school. I guess they were nervous leaving us alone, even though Chloe was seventeen. She’d babysat once overnight, but never for several days. They were worried about leaving us, and even second-guessed if they should go, but Chloe and I gave them our solemn promise that we would be good.”
She had to stop, because the power of remembering those two days always overwhelmed her.
“That would have been in 1998? April?” Brian’s question told her he’d guessed what came next, so she just nodded.
“They didn’t call Wednesday night, but we just figured they were having a good time. We were a bit concerned when they didn’t call Thursday morning, either.” She swallowed hard. “We went to school Thursday, and I guess I forgot to be worried. But that night, at home, Chloe was really upset and worried. She’d heard about the tornado outbreak, but didn’t want to tell me.
“She told me, years later, that when they found mom and dad, they were in each other’s arms. They’d taken shelter at a friend’s but the house had collapsed on them all. Mom and dad were the only ones killed.”
“Sugar, I’m so sorry.” Chase hugged her tight, and Brian kissed her hand.
“So Chloe raised you?”
“You’d think, but no. She wasn’t yet old enough, you see. We both got put into separate foster homes. The family I got placed with moved about a month later. Chloe had been in touch with our parents’ lawyer, but he didn’t seem very interested in helping us out any.
“They didn’t even let us say good-bye to each other before they moved me. I was having some emotional issues—I guess I’d wake up at night screaming.”
“Who wouldn’t? Darlin’, you were just a baby, really.”
Carrie couldn’t prevent the quick grin. Trust a man to think a eleven-year-old girl was a baby. But really, hadn’t she been just exactly that? She’d grown up sheltered and naïve, raised by parents in an openly loving home, parents who would never have harmed her in any way.
“Well, my new family didn’t care for the idea that the pretty little girl they had gotten might have problems, so I got sent to another foster home, and then another and another.
“Chloe tried to find me, but she was trying, too, to go to school and work part-time. She needed to be ready, she said, so that she could assume responsibility for me.”
“Didn’t your parents leave an estate for the two of you?”
Carrie shrugged. “We didn’t know it at the time, but my dad’s business partner managed to grab hold of the whole thing. An investigation was launched, but they never did find the man.”
“No wonder you keep to yourself, sugar. Can’t say that I blame you one bit.”
She could end it here, this telling of her past. She could end it and they would consider it enough.
But she couldn’t. She needed to be honest—and lying by omission was still lying.
“That’s not the reason.”
She felt the tension in both men. She couldn’t quit now. She’d never get here again if she did.
“The last family I moved in with—when I was thirteen—was the Lockwood family. They had a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Abilene. The father was a teacher, the mother a nurse. They had a son, George, who was sixteen, and, to all appearances a bit of a nerd.”
“Children’s services moved you into a home with a teenaged boy?”
Carrie shrugged. “Every other prospective family had shied away from taking me. I guess I was a little difficult—I don’t remember all that well, but I do recall being very angry all the time.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Brian’s epithet eased her emotions, some. No question these two cowboys were on her side, looking at things from her perspective.
God, she wished she’d met them earlier.
“I stopped being a problem when I lived with the Lockwoods. I thought, if I behaved, then George wouldn’t hurt me anymore.”
“What did he do to you, sugar?”
“The first night I had my nightmare, I awoke to find him in the bed with me, telling me to hush. At first I thought, ‘How nice, he’s not screaming at me to shut up.’ And then he raped me.
“He told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill me. And then he would find my sister and kill her, too. He told me that I was his gift from God, and that it was my duty to let him do whatever he wanted to do to me.”
“Dear God, sweetheart.” Chase scooped her up and held her on his lap. She saw the pain in his face. Looking at Brian, who’d moved closer, scooped her legs onto his la
p, and stroked her, she could see his expression mirrored his brother’s.
“How did you get out of there, darlin’?”
“When I was fifteen, my sister found me. She contacted me at school. And because by then, neither of us trusted ‘the system,’ we made a quick plan. The next day when I left for school, I crammed as many clothes as I could into my backpack and I left—not for school, but to join my sister, who had a car, and a job, in Dallas.”
“Did you report that son of a bitch to the cops?” Chase asked.
Carrie could feel him shaking, and knew that his anger was on her behalf. She sat up and looked him straight in the eye.
“It would have meant going back there, Chase, and putting myself under the thumb of the same caseworker who’d been assigned to me before. It would have meant possibly, my sister being charged with kidnapping. Mostly, it would have put me in that sick bastard’s sights again.” She blew out a breath. “I’m not proud of the fact that I was afraid to go back. Anyway, apparently, about two weeks after I left, George broke into the neighbor’s house one night, thinking the young girl who lived there was home alone. She wasn’t. Her parents were there.
“They woke up when she screamed, and they caught him, in the act of raping her. He was charged, and convicted, and sentenced to ten years. That was enough justice for me.”
She didn’t understand the quick look that passed between the brothers then. But a new worry had occurred to her as she’d done what they’d wanted—as she’d shared her soul with them. That worry mushroomed to mega-size proportions.
She was done keeping things back, and letting things stew and grow in ignorance and silence.
“Look, if you’ve changed your mind about me after all of that, I’ll understand.”
Chase reached forward and gently wiped the tears away that she hadn’t even noticed had begun to fall. How could a person cry and not know it?
Then he said, “We’ll give you a pass this time, because this has been a very difficult thing for you, giving us this gift of trust. But if you ever make such a suggestion again, you’ll go over my knee.”
Love Under Two Cowboys [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 7