As long as neither Tooms nor Potsy ever came near them, he could live with that.
* * * *
Jesse Benedict looked over at his twin, drawing comfort as he often did in Barry’s presence. They’d been womb mates, and continued to be, at the ripe old age of thirty-three, each other’s best friend. Though only fraternal twins, they often thought as one. They had each other’s backs, always.
Just lately Jesse had been very, very grateful for that.
They made their way through the unfamiliar pasture, keeping their horses’ gaits to a walk. Until they learned every inch of this land—their land, and wasn’t that a shock?—they’d have to be careful. Galloping hell bent for leather through the fields, as emotionally satisfying as that would be, could also end up with a horse falling into an unexpected hole. Neither he nor Barry would risk their mounts for a few moments of exaltation.
Jesse pulled his gelding to a stop and took a minute to just look around as he waited for Barry to wend his way over to him.
The land was different here from Montana—the trees shorter, the grass less green, and it was too damn flat. Jesse missed the mountains more than he would have believed possible.
The air here was different from Montana, too, with more humidity and lacking that fresh, mountain pine scent he’d catch early in the morning, year round, from his parents’ front porch. It was summer, but summer in Texas was a hell of a lot hotter than he was used to. Not that they didn’t get to triple digits some of the time back in Montana, because they did.
Just not every damn day.
Hell, everything here was different than what he was used to.
Except this. Except being on the back of his horse and watching as his brother, also on horseback, approached. Except thinking about the chores that needed doing that day, and knowing the work would take all he had, and then demand even more. Except knowing the land they worked and tended was Benedict land, entrusted to them, and the responsibility they had to be good stewards of it.
“Pretty, in its way,” Barry said. “Not better or worse, just different. But ours. Damn, brother. Did you ever for a moment think such a thing could ever happen?”
“No surprise I was thinking the exact same thoughts.” He sat forward on his horse, his arms crossed over his pommel. “Smaller tract to manage than we helped manage in Montana means we won’t have to resort to saddling a Jeep or a ’copter. We can do all of our overseeing from horseback, which sure as hell suits me fine.”
“Yeah, me, too. I’m surprised Cord and Jackson opted to help head up the equine portion of the combined business, instead of the cattle,” Barry said. Then he chuckled. “And even more surprised that you and I are the one’s chomping to get those beeves on the land and get going.”
Jesse grinned. His brothers, Cord and Jackson had always considered themselves cowboys, heavy emphasis on the word “cow,” despite their both having been pro athletes. He and Barry had been the ones in the family to develop a horse breeding operation—not to mention dedicating a chunk of their own portion of the Montana spread as a wild horse and burro sanctuary, leased free of charge to the BLM.
I can’t even think about that without getting pissed off all over again.
“What time is our appointment in Waco this afternoon?” Barry asked.
“Three thirty.” Jesse shook his head. “Dr. Carmichael sounded a lot more enthusiastic on the phone, once she checked our references.”
“I guess we can’t blame her for having been cautious when we called last week,” Barry said.
“No, we can’t. It’s a hell of a responsibility, starting up a new horse therapy program to help disabled adults and abused children.” Jesse hadn’t met Dr. Carmichael yet. He’d only spoken to her—twice, now. Since he and Barry had both been involved with a horse therapy program in Billings only since early January, they weren’t yet fully qualified to teach on their own. Fortunately, the good doctor had already lined up two fully registered instructors. Since the ideal was two handlers per horse, that meant he and his twin could continue to pile up their hours toward full certification under the mentorship of the registered instructors.
“I never thought I’d enjoy working with those kids the way I do. Pisses me off that good old Phil and Gordon had to fuck that up for us, too.” Barry sounded bitter.
Truth was it had been a shock to them both to see their former friends’ true colors.
Jesse met Barry’s gaze. “Not ‘too,’ brother. We have no one to blame but ourselves for what happened with Veronica. Every time my thoughts wander back to when she was just a kid, and the way we treated her—hell, the way the whole damn family except Cord and Jackson treated her—I want to kick myself to hell and back.” Their “picking” on their youngest sister had eventually evolved into bullying, something they’d only fully realized last December.
“You’re not the only one.” Barry sighed. “We’ll be able to visit her easier now that we’re here in Lusty, being as we’re just a couple hours away from her.”
“I was thinking. She sounded like she’d be okay with us doing that sometime when we spoke to her yesterday. But we’ll need to call ahead. I don’t want to drop in unannounced. She’s busy, balancing her career and her husbands.” At Christmas last year, Veronica had married Hank Stinson, the sheriff of Divine County, and Hank’s best friend, Travis McDaniel.
Jesse couldn’t help but smile when he thought about Travis. Not only had the former game warden had a crush on Veronica years ago—a crush his sister had shared—he’d proved a good friend and brother-in-law to the two of them recently.
Knowing Veronica had found happiness in Divine, and his two older brothers had found happiness here in Lusty gave him hope.
He and Barry weren’t getting any younger. Maybe being away from all the negativity back in Montana would turn out to be beneficial to them in more ways than one.
“We need to do a bit more research before we know what the hell we’re doing here. Ranching’s going to be a bit different. Can’t say I’m going to miss the snow, that’s for damn sure.”
Jesse grinned over at his brother. “Yeah, it’s going to be a real hardship not having to chip that ice off the stock tanks.” Then he frowned. “The heat will take some getting used to, but I figure, you and I? Hell, we can learn any damn thing we set our minds to learning.”
“That’s no lie.” Barry sighed, and then dropped his insouciance. “I feel like this is our second chance, you know? We fucked up so badly—not just in the way we behaved toward Veronica, but in our choice of friends.” He shook his head, and Jesse knew exactly what he was thinking just then.
It was a damn good thing Phil and Gord were in jail, along with that looser Brent Haygard. Otherwise, he and his brother might be in jail themselves—for assault, or maybe even murder.
“This is our second chance,” Barry said again. “And I don’t want to fuck up.”
“Then we won’t.” Jesse met his gaze. “What happens next is up to us—it’s our choice. So if we decide we’re not going to fuck up, it’s up to us to see to it that we don’t.”
As he looked out once more at the land that they’d purchased for the tidy sum of one hundred dollars—land that had been set aside by great-great-grandmother Sarah Carmichael Benedict and held in trust by Grandma Kate—Jesse inhaled deeply. Those words had sounded like a vow, because they had been one.
“Let’s head back to the brothers’ place and get to work,” he said. “We have a lot to do before we head into the city.”
* * * *
Assistant District Attorney Kevin Parish looked down at his notes, his brow furrowed. His office in the Federal Building in Ashland, Kentucky, wasn’t very big, but Mary Ellen bet he’d be in bigger and bigger offices as his career soared.
He had the look of a young man who wouldn’t be content being a bit player for long.
Mary Ellen could tell, just by the way he was frowning, that he had a few doubts about her story. That was all right. She kept her demeanor the same
way it had been since she’d fully come back to her senses the day after Oscar Tooms had tried to kill her. She knew exactly how she looked because she had practiced in the mirror. And she’d seen that expression on her face before—the same way she looked as a kid when her daddy would tip the bottle a little too much and get that mean snarl on his face.
She and her siblings knew to be afraid then. Sometimes, acting like a scared little mouse was all that was necessary. The old bastard had always seemed content if he knew they were all pants-pissing afraid of him.
“I don’t understand one thing, Mrs. Potsy. Why didn’t you try to get away from Tooms after he—in your words—forced you from your house?”
In your words. It was all she could do to not to tell that little snot-nosed college boy to go fuck himself. Was he as stupid as all that or—no. No, she saw that tiny light in his eyes. Intelligence. Calculation. The little twerp was trying to make her lose her cool, trying to get her to trip herself up. She could eat this little prick for breakfast and shit his bones into the toilet.
She lowered her gaze and took a moment to secure her personal ramparts. Ready, she raised her gaze to his but kept her tone timid. “Mr. Parish, may I ask how old you are, sir?”
He scowled. “I’m twenty-eight—not that it has anything to do with your situation.”
“Twenty-eight.” She frowned and then nodded. “So you were born in 1986. Sir, did your daddy ever take a switch to you? Or his belt? Did he ever punch you in the face or throw you into a darkened root cellar for a day or two when he was drunk?”
“No, of course not.”
“You have no idea how blessed you are, sir, to be able to say ‘no, of course not.’ The world I was a child in was far different than the one you grew up in. My daddy…” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “My daddy was gruff, and more than a little mean. He thought nothing of backhanding us, or taking his belt to us. He’d get this look on his face…and you did whatever it was he told you to do, then, because the consequences were too horrible to even think about.” Mary Ellen sighed.
“My daddy hasn’t changed, and was the same when I was living with him for that month, after I got out of jail. As soon as I could, I took myself off on my own again. And then, just as I was getting myself back, just as I was starting to think that everything was going to be all right, Oscar showed up. He had the same look on his face as my daddy always got. Maybe I should have fought him.” She let a single tear fall. Just one. Then she wiped it away as if she was ashamed for anyone to see her cry. “But I couldn’t. I was just too damn scared.”
The phone on Parish’s desk beeped. The man answered the call without apology. Mary Ellen couldn’t hear what was said to the Assistant District Attorney, but she could read his scowl well enough.
She’d wondered if his bosses were somehow listening in on this “interview,” and now she had her answer.
Whatever was being said to him was something he didn’t particularly want to hear. He hung up the phone and looked at her.
“That’s all. Don’t leave town.”
“Am I under arrest, then? I don’t live in Ashland. I’ve rented an apartment in Louisville. How am I supposed to live? Where am I supposed to live?”
“No, you’re not under arrest at this time.” Before he could say another word, the office door opened, and a man entered.
She’d already met the District Attorney, Bryce Nichols. He was an older man, likely in his midforties. He’d been polite, even though she’d known he’d wanted her to be guilty of more than just being a stooge for Oscar Tooms.
She lowered her gaze and then dared to look at him. “Mr. Nichols.”
“Mrs. Potsy. You’re free to go. We do need you to be available as the trial date draws near, but you can certainly go home to Louisville.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. I…I was hoping to take a week’s vacation. I…I need time to get myself back.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Nichols said.
“Make sure we know where you are at all times.” Parish clearly was unhappy, but had also, just as clearly been overruled by his boss.
“Of course I will. I have no intention of not fulfilling my civic obligation in this matter. You can be certain that I am going to testify.” She looked off for a moment, and then refocused again. “Do you know I will do all that I can to see you convict Oscar Tooms? Because if you don’t—or if he somehow gets loose—then next time, he will kill me.”
“Yes,” Nichols said. “I know he will.”
Mary Ellen kept her expression under control until she got inside her car. Even then, she kept up the charade. It didn’t take very long for her to negotiate city traffic and get back to the interstate. Three hours later, she was back home. Once inside, she locked the door—including the two new locks she’d had installed the day before—proof that being taken forcibly from her home had frightened her, badly.
In the statement she’d given the police while still in the hospital in Texas, she’d said that Tooms had come to her house, and that when pressed by him, she’d lied and told him that Alan Wilson and Duncan Moore, whom he’d believed were undercover insurance investigators, did indeed know his name and were working on finding him. She’d done so, she told the investigators, out of fear. She’d hoped if Tooms knew that she wasn’t the only one who knew who he was, then he’d go to ground, somewhere no one would find him.
It would come down in court to a case of he said, she said, but despite having one conviction against her, she knew the jury would believe her.
Her version of events was so very close to the truth, after all—and the prick had been caught red-handed, in the act of trying to kill her.
She hadn’t planned to stay in this luxury apartment as long as it looked like she was going to, but she knew the primary tenants would be out of the country for at least the next year. She needed to see the trial through, and she would.
But in the meantime, Mary Ellen had one very important thing to do.
She grabbed her laptop, and headed back to her car. She didn’t think she was under surveillance, but decided to act as if she was. She wended her way toward the downtown core of the city, got herself a cup of coffee at a drive-thru, and then parked in a parking lot in the heart of the business district.
It didn’t take her long to boot up her computer, and even less time to find an open Internet network. She logged onto an Internet bank site. She went straight to work not wasting any time, and did what she needed to do. When she was finished, she grinned.
All she had to do was get through the trial. Then, when it was over, she would disappear. She thought about it for a moment and chuckled. It was such a perfect fucking idea, she knew it was what she was going to do.
She took up her coffee cup and toasted the air. “I think I’m going to enjoy living in Hawaii. Ah, Oscar, you dirty rotten son of a bitch. You never should have given me the numbers of your bank accounts. You must have forgotten what a good head for numbers I have.”
She wasn’t going to look for anyone to take care of her, not ever again. Oscar, with the money he’d stashed away that she had just stolen, had unwittingly done a good enough job of that to last her a lifetime.
Chapter 24
Three weeks after the shooting, Alan, accompanied by Holly and Duncan, left the clinic with Robert Jessop’s all clear to return to work. Holly knew Alan was itching to get back to doing what he loved. He’d been so antsy last night looking forward to his appointment today that she thought he might have actually been vibrating.
For the first few days that he’d been laid up, she knew she’d gone overboard on coddling him. She couldn’t help it. Every time Holly thought about what could have happened, she felt sick to her stomach.
“I bet you’re really excited to be able to get back to work.” Holly smiled up at him, happy because he hadn’t been this relaxed in days.
They’d driven to the clinic in Alan’s truck. She noticed Alan and Duncan exchange a look as Duncan held the
passenger door open for her to get in.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to understand what they’re communicating to each other when they do that.
“I’m excited all right, but not about getting back to work.”
Holly expected them to drop her off at the library, and head out to the ranch. Instead, they headed straight to their house.
“I have to go to work,” Holly said. “The library is supposed to open in,” she checked her watch, “fifteen minutes.”
“And so it shall,” Alan said.
“But you won’t be opening it,” Duncan grinned. “Nancy and Jacqui are doing the honors for you today.”
Once she was out of the truck, she turned to the men, her hands on her hips. “I have to work, guys. I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate it if I arranged for two other wranglers to fill in at the ranch for you.”
“We might, if it was a special occasion,” Duncan said.
“And what could be more special than my finally being able to make love to you the way I want to?”
Holly had known Alan hadn’t been happy about her insistence on taking things easy. He and Duncan were both very virile men.
“I didn’t want to hurt you.” For the last two weeks she’d kept her fear bottled up inside. She couldn’t keep it there any longer. “Damn it, I could have lost you!”
Alan’s gaze softened. Right out there on the driveway he came up to her and gathered her into his arms. “Aw, honey. I know you were scared. I’m sorry. But you didn’t lose me. You’re not ever going to lose me.”
“I love you. I love you both so much, sometimes it hurts.”
She sighed when Duncan stepped up and stepped in, when he put his hands on her hips and his chest rested against her back.
“I love you, too, Holly. More and more each day.” Alan’s words sounded impassioned.
“I love you, Holly. You’re everything.” Duncan kissed her ear.
Alan moved back and cupped her face. “And since you were there when Dr. Robert said I could resume all normal activities, it shouldn’t surprise you that we’re about to do just that. We’re going to make love to you the way we’ve been wanting to make love to you for the last too many days.”
Love Under Two Wranglers [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Ménage Everlasting) Page 21