“I was able to report to your mother, quite honestly, that the Kendalls of central Texas are a very prestigious family. George actually knows Martin and Nicholas Kendall quite well.”
Well, of course he would. The Kendalls didn’t have a law office in Austin, but they had one in Dallas and another in Houston. She recalled that George had an office in Houston, as well.
Kimberly held her gaze and said, “I assured Doreen that they’re good folks, and that you were in very good hands with them.”
Samantha felt her face heat, and cursed the fair skin that accompanied her red hair. “That was my feeling, too.” They’re the best. She’d only left Lusty that morning and already she missed those very good hands. She missed them dreadfully!
How am I going to manage if I miss them this much already?
“As a matter of fact, I was briefly introduced to them last year when I went with George to Dallas. He was attending a convention and I was attending to my need to shop. I was impressed by the way the younger men were so attentive to their grandfather.”
“Oh! You met…the triplets.” She very nearly had said “my men.” Oh, Samantha, you’d better watch your tongue. Of course that thought just brought to the front of her mind other thoughts that she’d best not be thinking until she was alone—thoughts of tongues and what all those gifted men could do with them.
She brought her attention back to the conversation and wondered about that twinkle that had entered the other woman’s eyes. She stopped wondering when Kimberly said, “I did indeed, you lucky girl, you.”
Samantha absolutely did not know what to say in response to that, and mentally sighed with relief when Kimberly changed the subject.
“George sent along instructions for the morning. You’re to report tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. to Mrs. Bishop. Iris Bishop is the general in charge of the army my husband calls his staff.” She rolled her eyes. “The woman is sixty if she’s a day, but the partners all adore her—mostly because she takes complete responsibility for the administrative and personnel functions in the firm.” Kimberley shrugged. “My husband and his partners are men, focused more on billable hours, than on dealing with people—unless those people are clients, of course.”
“Mrs. Bishop sounds a lot like Mrs. Carmichael, the woman who headed up the personnel department of Fosters, the department store where I worked while I was in high school. Some of the staff called her The Dragon Lady, but I got along with her just fine.”
“Sounds like she could have been Iris’s sister,” Kimberly said. She finished her coffee and set the cup aside. “I’ll let you get settled in.” She gave Samantha a hug. “You mom’s not here, but I am. If you need anything—anything at all, please call me.”
“Thank you, Kimberly. I’m grateful. I feel like I have family here.”
“You do.” Kimberly cupped her face with one hand, and then stepped back, and picked up her car keys.
Samantha saw the woman out, walking her downstairs and watching as she drove out of sight.
Back in her second-floor apartment once more, Samantha picked up her two suitcases and hauled them into the bedroom. She hadn’t really looked at the bedroom when she’d arrived a half hour before. She’d been too intent on unloading her car and chatting with Kimberly Patterson.
But now she focused on the room, and more specifically, the bed. It wasn’t as large as the one she’d been sleeping in the last few nights, but that was fine, since she’d be sleeping in it all alone.
I’ll be alone in this bed every single night from now on. There’ll be no one to turn to, to love. No one to hold me.
Samantha felt her throat close as her vision blurred. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and burst into tears.
* * * *
It had taken every last ounce of his will not to beg Samantha to stay.
Preston gazed down at his dinner plate and noticed he hadn’t really eaten much. Looking at his brothers and their plates on the other side of his mother’s dining room table told him what he’d pretty much surmised.
They weren’t much interested in eating, either.
The plan he and his brothers had come up with had seemed logical at the time. They wanted to show their woman that they were mature, responsible, twentieth-century men, men who accepted and respected her need for a career. That they were men who believed her to be their equal in every sense of the word. To that end, they’d helped to pack her car, fed her breakfast, kissed her soundly, and sent her on her way. They made sure she had their phone numbers—the one at the cottage, the one here at the New House, and the two at the offices in Dallas, and in Houston, where they had to be in the morning.
She was to call them collect once she got to her new apartment and had a phone from which to call. Then they would call her every single night. Next Saturday, they would drive to Austin and…and they’d make love to her until none of them could walk for a week.
Yes, it was a sound plan. Too bad he felt as if his guts were being torn right out of him. Preston was pretty sure his brothers felt the same way. He missed Samantha the way he imagined a man might miss an amputated limb.
“Preston.”
Preston blinked. I wonder how many times she called my name. “Yes, Grandmother?”
“I asked you if you’ve heard from Samantha yet.”
“No, ma’am. She wasn’t certain that her apartment even had a telephone. She thought it most likely did not, since having someone else contract with the phone company on her behalf was asking a bit much.”
“I see,” his grandmother said. Well, her words said that but her facial expression and her tone of voice conveyed, quite clearly, that she did not.
“I suppose that’s logical,” his mother said. “After all, telephone service does cost money, so the phone company would want her to fill out an application, first.” She smiled at the three of them and he felt as he had only one or two times in his life before—as if his mother felt pity for his very stupid self.
Chelsea sat back from her plate and smoothed her napkin over her lap. “Tell me, please, why it was you allowed that young woman to venture off to Austin on her own? Why you—why the three of you—didn’t insist on seeing her there safely and settled in yourselves?”
“Grandmother, it’s not a question of our allowing Samantha to do anything at all. We don’t own her. She’s her own woman.” Taylor’s response was, of course, the right one for a twentieth-century man to make.
Preston wondered how it was his mind could recognize that while at the same time his heart thought the words somehow rang false.
“Oh, yes, yes, this is the twentieth century and women have the right to determine their own destinies, and so on and so forth. And, as they say these days, more power to them.” Chelsea Jessop-Kendall shook her head. “I know you men are smart, and I know you’re possessed of dominant personalities—you are, after all, Kendalls. I just assumed you were smart enough by now to know how to get your way while convincing your woman it was all her idea in the first place. After all, we women have been using that strategy with you menfolk for centuries.”
“We didn’t want to push her, Grandma,” Charlie said. “We need to prove to her that she can count on us to be there for her, to be responsive to her and her needs. We need to prove to her that she can pursue her career and still have us.”
Chelsea sighed. She shook her head. For their part, the grandfathers both hid what Preston suspected to be smirks behind their napkins as they fastidiously dabbed at their mouths.
Grandma Chelsea leaned forward. “But she doesn’t have you, does she? Y’all are right here looking all proud of yourselves for being modern men, while your woman is a hundred miles due south, and all alone.”
“She said she had to leave,” Preston said. “She said she needed to get settled in her apartment and ready for work tomorrow and we didn’t need to go with her.”
“And you believed that line of bull?” Miranda Barnes Kendall shook her head. “I’m with Mother.
You boys need to rethink your ‘battle plan.’”
Taylor sat straighter. “There is no battle plan, Mom. This is a very serious time for us. We’re setting the tone for the rest of our lives. We want Samantha to come to the logical conclusion that her life will be better, richer, and fuller with us in it. She doesn’t see how a marriage with us can work. We’re intent on proving to her that it can.”
“From a hundred miles away?” Jeremy shot a glance at his wife, and then looked over at his sons. “I think y’all failed to have ‘the talk’ with these boys.”
That got all of their attention because the grandfathers always referred to them as men.
“We know about the birds and the bees, Granddad,” Charlie said.
The fact that the older Kendalls and Jessop-Kendalls sitting around the table had nothing to say immediately in response to Charlie’s quip didn’t for one moment lead Preston to think they’d won this point. Clearly, the parents and grandparents were trying to tell them something and they just weren’t getting it.
Finally, Grandpa Dalton sat forward. “Men, you need to straddle a fairly thin line between being modern, caring, and sensitive men, and being the ones in charge. A woman may say she wants to be left alone, but that doesn’t mean she does. Now, I don’t want you to confuse that with a woman telling you to stop, or telling you, flat out, ‘no’ when you’re making advances. What we’re talking about here is when a woman says she doesn’t need you when she really does, but doesn’t want to appear to be too needy or clingy. Women seem to believe we men hate clingy.”
“What are we supposed to do? Throw Samantha over our shoulders and carry her off to our cave?”
“Oh, yes, at least once a month would be my suggestion,” Grandma Chelsea said.
“That is straddling the line?” Charlie asked.
“Better than what you’re doing now,” Nick said.
“Because, boys?” Miranda looked at each one of them in turn. “It isn’t just that you’re not straddling that line. It’s that you’re so far away from it, the line is not even within your sight.”
“I would suggest you use the time while you’re driving to Houston tomorrow morning to rethink your approach to our Samantha,” Martin said.
“And then,” Grandma Chelsea said, “you’d better get busy and fix it!”
Chapter 21
Samantha had never been more miserable in her entire life.
This past week had seemed positively endless. The thrill she’d been certain she’d experience, finally taking these first solo steps on her way to the career of her dreams, simply never materialized.
Instead, she pined for three tall, dark, and entirely too handsome men.
The time might not have felt like such a punishment to her if she’d at least been able to talk to them each night. That had been the plan, after all. When they’d stated their intention to call her every night she’d wondered if she’d really need that much contact with them. Now she wanted to cry because that plan hadn’t worked out at all and she really, really missed them.
She’d only managed one conversation with Preston, Taylor, and Charlie, and that had been an entirely too brief chat during her lunch hour on Monday.
Mrs. Bishop had turned out to be quite a challenge to Samantha’s people skills. The older woman seemed to think Samantha was at best hunting a husband, and at worst, a home wrecker, aiming for George Patterson himself! Why else, the woman asked, would a lady want to appear to be pursuing a career in the law?
Samantha recalled Grandmother Chelsea’s caution that the attitude outside of Lusty might not be a particularly modern one—or even one accepting of modern ideas.
Man, was she ever right. Iris Bishop is from the stone age!
Kimberly’s showing up on Thursday to take her to lunch had thankfully put an end to that suspicion on the office manager’s part, at least her suspicion that she had designs on George Patterson. Samantha was beginning to believe that was as good as it was going to get between her and the office manager.
Apparently Iris Bishop had no trouble with the concept of a female being in charge of the “office” but she wasn’t at all enamored of the concept of “lady lawyers.”
Samantha preferred the term women lawyers, but decided to keep that little tidbit to herself.
In light of Mrs. Bishop’s views of her, she hadn’t felt right placing her phone call to the Kendalls from an office phone, even though she fully intended to call collect, and on her free time. So she’d walked a few blocks to the Carstairs Hotel, and used one of their private phone booths that lined one side of the lobby to make her call, instead.
Now here it was, Saturday morning, and she still had no phone in her apartment!
The phone company had promised, each day, that her phone line would be installed by the end of that day. By Wednesday, Samantha had been ready to tear out her hair—or someone else’s. Finally, yesterday, she’d managed to get a hold of a supervisor with the phone company who’d promised that they would be out the following Monday, guaranteed.
Every other attempt Samantha made to connect with her men had failed miserably. She kept just missing them—she simply never seemed to time her calls right.
Samantha had even driven to the Carstairs hotel Thursday night, and called the cottage. When she’d gotten no answer there, she’d called the New House. Martin Kendall had answered and explained there’d been a last-minute problem with a case at the office in Houston that day and that the men had stayed late. He’d heard from them a half hour before she called.
They were on their way home at that very moment, Martin had said. But as they were driving from Houston they could be on the road for a couple of hours, yet.
If Samantha didn’t know better, she’d begun to believe that the week she’d spent in Lusty loving and being loved by those three men had all been an illusion, just a wonderful dream.
Well, it was Saturday, and Samantha had had enough. It wouldn’t take more than an hour and a half to drive from Austin to Lusty. She’d make the return trip on Sunday evening.
Unless, of course, the reason I’ve been having so much trouble getting hold of those men was that they’ve changed their minds about me.
That thought twisted around her heart and squeezed until she nearly couldn’t breathe. Her eyes stung, and she wiped furiously at her face.
Why, I’ve turned into an emotional mess! Anyone who knew her back home would be shocked to see her like this. Over the course of two short weeks she’d gone from being a goal-oriented, purpose-filled woman with her eye fixed firmly on her plan to being…to being a woman in love.
Samantha was totally and irrevocably in love with Preston, Taylor, and Charles Kendall. She still wanted to be a lawyer. She still thought she might make a pretty good judge or magistrate someday. But she no longer needed to add the title of madam justice to her name. She would really much rather add the title of wife, and maybe, someday, mother, to her name instead.
Samantha yawned and then looked at the clock. It was 8:15 and suddenly, she didn’t want to wait even long enough for her morning coffee to finish brewing. She just wanted to jump in her car and go.
She grabbed her overnight bag and began tossing the few things in that she would need for a short stay in Lusty. A knock at the door had her heart tripping and excitement rushing through her veins. She fairly dropped her case and ran to the door.
Samantha looked through the security viewer and sighed. Pasting a smile on her face to hide her disappointment, she opened the door.
“Good morning, Kimberly.”
“Good morning. I have a surprise for you!” Kimberly Patterson’s wide smile and happy eyes gave Samantha a kick in the conscience. With all that this kind woman has done for you, and here you are, wishing her gone?
Samantha invited the woman in. She’d forgotten to turn off the coffeemaker so the aroma of the freshly brewed beverage laced the air. “Can I pour you some come coffee? It’s just finished brewing.”
“
Perfect! I rushed out the house without my first cup, I was so excited to tell you.” Kimberly’s gaze rested on the overnight bag. “Oh! You’re going somewhere!”
Samantha sighed. She’d pretty much decided that she couldn’t keep the way she felt about those three Kendalls from the woman—particularly since she’d seemed to have guessed at Samantha’s feelings anyway. “Yes. I was going to drive up to Lusty.” She paused, trying to find the right words, and then shrugged. “I miss them.”
Kimberly grinned. “Of course you do, sweetheart. My surprise is that when George found out about the runaround you were getting from the phone company, he called someone who called someone, and there will be a technician here within the hour to install your new telephone today!”
“Oh. Thank you.” At least try to sound grateful, you ingrate! “Really. Thank you.”
Kimberly just laughed. “Do you have that extra key I gave you Sunday?”
Samantha blinked. “For here, you mean? Yes, of course. I do.”
She held out her hand. “Give it here. I’ll wait for the phone guy, you head off to your men.”
Samantha blushed. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering. Now hand it over, and hit the road.”
Samantha gave Kimberly her apartment key, and a big hug which was returned just as enthusiastically.
Ten minutes later she was in her car and driving toward Lusty.
* * * *
“What if it isn’t just all around bad timing?” Charlie asked. “What if she’s changed her mind about us?”
“I don’t think I could bear that,” Taylor said. “You do realize that if that’s the case, we’re going to end up being just like the bachelor uncles?”
Preston was shaking his head. Of course, Taylor was referring to their uncles Peter and William Benedict. Those two old bachelors were getting odder by the year. They rarely came to visit, preferring to stay close to their little farm, just outside of town.
Their Lusty Little Valentine [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 20