Love Under Two Adventurers [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Cara Covington

  And that was the problem, it was all only for the most part. Dr. Daniel Montrose had some pretty dominant genes in him—as well as a propensity for always wanting to have his way. Greg had grown up in a large, extended family, and he knew the best relationships—the happiest and most enduring relationships—were ones where all parties concerned were equal partners, and where no one got their way all of the time.

  He had some serious thinking to do—about Daniel, and his future, and hell, about Rebecca, too. And it would best that he do that thinking before he make any more life-altering moves.

  If he wanted Rebecca, then he really needed to end things with Daniel. Not that he was averse to having a true ménage, himself. But he had no idea what Rebecca would think of that, once she got over the shock of his bisexuality.

  Of course, the crux of the matter was that Daniel would never share, period.

  I’ve put myself in a hell of a mess, and all before breakfast. His stomach growled. Greg grinned as he hit the bottom of the stairs and hit upon a great idea. He’d head on over to his Aunt Samantha’s. He was as at home there as he was here—or over at the ranch, with his Aunt Bernice and Uncles Caleb and Jon. He frowned when he thought about the news the family had served up when he’d arrived on Christmas Eve after spending several months in Indonesia.

  Benedict International was opening an office in New York City. Most of his immediate family would be moving there, likely sometime in the next few months. The Town Trust had hired a manager to head up the office of Benedict Oil and Minerals in Houston. His father, Carson, would commute a couple of times a month to oversee that manager until Josh and Alex were ready to take over for him in 2006.

  Everything was changing, but then home did that to you if you weren’t paying close enough attention—or if you stayed away too long.

  My God, the geeks are going to be running one of the companies in just over a year! He didn’t waste any time thinking about the very real fact that Josh and Alex were two and four years younger than he, respectively.

  Those particular cousins who were actual cousins had grown up always knowing what they wanted to do—and, he’d bet, they’d be damn good at it, too. For his own part, Greg wanted nothing to do with the corporate life. He was grateful, actually, that between the geeks and his triplet older brothers, the corporate arm of the family would be well taken care of.

  It didn’t take Greg more than a few minutes to make his way over to the New House. If he knew his Aunt Samantha, she’d be in the kitchen with his Uncle Taylor and maybe his Uncle Charles, cooking up a huge breakfast. Uncle Preston would have set the table and by now be sitting in the kitchen, reading a law journal of some kind, ready to fetch and carry as needed as his contribution to the cooking process.

  Those were images ingrained in his brain from all his growing-up years, part of the myriad memories he took around the world with him.

  Greg bet he’d be able to tell, as soon as he opened the door and walked in, what would be on the breakfast menu this morning.

  He grinned in anticipation. But when he opened the door and stepped inside, he could smell nothing cooking at all. Nor could he see anyone, but he could hear…something. Voices, but not the voices of the family.

  Kind of odd to have the television on so early in the morning.

  He headed down the hall toward the family room, where he knew the television was located. His Aunt Samantha stepped into the hall from her office.

  “Sweetheart, I just tried to call you at the Big House.”

  He’d never seen her look so somber. She said nothing more, just held her hand out to him and then led the way back into the den.

  When he entered the room, his attention was captured by the sight of so many of the Kendalls gathered in front of the television screen. His heart dropped as the images being shown and the words of the announcer bombarded him. It took him long seconds to understand exactly what he was looking at.

  “Sit down, boy. Thank God you decided to come home for Christmas. But you’ve some good friends there, I reckon.” Uncle Preston eased him into a chair. Greg’s attention was riveted to the breaking news story.

  “Yes. I…I know a lot of people there.” He stopped short, of course, because no one in the family knew his secrets. He felt a searing stare brush him and turned to meet Jordan Kendall’s gaze. Well, Jordan knew one secret he had—it was something they shared.

  He hadn’t even told Jordan about Daniel. The expression on that man’s face now told him he knew, anyway.

  The words of the newscaster didn’t seem connected as his subconscious fought with reality. “Subduction earthquake…9.1 on the Richter scale…the third largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph…”

  The pictures he was seeing were of something more than just an earthquake. The word at the top corner of the screen finally registered.

  Tsunami.

  He recognized the map being shown, of course. Indonesia laid spread out before him, so much of that fascinating, complicated land familiar to him now. The red patches—areas of the worst devastation—were farther away from Jakarta, the area he’d spent the better part of his time in. They illustrated the worst hit areas with a stark, searing red. Most of the red had been painted along the northern end of the island of Sumatra.

  Greg mentally pulled himself out of his shock. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

  Shit. When did I turn the fucker off? He pressed the button, impatient for the device to power up. Finally it did, and he quickly dialed the number for the clinic. He got a busy signal, which told him that either the clinic itself was inundated—well, duh, of course it would be—or that phone service to the city was out. That was more than possible, as well.

  The infrastructure there wasn’t of the same quality as here in the States.

  He listened to the announcer on ANN—the All News Network—as the sober-faced man spoke of the rescue efforts already underway and the recovery plans that were even now being drawn. Tens of thousands of people were missing, and feared dead.

  Tens of thousands!

  Greg quickly calculated the time line of the disaster. Disaster had hit at around eight thirty in the morning, Jakarta time. He did the math quickly—seven thirty in the evening last night.

  Hours ago. There was talk on the screen of refugee camps already being set up. That’s probably where Daniel is, treating patients as they arrive. As a member of the relief group, Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders—he was in the country to offer his talents and services to the people who needed them most.

  Dr. Daniel Montrose was the second son of the Earl of Warrington, and had no need to make a living. It was one of the things they had in common, and one of their bones of contention.

  Greg’s family had always treated him as if they knew he was just searching for his place. Daniel accused him—often—of being a spoiled, trust fund baby.

  Some truth in that, I suppose, as I haven’t settled down to a single goal.

  “Most of your friends are in Jakarta?” Jordan asked.

  “Yes. Although I’ve been to Sumatra a few times. I know some…relief workers there. I’ve lent a hand now and then.”

  Because Daniel insisted he needed to help. True, he was no doctor—hell, he was not much of anything, truth be told. But he could drive a truck filled with supplies and he had a back strong enough to move things. He’d split his time between Daniel’s group and another well known, international charity—Maria’s Quest—that could also almost always be found in the most depressed and needy areas in the world.

  He still held his phone in his hand when he felt the vibration. He’d turned the ringer off when he’d left Jakarta, and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on again. He looked down at the display. He had a message in voice mail.

  The number was unfamiliar but the country and area code were not.

  Greg retrieved the message.

  “Greg.” There was a pause, and he heard the sound of a sigh.
“Christ, I made a mess of things, didn’t I?” Daniel’s voice sounded tired. He always overworked himself when he was stressed. “I wanted to call and say Happy Christmas, but I was in surgery most of yesterday. I miss you. I’m sorry for…” He gave a sound of derision and Greg could picture him so clearly, could see him run his hand through his short, blond hair. “Bloody hell, I’m just sorry. Look, it’s not even dawn yet, Boxing Day.” Greg still didn’t get that, why the British had an extra holiday named for a sport the day after Christmas. “I’m in Medan, they had a hell of a mess here on Christmas day so I came up to lend a hand. I should be leaving for home just around noon. I just want to check on my two patients, first. You can call the hospital here before that, or reach me at the clinic tonight. I need to hear your voice. I want us to work this out.” Daniel recited the number he’d called from. “Take care, love.” That last had been said quietly. Daniel wasn’t very comfortable using terms of endearment, and never when someone else might hear him.

  Greg didn’t realize he’d sobbed out loud. Medan was a city on the northern end of Sumatra.

  “Greg?”

  “Sweetheart?”

  Jordan and Samantha had spoken at the same time. He met Jordan’s gaze, and then looked at his aunt.

  He couldn’t tell them, couldn’t find all the words. “I…I have to go. I have to get back there.” Daniel. He inhaled deeply and knew he was quaking, inside and out. “My…my friend. My best friend. He’s there. I have to go.”

  There was too much to do for the numbness to set it. It took planning, and pull. It meant cutting short his time with family, but that didn’t seem significant just right then. It meant a hasty, sloppy good-bye to Rebecca. He filed away the look of shock and hurt in her eyes, to think about later.

  Later, after hours of travel and paying thousands of dollars in bribes to get to where no one was supposed to be able to go. Later, when the numbness, the horrible, empty numbness finally set in.

  Later, when he stood on muddy ground where Daniel’s Medan clinic should have been and looked out over devastation so complete, no one could possibly have survived it.

  Chapter 2

  March 2013

  The damn dream never changed.

  Rebecca Jessop tossed aside the blankets and set her feet on the floor. The chill of the burnished wood helped pull her all the way out of sleep. With the fingers of her left hand she combed back her long, black hair so she could at least see. With her right hand she scooped up her cell phone and pressed a key. She guessed it was too damned early even before her eyes focused on the illuminated, digital time display. 3:15 a.m.

  Rebecca knew from experience she’d never get back to sleep—not for a while, at least.

  Not for the first time, she wished she smoked, or drank, or something. Not for the first time she wished she could tumble all the way into an old cliché of the artiste, become a creature given to excesses, driven by her great, raw, overpowering talent, pushed to the very edge of sanity…

  Yeah, right. She’d actually met some artists who fit that old, worn-out stereotype. She thanked—and occasionally blamed—the grounding she’d received as one of five children growing up in the small, well-insulated, and disciplined town of Lusty, Texas. Because of the way she was raised, and despite earning her living with canvas and pigments and brush, she was actually a fairly normal woman.

  For all that her family tended toward the politically correct term of living “alternative lifestyles,” and that every last one of them had more money than they could ever spend in two lifetimes, the people of Lusty were conservative, ordinary, and really just plain folk.

  She could recite the precepts she and all her cousins, and near-cousins, had been raised on—probably even in her sleep. You don’t live rich, you don’t think yourself better than others, and you sure as hell don’t act like a trust fund baby with a sense of entitlement.

  Or an over-arrogant artiste with one.

  “I must be desperate to get those damn dream images out of my head, if I’m reaching back that far.” The sound of her voice echoed in the darkened bedroom. Rebecca reached over, turned on the battery-operated bedside lamp, and reached with her hands for her robe and her feet for her slippers.

  Hot tea. A nice pot of hot tea and a cookie were what she needed. Darjeeling, as it was one of her favorites. If exhaustion didn’t return so she could go back to sleep, she’d pull out her sketch pad and make her time out of bed productive.

  She stood and took one step away from the bed and started to put on her robe. A flash in the full-length mirror on the wall caught her attention and she froze, transfixed by the image of the tattoo that stared back at her, an image that she still wasn’t quite used to seeing.

  The vines, graceful and fluid, in charcoal black, looked as if they’d been gathered and sculpted to grow into a shape, the shape of an arrow shaft. Beginning on her left hip bone, the shaft angled down and to the right, until the vines gave way to an arrowhead, intricately drawn of delicate flowers in shades of blue with tiny pin-points of red, the details so meticulous, that Rebecca—an accomplished and sought-after artist in her own right—felt awe whenever she looked at it.

  The arrow pointed directly at her pussy.

  “Why bluebells?” Seth Carter, tattoo artist extraordinaire, had asked as he drew the sketch that he would then re-draw on her skin.

  “I like them.” Her answer had been true, but not all.

  Greg Benedict had once told her not to “bat her pretty little bluebell eyes at him.” Of course that was before they’d had their one-night stand, for which he’d had the nerve to apologize for the very next day.

  The dream unfolded in her mind again, just like always, only now she was awake as it happened.

  It always started out so happy, so joyous. They’d made love, beautiful, wonderful love, and she’d been in seventh heaven, having finally given him the gift of her virginity. Then the dream turned dark, and hurtful.

  “I never should have touched you, Becca. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “Look…I don’t have time…I’m sorry, I have to go. We’ll talk later.”

  Rebecca pulled herself out of the past, out of that horrible dream she kept having over and over and over again. Of course it hadn’t ever been just a dream, but a real memory. And they’d never talked later. Greg had rushed off back to Indonesia, and she’d headed for all points—any points—west.

  Rebecca focused her eyes in the mirror once more, on that tattoo she’d had inked on her body just weeks ago, specifically for Greg. She exhaled, and then put her robe on.

  The truth of the matter was their not talking “after” had been her fault, not his. She’d shunned every attempt he’d made to communicate, until, finally, he’d given up trying.

  She shook her head. She was older and wiser now, and when she’d left Seattle to come home, she’d made herself face some hard truths. Or rather, one specific hard truth.

  She’d been a self-centered, immature child at twenty-three, and had handled the entire situation between her and Greg Benedict totally wrong.

  While no woman would want the man she’d had a crush on all her life to apologize for finally making love with her—and taking her virginity—she was old enough now to understand that in all likelihood, and for whatever reason, she’d never gotten the whole story there.

  At the time she’d thought he was apologizing because he regretted making love with her, as in, it had been a horrible experience. Now she figured that her immature, knee-jerk reaction likely had been completely off base.

  Everything between Greg and her had gone from hell to heaven to hell again during about a thirty-hour period. Not coincidentally it had been a period of time when a part of the world had been devastated by a horrific natural disaster. When he’d left so hurriedly, she understood he was heading back to where he’d been living for the last several months—Indonesia.

  She’d held a grudge for a lot of years, but the truth was if
she’d loved him as much as she thought she did—or rather, if she’d been more mature and generous in that love—she would have admitted to herself that likely someone, or several someones who he cared about had been in peril. And although, as far as she knew, he’d never spoken about that time afterward, she believed that he’d lost someone he loved in that tsunami.

  In the aftermath of that disaster, according to most in the family, Greg Benedict had become a changed man. Oh, he was still a self-described adventurer and still refused to settle down in one place. But now his wanderlust took him to places in need, and rather than challenging himself to climb higher, go faster, or reach farther, now he challenged himself to do more, to dig deeper, and to make a difference.

  Since Rebecca had never been able to cure herself of this love she had for the man, there was only one thing left for her to do.

  She needed to face him straight on, confront him about the feelings she had for him, and have that long overdue talk.

  She did know he’d met someone several months before. A friend of a friend had run into them in New York, and Greg had introduced the friend of a friend to the man. His name was Cody Harper, he was a photographer and, like Greg, he was bisexual.

  That may have complicated the situation, but it didn’t really change things. Rebecca needed to see if something between them—hell, between all three of them—could be possible. She thought of her cousin Tracy Alvarez-Kendall, and how happy she was in her marriage to her two men, who were also married to each other. She’d asked her once if it was difficult, balancing time with her two husbands, with time for the two men to spend alone. She’d shrugged, and grinned, and finally had declared it was definitely worth it.

  If they weren’t interested in her, if there truly was no hope for her to have her heart’s desire, then she needed to finally and at last let go, and move on with her life. All she had to do was finish gathering her nerve, find out where they were at the moment, and then make arrangements to get there.