Marc felt his right eyebrow go up. April had just given them a perfect British accent. Her talent there might even match my own.
Jeremy turned to look at her. “You just did, Amelia Earhart.” Then he grinned and shook his head. His attention went to the people standing around, looking at the three of them, smiles on their faces, waiting.
“I don’t know what to say,” Jeremy said to the gathering. “Except, thank you.” Then he looked at the sign that read, Welcome Home Marc and Jeremy. He sighed then met Marc’s gaze briefly before turning back to the crowd. “It’s good to finally be home.”
Marc slipped his arm around him. He was so damn proud of Jeremy right then. April met his gaze. Her eyes looked a little misty. She felt it, too, that step their lover had just taken and wasn’t that—wasn’t she—an unexpected blessing?
“We’re all so happy you’ve come home,” Grandma Kate said. Her hug was as strong as ever. When she hugged Jeremy, Marc noticed his lover soaked it in. Then she hugged April. “I’ll let you get acquainted with all the family who’ve arrived since you left,” she said to Marc.
“I was just thinking how much Lusty has grown,” he said. His mom had kept him up to date with news about the marriages and the new arrivals. But reading about it and being faced with the increase in bodies in person was an entirely different matter.
“It has, indeed. We have Benedicts from New York and Montana, and Kendalls from New York and Wyoming.”
“And some folks that aren’t Benedicts, Kendalls, or Jessops,” Jeremy noted.
“Indeed. I believe that Lusty draws to her the people that need her,” Grandma Kate said.
“That’s a comforting thought, Grandma Kate,” Jeremy said. “And, quite honestly, a difficult one for me to wrap my head around.”
“I do know how you feel. I wasn’t born here, either. And although my arrival was several decades ago, I still remember that sensation of being faced with a sense of family that seemed too good to be true.” Then she took Jeremy’s hands and held them for a moment. “But you’re here, now, sweet boy. That shows at least a willingness to be open to the possibilities. And for now, that’s enough.” Kate smiled then took herself over to some people that Marc hadn’t met but recognized from the little dustup a few weeks back at the roadhouse.
They were a middle-aged couple. The man was a cowboy if ever Marc had seen one, and the woman—blond, smartly dressed, and with eyes that had known pain…he couldn’t put a label on her. If he was still in the spy game, he would categorize her as an unknown and possibly dangerous player. He knew their names, of course, but had never sat and talked with them. They were Angela Monroe Stone, and Ricoh Stone, and they were newlyweds.
He also knew them to be Grandma Kate’s good friends, and that right there was good enough for him.
His thoughts closed off as people pressed close. Marc received hugs from the Jessops in attendance—his Aunt Anna and his Uncles Craig and Jackson, as well as his cousin Gord, who with Clay Dorchester, one of Kate Benedict’s actual grandsons, had married the exotic-looking Tasha. Observing the family of six, which included Clay’s three children from his first marriage, which had ended upon the tragic and unexpected death of Victoria Dorchester, it was hard to tell that they hadn’t always been together. Sometimes, the pain of loss stayed with children and marked them, permanently. These children appeared to have adjusted well. The way the young girl stayed close to Tasha, and chatted with her, spoke volumes to him of love and acceptance, on both sides of the age divide.
Marc’s brothers Robert and David, along with their wife, Jillian, and their daughter were present, of course. Just then a charging, knee-high missile on a collision course ran toward him, and Marc took the opportunity to scoop up his toddler niece, Colleen.
“Hey there, cutie pie!”
“Unca Marc!”
He hadn’t had much experience with children and was delighted to discover he didn’t need any. He set the little girl on his hip and just grinned at her. She grinned right back then coyly laid her head on his shoulder, her gaze cast in the direction from which she’d come. Marc met the laughing gaze of his brother David, who’d been hot on the little girl’s tail.
“Thanks for the capture,” David said. “The terrible twos last into the threes and are…something else.”
“I’m sure Jillian appreciates that her husbands are hands-on dads.” Marc had to work at keeping the laughter off his face. It hadn’t taken him very long at all to know that both of his oldest brothers—but especially Robert—were Doms. He’d recognized the collar his pretty sister-in-law wore for what it was.
David grinned. “Robbie and I made the mistake of telling her at one point, just around the time Colleen started walking, that this parenting gig was not only fun, it was easy.”
April chuckled. “Did she laugh out loud at you?”
“She did. Now we know why. The ironic part? She said that raising Brandon really had been fairly easy for her.”
On his shoulder, Colleen yawned. Then she looked at her Daddy, sat up, and extended her arms.
“Come here, punkin. I think you’re sleepy.”
“Am not!”
David cradled her on his shoulder and gently massaged her back. She yawned again, sighed, and laid her head down on him. “Let’s go find Mommy,” David said.
“Mommy!”
His brother headed off, joining his wife, who’d been talking to his new cousin, Chloe Jessop.
Marc nodded toward the two women when they looked his way and directed his comments to his lovers. “The first time I met Chloe I did a double take. Those brothers of mine—Grant and Andrew—are so damn big, and she’s just a little bitty thing.”
“I’ve watched them together,” April said. “I think your brothers are totally smitten with Chloe, and she’s totally smitten right back.”
“That’s what I think, too.” Marc directed Jeremy and April toward a group of aunts and uncles. “Let’s make the rounds, meet everybody, and then we can sit and eat.”
Before they moved to do just that, Jeremy stopped them and then stepped close to April. “There are things I went through…childhood things that more or less became public knowledge to everyone in town, shortly after Ari came to live here. I’m sorry that I haven’t taken the time…”
April placed a finger over his lips. “When we’re alone, the three of us, later, you can tell me what you want me to know. I don’t think anyone here is going to tell tales, or even talk about whatever it was, because…well, I just don’t think they will. But if they do, I’ll pretend I don’t hear them. I wouldn’t have expected to learn your deepest inner thoughts or secrets in the first few weeks, Jeremy.”
Jeremy took her finger, kissed it, then enfolded her whole hand in his. “Thank you.”
“Let’s go make nice to the family so we can chow down,” April said. “I’m hungry.”
Jeremy’s smile just then lifted Marc’s heart. “You know what?” He looked at Marc then at April. “All of a sudden, I am, too.”
* * * *
The piano music of Lorie Line floated through the house, a quiet and contemplative just-barely-there sound that soothed the soul and quieted the mind. April imagined that neither Marc nor Jeremy were used to the kind of large, somewhat noisy gathering that a family party at Lusty Appetites invariably produced. They had attended the engagement party for Parker, Dale, and Jenny, but they hadn’t been at the center of attention, then.
April sensed a bit of the loner in each of the men. That matched her well because she was a loner at heart, too.
Laughter, conversation, subtle country music in the background, with the sound of children chortling, shouting, and crying had been their fare for the last few hours. April wasn’t a hermit, but she had to admit it was nice to sit here in this newly comfortably furnished house and listen to “Unchained Melody” drifting softly on by.
The men had invited her to sit while they got them all something to drink. She’d chosen the center
of the sofa since she hoped they’d choose to sit here, too, with her in the middle. She could hear the deep murmur of their voices from the kitchen and realized that, too, was a sound that gave her comfort.
April could practically see the bond the two men had formed. She wondered, then, if they’d worked together, if that was how they’d met. Nothing had been said, but April had plenty of clues. Now, as she waited for the return of Marc and Jeremy, and hopefully a glass of nicely chilled zinfandel, she began to put some of those clues together. She thought about the way the two men were always very attuned to their environment, the way they would scan their surroundings and then position themselves accordingly, when they thought no one was watching. Not to mention the speed with which Marc had extricated Jenny from Vance’s grasp that day at the roadhouse—and the fact that Jeremy just as quickly produced a Glock 23, which he held in a standard, expertly executed police-style two-handed grip, the safety off and his weapon trained on the villain, center mass.
The final clue was that Marc hadn’t been back to Lusty for nearly a decade. Some people had left this town, she’d learned, most usually to seek their fortunes elsewhere. She recalled hearing of the two Benedicts who’d left in the 1940s, one heading to New York State and the other to Montana, where they’d each set down roots and built their families.
Having seen Marc with his parents, aunts, uncles, and even Grandma Kate, April was pretty certain it hadn’t been any kind of antipathy toward his hometown or the alternate lifestyle practiced here that had sent him on his way.
His pleasure at finally being home was too palpable and genuine for that to be the case.
“Have you figured it all out yet?”
April looked up and met Marc’s gaze. He had a way of staring at her that seemed to penetrate deep down inside her. She knew that she’d never be able to lie to this man, ever. Not that she could imagine she ever would want to, but still.
Jeremy’s gaze was just as direct and just as piercing. And in that moment, she understood the full truth of the matter. April would never be able to deny these men anything they asked of her.
It had been about five years since she’d had what she’d call a serious relationship. Nigel Brent was a good man, and her inability to trust him was all on her. I have no idea why I trust these two men more than I’ve ever trusted any man. No, she had no idea. She just knew that she did.
April turned her attention to Marc’s question. “I’ve gathered a few clues just through observation, and I have a few ideas. I won’t say I’m not curious because, of course, I am. However, I’ll wait for you to tell me what you want me to know.”
“Because…” Jeremy’s one-word question kind of hung in the air as if it were filled with just enough helium to reach chest height.
“If you want me to know what you used to do for a living out in the wider world, you’ll tell me. No, let me rephrase that. If you can tell me, you will. Otherwise, you won’t mention anything because I know neither of you would lie to me.”
“A few short weeks, and you already know that?” Marc asked. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Did you ever choose Pollyanna as a pseudonym?”
April grinned. “No. That’s one persona I don’t think even I could ever pull off.”
“I think you can do damn near anything you put your mind to, April Bixby.” Jeremy handed her a glass of wine and sat down on her left. He held a beer, as did Marc, who sat on her right. She sniffed the contents of the glass and then sipped the nearly colorless liquid.
A very nice Zinfandel, indeed. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but this was delicious.
“We’ll tell you everything,” Marc said quietly. “But in the interests of getting to know you—learning how your mind works—we invite you to take your best shot. Figuratively, not literally, of course.”
“All right.” She took another small sip and set her glass on the coffee table. She looked first at Marc and then at Jeremy.
“I think the two of you worked in covert ops of some sort—either for the CIA or some other agency—that you met on the job, and that you’d both reached the bottom line below which you would not sink and so have retired from that line of work.” It was one thing to take a guess about them and another to offer a glimpse of herself. But if this was going to be a relationship, and since they’d pledged complete transparency, she had no choice but to offer the same. She inhaled deeply and finished her revelations. “I also think you both have wounds—the kind that don’t leave physical scars but are integral to who you are as human beings. Which is a very good thing, because so do I.”
“It’s a comfort to know our woman has no problem connecting the dots,” Jeremy said.
“It is,” Marc agreed. “It’s also good to know we were meant to be together because, Nancy Drew, our hearts both hurt to think that you’ve been wounded, too.” Marc tilted his head to one side. “I see a worry in your eyes.”
“Not a worry so much as a question. You’ve been together for a long time. Are you sure there’s room for me? That I’ll fit in?”
“We’ve always known we wanted to share our lives with a woman,” Jeremy said. “One of the biggest things Marc and I have in common was that goal, that—need.”
“We knew within moments of meeting you, baby. So let’s see what we can do about making something good between us. We want to help you heal.”
“I’m trusting we can all help each other heal, together, in time.” Her heart had already begun to ache, thinking of them being in pain. Now she was being given the chance to help, and nothing could have pleased her more.
“Let’s drink to that—and then we can figure out who goes first.”
Chapter Three
Jeremy Bishop possessed a finely honed people-sense. He’d thought about that as, beginning when he was in college and going forward, his intuition about others—his sometimes apparent snap or hurried judgments about the trustworthiness of the people he met—had never failed him.
He had gut instincts about people, and his gut had never been proven wrong.
That talent was something he hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about. He supposed it was the cosmos’s reward for that first horrendous betrayal he’d suffered at an age when he’d been completely powerless.
It wasn’t a tradeoff he would have chosen, but sometimes the cosmos offered no choice. So he’d accepted the belated gift of infallible gut instinct and didn’t even really think about it much anymore.
Neither did he have to do any analytical thinking about April Bixby. Drawn to her? Hell, that had happened the very first moment he’d laid eyes her. Attracted? What a weak word. Jeremy could admit to himself he was already more than half in love with her.
And yet.
He shook his head, set his beer down, then angled himself on the sofa so he could face her. And because she was sitting so perfectly between him and his lover, turning slightly to face her let him see Marc’s face, too.
“This feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
“No judgments.” April picked up his left hand and threaded the fingers of her right through his. “And no pressure. If you can’t…”
Jeremy acted on those instincts of his. Sitting as he was, with his right arm across the back of the sofa and his fingers resting on Marc’s arm, he was in the perfect position, connected as he was to both of them.
He bent forward lightly and covered April’s mouth with his own.
April opened to him, her lips soft and pliant beneath his. Her taste sent a zing through his blood, adding a visceral something that ran like sweet hot syrup, filling up some of the empty places that had been languishing in his soul. Her tongue stroked his, and she suckled, returning the sweetest little bit of drinking, and just that quickly, he was hooked.
He lifted his head, and his gaze immediately sought Marc’s. His lover smiled, his eyes brimming with love, and…pride. Moved, Jeremy leaned closer. Marc met him halfway. Inches from April’s face, he and Marc s
hared a kiss right in front of her. Hard, lusty, their kiss had been Jeremy’s haven, his safe place since that first one, shared moments before they’d been rescued from that cave in the mountains of Afghanistan four years ago.
A soft, sweet stroking drew his attention. He lifted his head and realized that he’d released April’s hand, but rather than be offended, she’d used both of her hands to stroke their cheeks—his and Marc’s. He wasn’t alone in sending her a questioning glance.
“That was so beautiful. It was as if you needed both of us, in that moment, just to be able to go on.”
“I did. I do.” Jeremy felt himself melt just a bit more as another tiny doubt left him. He had worried because he and Marc hadn’t shared a woman yet, although they had discussed it.
As it turned out, Marc wanted the same thing he did—the kind of family he’d witnessed here in Lusty, not just on that first visit but on the few other occasions he’d been able to get away and visit his sister. Theoretically, he’d understood the kind of family he envisioned was possible.
He just hadn’t known, until that very minute, that it was possible for him. For them.
As if she’d been reading his thoughts, April stroked his cheek again. “I want us, together, to be a safe harbor for one another. I want us to know we can each rest in this…whatever this is between us. We haven’t made love yet, but that doesn’t seem to matter. In here”—she touched her chest, in the vicinity of her heart—“we’ve connected. So I meant what I said. No judgments. No pressure.”
Jeremy had no warning. The words just tumbled out of him. “My father—my biological father—began to sexually abuse me when I was five years old.”
April took his left hand in both of hers. Marc extended his left arm across the back of the sofa, behind April, and grasped his right shoulder.
They both gave him a simple squeeze. A single gesture that said, we’re here. Marc already knew what he was going to tell April. He’d reassured Jeremy that she’d only be outraged on his behalf. Jeremy hadn’t been so sure, but now he was. Bolstered, Jeremy inhaled and continued to speak.
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