Love Under Two Montanans

by Cara Covington

  Everyone’s attention turned to that man. As Jenny watched, she understood he hadn’t expected silence to be the answer to his question.

  Adam Kendall’s hands were on his hips, and his attention focused on the creep. “And you would be?”

  “Hey, I’m just one of the victims of that mad man’s actions. An innocent bystander, just stopped in to eat. The next thing I know, there’s a gun. I just might sue.”

  “My roadhouse is closed.” Angela wore an expression Jenny had never seen before as she stared at the loud-mouthed creep. She sincerely hoped her boss never looked at her that way. “As soon as the sheriff takes your statement, I expect you to take yourself elsewhere.”

  “That’s not very friendly.” The creep skewered Angela with a nasty stare. Ricoh stepped closer to her, laid his hand on her shoulder, and sent that guy a truly fearsome glare.

  “Good.” Angela punctuated that with a nod. “We understand each other perfectly, then.”

  “Come, sweet girl. We’ll go to Angela’s office and see how badly you’ve been hurt by that horrible madman.”

  Jenny held on to Parker’s hand, and Dale’s, as they followed Kate and Angela into Angela’s office. There was more commotion happening in the dining room, but in this smaller room, with the door closed, those sounds practically disappeared.

  “I have another tee shirt here you can put on,” Angela said. She walked over to the closet and took out a brand-new shirt from a batch she’d purchased for the staff to wear in the fall, during a promotional event she had planned. Angela nodded to Dale, who was still standing. “Be careful when you take her shirt off her. Try not to scrape her skin.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jenny of course was sitting down, once more in Parker’s lap. She guessed he wasn’t going to let go of her anytime soon.

  Dale was infinitely gentle as he lifted her shirt from her. She was wearing a plain white bra beneath it and felt perfectly comfortable appearing this way, except for the stinging on her shoulder and her neck. The more she focused on it, the worse it felt. Dale gently eased her bra strap off her shoulder, and that helped.

  Grandma Kate stepped forward. “It doesn’t appear too serious, but it could use some tending.”

  A knock sounded, and the door opened slightly. “Warren and Ed are here, Grandma Kate,” Adam said. “Should I send one of them in?”

  “Yes, please, Adam.” Kate turned her attention to Jenny. “I don’t think it will blister, but it should be treated.”

  Less than two minutes later, Edward Jessop, carrying something that reminded Jenny of a tackle box in his right hand, came into the office. In his left hand he carried two bottles of water. The condensation told her he must have gotten them from the kitchen.

  “You got here fast,” Dale said. “I’m impressed.”

  “We were actually on standby, parked in the driveway for Angela’s house.” Edward handed the bottles to Dale then set his case on a corner of Angela’s desk. He opened the case and pulled out a small stack of gauze pads, each one wrapped. These he handed to Parker. Then Edward donned a pair of latex gloves and turned his attention to Jenny’s injury.

  His touch was very light as he used a single finger to outline the affected area. “First degree burn, not too bad. Does it hurt?”

  “It stings but not horribly. I’ve burned myself worse, cooking.”

  “Me too,” Ed shot her a grin. He opened one of the pads then held it out to Dale. Her love was quick because he opened one of the bottles and poured some of the water onto the pad.

  Ed used the saturated gauze to gently soothe Jenny’s shoulder. He repeated the process several times, each time using a fresh piece of gauze, freshly wetted.

  Finally, he used a dry gauze pad to pat the area and then applied a fresh larger gauze as a bandage.

  “Have Robbie look at that tomorrow, Jenny. I don’t think it’ll blister. ”

  “Thanks. It feels better.” Jenny sighed.

  “Thank you, Edward.” Kate grinned at him.

  “You’re welcome. I was also to tell you that it’s all clear out there.”

  “All clear?” That confused Jenny. “What’s all clear?”

  Kate nodded. “Yes. That means the man who attacked you, and the creepy one who spoke to you, have left the building.”

  Jenny looked at Parker, and then she turned to Dale. Neither of them seemed to have a clue what was going on. And the paramedics had been on standby next to the parking lot! “I think it’s time for some answers.”

  “Yes, sweet girl,” Kate said. “I do believe it is.”

  * * * *

  They were greeted by applause when they stepped back into the dining room. Parker brought Jenny’s hand to his lips and kissed it. One look in his woman’s eyes and he knew she really was all right. He let his gaze take stock of the room. Adam was sitting in the back, talking to the young couple Parker had seen earlier, tourists who had been eating lunch. Also sitting there was a young woman, a lone diner, who’d sat close to them.

  Both the man who’d attacked Jenny and the rude one who’d taken on the air of a big shot were nowhere to be seen. Neither were Connor Talbot or Mel Richardson.

  Parker spotted one man he needed to speak to right away. He approached Marcus Jessop, with Jenny’s hand still in his left, and extended his right. “Thank you. We owe you, big time.”

  “I never saw anyone move so fast,” Dale said as he shook Marcus’ hand, too. “Thanks for protecting our woman.”

  Jenny looked up at the man. “Yes, thank you, Marcus. By the way, you’re solid.”

  Marcus chuckled. “You’re welcome. How’s the burn?”

  “Not too bad.” She gave him a smile.

  Parker noticed that Marcus appeared slightly distracted. He was talking with them but casting looks at that new waitress—no, investigator—and then flicking quick glances at Jeremy.

  Jenny seemed to notice it, too, and smiled. And then she put her full attention on the woman. Before she could say anything to Nancy/April, Peter Alvarez-Kendall was right there in front of her.

  “You said you weren’t going to go all G.I. Jane in his face. That’s a direct quote, damn it!” He reached for her then pulled his hands back. He obviously wanted to hug her but didn’t want to risk hurting her.

  Jenny tugged on her hand. Parker let her go, and she wrapped her arms around Peter and gave him a quick hug. She stepped back and looked up at him. “I’m okay, Peter. And I didn’t go all G.I. Jane on him. I think that was more like pure Flo the waitress—you know, that old sitcom, Flo’s Diner?” Then she sighed and stepped back from him. “I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t. I didn’t even think. It was like my arm reacted all on its own, and that was that.”

  The couple Adam had been interviewing approached, told Jenny they were glad she was okay, and left.

  “It’s this town,” Adam said, clearly having heard her. “The die was probably cast when Jenny and Ari became bff’s, which then brought her into contact with all the other kick-ass women of Lusty.”

  The stories the guys had told him and Dale had sounded surreal at the time and maybe even a little funny. Parker didn’t think they were funny any longer.

  Jenny turned to face Adam. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on? Who was that guy? Why did he grab me? How was it there were so many armed people in this roadhouse? Why were the paramedics on standby out in the parking lot? And who the hell is Marissa Jayne Featherstone?”

  Instead of everyone looking at Adam, as his woman was, the men turned their attention to the newest member of the roadhouse waitstaff. She’d told Jenny that her name wasn’t Nancy, but April, and that she was a private investigator. Whatever had happened, she clearly was key.

  When Jenny realized where everyone’s attention was, she turned to face her new friend, too. She put her hands on her hips. He saw the slight wince when she moved her shoulder but, more, saw the temper flashing in her eyes.

  His woman had reached
the end of her patience, and he, for one, would do whatever he could to see to it she got some answers.

  Unabashed, the woman holding everyone’s attention stepped forward and nodded. “Yes, you do deserve answers. I’ll tackle your last question first because it’s the easiest and the hardest and at the heart of everything. Jennifer Collins, you are Marissa Jayne Featherstone.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny blinked, gave her head a little shake, and stared at Nancy—no, April. I couldn’t have heard that right.

  She looked at her guys, and then she looked around the room. Angela appeared as surprised as she felt, but the others—Peter and Joe, Adam and Kat, hell, even Marcus, Jeremy, and Grandma Kate—they didn’t look surprised at all. There were other people she didn’t recognize present who were standing as if they were a part of whatever had just happened. Those people were looking at Grandma Kate.

  “Why don’t we all settle in the back?” Angela stepped forward, taking charge. “We’ll bring out some food and some drink, and then we can all be brought up to date at the same time.”

  “Thank you, Angela.” Kate’s eyes gleamed. “Everything happened so fast Jake and I didn’t even have a chance to order our lunch!”

  Jenny mentally tapped her foot as everyone got comfortable, chatted amiably, and more or less bided time as if no one had anything more pressing to think about.

  She looked up, surprised to see Laci and Bailey come into the roadhouse, along with Braeden Carter. The two women hadn’t been scheduled to work, but Braeden was on time.

  “We’re taking careful mental notes,” Parker, on her right, said. He spoke close to her ear so no one else could hear. He had hold of her right hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “If we ever see that look on your face directed at us, we’ll know we’re in big trouble.” Dale, on her left, held her other hand. He bent and kissed the side of her head.

  “Jenny, you look a bit…off. Are you in pain?” Jake’s frown indicated his concern.

  “She’s not in pain. She’s pissed. I think she wants those answers now.” Parker looked around the room. “And frankly, so do we.”

  Just then, Angela and Patrick came out of the kitchen bearing trays of sliders and wings. There were baskets of fries and chips with salsa. There was sweet tea and coffee and beer, all delivered with great speed.

  Jenny wasn’t particularly hungry, but she accepted a cup of coffee. She wrapped her hands around the cup, hoping the heat would help ward off the chill she was feeling.

  Angela had left them but was back moments later with a woolen throw—the one Angela used when she was in her office and the A/C was too chilly—which she handed to Parker. He was very careful when he tucked the blanket around her. Her men pressed in closer, and she began to warm up.

  “Thank you.”

  Angela smiled. Ricoh eased her onto his lap.

  “I’m a private investigator, and I’m based in Austin,” April said.

  “And you posed as a waitress and used the name Nancy Drew?” Jeremy’s tone sounded incredulous. “Really?”

  April grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, not one of my most creative aliases.” She turned her attention back to Jenny. “A few months ago, I received a call from a woman who said she’d just discovered she might have a granddaughter.

  “Amanda Pearl Featherstone was elderly, and not well. She’d had a visit from a young woman she’d seen a lot of in the years her daughter was growing up. That woman had moved away when Mandy, Amanda’s daughter, was in her teens and experiencing a rebellious upheaval.”

  At first, Jenny was only half listening. Now, she focused on April. “Mrs. Featherstone’s daughter was named Mandy?”

  April nodded. “This friend of her daughter’s had said she’d run into Mandy in Dallas, several years before. That she’d appeared to be getting her life together because she was in the late stages of pregnancy. She said Mandy intended to give birth and keep the child. Mrs. Featherstone had assumed her daughter was dead because she’d been immersed in the drug culture when she’d run away, and she hadn’t seen or heard from her for more than twenty-five years. Mrs. Featherstone wanted me to find her daughter, if she was alive, and her granddaughter.

  “It took a month before I was able to uncover a record of a Mandy Smith giving birth to a baby girl at one of the hospitals in Dallas…but at the same time, I had also discovered there’d been a Mandy Smith who’d died at another, the result of a hit-and-run accident. The events were only weeks apart. I found Mandy’s grave, got a court order, and arranged for DNA testing. The results came in before my client died.

  “Mrs. Featherstone grieved the loss of her daughter but hoped for the discovery of her grandchild. At that point, I didn’t think it would be so hard to find you. But I hit a snag.”

  Jenny met April’s gaze. “A nurse at the hospital where…where Mandy died, a friend of my mother’s—of my adoptive mother’s—promised Mandy she would protect her baby—me. Apparently, she told the nurse that her family had killed her.”

  “If poor Mandy had been using drugs a great deal in her life up to the time she became pregnant, and then suffered the trauma of her accident, she might well have been delusional at that point.” Kate’s quiet words echoed what Jenny herself thought.

  “I don’t doubt the nurse and your adoptive mother believed Mandy at the time,” April said. “Absent of any solid evidence to the contrary, they acted to honor Mandy’s dying request—and to protect an innocent baby.”

  “You’re certain that I’m Mrs. Featherstone’s granddaughter?”

  “I am. We will, however, have a doctor take a sample so we can compare your DNA to your birth mother’s. The estate requires that proof.”

  Jenny tilted her head. “Estate? There’s an estate? Is that why that man grabbed me? And, who is he?”

  “His name is Douglas Vance. He was a great-nephew to Amanda Featherstone, and had believed himself her only heir, and so had been expecting she would leave her entire estate to him.” April shook her head. “The irony of this situation is Mrs. Featherstone was never going to leave him anything more than she did. Until she learned she had a granddaughter, she intended to leave her estate to charity. Mrs. Featherstone told me that Vance was an inept scoundrel and never saw a dollar he didn’t squander or one he ever earned. But he was family from her husband’s side, and she left him what anyone else would consider a fortune.” She met Jenny’s gaze. “If Vance had somehow succeeded in his plan, and ‘removed’ you from the picture, the will would have reverted to its previous terms as per a codicil. Clearly, the man didn’t read his copy of the document. If he had, he would have known going after you would have gained him nothing.”

  The door to the roadhouse opened. Connor Talbot and Mel Richardson came in, nodded to Grandma Kate, and then pulled up a couple of chairs and joined them.

  Jenny’s eyes widened. “You two were following the creep, weren’t you? You came in right after he and his friend did, and the first thing you did was look at them!”

  “We did,” Mel said. “The creep is a bottom-feeding loan shark slash minor thug. What you might call a big fish in a rain puddle by the name of Brody Carp.”

  “He came to our attention a while ago, when we were on the case chasing the man who’d stolen Chloe and Carrie Rhodes’s inheritance.” Connor looked at Grandma Kate. “Of course, we’d been keeping tabs on him, hoping to find an opportunity to have him arrested. And of course, it was a simple matter, once we knew he was trying to find Jenny, to call him with an anonymous tip and have him head this way.”

  April looked from Kate to Connor. “Is that how Vance ended up here, too? Because I was certain there was no way on God’s green earth that man could have figured out…”

  “He obviously didn’t figure anything out since he grabbed Jenny and demanded we give him Marissa.” Grandma Kat looked at the group. “He is a bumbling, odious man.”

  “And one who was dangerously close to the edge of sanity, obviously,” Kat
Jessop said. “After he broke into his former investigator’s office, and the investigator walked in on him, there was a scuffle. The investigator went down, hitting his head on the corner of his desk. Apparently, Vance was convinced he’d killed the man, and that was enough to send him over that edge.” Kat spread her hands. “I had his car wired for sound and a tracking device. He thought he had nothing left to lose.”

  “All these people bumbling around, someone was bound to get hurt.” Grandma Kate looked at Jenny. “I couldn’t see waiting for something to happen when we could drive the herd this way.” She looked at Angela. “I explained the general plan to Angela, and she agreed this would be a good place and time to bring everything to a close. The only concern she had, and rightly so, was that she would likely have a few genuine guests here. She wanted us to protect them. So we hired a few extra bodyguards and did just that.”

  Several people present, the ones who Jenny hadn’t recognized but who had been “guests” that day, raised their hands and waved.

  “We all agreed things had to end here and now,” Adam Kendall said. “And we had just enough time to do what needed doing. But none of us figured the man would burst in and grab Jenny the way he did.”

  “We all thought he’d show up, get a table, and start asking his questions,” Kat said. “Since that investigator didn’t die from his injury, he was willing to testify against Vance. All we had to do was arrest him because the Austin PD had a warrant with his name on it.”

  “You need to know, Jenny, I had a bead on Vance. I was moments from pulling the trigger when you did your Flo thing,” Kat said.

  “And I was behind you and seconds from doing the same thing,” Adam said.

  “Well, I imagine he’s definitely under arrest now,” Jenny said.