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

by Cara Covington

  “You’re both of you my dream come true, and I am going to be the best wife, and the best mother to our children…and I’ll try not to give you too many more gray hairs.” She grinned and then her smile softened. “I will honor you and love you both for the rest of my life, and yes, into the next one as well.”

  Then Andrew placed a ring on Chloe’s left hand, next to the one from Grant she already wore, and she gave one to him, too, similar to the one she’d given Grant. Ari recalled the day Chloe came back from Divine, all excited, and showed them the matching wedding bands she’d bought for her men. She also had been lucky enough to have seen Chloe’s wedding rings. Grant and Andrew had been proud of the two bands of etched gold that fit together as one.

  Chloe and her men turned to face the older women. Samantha nodded to Kate. “Please, do the honors, Kate.”

  Kate Benedict spread her hands, palms up. “And now your journey begins, and your adventure awaits. May you forever remain steadfast, each one in the others, and may love light your way, always. Congratulations!”

  Cheers and applause and shouts of congratulations filled the air. People started to move in, wanting to congratulate the happy triad. Ari thought to move back, but the two Benedicts who had a hold of her hands had a different idea.

  “Let’s go and give our congratulations, and then we can grab a table and a couple of beers and get to know each other better.” Cord Benedict wore a smile that she bet in the past had allowed him to get away with a multitude of sins.

  “Get to know each other better? We don’t know each other at all,” Ari said.

  “Exactly my point!” Cord beamed at her and damned if her heart didn’t give the barest little flutter.

  “She’s likely too chicken to spend a couple hours talking and dancing with us,” Jackson said.

  Ari would have turned on the man then, but they were next in line. They did let her hands go so that she could hug each of the grooms, and then really hug the bride. But since they still bracketed her, she wasn’t able to get away.

  Oh, and you’re really trying hard to do just that, aren’t you, you little hypocrite?

  One of these days she was going to choke her inner imp to death.

  The men had her hands again, but before they took too many steps, Ari twirled around, surprising them both into releasing her.

  She stepped right up into Jackson’s face. “It’s not the drinks or the talk or even the dancing that I mind. It’s the fact that the first chance you get, you’re both going to try and play naughty dog.”

  Jackson’s dark gaze held hers and she felt a shiver run from her nipples to her clit. “Well, now that you mention it, the thought had entered our heads.”

  “Your little heads, you mean?”

  “Honey, they ain’t that little.”

  Ari opened her mouth, and shut it fast when Cord placed a finger under her chin and turned her face toward him.

  “A couple of beers, a couple of dances, and some talk. That’s all. We’ll save the first round of naughty dog for another time.”

  “The first round?” It was pretty hard to remain sounding indignant when all she wanted to do was laugh.

  “You’re worth a hell of a lot more than just one round, Red.” Cord sounded very sure of himself.

  Maybe it was the use of that nickname that did it, or hell, maybe it was all the sensuous pheromones in the air. Ari had the sense that she was about to get herself into a shit-load of trouble.

  Realizing the fact didn’t stop her.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt at all that I am worth the trouble, and much more. I’m just not so sure that the two of you are.”

  Chapter 3

  “You’ve polled very well, sir. Your results against your known possible competitors going into the primary put you ahead of every one of them. I believe that if we begin right now, ease into things, we’ll be well positioned for the first of the year.”

  “Excellent.” It was the news that Thaddeus Bishop had been hoping to hear. Frank Mills had been recommended to him by the party chairman as a campaign manager who applied himself one hundred per cent to winning.

  He’d researched Mills. Of course he had. The man knew what he was about, and had a long list of campaign successes behind him. The fact that Bishop had managed to get him to sign on to his campaign meant that Mills thought he was a good bet, too.

  Now, ensconced with the man in his private study in his home in Indianapolis on this pretty first Saturday in September, Bishop felt everything he’d been working for over the last five years was finally ready to bear fruit.

  “I know that stepping up to the Senate is a risky move,” Bishop said. “But I think I can make a difference. And I’m the right age, I believe, to begin this journey now.”

  Mills nodded. “Would I be correct in assuming that ‘Senator’ is not your end game, sir?”

  “You would. But we’ll take this one step at a time for the time being.”

  “Fair enough.” Mills set his pen down. He cast a glance over his shoulder, and Bishop had the sense the man was checking to make sure his den door was closed.

  “Frances would never just walk in,” he said. “We have complete privacy here.”

  “Good,” Mills said. “Because before we go any further, I need to ask you a very personal question, sir. I’ll preface it by saying that from the moment we signed that contract, you and I, we became a team. I will at times be closer to you than your own wife—or your girlfriend. For the next two years I am your man. So I need to ask you if there is anything of a personal nature that could pose a problem down the line that I need to know about. You have to tell me now about any indiscretions, any skeletons in your closet…anything at all that could bite us in the ass down the road. You need to tell me now, so that together we can decide if there are actions needed to be taken, and get them seen to.”

  Bishop had known the question was coming. He’d considered this very subject before even deciding to make a run for the senate seat being vacated by the retired Senior Senator from Indiana. But most of his motivation for bringing up what he was about to say, really was remorse.

  He’d done something he should never have done, and he was truly sorry for it. Looking back at the man he’d been before he quit drinking, he felt deeply ashamed. Some things he’d done that he didn’t recall. But there was one night in particular that he did.

  At first, when the memory surfaced, he had difficulty accepting that he could have been so vile. But he had been. He’d already made amends for his drunkenness and his horrible behavior with his wife, and his son. A shiver coursed down his back when he thought about Jeremy. A tiny voice, deep inside his mind, sneered at him. Really? You never see him anymore, and you know why. Bishop pushed that voice away. He brought his thoughts back to the present, to the facts—what he had decided were the safe facts—he was about to reveal.

  There was only one person he’d treated horribly he had yet to apologize to.

  “There is something.” He sat forward. “You know that I am eight and a half years sober.”

  “I do. The fact that you’re a recovering alcoholic actually polls very well. And”—Mills nodded—“the strength of character inherent in a man who can turn his life around is a good quality for a man seeking to represent the people in Washington and turn the country around.”

  “Be that as it may, my behavior toward my stepdaughter, Constance, was—” Oh, God, he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t confess what he had done to the girl late one night when his wife had been away. It was more than the one night. It annoyed him that his inner voice kept interfering. Was that his inner voice, or his conscience? Or perhaps some of his fear speaking out? Fear of wrong-doing, or fear of being caught? After becoming sober, some of what had happened when he’d been drunk was a blur to him. Had it happened more than once? Because barely a year later, after the one incident he did recall had taken place, Constance had run away from home.

  He’d feared she was dead, except that his s
on’s friend, Drake, reported that Jeremy had seen her alive and well in Austin, Texas, just three years ago.

  He’d quietly put out feelers, but his inquiries had come back without result.

  Drake said that Jeremy had gotten the impression that she was alive and well, but not prosperous. He hadn’t been able to speak to her, because, apparently, she’d seen him, recognized him, and run.

  Thaddeus had thought about that near encounter. Hell, for several weeks after Drake had told him of it he’d thought of little else. He became convinced that if he could find her, meet with her, he would be able to make those amends long overdue as well as ensure that word of what he’d done never surfaced.

  Constance had never been anything but sweet and biddable. His behavior had chased her away. He was certain that he could easily persuade her to let that one indiscretion remain in the past.

  Maybe she didn’t even remember the exact episode. He’d heard it said that sometimes, when young girls experienced certain kinds of trauma, that their subconscious minds often blocked the actual event from their memories. In the aftermath, she and her mother had been at odds constantly, and he’d had to speak to Frances more than once about her being too harsh with the girl.

  Bishop was pretty certain her mother’s behavior was the real reason she’d run away.

  “In the past, you let it be known that Constance had been a wild child, incorrigible, and that she’d run away at the age of fourteen.”

  “That wasn’t the entire truth.” He wouldn’t blame his wife publically, either. No, but he had one more thing he could blame. “My drunken rants drove her away. I want to find her, and meet with her. I owe her an apology, and I owe her for the years of support I denied her, through my bad behavior.”

  “Congressman, I don’t know if we could ever find the girl. How long has she been gone?”

  “Eleven years and four months.”

  “That’s too long a time, sir. I hate to say this, but for all we know, she could be…deceased.”

  “She’s in Texas. Austin, or she was three years ago. She was seen by someone who knew her, and recognized her. The recognition was mutual, but she ran before this person could speak with her.”

  Frank Mills sat back and appeared to be in deep thought. Slowly, he nodded his head. “All right. If we find her, and you’re successful in mending whatever was broken between you, that can only help the campaign. If you can’t find her, that will help us, too—a man who has been searching all these years for the stepdaughter who ran away.” Then Mills shrugged. “The other possible outcome—that we find her but she refuses to see you, or worse, tries to make things difficult for us—well, we can make that work for us, too, sir. You just leave it to me.”

  “Constance was never really a troublemaker. That was just assumed by the authorities at the time she ran away and I—well, at first I didn’t correct the impression, because at the time, I was still drinking.” Bishop sat back, satisfied with his representation of events. It had been more than a decade ago and Constance had been only a child, after all.

  “All right, Congressman. If this is what you want, I’ll put a private investigator I’ve used in the past on the case. He doesn’t come cheap, but he is very discreet, and very good.”

  “The money doesn’t matter.” And really, it didn’t. He’d done very well once he’d sobered up. Of course, the inheritance from his grandmother had helped. But he had turned his life around, and not just from being a drunk to being sober.

  “If you could give me a picture of her, even an old one, it would really be an asset to the investigation.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Frances packed away all of Constance’s things years ago.”

  “It would be hard for a mother to deal with the disappearance of her only daughter. It must have been very painful for her.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  More like she couldn’t stand the sight of her own daughter and had been happy as hell when she’d run off. When Constance had told her mother what he’d done, his wife had accused her of lying, of trying to ruin her marriage and her life. And you threatened her. No, that was his fear talking again. Yes, he had done that one thing, but he hadn’t been so venal as to threaten the child.

  Frances might be a problem. They never spoke of Constance, but he knew his wife had disowned the girl years before, the moment she’d told her what he’d done.

  It occurred to him that if he explained his search for her in the same way Mills had just voiced it, she’d go along with the plan to locate her.

  Frances didn’t want anything to do with her own daughter, but she did one day want to be the First Lady of the United States.

  Thaddeus would just explain that such accomplishments and goals always came with a price—and one that sometimes was unpalatable, but necessary, to pay.

  * * * *

  Despite the way they’d started out, with sexual innuendos and cheap one-liners, Ari found Cord and Jackson Benedict to be pretty good company for an evening.

  I will not, under any circumstances, think of them as d-a-t-e-s.

  After all, she’d arrived at the community center on her own and planned to leave that same way when the night ended.

  Cord had asked a question about what he’d heard. His question was not about the procedure of the Ceremony, but how Chloe Rhodes Jessop had managed to save Adam Kendall’s life.

  Ari tried not to feel uncomfortable as she finished explaining the events she’d heard about but not witnessed herself. She hadn’t been living in Lusty yet when that psychopath George Lockwood had come to town intent on taking Carrie and ended up, instead, with her sister, Chloe.

  Though fairly common knowledge, the story of what Carrie had endured as a child was way too close to home, and made Ari uncomfortable just thinking about it.

  Then, to get her mind off dangerous territory, she fast-forwarded and told them about recent events in Divine, when Emily Anne Bancroft and Lucy Carter had been taken at gunpoint by an old enemy of Carrie and Chloe’s—and Chloe had tried to rescue them.

  Cord and Jackson gave her their full attention. She thought Cord’s focus on her was more intense than she’d expected of him, but then, he was hearing strange things about this newly met side of his family.

  “No wonder Grant made that gray hair comment,” Cord said. Then he shook his head.

  “That’s nothing,” Jackson said. “I had a long chat with Chase the other day when we rode out to check the fence line. If even half the things he told me are true, the women of this town seem intent on aging the men right quick enough by taking foolish risks.”

  “I’ve heard some of those same stories,” Ari said. “I believe in each case, however, there were extenuating circumstances. When you’ve been apprised of all of the facts, I’m sure you will agree that in every instance the women had no choice but to act.” Then she batted her eyelashes at Jackson. “We aren’t living in medieval times anymore. Today’s woman doesn’t wait around to be rescued by some man.”

  “Why doesn’t the fact that you just said that surprise me?” Jackson asked.

  “I’m sure I have no idea.” Ari may not have a life history of the kind of friendships with other women that most females could boast, but she sure wasn’t about to sell her gender down the river, either.

  “What’s the story there?” Cord asked. He nodded toward the dance floor. Ari followed his gaze and found she couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve noticed that beautiful blonde dancing with each of those men sitting at that end of the table as if each one was the love of her life.”

  “That’s because each one is. That’s Grace Warner with her husbands, Jack Warner, Ethan Grant, and Adam Davis.” Ari had met all four of them earlier. She didn’t often like people at first meet, but she’d really liked Grace. That surprised her nearly as much as the sight, just moments before they’d been introduced, of Kate Benedict and Grace Warner in an I’m-so-happy-to-see-you-again hug.

  “Warner, Grant, and Davis?” Jacks
on’s brow furrowed.

  Ari immediately knew what he was thinking, and she didn’t want to think about that too deeply at all.

  “They’re from Divine. So are they.” Ari nodded toward the other guests Chloe and her firemen had invited, Lucy Carter and her fiancés Patrick Owen and Beck O’Malley. Those three were dancing together and seemed to be lost in a world of their own. They weren’t the only threesome on the dance floor, either.

  “So…they have ménage marriages in Divine, too?”

  “Apparently.” Ari shrugged. She knew quite a bit, really, because the women who came to the spa talked. She refused to think of it as gossip, because the women she’d met so far lacked the mean-spiritedness she associated with that noun, “gossip.” “They tend to live quietly, there. They don’t have the freedom of an entire town, the way folks do here.” Ari thought about that for a moment. “It must be a challenge. They would have their friends, and times when they could let their hair down. But to worry about always being under scrutiny? I think it takes real courage to live like that.”

  “Perhaps the reality of being in love bestows the kind of courage you think they need. Or maybe it’s just knowing that your love is good and just, no matter what anyone says. Maybe when you feel that way, nothing and no one else matters.” Cord’s words surprised her. She wouldn’t have thought a man who’d made his mark in the world of sports would have such thoughts.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been in love. In fact until I moved here, I’d never—” Ari stopped herself. What the hell was she doing? She never let anyone in this way, never shared her inner thoughts, let alone her feelings.

  Jackson met her gaze. Something about his eyes—or more likely the way he looked at her—seemed to render her motionless and speechless at the same time it stirred her libido.

  Twenty-five years old, and her libido had never stirred—until today.

  “Were you going to say that until you moved here, you’d never seen anyone in love? Or maybe you were going to say that you hadn’t even believed that love existed before coming here?”