Jake Kendall grinned, and Maggie could see immediately what had attracted her niece to the man in the first place. His smile lit up his eyes so that they positively sparkled. He wore the expression of a young boy hatching the most devilish of plans. His brother Adam tended toward the dark, silent type, his expression one of patient contemplation. Adam, she’d found, didn’t smile as often as his brother. Yet when he did, that smile blossomed slow and sweet and was lined with promises of tenderness.
Maggie figured Ginny Rose was definitely getting the best of all possible combinations with the two Kendalls who’d wooed and won her heart.
Jake turned his gaze back to the parlor. He wandered over to the fireplace and laid his hand on the mantel. Maggie read respect for the building in his every movement. “The house was built in 1917 to serve as a convalescent home for soldiers returning from the war over in Europe.” Jake looked around, and his expression turned as serious as she’d ever seen it. “They weren’t just Texans who came here, then, to recuperate. Some of the soldiers had been gassed—they did that in the first war. The dryer Texas air, compared to, say, the northeastern part of the nation, made it easier for those men to breathe.” He shook his head. “The home was closed in 1930 and then opened again when the guns flared back to life with World War II.” Jake turned toward her and smiled. “In 1941, the Town Trust hired a feisty nurse-administrator to run the home—a woman by the name of Katherine Wesley. Lusty has never been the same since.”
Maggie laughed, delighted with this bit of trivia. “That would be Grandma Kate!” The diminutive senior may have been ninety years old, but Maggie figured the term “feisty” still fit her like a deceptively soft leather glove.
Jake chuckled. “She’s got you calling her that, too.”
“The lady is kind of hard to resist.” Maggie couldn’t help but have a soft spot for Kate Benedict. “She more or less adopted me as another granddaughter, just like she did Ginny.”
Jake nodded. “Kate was Ginny’s champion before Adam and I had the privilege to become so.”
“I know.” Maggie’s own mother, Virginia Morrison, had known she had a granddaughter growing up in foster care in Texas. Yet she’d chosen to ignore the fact. Neither had she ever even told Maggie about Ginny. Maggie hadn’t learned of the young woman’s existence until after her mother’s death.
Maggie was grateful Kate had filled the role of surrogate grandmother for Ginny, even though she’d no longer been a child.
One could never be too old for grandmotherly love.
Maggie brought her attention back to the conversation. “Kate Benedict is, as I said, very hard to resist. And now that you told me about her connection to this house, I think it’s rather fitting that this dignified, old building is going to have a new life.” Maggie recalled the sparkle in the older woman’s eyes when she’d told her she had the ideal place in mind for a B and B. “With eight bedrooms, not counting the master suite, it’s certainly large enough.” Maggie shook her head as she took in the parlor. “It’s perfect!”
“The Town Trust has the responsibility of ensuring that every building it owns is maintained. So as repairs and maintenance have been warranted, they’ve been done.” Jake leaned against the amazing fireplace that filled one wall.
This large parlor-like room would make a wonderful lounge area, a place where guests could mix and mingle. Perhaps she’d install some bookshelves, as well as a card table or two. Or better yet, a card table and a chess table!
Jake coughed, and Maggie snapped her gaze to him. She immediately realized what she’d done.
“Sorry. I zoned out on you. I was just imagining the possibilities with this room. Even though it’s only been a few days since I have officially been out of the hospitality industry, I’m eager to get started.”
“Good. You do understand that whatever renovations you want done here will be taken care of by the Town Trust. You’ve just to name what’s to be done.”
Maggie grinned. “Yes, so Grandma Kate has said, numerous times.” Maggie believed that perhaps the woman thought that, having previously owned her own motel, she might find the terms of doing business in Lusty prohibitive.
Another innkeeper might resent the sort of financial arrangement the Town Trust required, but Maggie thought it would suit her to a tee.
For the cost of her lease and a small percentage of the profits—a total sum she believed to be reasonable, really—she’d own the business but not the building or property.
After what she’d gone through over the last several years with The Leprechaun Motor Hotel in Wildwood Crest, she was glad to give worry a rest for a change and focus on what she loved most, which was simply being an innkeeper.
Besides, the biggest draw this town had to offer her was the opportunity to get to know her niece and grandnephew better. She didn’t need to make this business a success to earn her living. She had enough money in the bank to live comfortably for the rest of her life.
She needed to make it a success because, quite simply, it was the way she was wired.
The front door opened, and three men stepped into the unfurnished house.
“There you are.” Richard Benedict nodded to Jake and then came right over to her as if she was the only person in the entire room. His brothers followed suit, and she took a moment to appreciate their aura of power and masculinity. Maggie had to admit, if only to herself, Ginny and Benny really weren’t the only attractions for her here in Lusty, at least not as of a few days ago.
The three of them standing there in the filtered sunlight made a very attractive picture. If she didn’t know them to be titans of business and commerce, she’d easily believe they spent their days in front of the camera. She could imagine them posing with luscious half-clad beauties or modeling the latest in men’s sexy, intimate apparel.
A hot image flashed through her mind of the three of them, each wearing nothing but a very tight and very tiny Speedo.
What is it about the brothers Benedict that short-circuits my brain and sets me to thinking about sex, when I’ve never thought about it before?
Even though she’d deliberately avoided them since the night of the Kendalls’ commitment party, she was no closer to knowing what the hell she was going to do about her attraction to these three men than she had been then.
All the logical arguments she’d come up with against wanting them hadn’t diminished that wanting one iota.
“Hey, good timing.” Jake smiled. “We’ve just finished going through the house for the first time.” He turned to Maggie and gave her a sheepish look. “I forgot that I had a meeting set up for about twenty minutes from now. I didn’t think you’d mind if Rick, Trey, and Kevin helped you make notes about any renovations you might like to have done to the place.”
“I brought a tape measure and my BlackBerry.” Kevin held both up and grinned at her.
Maggie tilted her head to the side. Jake, Adam, and Ginny surprisingly hadn’t said much about the fact that these three Benedicts more or less had monopolized her time the other evening at their brothers’ celebration. And when she’d let them know that she was retiring for the evening, they’d all three of them seemed relieved that the triplets had offered to give her a ride home—or rather, to her temporary home, which was with them.
Now she wondered if there wasn’t a reason for that. Since she wasn’t one to mince words, she said, “You wouldn’t be trying your hand at matchmaking, would you, Jake?”
“Me? I’m a lawyer, not a dating service.” Then he laughed. “Seriously, I did contact the guys when I realized this morning that my time was limited today, and they immediately volunteered to help out. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you. I just thought that since you do know them, it wouldn’t be a problem.” Then he looked from the Benedicts to her, his expression suspiciously innocent. “Is it a problem, Maggie?”
Oh, it was easy to forget that Jake Kendall was a lawyer, until he neatly turned the tables on her. That was not only one hell of a quest
ion, it was the question—and one she was in no way ready to answer in any certain terms.
So she did the only thing she could and turned it right back to him. “Why would you think it’s a problem, Jake?”
Jake chuckled, then came over and kissed her cheek. “I’ll leave you in their expert hands, then, Aunt Maggie. See you later.”
Maggie watched him leave, feeling a combination of excitement and trepidation. She knew exactly how long it had been since she’d seen the Benedict men. For those two days, she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d felt being in the center of them and the center of their attention at the Kendalls’ celebration.
Telling herself she shouldn’t have those feelings hadn’t worked. Telling herself her emotions were likely just a temporary aberration hadn’t worked.
Now as she watched them watching her she realized that she’d hoped—illogically—that if she didn’t see them, then whatever it was that had been happening between them would end and she wouldn’t have to make a decision on what came next.
Foolish, foolish thinking.
“How are you, Maggie?”
“I don’t know.” She hadn’t meant to let confusion seep into her voice. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she had the feeling she needed to not only stay strong but appear strong as well.
Anything else simply wasn’t acceptable.
“It’s all right, love.” Richard closed the distance between them and took her hand. When he raised it to his lips and kissed it, she felt herself fall just a little further under the spell the three of them seemed to be weaving around her.
“We’re really no threat to you, sweetheart.” Trevor approached on her left but didn’t touch her—at least, not physically.
She could have sworn she felt the heat of him seep into her body, and seep deep.
“We’re drawn to you, Maggie. And we think you’re drawn to us, too.” Kevin came to stand by her on the right, and she felt boxed in.
She should protest that they were encroaching on her personal space, that they were crowding her out, making her feel… Maggie blinked. The truth was, she felt safe. Secure. Protected.
None of those were sensations she’d ever really enjoyed much in her life. From the time she’d turned twenty-two and she’d had to care for her sick mother, she’d had only herself to rely upon. Every decision, every problem had been hers and hers alone. There had been happy times, too, times when she’d had some good fortune come her way—like the time she’d been named businesswoman of the year, and the year her business had turned a record good profit. And those times had been hers and hers alone, too.
Until this very moment, Maggie hadn’t fully appreciated how very lonely she’d been for most of her life.
“What’s wrong?” Richard’s tone alerted her that she was wearing her emotions on her face. His hand squeezed hers.
What was it about this man and his tendency to hold on to her? Perhaps the better question is, why do I let him?
“Nothing.” She saw the concern on all their faces. Disbelief, too. She guessed she couldn’t blame them for that.
She supposed she owed them more than a one-word disclaimer. But what could she say, really, without leaving herself wide open and vulnerable?
Maggie wasn’t used to holding back and couldn’t seem to do so even now, when holding back might be in her best interests. “The three of you make me think of things I never thought of before and feel things I don’t know what to do with. You confuse the hell out of me.” She met each of their gazes in turn. “What do you want from me?”
Oh, the heat that flared in all their eyes made her realize that had been a stupid question, indeed.
Then Trevor stoked his hand down her back. “We just want to spend time with you, sweetheart. We want to get to know you, and want for you to get to know us.”
“There’s an attraction between us, Maggie. You know there is.” Kevin smiled, and she thought he could give Jake Kendall a run for his money when it came to cheeky grins and charm.
Richard rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “It’s never happened to us before, love. We’ve never, all three of us, been drawn to the same woman before.” He looked at each of his brothers and then met her gaze again. “When we were younger, finding one woman between us was something we assumed would be in our future. It’s the Benedict way, you see. But years passed, and nothing happened. Lately, we’d begun to think it was never going to happen for us.”
He must have seen on her face the slight panic his words gave her. Attraction was one thing. Attraction—good strong physical attraction—could lead to enjoyable evenings, and even sex. Maggie was thirty-five years old and unattached. She was accountable to no one, and if she somehow ended up having sex with these men, then fine. But she wasn’t interested in anything more.
She wasn’t looking for a husband, let alone three of them.
Richard shook his head. “We don’t want to scare you. We’re not talking about a forever kind of thing, here. We just want to explore this, whatever it is happening between us. We don’t want to leave you alone, either. Unless, of course, you can tell us here and now that you don’t feel it, that you’re not interested in what’s happening here, that you don’t want to find out what it could be.”
Maggie’s heart pounded in her chest. They’d very deftly put the ball where it belonged, in her court. The brothers Benedict were letting her know that whatever happened next—or didn’t happen next—was completely up to her.
“I can’t tell you that. You know I’m drawn to all three of you. I just don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what comes next.”
“That’s easy, love.” Richard brought her hand to his lips again and kissed it. “What comes next is we help you set up your B and B. Think of us as your own personal staff. What do you need to do first?”
Chapter 4
Maggie was reeling from the effects of Hurricane Benedict, and never mind that they didn’t usually get those kinds of storms in this part of Texas. Had she been foolish enough, that first night, to take the bet that once she was rested she wouldn’t want them? Ha. She thought that might be what they referred to on the boardwalk in Atlantic City as a sucker bet.
The brothers Benedict surrounded her and kept her so off-balance that she honestly didn’t know if she was coming or going—and certainly never had a chance to fight her attraction to them.
As if you really wanted a chance to do that.
At the moment they were standing, all four of them, in a corner of a huge warehouse looking at bedroom furniture. They’d originally come here so she could see if there was anything that would suit the front parlor.
She wasn’t at all sure she understood how, then, they came to be looking at bedroom suites.
“So it’s down to this cherry wood set and the oak set, right, love?”
When Maggie just stared at Richard, he continued, “Of course if you would really rather go into Houston and go shopping for a brand-new bedroom set, we can do that, too. Whatever you want, Maggie. Just name it.”
They’d each been saying a version of that—whatever you want, Maggie—since they’d picked her up that morning. Trouble was, Maggie didn’t know what the hell she wanted. She was beginning to suspect the brothers Benedict had decided that what she wanted was what they wanted.
Damned if they probably weren’t absolutely right.
Maggie looked around at her surroundings. If she hadn’t known better she’d have sworn that she was already in a furniture store—a big-box store that had everything anyone would need to furnish a house, right down to sets of pots and pans, linens, and dishes.
She’d awakened that morning thinking that when the brothers arrived to pick her up, they were going to carry on from the day before, measuring, making lists, and scoping out the guest rooms in the new B and B. And they did do that, sort of. But somehow, in the process of marking items off her “to do” list, she’d mentioned the idea she had for the parlor, and the next thing
she’d known, they were here.
She had picked out some wonderful furniture for that room, so that the only thing she had to actually go hunting for was a chess table and matching chairs.
Now they were looking at the bedroom suites, not for the guest bedrooms, mind you, but for the master bedroom. Somehow, they’d decided that that beautiful, huge suite on the ground floor of the house should be the one bedroom not available to guests. They’d also talked her into moving out of Adam, Jake, and Ginny’s house. Today!
She’d had no idea when she arose this morning she’d be moving into the elegant Victorian on Park Lane quite so soon. But this idea, at least, really was a sound one. Her hosts had barely gotten together when she’d become their houseguest. She really wanted to give Ginny and Benny and the men who loved them the space they needed to find their rhythm as a family.
Maggie brought her attention back to the question at hand.
The cherry bedroom suite was exquisite and looked to be brand-new. She couldn’t resist running her hand over the dresser. The wood felt warm and glossy, sleek and sexy. She liked the dark rich color of it. It didn’t hurt that the headboard and footboard featured tall, elegant posts. Could it be converted to support curtains? Or maybe she could fashion a canopy to adorn the piece.
Maggie tried to fight her smile but knew she was losing the battle. She’d always wanted a four-poster, canopy bed—ever since she was a child and had seen one in a movie.
The ceiling in the master suite was certainly high enough to allow her to make that fantasy come true.
Maggie wanted the bedroom set. “I really like this. Who does it belong to? I can write a check—”
“You. If you like it, then it belongs to you.” Richard spoke as if stating an obvious truth.
“No, it doesn’t. Look, I know your grandmother insisted that any changes and renovations to the inn be underwritten by the Town Trust, but that offer certainly doesn’t extend to the bedroom I’ll be sleeping in.”
“Maggie said ‘underwritten.’” Kevin grinned at his brothers. “Rick, she speaks your language, bro.”
Love Under Three Titans Page 4
