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

by Cara Covington

  Oh, God, I’m in love with them. God help me, I’m all the way and forever in love with Jesse and Barry Benedict. And I don’t know how to handle it!

  * * * *

  Barry snuggled up to Charlotta’s back, her ass cradled against his cock. He’d taken up a slow, rhythmic caress, gently stroking her hip. He knew the exact moment she fell asleep. Her breathing evened out, and a fine sheen of perspiration broke on her flesh. He took a moment to ease the covers higher. They’d learned that her sweat dried quickly but if they didn’t cover her right away she shivered.

  It didn’t matter if the slight trembling didn’t awaken her. They didn’t want her to be cold—not ever again.

  What haunts you, my love? He and Jesse were on the same page, both of them agreeing that something did. Being a man who’d made some really bad choices in the past, he had an idea what that something might be, even though the realization confused him.

  In his mind, and in Jesse’s, she had nothing to apologize for, and certainly nothing to regret or be ashamed of.

  But it’s not our minds that matter, it’s hers. The irony wasn’t lost on him, either. If they knew a trained psychologist, they might ask him—or her—how to help their lover over the last hurdle that seemed to be preventing her from achieving what they knew, instinctively, would make her happy.

  Their lover was a trained psychologist, and in some ways that was the problem.

  If one of her clients acted the way she did, I bet our Shar would find a way to help her. Barry admired Charlotta Carmichael for the woman she was—the consummate therapist dedicated to the well-being of her clients and a woman capable of giving her lovers everything they could ever want and be everything they could ever need—except, at the moment, for one thing.

  He suspected that deep inside, she didn’t like herself very much. I know how that feels, and I sure as hell recognize the signs.

  The question remained, how could they help her? She needs to deal with whatever it is, before she can tell us what we already know.

  There was no doubt in either of their minds that Shar loved them, that she knew she belonged to them. They knew it, but they both of them longed to hear the words.

  “We need to meet her family.” Jesse’s words, just above a whisper, not only signaled his twin was awake, but that he’d been wrestling with the same dilemma.

  Barry met his gaze and let his words sink in. “Yeah. She mentioned our going home to Montana for the holiday, was happy to go to Cord and Jackson’s with us—but didn’t say a word about her own folks.” Come to think of it, Barry couldn’t say who the folks at “home” were. She’d mentioned her parents, almost in passing. But it had been her uncle and her aunt she’d talked about the most.

  “Christmas,” Barry said. “We should insist that we go and see them close to Christmas.”

  “She’ll know what we’re about, because she’s damn smart that way. We can’t ask that she reach out like that, without offering her the same, little brother.”

  Barry nodded. Both he and Jesse had been eager, shortly after they’d arrived in Lusty, to connect with Veronica again. Circumstances had conspired the first couple of times to interfere with those plans—and he and Jesse had both stepped back and stopped trying. He understood why that was so, of course.

  But weren’t they behaving the exact same way their woman was behaving? And while they couldn’t see the effects of that reluctance in their own selves, he had enough clues by things she’d said that Charlotta could.

  “Crap. You’re right. Okay, yeah, why don’t we do that?”

  “She’ll need advance notice, because she’ll have to arrange her schedule.”

  “Let’s call it a vacation,” Barry said. “We’ll head to Divine for a couple of days, and then to her uncle’s ranch on the outskirts of Austin.”

  “Good thinking. We’ll toss in a couple of nights at some fancy hotel,” Jesse said. “One that has a full-service spa so we can treat her to some professional pampering.”

  Barry knew from little things Shar had said over the last few months that she did love a little pampering from time to time.

  While they’d spoken, Charlotta had slept soundly. He stroked her, shoulder to thigh, simply because he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  “That sounds like a plan. I just hope it works.”

  “Me, too. Because if it doesn’t, I’m going to tell her how I feel about her—and keep telling her until she either accepts it, or walks away.”

  Just the thought of Charlotta leaving them was enough to make him break out into a frightened sweat. But Jesse had the truth of things.

  They needed more than a dating relationship with Dr. Carmichael. They wanted, needed, to make her their wife.

  Chapter 17

  December 22, 2014

  It was one of those times in her life when she was both pleased…and uneasy. Charlotta mentally shook her head at herself as Jesse negotiated his way into the very shallow parking lot in the heart of Divine, Texas.

  She wasn’t even certain how this bargain she’d made with Barry and Jesse had come about. She was delighted, of course, that they were finally getting together with their sister, Veronica, and her husbands. That part was all good. It was the next part of their vacation plans she wasn’t as sure about.

  Once they left Divine, they’d be headed to her uncle’s ranch outside of Austin. Uncle Leroy and Aunt Bella were so happy she was “coming home” for Christmas. They hadn’t even hesitated when she’d said she was bringing a couple of men with her.

  Maybe that was because they’d had to tell her that her folks wouldn’t be there. Her parents had left for a month-long cruise the first of December. Of course, that had been news to her.

  “Well, here goes nothing.”

  Jesse’s uncharacteristically negative comment pulled Charlotta out of her own head space. She’d been so caught up with her own worries, she hadn’t even noticed how tense and quiet her men had become.

  “You’re really nervous.” Once she was standing with them outside of the truck she focused on both men. They were only a few feet from entering Rudy’s, the restaurant where they were meeting the Stinsons for lunch. The aroma of food made her stomach growl, but she pushed that aside and took a moment to assess the current emotional state of her two lovers. They were men of strength, men she’d come to respect and—damn it all—she’d even fallen in love with them, although she was holding off telling them that.

  It hurt her to see them so down on themselves and so unsure of their welcome as they approached this reunion with their sister.

  “We are nervous, baby,” Jesse said. “I know we told you the facts, but I don’t think we managed to convey to you just how really rotten we behaved, in the past, toward Veronica. At her binding ceremony last year we felt like exactly what we were—outcasts. We still feel that way.”

  “We were bad, princess,” Barry said. “We both consider it a miracle that she’s even willing to see us at all.” Barry sighed. “We worked with a couple of kids who’d been the victims of bullying back in Montana, and it sickens us to know we made our own sister feel the way those kids felt.”

  Charlotta had known this moment would come. She’d heard everything they’d had to say about what they’d done, and in no way did they deserve the shit they were heaping on their own heads.

  It was time for the lover to let the counselor into the relationship. “Do you want to know what I think?” She saw Jesse frown, and held up her hand to stop his protest before it even started. Maybe she couldn’t tell them she loved them—that was her problem, not theirs—but she sure as hell could show them the men she’d come to know and love.

  “Yes, you bullied your sister. Yes, you likely went too far. But you learned that behavior from the two adults who should have shut you down when you were little kids, the two adults who should have been there as Veronica’s champions. Should you have realized when you were older, when you were in high school, what you’d done? Maybe. In my exp
erience people only know what they know. So, your sister moved out when she left for college and you rarely saw her after that, until last Christmas. Just last Christmas, when you finally had your eyes opened to what you’d done. Now, if you’d shrugged it off at the time and treated it all as no big deal—then yeah, you’d deserve at least some of the crap you’re heaping on your heads. But did you do that? No. I know you. You likely both suffered with your epiphanies, and beat yourselves up to hell and back over them. Then, as I understand things, you beat the crap out of those two asshat ex-friends of yours, Phil and Gord Maxwell, when they mouthed off, insulting Veronica on your return from Texas. You washed your hands of those two, and then sought to make amends in the only way you knew how—by volunteering to work with kids with emotional issues—some of whom, yes, had been bullied. But your atonement didn’t stop there. When you found out that those two losers were poaching wild horses, you contacted your brother-in-law, Travis, to get direction as to how you could help the authorities nail those bastards. Once they’d been arrested and put on trial, you testified against them. Then you left the only home you’d ever known, rather than continue to live with the kind of manipulation that had turned you into bullies in the first place.

  “Oh, and you continue to give of yourselves even more than you did in Montana, for the kids that need you here in Texas—giving, and making a real difference in their lives. Am I getting through to you at all?”

  Both men had gone quiet, and slight blushes had tinged their cheeks as she spoke. In response to her question they looked up, met her gaze…and then their attention shifted to a place behind her.

  “Oh no….no no no no no!” Jesse’s last word was a shout and before she could open her mouth, he took off at a dead run.

  “Aw, fuck!” Barry was a half step behind him, running all out.

  Charlotta whirled around, took in what was about to happen, and screamed.

  It happened so fast, in retrospect it seemed like it had all taken place in slow motion. A woman had been walking in the far too cramped parking lot, a baby in a sling, tucked close to her body. For some reason, she’d stopped, and stooped—possibly to pick up something she’d dropped. In that position, her one arm protectively cradling the head of her baby, scrunched down, she barely seemed as tall as a child—and a large, jacked-up pickup truck began to back out of its spot, headed directly for her.

  When Charlotta screamed, the woman, still stooped down, looked over her shoulder, and she screamed, too.

  A heartbeat of time was all they had but somehow, Jesse and Barry were able to reach both mother and child—and one on each side of her—lifted her, their momentum carrying them all forward, out of harm’s way.

  The truck’s tires skidded as the driver jerked his truck to a sudden stop in the gravel lot. The sound unfroze Charlotta, and she ran toward them.

  Behind her, other shouts and other footsteps echoed, and she knew she wasn’t alone in witnessing the scene.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” The blonde was crying, her attention focused on the baby in her arms. “Oh, Whit, I nearly got you killed. Oh, my God!”

  “Durn it, ma’am…I’m so sorry. I honest to Pete didn’t even see you there. Are you all right? Oh, Lord. And your baby? Is your baby all right?”

  The big man who’d jumped out of the still idling truck looked to be beside himself as he worried his ball cap between two big, beefy hands.

  “Yes. Yes.” She looked from Jesse to Barry. “I’m okay. Whit’s okay. Thanks to these two men.”

  The driver stuck his hand out, grabbing first Jesse’s hand and then Barry’s, giving them both a hearty handshake. “Man, I only saw you guys in the rearview, moving like frickin’ superheroes. Thank the Good Lord for you both.”

  “Amen to that. Good job, guys.”

  Charlotta looked at the other three people who’d just joined them. The man who’d spoken possessed an impressive presence. Tall, muscular, and wearing a mantle of authority that had more to do with the man himself than the cop uniform he wore, he immediately seemed to take over the space and the scene.

  Jesse and Barry both looked embarrassed, and she didn’t know if it was the truck driver’s praise or the cop’s comments that did that.

  Jesse shrugged. “Hell, Hank, we were just in the right place at the right time. Anyone would have done the same. We’re not heroes.”

  “I can only hope I would have,” the pickup driver said. “Honest to God, Sheriff Stinson, I never saw the lady, I swear.”

  The Sheriff—Hank Stinson—waved his hand. “This parking lot is a hazard, it’s so shallow.” He turned his attention to the young mother, who was now enfolded in the arms of the auburn haired woman accompanying Hank. Then she looked up over the blonde’s head, and Charlotta saw the family resemblance to her men as she met Veronica Benedict Stinson’s amazing violet gaze for the first time.

  “Are you all right, Presley Ann?” Hank laid a hand on the blonde’s shoulder, his tone gentle.

  “Yes, yes I’m fine, Hank.” She straightened and was looking from Jesse and Barry to Hank. Charlotta could see the questions in her eyes.

  “If you’re sure you’re all right, ma’am? Again, I’m very, very sorry I didn’t see you.” The truck driver dipped his voice, something Charlotta had heard men do often when they talked to those smaller than they.

  Presley Ann looked at him. “I’m fine. This wasn’t your fault at all, sir. I should have been paying closer attention to my surroundings.”

  The driver just nodded to her, a show of respect, and headed back to his truck. They all watched as he carefully moved his vehicle away from them, and then swung his rig around to exit the lot.

  “Presley Ann, these are my brothers, Jesse and Barry Benedict.” Then Veronica looked at Charlotta. “And this is Charlotta Carmichael, their girlfriend.”

  Charlotta nearly laughed at being called a girlfriend. “Small world, isn’t it?”

  “You’re sure you’re all right, ma’am? I hope we didn’t tackle you too hard.” Jesse looked down at the baby. “He’s a handsome little fellow. What’s his name?”

  “You didn’t hurt me, Jesse. My son’s name is Whit. Short for Whitman Merritt Woodworth.”

  Jesse grinned. “That’s quite a handle for the little guy. Whit suits him, Mrs. Woodworth. He looks like a little angel.”

  “It’s Miss, not Mrs. And thank you—” She stopped and looking from Jesse to Barry, smiled at each of them. “Thank you both for tackling me.”

  “Presley Ann, I think I should call Kendry and Jared and get them over here to take care of you.”

  “No, thank you, Hank. I’m fine, really.”

  Charlotta didn’t know much about Sheriff Stinson, except the little snippets she’d heard in passing from Camilla and most recently from Jesse and Barry. He was clearly a take charge kind of man, and she could respect that—Jesse and Barry would both deny it, but they were both take charge kind of men, too.

  “Are you sure, Presley Ann?” Veronica’s other husband, Travis McDaniel, asked. “I know I’d want to be with Veronica if something like this happened to her, even if she was unharmed.”

  “I’m sure, Travis, but thank you.”

  Clearly Presley Ann was someone who mattered to these three people—and like herself and Veronica, she mattered to a couple of men, as well.

  Charlotta could understand that protectiveness she saw on the faces of Jesse’s family, as she felt the need to reach out to Presley Ann, too. The young woman was still trembling. “You’re shaking like a leaf. That’s adrenaline for you, letting you down not-so-nicely after a big scare. But you and Whit are both okay.” Charlotta realized she hadn’t actually seen the baby yet. She looked down at him now and gasped. The little guy was sound asleep, clearly unperturbed after all that ruckus, but even so she knew she’d never seen such a beautiful baby. “Wow, he is the most handsome little man I’ve ever seen.” Handsome, and familiar somehow. The sleeping babe reminded her of someone—but she just couldn
’t put her finger on whom. She dismissed the sensation and opened her handbag. She handed out a fresh tissue to the still watery-eyed and slightly shaking Presley Ann.

  “Thank you.” She used the tissue, and then she inhaled deeply, clearly digging for calm. “It’s been one thing after another lately, but maybe my luck is turning at last. Maybe I’m doing something right, after all, because I can’t think of why else I’d be so blessed to have my baby saved like that, just in the nick of time.”

  Not herself saved like that, but her baby. Charlotta had met many mothers since she’d begun working at the center, but few showed such a complete devotion to their children as Presley Ann displayed.

  “Come into Rudy’s and sit with us for a while, Presley Ann. At least until the shaking stops,” Hank said.

  “I’m here to get lunch for Leah and myself—I just planned to sit by the front and wait for the food there.”

  “Well, now you can sit with us, and wait for it to be brought to our table,” Hank said.

  Presley Ann looked down at her son. Looking up, she gave Charlotta a smile. “I hope you don’t mind.” Charlotta understood the comment when the young mother stretched up and kissed Jesse and then Barry on their cheeks. “Thanks again. You’re my heroes.”

  Charlotta chuckled and slipped her arms through those of her men’s. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of your blush quite so much.”

  “They look like they got caught in blustery winter storm,” Veronica agreed.

  “Can’t say I know what that’s like.” Charlotta shivered. “Nor do I care to—necessarily.”

  Charlotta hoped they had reservations, because the restaurant appeared to be very busy. But the moment one of the servers saw them, she held one finger up, indicating that she needed only a minute. Charlotta would have thought that such a large party as they were would have had to wait a long time, but the service was excellent—the staff deftly moved two tables together to accommodate them, and that was that.

  Menus were distributed. Presley Ann gave her order to the waitress then and there, explaining she wanted it to go.