He’s having the same shocked reaction to seeing the woman still alive, much less seeing she’s as vibrant as they’d ever seen her. It didn’t seem as if Kate Benedict had aged a day in years!
“Thank you. Let’s get you a chair so you can join us. I’m sure we’ll all fit if we each make just the smallest adjustment.”
Before Jason could react to her suggestion, one of the men at the next table got up and grabbed an extra chair. He placed it between Grandma Kate and Logan, and Phillip sat. After adjusting his chair, Jason sat back down, too. There had been enough room for one more person.
Phillip turned to the only family member at the large table he hadn’t acknowledged. “Alice, I understand congratulations are in order!” Phillip’s smile beamed, and for just a moment, Jason envied his cousin his easy way with people.
“Thank you, Phil.” Alice introduced Ian and Ken Kendall to him. Jason got his first pleasant surprise of the evening when he found out that the men were cousins and business partners—he knew how that worked—and that they were the founders of the very successful company, Edgers, Inc.
“We’re actually considering adding your company to one of the portfolios we offer,” Phillip said. “Some clients like to invest in areas that hold their interest. Some who are outdoors enthusiasts might welcome the option.”
“With Alice’s help, we’re getting a second brick and mortar store up and running, close by, in Waco,” Ian Kendall said. “As well as we’ve done to date, I have no doubt we’ll do much better now that we have our Alice working with us.”
Watching his sister and the two men she planned to marry—how the hell do you marry two men, anyway?—it was clear that both men were besotted with her, and Alice, of course, was all for them. With her flightiness, it didn’t surprise Jason that she would be.
She’s just the sort of woman to be in love with the idea of being in love.
That thought brought him right back to the place he’d been, mentally, when he’d come into the restaurant. “Percy was quite put out that you broke things off with him.”
He’d said that when he’d arrived, and he hadn’t planned to say it again. But maybe it was time for some hard truths. He’d introduced one of his oldest friends to his sister, believing Percy was just the man who could take Alice in hand and temper some of her capriciousness. He looked at each of the Kendalls in order to judge their reaction to his revelation.
Their grins were not what he expected.
“Ah yes. Percival Pious Poindexter,” Alice said.
Jason frowned. “You mean Percy Simmons?”
“Oh, no, brother-mine. ‘Percy Simmons’ might be an interesting man, even a nice man. But just hearing the name Percival Pious Poindexter should cause a sucking-lemons expression and should also clue you in to the sort of person this was. First, he thought that you gave me to him to mold into a proper corporate wife. He wanted to tell me what to wear and how to wear it, he wanted to approve my friends, and he wanted his mother to help make me a woman of, and I quote, ‘more refined femininity.’ He seemed to think that a percentage of your business would be his as some sort of dowry.”
Jason frowned. He looked from his parents to Phillip. He shook his head. “No, you must be mistaken.”
The fire in her eyes told him she was not mistaken.
“Two dates! We went on two flipping dates! That wasn’t a relationship, far from it. But the coup-de-enough-already came when he presented me to his mother—at their club—on that second, very regrettable date. Mother Pious Poindexter said, and again, I quote, ‘it might be a challenge to eradicate the remnants of the manure, but I am up to the challenge.’”
The gasps around the table matched Jason’s reaction to his sister’s words, exactly.
“I don’t understand! I thought Percy was a good man. I just wanted to….” Now there was the problem. What had he wanted to do, exactly? The truth was an uncomfortable weight on his shoulders. The truth was, he’d wanted to “fix” his sister.
Funny how you can think something without actually thinking it before you understand just what the hell it was that you were thinking in the first place. Jason reached for another antacid.
“Well, actually, as it turns out, you did Alice and us an enormous favor.” Ian Kendall picked up Alice’s hand and kissed it. “She didn’t come here to escape Percy, you understand, but you. And because she did, well, we’ve found the woman of our dreams, who has agreed to marry us. So, thanks, Jason. And the bonus from now on, for you? You don’t need to be concerned about Alice anymore, not one little bit. We’re going to be taking very good care of her from now on.”
That was as clever a put-down as Jason had ever heard. It was directed at him, of course it was, and he didn’t know quite what to think of that. What hurt the most, however, was knowing that basically, and for all intents and purposes, he’d built a wall between himself and the one sibling that was closest to him in age, the one he’d cared about the most—and that wall had just been covered in a layer of cement.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Benedict.”
Jason looked up into the kindest, softest brown eyes he’d ever seen. Leesa Jordan. Grandma Kate had told him that Leesa could sometimes have a bit of a temper, but it never lasted. Here was the proof of that. Not only the words just said. There was a tenderness in her expression. In that moment, surrounded by family, in a place he didn’t understand, he knew one thing.
He didn’t deserve Leesa Jordan’s tenderness. Not one little bit of it.
Then she set a plate in front of him. On it were two very delectable-looking pastries. “These are for you.”
“You don’t owe me an apology, Miss Leesa, but thank you for it. And for the pastries. This is my best friend, and my cousin, Phillip Benedict.”
She extended her hand, and Phillip, who’d gotten to his feet, accepted her offer, taking her hand in his. Jason had risen, too, and she turned to look at him. Neither of them spoke, but when she made the same offer to him, he accepted.
“If you bring me another plate, I’ll share this bounty with my best friend.”
“I’ll see to that right away. Meanwhile, why not sit and relax? I imagine you’ve put in a long day of travel.”
Jason sat down, his gaze following Leesa as she went to the buffet and returned with a clean plate and another fork. She deftly transferred one of the pastries and set that plate down in front of Phillip.
“Your cousin Tracy makes these, and they’re usually the first things that disappear from the buffet.” Leesa met his gaze and then Phillip’s. “Enjoy your evening, gentlemen.”
As he had the first time she’d headed off, Jason followed Leesa with his eyes. She didn’t go back into the kitchen but began to stop at some of the tables and chat.
“I told you she doesn’t hold a grudge long,” Kate said. “She’s only been with us a few months, but already, she’s a part of Lusty.”
Jason didn’t know if that was a warning or simple conversation. The only thing he did know was he’d been offered an olive branch, of sorts.
A smart man would accept that, no questions asked.
I guess I need to think about how smart of a man I really am.
Chapter Two
Sweat drenched Leesa as she finished her allotted time on the rowing machine. Head bowed, she took a minute to try and even her breathing. She’d set her towel down beside her. Now, scooping it up, she used it to blot her face then draped it over her shoulders.
She hated exercising but liked how she felt afterwards. A quick look at the clock that hung above the workout room door confirmed what her body told her. She’d put in a solid hour and was ready for a nice hot shower. She took the time to wipe down and disinfect this final piece of equipment she’d used. Then she grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and sat on one of the benches along the wall.
Staying fit hadn’t been on her radar before she enlisted—with the permission of her parents—at aged seventeen. But it had become a fact of life
for the fifteen years she’d worn the uniform of a soldier in the United States Army.
The only skills she’d brought to the table had been a love of cooking and an interest in nutrition. So, she’d become a member of food services and had been assigned to bases here at home and overseas.
A final tour in Afghanistan had netted her a gunshot wound and a purple heart and the realization that perhaps the more than fifteen years she’d served was enough.
The door opened, and Rachel Gillespie entered. Like Leesa, she was dressed to exercise.
“Hey, girlfriend. How was the party last night?”
Leesa couldn’t not grin in response to her friend’s smile. Rachel had that effect on her. Never had she met a woman more prone to having a positive outlook or one who was quicker with a smile or an encouraging word.
Usually Rachel, one of the servers at Lusty Appetites, would have been at work last night and attended the party herself. But Brandon, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and assigned as an instructor at Goodfellow Air Force Base had arrived home after three weeks away for special training at the Pentagon.
Rather than ask her best friend how their private party last night had gone, Leesa focused on her question, instead.
“You mean you don’t know? The news feed in this town must be having an off day.”
Rachel laughed. She grabbed a towel from the shelf and took it over to what she referred to as her torture device of choice—one of the elliptical trainers. She draped it on the handlebar then came and sat beside Leesa.
“All right, then. Complete transparency. I heard that Jason Benedict and his best friend and cousin, Phillip, arrived unexpectedly and that after Jason shot his mouth off to his sister, you told him he was full of shit.”
Leesa burst out laughing.
“I also heard that he followed you everywhere with his needy, puppy-dog eyes and even had his tongue hanging out of his mouth some. Reports are mixed as to whether or not he was drooling. And that Phillip, once you gave him a cream puff, was no better.”
“Oh, puleese!” Leesa shook her head then uncapped her water. She took a long pull, hoping the cold liquid sliding down her throat could give her a moment to strategize.
Rachel met her gaze, her head tilted, and waited.
“Okay. So maybe I did notice the two of them looking at me. And maybe I kind of looked at them, too. But that does not mean that we’re attracted to each other. You know how I feel about knockin’ boots with one let alone two Y-chromosome carriers.”
“Oh, you’re attracted, all right,” Rachel said. “You just think you don’t want to do anything about it.”
“Girlfriend, my brain’s a pretty good one. And I learn my lessons in life really well.”
“Not all men are assholes, Leesa. I can say that, and know it for truth, all things considered. But it can be awfully scary to take a chance after you’ve been burned, and I know that from my own recent experience, too. My advice is to just let it alone for now. Let your mind rest on it. As Grandma Kate likes to say, things generally turn out the way they’re meant to be.”
The door opened, and Brandon Gillespie and Trace Langley—Rachel’s husbands—came in. That was Leesa’s cue to leave. Not that she didn’t like the men her friend had married—she absolutely did.
But she knew they were all three involved in a personal fitness challenge of some sort and that early Saturday morning was their usual time at the gym, all three of them. It was best to just leave them to it. Besides, she and Rachel worked out a couple times a week, and they saw each other at work practically every day.
This facility the town had built was top-notch. Large and sprawling, it featured this well-equipped workout room, as well as a slightly larger gym that was designed for running training as well as basketball. There were rooms used as dojos that had been intended for smaller groups, too. Construction was about to begin within the next few days to install an indoor pool—an Olympic-sized one. The building that would be adjoined to this main one would include a couple of smaller pools and a few hot tubs. For the complimentary use of the families, and anyone else living in Lusty, the fitness center comprised one side of this very large complex. The other side was a large and very well-equipped indoor gun range.
Leesa thought the free use of this wonderful complex was the best perk ever. The shower amenities were the best, and as hot water poured down on her, her mind began to wander over the topic she’d told her bestie had already been decided.
I’m lucky Rachel didn’t call me out on my lie.
The truth was she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about those two Benedicts. As she’d approached the table last night, her peace offering in hand, she’d overheard Ian Kendall’s words and seen their effect on Jason.
You don’t need to be concerned about Alice anymore, not one little bit. We’re going to be taking very good care of her from now on.
The look of pain on Jason’s face hadn’t lasted long, but she’d seen it—and so had Grandma Kate. God, he’d looked as if he’d been kicked in the gut. She’d bet what he’d heard was a severing of the ties between himself and his sister by his sister’s future husbands.
Maybe he had come into the place and acted like an ass, and maybe—well, no, probably—he’d been a bossy older brother toward his sister. But some people didn’t know how to translate emotion into action, and some people had no idea how their actions and words were sometimes interpreted by others.
Fuck.
Leesa straightened up and shook her shoulder-length hair. She finished up the job of getting clean and then turned off the water. Two things occurred to her, and she wondered how they could possibly be connected.
The first was that she’d spent way too much time in the military, where most of her coworkers had been men. She’d managed, pretty well, cleaning up her spoken language since she’d rejoined the civilian population. Maybe she should work on cleaning up her thought language, too.
The second thing was that all the self-denial or mental gymnastics in the world were not going to change the course of what was to come. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d made a decision, when she’d left the service, that she’d live the rest of her life as a single woman.
“If Grandma Kate is right, then I don’t have to worry about helping or hindering events.” So she wouldn’t. She’d just take each day as it came and wait to see what fate had in store for her.
She’d watched in the past as some of her fellow servicemembers would leave camp, destination deep-cover recon.
Leesa nodded her head once. That was exactly what she’d do, a kind of deep-cover recon. She dried off and got dressed. Her damp towel went into the laundry hamper, and her workout shorts and tee went into her bag and would go into her own washer as soon as she got home.
Carrie Benedict would have opened the restaurant by now. Leesa was due in by eleven. She checked her watch. She had just enough time to do what needed done at home before she began her shift.
She had no time to waste on thoughts of a pair of mouth-watering Benedicts. Neither was there any kind of busy she could think of to keep them from lurking in the back corner of her mind. Leesa nodded, her mind made up.
She’d consider the pair of hotties a pot of thirteen-bean soup, barely simmering but safe to leave on the back burner in the corner of her mind, for the time being.
* * * *
“Wow.”
Jason looked over at Phillip and nodded. “That was my impression, too.” He’d slowed his car when he realized the mansion coming up on the right—no other word would describe the house—was their destination.
“At least now I know why our cousins referred to it as the ‘Big House.’”
“I was pretty sure last night that they weren’t comparing it to a prison,” Jason said.
Phillip chuckled. Then he looked to the left. About a quarter-mile off stood another mansion. This one had definitely been constructed in the antebellum style. “That must be the New House,” he said.
He pushed thoughts of the occasion aside but not so much because he didn’t want to accept the truth of her situation. The words of one of her fiancés, Ian, still stung in his memory. As if Ian had decreed that Alice was no longer his sister, that he no longer had any right to care about or for her.
Well, you sure as hell didn’t do a very good job, ever, in that regard.
Jason rarely heard his inner voice. He’d long before decided it couldn’t possibly be an agent for good. His father had once referenced his own inner voice as one of reason, but Jason had decided at some point that the voice in his head had little to do with reason.
He would sit and think about that previously accepted tenet, later.
He eased his car into the driveway and maneuvered it so that he parked it beside the row of several other vehicles there.
“J. Coop? You need to let it go, man. I don’t think Ian was telling you that you couldn’t have anything to do with Alice anymore.”
Phillip had begun calling him J. Coop—short for his first two names, Jason Cooper—when they began to spend most of their spare time together as kids. At first, he’d just assumed it was because his own brother was Jason Jonathan. Only lately he’d realized Phil could have called his brother J.J., like the rest of the family did, but he didn’t.
“Look, we’re here, where our family began. Let’s take a few days and simply enjoy the experience, okay? We’ll have lunch with Grandma Kate, and then we’ll join the cousins at that Roadhouse tonight, at the north end of town.”
“All right. Let’s do that.”
Phillip rarely asked anything of him, and that wasn’t right. They were supposed to be partners, and that inferred a fifty-fifty split, not just of responsibilities but of affection and concessions, too.
Love Under Two Financiers Page 2
