“You’ve made me so very happy, wearing this gown on your special day.” Chelsea Benedict Jessop-Kendall reached out a slightly trembling hand to caress the fabric. “My mother, Sarah, and my future mother-in-law, Amanda—and Amanda’s mother, Emily, worked on this dress with me. It was always my Jeremy and my Dalton I was going to marry. From the time I was little, there was never anyone else for me.”
“I’m so very humbled that you’ve allowed me to wear this, Grandmother Chelsea. Thank you. It’s perfect.”
“You’ve a head on your shoulders—and having listened to Caleb tell us about your adventure a few hours ago, I know you’ve got pluck. Like Madison, I think you’re perfect for Craig and Jackson. I believe y’all were meant for each other.”
“Things tend to turn out the way they’re meant to be, don’t they?” Kate Benedict stood back and nodded. “We didn’t even have to pin this dress. It is perfect.”
“I’ll be very careful of it, Grandmother Chelsea.”
“It’s yours, child. A small enough boon for having saved the lives of my grandsons.” Then she giggled. “In more ways than one.”
The women laughed. Grandmother Mattie came forward and put a couple of decorated pins in her hair. Anna tilted her head to see them, smiling at the way her coif now sparkled.
“I look like a bride.” Anna met the gazes of each of the women in turn. Madison, her mother in law, the grandmothers, Chelsea and Mattie, Miranda and Kate and Samantha, and her sisters-in-law, Joan and Heather. These women she’d only met in the last week weren’t strangers, for all of that.
They were her family.
“You do indeed look like a bride. I remember what it was like,” Madison said. “Coming here from Las Vegas, married, yes—but I didn’t feel like a bride, either, until our Commitment Ceremony.”
Anna met her gaze. A bond had already formed between them, and Anna knew it would only strengthen in years to come. “Yes. That’s what I needed more than anything. I needed to feel like a bride.”
“Then let’s do this.” Chelsea got to her feet. Anna noted that her daughter-in-law stood close, just in case. But the elderly woman seemed possessed of a strength of purpose Anna hadn’t seen on her before. She turned to her own sister-in-law, Madeline Kennedy Benedict. “Shall we, sister? We’ve gotten quite good at performing these ceremonies, if I do say so myself.”
“We have indeed.” Madeline offered her an arm. “Our parents began a tradition here, and we have proudly followed in their footsteps. This is a joyous day for us all.”
“And the perfect way to begin a brand New Year.” Anna decided, then and there, that she would honor the day as her true wedding anniversary. And she knew without a doubt, that her husbands would feel the exact same way.
Epilogue
Present Day
Anna took a long look at the photograph she held. Bartlett Jones had been at that New Year’s Day party, of course, cameras in hand. He’d taken several pictures that day of the gathering and the impromptu Commitment Ceremony. But of all the wedding pictures she’d posed for, this one was her favorite.
A sepia print, it showed her in Grandmother Chelsea’s beautiful antique gown, her men looking very dapper on either side of her. They were flanked by the grandmothers, while the middle-aged women—Madison, Miranda, and Kate—were on the floor in front of them.
Sometimes, Anna missed her mother-in-law and Miranda and those gracious older ladies to the point of tears. She would be forever grateful for their love and their acceptance, at a time in her life when those two qualities seemed foreign to her.
She handed the photograph over to her daughter-in-law, Carol.
“Wow, Mom,” Carol said. “That was quite a story. And you look fabulous!”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I can tell you that on that day, with my two handsome men on either side me I felt fabulous—a feeling that has never abated in all the years since.”
“I had no idea that Grandmother Cooper was like that, although I do remember her as being a bit cold.” Nancy wiped a tear and shrugged when her husbands shared a look and then moved in closer to her. Anna had no trouble interpreting that look—as she’d seen it in her own husbands’ eyes a time or four.
But she wouldn’t ask. She’d let Nancy, Eli, and Jeremiah pick their moment to give their good news.
“I remember Grandfather Cooper more than her,” Warren said. He’d been looking over his wife’s shoulder. Now he met his mother’s gaze.
Sometimes, the resemblance to his father Craig was downright uncanny—oh, not in his looks so much, but in his not-too-latent take charge attitude.
“You would remember your Papa Cooper more, as he came and visited—alone—at least three or four times a year. It wasn’t until Nancy was born that my mother began to take a slight interest in me and mine. By then, of course, my father had died, and I think, in the end, Mother was really quite lonely.” Anna sighed. “Clara Cooper was never a happy woman, and really, that is just a damn shame. Imagine living your entire life and never being happy.”
“We invited Clara to come and live with us,” Jackson said. “She was family, after all. But she declined. She never really accepted that her daughter had married two men. All we could do for her, in the end, was to see to it she had someone to look after her, and that she was cared for.”
“Whatever happened to that poor man—the brother of Carl Sanders? In a way, he was as much of a victim of that con, and his brother, as the three of you were.” Carol handed the photo to Nancy.
“He was the real victim, actually, because he’d truly believed his brother had finally become the brother he’d always wanted to have,” Anna said. “I really felt very sorry for him. I knew what it was like to be disappointed by family.”
“To answer your question, we invested in his business, of course. His brother’s perfidy aside, Gareth is brilliant, and was way ahead of his time.” Craig grinned.
“So...you said is. Does that mean he was successful?” Paul asked. “The name isn’t familiar to me.”
“Oh, good grief.” Jeremiah shook his head. “You’re talking about the dot-com billionaire G. Thomas Sanders, aren’t you? He came up with a platform for games, and sold it to a huge multinational corporation—and then got out of the business. One of the few dot-com billionaires who retired, fortune intact.”
“One and the same.” Jackson grinned. “One of our better investments, actually.”
“Not long after our Commitment Ceremony, I discovered the reason for my emotionalism on New Year’s Day, of course,” Anna said. “I was pregnant with Warren.”
“We maintained the Dallas office for a couple more years—but when it was clear our family was growing, we decided we really didn’t need to be there.” Jackson grinned.
“My heart was here, in Lusty. Your Grandmother Madison had helped me learn all I needed to know—about cooking, and growing roses, and being a wife to two Jessops. It was she, when she learned of my love of history and my abandoned ambitions to be an archeologist and a museum curator, who pushed for the museum we have today.”
“Grandmother Chelsea had come up with the idea a few years before,” Jackson said. “She wanted to make sure that the story of her parents, and in-laws, how they had made a dream into reality would never be forgotten.”
“I know that she and Grandmother Mattie would be so pleased to see the way, not only that Lusty has grown, but the way in which it’s very much what those first ones intended it to be—a sanctuary.” Anna looked at her eldest sons, and their wife, and her daughter, and her husbands. Then she focused on her triplets. They’d been battered some by life. She knew a little, but not all of what they’d gone through. Her heart ached for them, but she knew all she could do was be there for them. “And what better time than New Year’s to remember, that what Lusty represents, more than anything else—even more than family and acceptance—is a sanctuary for those who need her, and place for new beginnings.”
She looked up and met the
gaze of first Jackson and then Craig. And she smiled when Craig lifted his glass.
“To new beginnings,” he said. He smiled at Anna, even as he focused on his three sons. “And to coming home.”
Anna’s heart filled with the familiar joy of home, family, and love. Yes, this was her favorite time of year, and she had no doubt that the spirit of those who came before, and the promise of those who were yet to arrive, filled every corner of her house.
Just as her love for her two virile husbands filled every corner of her heart.
THE END
WWW.MORGANASHBURY.COM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Morgan Ashbury, also writing as Cara Covington, has been a writer since she was first able to pick up a pen. In the beginning it was a hobby, a way to create a world of her own, and who could resist the allure of that? Then as she grew and matured, life got in the way, as life often does. She got married and had three children, and worked in the field of accounting, for that was the practical thing to do and the children did need to be fed. And all the time she was being practical, she would squirrel herself away on quiet Sunday afternoons, and write.
Most children are raised knowing the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. Morgan’s children also learned the Paper Rule: thou shalt not throw out any paper that has thy mother’s words upon it.
Believing in tradition, Morgan ensured that her children’s children learned this rule, too.
Life threw Morgan a curve when, in 2002, she underwent emergency triple bypass surgery. Second chances are to be cherished, and with the encouragement and support of her husband, Morgan decided to use hers to do what she’d always dreamed of doing—writing full time.
Morgan has always loved writing romance. It is the one genre that can incorporate every other genre within its pulsating heart. Romance showcases all that humankind can aspire to be. And, she admits, she’s a sucker for a happy ending.
Morgan’s favorite hobbies are reading, cooking, and traveling—though she would rather you didn’t mention that last one to her husband. She has too much fun teasing him about having become a “Traveling Fool” of late.
Morgan lives in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, with a mysterious cat, a nine-pound Morkie dog who thinks he’s a German Shepherd, and her husband of forty-two years, David.
For all titles by Cara Covington, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/cara-covington
For titles by Cara Covington writing as
Morgan Ashbury, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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A Very Lusty New Year [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 21
