Kate smiled at the men, and then turned that smile on her. “I see Emily Anne looking this way. I’ll send her over with coffee and some of those lovely pastries that Tracy makes.” She turned to look at the men again. She winked at them and then said, “I’m more than a little fond of my granddaughter’s pastries.”
“Thanks, Grandma.” Nancy kissed Kate’s cheek. She couldn’t help but grin in response to the woman’s wide smile and twinkling, mischievous eyes.
“Ma’am, it was a real pleasure meeting you,” Eli said.
“Thank you for welcoming us so sweetly to your town,” Jeremiah said.
Both men sent Nancy pointed looks.
Kate nodded. “It was a real pleasure meeting the two of you, too—at last. But one thing you need to understand. If I didn’t already know that Nancy was partial to you, you can be sure the welcome you’d have gotten from me and the rest of the family would have been quite a different one.”
Nancy felt shock ripple through her. How does Grandma always know these things? To cover her shock, she laughed. “Grandma, are you carrying your Colt tonight?”
Kate patted her handbag. “I am. I am, indeed.”
Nancy watched her grandmother head toward Emily Anne, and then turned back to look at the men. Both wore shocked expressions.
“Tell me your grandmother was joking. She isn’t really carrying a Colt—as in a handgun?” Jeremiah’s sexy Kentucky drawl, subtly different from a Texan one, did something delicious to her girl parts.
“She wasn’t joking. It’s a beauty, too, ordered and made especially for her by her late husbands. It has a pearl handle—and she used it just a few months ago to shoot a very bad man in the leg. Within an inch, I’m told, of his dangly bits.” If she wasn’t mistaken, both men’s complexions paled slightly. Satisfied that she had the upper hand at least for the moment, Nancy sat down, folded her hands, and prepared to see just what was what.
* * * *
Eli Barton let his gaze follow that sweet little old lady. It took him less than a minute to understand the respect with which she was held by everyone in the restaurant.
Twenty seconds after that, his gaze fell on two men who were sitting and giving him and Jeremiah a solid, cop-like stare.
“This place is just full of surprises,” he said.
“I wondered when you were going to notice them,” Jeremiah said.
“Notice what?” Nancy’s expression looked innocent enough. Eli didn’t think she had any clue what he and his partner—his best friend—had been talking about.
“The men. They appear to outnumber the women here.” Eli turned his attention on her. Rolling with the segue, he said, “and did I understand your grandmother correctly? This is an engagement party for Clay and Gord and Tasha?”
Eli kept his gaze on Nancy’s and saw the hesitation come and go. And then he read, not embarrassment, but pride.
“You did understand her correctly. My cousins Gord Jessop and Clay Dorchester are going to marry Tasha Garwood. If you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll take you through the museum so you can get a grasp of the family history. My mother is the curator of the museum.”
“Your parents are here?” Jeremiah began perusing the room.
“I would have thought they’d be over to give us the rubber hose treatment,” Eli said.
Nancy grinned. “Grandmother is the head of the combined families—and she’s not, technically, my grandmother. However, she is an expert at giving the third degree. My parents—my mother and my two fathers—simply allowed her first crack at y’all—out of respect for her.”
Eli sat back, and then sent a quick glance to Jeremiah.
“Well now, cupcake, it would appear that we’re really not in DC anymore.” Eli wondered at the swift look of shock that crossed Nancy’s face. Then it was gone, and the expression he knew so well—the professional guardian of the ramparts—came back into view.
“No, you’re not. Did you really leave Darnell Associates?”
“As soon as we found out you’d left DC for good.”
“Why?”
Eli had been hit on enough times by enough women with varying degrees of calculation in their eyes that Nancy’s lack of guile was more than refreshing.
It was sexy as hell.
Of course, he couldn’t right then and there give the woman sitting across from him the whole truth, but he could give her most important part of it.
“Is it so hard for you to believe that we left because we needed to be where you were?” Eli asked.
Jeremiah leaned forward. “All those times we dropped in to see you and asked you out? We didn’t have any ulterior motives, Nancy.”
“We thought the fact that we were both interested in you was what kept you from saying yes to either one of us.” Eli looked around the restaurant. “Clearly, that didn’t shock or even offend you the way we thought it did.”
“Y’all know that expression, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?’”
Eli looked at Jeremiah. His friend raised one eyebrow and then they both turned back to Nancy.
“You’re telling us what happens in Lusty, stays in Lusty?”
“For the most part, yes.”
“And many a fine Washington career was murdered by sexual scandal.” Eli couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. He’d wanted to think that Nancy was different than other women.
“Jerk. It wasn’t my career I was trying to protect.” She made to get up. Eli reached out, and took her hand in his.
“I’m sorry.” Maybe it was time for a little more truth. “Honest to God, Nancy Jessop, you have us both tied up in knots so that we can’t even think straight.”
“We’re not here to start over, baby,” Jeremiah said. “We’re here because we had to know if what we both felt—what we both believe you feel—is something worth pursuing.”
Nancy nodded her head slowly. “All right. I’m not sure what I feel. But I can’t lie to you. There’s an attraction. There always has been.” She looked at him, and then Jeremiah. He could tell she had something else she wanted to say.
No one could ever accuse Eli of being an overly sensitive kind of male. That was Jeremiah’s forte. Still, for Nancy, he’d make an effort.
“What is it? You can say anything to us, Nancy. Anything at all.”
“I’m home for good. I decided that it was time that I did something to please myself, not something that I thought others expected of me.”
“Did your family pressure you to ‘make something of yourself’?”
Eli knew why there was a slight bite in Jeremiah’s tone. There’d been a time when his family had pressured him to dive in to the company business—every single one of them had excelled in one branch of academia or another.
Nancy shook her head. “No, not at all. It was all me. Thinking that in order to change the world I had to do something big. And so I made a plan and followed it, but in the end, I didn’t accomplish what I’d set out to do. And I’ve come to the realization that changing the world can be done in more modest ways.”
“All right.” Eli didn’t mind letting her know he was a bit confused. So was Jeremiah, if that man’s expression was anything to go by. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“I’m home for good. But I won’t kid myself into thinking, even for a moment, that either of you would ever consider settling down here. So I just wanted you to know, that I’m not looking for a promise and a ring. In fact, I’m not even interested in a promise and a ring at all.”
So this is what Karma cake tastes like. Eli sent a mental apology to all the women who, over the years, had indicated they’d like to develop a relationship with him—women he’d brushed off or dumped without a second thought.
Because for the first time in their lives, he and Jeremiah were thinking about the proverbial house with the white picket fence—or in Nancy’s words, a promise and a ring. And the woman who’d caught their attention, the one they’d already fallen for, had just giv
en them the confirmed bachelor’s speech.
“Tell you what.” Eli still had hold of Nancy’s hand, so he used his thumb to caress the back of it. “Let’s start from here, and see what happens?”
He didn’t know what Nancy was looking for as she looked from him to Jeremiah and then back again. But she must have found whatever it was. She nodded, her expression more serious than he’d ever seen it.
“All right, we can do that if you really mean that.”
“We definitely mean that, baby,” Jeremiah said.
“Well in that case, I guess you’d better come with me and meet my parents.”
Chapter 3
I had no idea that all this time I’d been so transparent.
Nancy hadn’t spent a great deal of time in her life lost in daydreams, imagining things. She preferred to make an assessment of whatever situation she found herself in and then move forward. Even as a child she’d rarely daydreamed.
But if she had, if she had spent any time imagining what it would be like the first time she introduced a man—or two—to her family, she was almost positive that she wouldn’t have imagined easy acceptance and instant camaraderie.
Hell, Eli and Jeremiah got along so well with her fathers, she very nearly asked all of the men if they wanted to be alone together.
“What part of Maryland are you from, Eli?” Anna Jessop appeared to have her entire attention focused on the man. Nancy grinned. It had been a few years since she’d actually seen her mother in action.
She was a wonder to behold.
“I’m from Annapolis, ma’am. Born and raised there.”
“I thought so. You have a very slight accent.” Anna Jessop grinned. “You’re not the first…Washington type whose antecedents I’ve figured out with my excellent hearing.” And she looked, for just a moment, to her left.
Nancy followed her mother’s focus. Peter Alvarez-Kendall seemed to be staring at Eli and Jeremiah. When he noticed her mother looking at him, he smiled at her—and that smile held genuine warmth and affection.
Nancy didn’t know Tracy and Jordan’s husband very well. But if her mother thought so highly of him—and vice versa—perhaps she should correct that oversight, and soon.
“That’s a remarkable talent, Mrs. Jessop,” Jeremiah said.
“Our Anna is a remarkable woman.” Nancy’s father, Jack—short for Jackson—nodded once, as if to underscore his statement. “Do you know, she singlehandedly organized all of the historical documents and pictures in the entire museum all by herself?”
“No one knows more about Lusty’s history than Anna,” her father, Craig said. “And no one can create organization out of utter chaos quite like her, either.”
“We were a couple of entrepreneurs with lots of money, a half-assed plan and not much experience, when we hired Anna to be our ‘office manager.’” Jack lifted one of Anna’s hands and kissed it. “She’s been organizing us ever since, and we’re damned grateful.”
This was one of Nancy’s cherished memories of childhood—the deep and abiding love between her parents. That love was still as vibrant now, she was certain, as on the day of their Commitment Ceremony so many years before.
“You two just make me blush so,” Anna said. “The truth is I was never complete until these two handsome men swept me off my feet.” She turned her attention back to Eli and Jeremiah. “Did I understand you to say, earlier, that you quit your jobs with Darnell? Isn’t that a very lucrative company?”
Nancy had thought if she ever brought any men around to meet her family that she’d be annoyed having them questioned as if they were suspects in a major crime.
They’re big boys and they can take care of themselves. True, but it did surprise her some that she looked forward to their answer with a certain amount of glee. She met her mother’s gaze, and took that opportunity to remind herself that Grandma Kate wasn’t the only exceptionally wise woman in Lusty.
Her mother seemed to understand all of her little doubts, and appeared determined to have those issues addressed right here and now.
Eli and Jeremiah exchanged a look Nancy had no trouble understanding. Why hadn’t she realized before now that they shared an almost psychic connection?
The families were rife with men whose bond was so close that they often could finish each other’s sentences—or know the other’s thoughts with a glance. Many of them were twins, but her oldest brothers, Warren and Edward, who were not womb mates, had that connection, too.
Her cousin Julia Benedict had married two men who’d only known each other since adulthood, but were closer than brothers. Susan had as well, though Nancy understood that Colt and Ryder had become partners in the game of survival when they’d been adolescents, living on the streets of El Paso.
Eli nodded to Jeremiah, and then he looked at Nancy. “We had been trying for some time to get Nancy’s attention.” Eli faced her mother. “But that place—DC—is like no other place on earth. Nothing is real there. At least that’s the way it seemed.” Eli stopped, and inhaled, then turned to Nancy again. “We don’t blame you for not taking us seriously, despite our getting really frustrated with the entire situation. And then we found out—after the fact—that you’d left. And not just on a vacation, because we discovered quite by accident that you’d sublet your apartment to someone else. We panicked.” Eli looked at her dads, so she did, too.
It was clear to Nancy that both of her fathers sympathized with the story Eli told. She knew why, of course, because she’d heard the story of how her fathers had won her mother many times through the years. She thought she could see similarities between what these two lobbyists had done and that romantic tale, and guessed her fathers did, too.
This isn’t like that. Eli and Jeremiah aren’t trying to win me in that way. They aren’t courting me and they certainly have no interest in marrying me. They just want to get together for now. And that was really fine with Nancy. They were three consenting adults, well over the age of twenty-one. A good time would be had by all, and when it was over, everyone would just walk away.
Nancy felt the sting of tears behind her eyes and a scratchy, achy lump in her throat that she didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Nancy?”
Jeremiah had slipped his arm around her. His saying her name had her turning to meet his gaze. She read worry in his gaze, and could have kicked herself. The last thing she wanted was for these two men to get into the habit of reading her.
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Usually she could manipulate a conversation with the best of them. Not something she did on a personal level, the skill had allowed her to keep the upper hand in the office—and even, once in a while, with the Senator himself.
But I’m not that woman anymore. I’m just plain Nancy Jessop of Lusty, Texas. And Nancy Jessop was an inherently honest person.
“I was just thinking how fast everything changed, that’s all.”
“Why did things change?” Eli asked. “No one had any idea why you’d quit your job. It seemed to come out of the blue. We heard rumors, of course, none of which deserve repeating.”
Next Monday was the day that Senator Cordell had told her he planned to announce his retirement.
“I didn’t really quit.”
“You were fired? What the hell is wrong with that man? Doesn’t he know you’re the best damn legislative assistant on the Hill?” Jeremiah’s outrage couldn’t be an act. Nor could his sudden discomfiture or the slight blush shading his cheeks. He looked right at her mother. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, for my language.”
Anna waved her hand. “Oh, no need, dear. You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Since everyone was looking at her—not just those sharing the table, but everyone, she shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone, because the Senator asked me not to. But I don’t imagine any of y’all will be racing to call the wire services. On Monday, Cyrus Cordell is going to announce his retirement from public
life, effective immediately. That’s why he terminated my employment. My job was gone, and he wanted to spare me the media circus, once he made that announcement.”
Eli frowned. “I still don’t understand why you left DC. You have to know how well respected you are. Congressmen and Senators alike would have been lined up out the door trying to get you on their teams.”
Clearly her decision confused Eli. His attention on her right then was focused—as if she was the only person in the restaurant, and her response to his observation the one vital piece of information he just had to have.
Nancy shrugged. “Thank you. But with all the acrimony and partisanship over the last few years, it’s just not a fun place for me to be anymore. I can’t take the tension, the sniping, and the lying. Over the last few months especially, the atmosphere on Capitol Hill has become toxic. So I decided, when I all of a sudden no longer had a job, that it was time for me to begin a new chapter in my life. I decided it was time for me to do something I’d wanted to do when I’d been a kid—before the idea of doing something big and important entered my head.”
She looked over at Jeremiah. His smile warmed her. She turned back to Eli. More serious-minded than his friend, he tended to like to work things through before he made a judgment call. He met her gaze, but gave nothing of his thoughts away.
“All right,” he said. “What is it you plan on doing?”
“I’m going to open a bookstore right here in town. In fact, I’m just waiting for final approval from the Town Trust, which Grandma doesn’t think will be an issue. And since Kelsey, who owns this business right here, likes the idea, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a go.”
“The bookstore?” Jeremiah asked.
“The bookstore, yes, but also connecting it to the restaurant. If all goes well, before the fall, the good folks of Lusty will have a place to come and enjoy gourmet coffees and teas, the ambiance of a gas fireplace on chilly days, and big comfy chairs they can snuggle into while they read.”
Love Under Two Undercover Cops [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 3
