“That son of a bitch! What did he do to you? I hope you paid him back double!”
She and Grace laughed together when she heard Jack say, “Triple,” as he fiddled with the drawer mechanism under her stove, and a voice filtered in through the kitchen window, “Quadruple!”
“So you pounded his sorry ass?” she asked Jack as Adam came in through the back door.
“Yes, ma’am. Pounded him real good.” He offered her the hand he wiped off with a dish towel. “Jack Warner. I’m pleased to meet you. You must be Charity.”
“Trust me, the pleasure is all mine. If I never see that miserable rat again, it will be too soon. Thanks for throwing out the garbage. I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. And you must be?”
“Adam Davis, ma’am. Glad to know you,” he said as he held out his hand to her.
Grace grinned as she observed her sister’s reaction. Charity’s eyes got big and round as she sized both of them up and looked over at Grace with obvious approval. “I’ll bet you did pound his ass real good! Could he walk?”
“Nope,” Adam replied, chuckling. “I had to carry him out, but I’m sure he’ll survive.”
“I hope he doesn’t file assault charges,” Grace said, suddenly very concerned about that possibility.
“He assaulted you first in front of three credible witnesses,” Jack reminded her. “I doubt he would be stupid enough to do that.”
Charity snorted. “His stupidity knows no bounds, but I’m more worried about him coming back to harass you, Grace.” Charity gestured to the overnight bag hung over her shoulder. “That’s why I’m staying with you for a few days.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Jack said. “We’ll put a steak on for you, too. I was concerned about Grace staying there by herself tonight and was considering offering to bring her home with us temporarily until things die down.
Just then, Ethan walked in the door. Grace noticed Charity eyed him appreciatively as well, turning a curious look on her. In one hand, he had a bag from the hardware store, and in the other, he held a shopping bag that contained a six-pack and what looked like a bottle of wine.
“Hi. I didn’t know if you had any beer. You don’t seem like the beer drinking type, so I picked up a bottle of sangria as well, if you like that sort of thing.”
“She loves it! And who might you be?” Charity asked as she took the bag containing the beer and wine from him.
“Hi. I’m Ethan Grant, and you must be Charity. I’m glad you could come over. Grace was pretty shook up earlier.” As Grace came near, he put his arm gently around her shoulders and drew her a little closer. His fingers stroking her shoulder sent warm shivers racing over her skin.
“I appreciate all of y’all looking out for her. Everything is going to be fine now that he’s gone.”
“I hope so,” Jack said. “We’ve got a poker buddy who’s a cop. I called him and told him what happened, and he said he’d drive by regularly tonight.”
“I brought my shotgun with me. He’ll get the message if he comes back,” Charity replied sweetly.
Adam whistled appreciatively as he turned around and walked to the back door. “Remind me to never piss you off, woman. I’m gonna finish up out here before it gets too dark to see.”
Everybody laughed.
Charity then set about tidying the house from their quick pack-up of Owen’s belongings. Jack and Grace finished the food prep in the kitchen while Ethan replaced the deadbolts on all her doors. Jack joined Adam on the back porch, tending the heating grill, and Ethan joined them on the back porch after he was done.
Adam finished the installation and turned on the AC. He walked in the kitchen and said, “Baby, you’ve got air conditioning again.”
“Oh, thank you, Adam!” Grace rose from her chair and gave him a great big hug and a kiss on the cheek. She enjoyed the gentle, loving way Adam wrapped his arms around her.
He released her after a few seconds, retrieved a beer from the refrigerator, and went out the backdoor to join Jack and Ethan.
“I’ll be right back. I’m gonna shut all the windows.” Grace left the room, and Charity carried the pan with the steaks out to the guys to put on the grill.
Charity came back inside and poured two generous wineglasses full of the sangria and sat down at the kitchen table with Grace. “So…Jack?” Charity eyed Grace devilishly and bit down on the heel of her hand dramatically.
“Yeah.” Grace breathed out on a long sigh and nodded, ready for the interrogation to begin.
“And…Adam? Mmm-mmm-mmm!” She made clutching movements with her hands spread apart like his shoulders were between them.
“Uh-huh!” Grace replied, remembering what it felt like to be nestled between those big shoulders when he’d hugged her Sunday night. She closed her eyes, wanting to go there again and again.
“And…Ethan,” Charity whispered, licking her lips. Grace had to giggle.
“Mmm…yeah,” Grace agreed in heartfelt appreciation as they toasted her men.
“When did you meet them?” Charity asked, expecting details. Grace gave her all the basics—leading up to the funeral and how she’d only recently met Adam and Ethan. She told her about the funeral, the AC, Owen, and, more importantly, how attracted she felt toward all three of them, including her conflicted emotions, feeling that she somehow was acting like a tramp wanting all three of them.
“Sis, it looks to me like all three of them want you. Have you done anything yet?”
“No!” Grace whispered. “I’m scared to. How would I choose? I don’t want to choose.”
“You want them all, don’t you?”
“Am I crazy?”
“No.” Charity refilled their glasses again. “If they all treated me the way they treat you and I wasn’t already married with a family, they’d have me eating out of their hands. All at the same time, too.” She had a wicked gleam in her eyes.
“Bad girl.”
“You have no idea, baby sister. If I were you, I’d be on them like white on rice, any way they wanted me.”
“You would not believe the dream I had this morning, right before I woke up.” Grace said.
Charity was only a couple of years older than she was, and they’d always been very close growing up, sharing and keeping each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. So Grace had no compunction whatsoever about sharing every detail of her dream. The wine helped release any information she might have held back. She refilled their glasses, surprised to find that they had polished off the bottle, and told her sister all about it.
“What should I do now?” Grace finally asked.
* * * *
Charity scoffed. “What should you do? Seize the freakin’ day! That’s what you should do.” Charity took their glasses to the sink to rinse them out.
Right before she turned on the water, she realized she was hearing the sound of crickets because the window over the sink was wide open. Making a job out of rinsing the glasses, Charity gazed out the window, smiling at the stunned faces on the men sitting in the lawn chairs on the back porch. Jack looked up at her with guilty eyes.
Her mama didn’t raise no dummy. She wasn’t about to mess up the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that fate had presented Grace with by being tacky and tattling on the men for eavesdropping on their conversation. Charity prided herself on being a good judge of character, able to smell a rat at fifty feet. Owen had been a rat. These men were a whole different breed. What they all had in common was their obvious adoration of her baby sister. She looked down and caught Jack’s eye again and winked at him, trying not to laugh out loud at the dismayed look in his eyes. They never moved a muscle, a captive audience.
It was time to lay it all on the line. Otherwise, there was no telling how long Grace might torture herself with these conflicting feelings and no telling how long it would take to extract the necessary green light they needed from Grace before they could tell her how they really felt. Grace had little experience with men, and if she c
ounted Owen as a real man, she had no experience. It was time for the master to get to work.
Charity rejoined Grace at the table and laid her hand on Grace’s arm.
“Can I ask you a question? Will you be completely honest with me?” At her nod, Charity continued. “Do you love Jack? I don’t mean love to have a fling with him. I mean do you really love him, forever kind of love?”
“Yes, I think I have practically since his mother introduced us. When I look in his eyes, I see such tenderness and acceptance. He’s a kidder and loves to tease me, but when I’m around him, I want to hold on and never let go.”
“You said you only recently met Ethan and Adam. How do you feel about them? Do you think you can love them?”
“There is this raw, new attraction that I feel toward both of them. I love how loyal they are to each other and to Jack. When they look at me, I feel beautiful and sensual. Sort of powerful, you know, like I know they are attracted to me. When I’m near them, there is not a part of me that doesn’t want their hands all over me. Ethan kissed me for the first time tonight right before he went to the hardware store.”
“Is he a good kisser?”
“Wonderful. It stole my breath and got me all—” Grace paused, blushing profusely.
“—all hot and bothered? Wet? Horny?” Charity asked, grinning and laughing along with her.
“Yes, yes, and hell yes!”
“Don’t you wish you could just sit down and have them tell you how they felt about you so you could do the same?” Listen up, boys. Can’t make it any simpler for you than this. Thank me later. ”What would you say?”
Grace rested her cheek in her palm, twirling her wineglass between her fingers. She looked into Charity’s eyes and spoke with a tremulous voice, “I would tell them I love them all. I’m almost afraid to say it out loud even to you, but I adore them. I want them all, and not just temporarily, and not just because they were my knights in shining armor riding in to save me today. I want them and love them each in a different way. But I can’t choose between them, and I don’t want to. Oh, my gosh, I do love them. Charity, I must be crazy. What kind of person goes blabbing she’s in love with three men, two of whom she’s known only three or four days?”
“You’re not. That’s just the wine talking, making you think you’re crazy. I’ll tell you what would be crazy, though. You missing out on an opportunity to be happy just because what makes you happy doesn’t fit into a nice neat mold like the world says it should. Sometimes you have to take the opportunities life presents you with and enjoy the love that finds you, even when it’s a little unorthodox. It would be sad if those guys never knew you loved them because they were afraid to tell you themselves.”
Hint, hint…
Grace looked up at the clock and said, “I wonder what’s keeping those steaks? The grill must have taken a long time to heat up. I’m going to run to the bathroom. Why don’t you check on them?”
After Grace left the room, Charity walked over to the sink and silently lowered the window and locked it tight. She stepped out the back door as Jack turned from placing the steaks inside the grill and closed it, checking his watch.
“We can never thank you enough for not ratting us out, Charity,” Jack said. “Once you got started talking, we were afraid to move a muscle for fear she might realize she left the window open. It would really embarrass her to know we overheard that conversation.”
“You can thank me by not breaking my sister’s heart, Jack. She deserves the best. I think that might be the three of you. But I will hunt you down with my shotgun if I ever hear that you’ve hurt her or teased her about her weight. She is very sensitive about that, and Owen never had an ounce of mercy for her.” She watched Jack’s face fall as she spoke those words, and she listened to what he said next and knew she’d judged them rightly.
“I can promise you that will never happen. We heard some of the things Owen said to her when we got here tonight. I speak for the three of us when I say we think she is perfect exactly the way she is. From the top of her head to the tips of her toenails, we think she’s perfect. Thank you for helping her express her feelings about us. It was very humbling to hear.”
“Don’t leave her hanging.”
“No, ma’am,” Ethan said. “You’d really hunt us down with your shotgun?”
“Damn straight. They’d never find your bodies either. I’m a big CSI fan. And stop calling me ma’am. I think I hear her in the kitchen. I plied her with your wine, Ethan, so she’s kind of tipsy. Give her a chance to sober up a little.”
“The food will help, I imagine,” Adam replied. “Thanks again, Charity. You’re the best.”
“You have no idea!” she cracked as she opened the back door and stepped back inside. Grace had plates and glasses down from the cabinet, put out silverware, and was filling glasses with ice when Charity came back inside.
“The steaks should be ready in a few minutes. They got busy talking and lost track of time.”
Grace smiled at her and said, “Imagine that.” She rubbed her temples with her fingers. “I think I may be a little tipsy.”
“Me, too, but you’re safe with us,” Charity replied, smiling indulgently at her, just like a big sister should. Grace went to her and hugged her. “Is everything ready? Nothing else you need me to help with?”
“No, Jack was a big help earlier.”
“Yeah, I saw him helping himself first hand, remember?” Charity snorted loudly at her own humor. They made iced tea, and a few minutes later, the back door opened, and the guys brought the steaks back in, ready to eat. Charity spent the next hour watching the way Grace interacted with her men. Charity could see that they really were her men. They waited on her, refilled her tea glass, as well as Charity’s, complimented her cooking, and bragged to Charity about the meal Grace had brought to their house.
“I’m really sorry to hear about your loss, Jack. It sounds like she was a wonderful mother to all of you growing up. How’s your dad doing?” Charity asked.
“It’s been really hard for him. I think if I was married that long I’d feel like I was missing half of myself,” Jack replied sadly. “But just like tonight, life has to go on. We’re doing our best to keep him busy, help him get back into the old routine. They went everywhere together, except Stigall’s. That was Mom’s one guilty pleasure, going shopping every Saturday morning while he met his buddies at the Dairy Queen for coffee.”
“Yeah, Dad was hoping he might sit with them for a while and have a cup this Saturday,” Ethan said, passing the sliced tomatoes to Grace before she even had a chance to ask.
Charity thought it was nice that they paid attention, trying to anticipate her needs.
Their conversation continued as she rose from the table, took her plate to the trash can, and scraped it off. The men rose from the table, too, and took Grace’s dishes from her hands. When she would have shooed them into the living room to talk while she cleaned up, they turned the tables on her and shooed her and Charity into the living room. With the three of them working, they had everything tidied up in a few minutes.
Jack came into the living room. “Well, ladies, we know you two want to talk some more, so we are going to head on back to the ranch. If you have even the faintest inkling of trouble from Owen, one of you call 911 and the other one call us. We can be here in five minutes. Remember, our cop buddy will be driving by to make sure everything is okay.”
Grace rose from the couch and stretched, arching her back, and tried to stifle a yawn.
Charity went into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and to give them a chance for a more private good-bye.
Chapter Five
Grace looked at the three of them standing there, so handsome and strong. She looked in their eyes and saw acceptance, hopefulness, and desire. Charity had encouraged her to take her chance. Rose Marie had encouraged her to seize the day. If she didn’t act on that advice right now, she knew she’d regret it later.
She went t
o Jack first, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her head against his chest. He leaned down to her, almost tentatively, tilted her chin up, and kissed her lips for the first time. His lips were warm and gentle against hers, making her feel small and precious to him. She was enveloped in his clean, masculine warmth, and she felt a little dizzy as she returned his kiss enthusiastically. She felt his strong hands skim down her ribs and come to rest on her hips, pulling her to him ever so slightly but enough that the erection growing inside his blue jeans pressed against her abdomen. She felt that yearning warmth begin in her belly and spread down to her throbbing clit.
She longed for a time when this might be the beginning and not the end of the evening. She was aware of Adam and Ethan standing nearby. She surprised herself, subconsciously recognizing them not as observers but participants merely awaiting their moment. How odd to feel that way. She had so little experience with men and this sort of thing, and she should have felt self-conscious about kissing Jack in front of them, but instead she was contemplating having the two of them kiss her next. It was over too soon.
Jack cupped her cheek, looking down into her eyes. “See you soon. Be safe.”
“I will. You, too.”
He looked at her for a moment like he wanted to say more, then released her and went out the screen door to start the SUV, leaving the others to their good-byes.
He’d released her to Ethan, who gave her a knowing grin. He was anticipating his second kiss of the evening from her. He looked down at her with warm eyes as she rose on her tiptoes, and he leaned down to her. He caught her in a more passionate kiss than the first time. He pulled her to his hard, muscular chest, pressing her breasts against him, and she was sure he could feel how hard her nipples were and the way she trembled in his arms. Unlike the first kiss, she opened to give him access. As his tongue caressed hers, her body bloomed into full arousal for him. He rested his hands on her hips, pressing himself to her, making her aware of how she affected him.
The Divine Creek Ranch Collection, Volume 1 [Book 1 - Divine Grace, Book 2 - Her Gentle Giant, Book 3 - Heavenly Angel] (Siren Everlasting Collection) Page 7
