“Do you remember us telling you about Parker and Dale the other day?” Ari leaned in close and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “They’re the ones who overheard Norah and her fiend—oops, did I say that out loud? I meant friend, of course.”
“Easy mistake to make. There’s only one letter difference between the two words, after all.”
Ari smiled, and Jenny grinned back. Then she sighed. “Yes, I do recall.”
“And I recall how just moments ago, the three of you were in a little mutual bubble of hot-holy-hell, all by yourselves. Why, I could almost hear the angels singing. The chemistry between you was that potent. I swear, steam, among other things, was rising.” Ari winked.
Jenny opened her mouth to protest then snapped it shut again. It would be pretty hard for her to protest when every word Ari had just said was the truth.
“That’s our secret, girlfriend.” Jenny knew she could trust Ari.
“Believe that if you want, girlfriend. The real truth? Y’all were noticed by more people than just me.”
Jenny sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
They’d reached the seats at the back. Ari looked over her shoulder and then turned back around. “You sit right there.”
Jenny was directed toward a chair, the second from the end facing the long bench seat.
“That way, you don’t have to look at the crowd behind you. You’re on your own time, now.” Ari leaned in very close. “And for the record, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The fall is scary, but the landing is heavenly.”
“Sure, it is.” Jenny reminded herself of a myth she’d heard tell of but never experienced until now. Friends, happy in love, didn’t rest until all their single friends were happy in love, too.
Happy in love? That had been something she’d assumed to be sometime in the nebulous future, not in the here and now. She was not in love, happily or otherwise. Oh, no, she was just…Jenny. Jenny had just met two Montana cowboys. Just. Met. Them. They hadn’t even shared a conversation or a tonsil-inspecting kiss. There was no way she could already be in love with…them.
Cord directed Parker and Dale into chairs on either side of her, then tossed her a wink. Looks like I’m suddenly in the future.
There was, as far as she could tell, only one thing she could do. Jenny made certain her butt was nestled snugly in her chair. With her feet firmly on the ground, her chair neatly pulled up to the table, she figured she was as protected as she could possibly be from any unplanned falls—of any kind.
Chapter Three
Douglas Vance had been waiting for this moment ever since he’d heard of his dear great-aunt Amanda’s death. He stepped off the elevator into the law offices of Mathers, Chambers, and Horne, one of the oldest firms in Austin.
He made his way to the conference room, more than a little annoyed at the number of people already sitting around the large table. After the death of his great-uncle, Simon Featherstone, he’d been the last remnant of the Featherstone side of the family. His mother had been the daughter of Simon’s sister. There shouldn’t be anyone else sitting at this table except lawyers and law clerks.
His ire cleared, and he recognized the members of Amanda’s former staff—housekeeper, chauffeur, and gardener. Every time he saw the three of them together, the way both men seemed to be focused on the woman, he wondered. Men were meant to subjugate women, not know-tow to them. The first thing he was going to do when he moved into that big-ass mansion was to fire every single last one of them. He wouldn’t even give them notice. He’d just boot their sorry unnatural asses out the door.
That decision was reinforced when none of them even made an effort to suck up to him. They ignored him as if he was a complete stranger to them. He mentally shrugged off the insult even as it rankled. They’ll all be out of work soon enough. Vance didn’t worry about the weird-looking chick with the spiky reddish hair sitting at the other end of the table. She was likely some sort of law clerk or student because she had a pad of paper in front of her, a pen in her hand, and appeared focused on reading whatever was in the document before her.
Vance picked a chair with easy access to the door—he just needed to know the dollars and cents coming his way, and when he’d get them—and settled in for the reading of his dearly departed kin’s last will and testament.
This was a moment he’d waited for, for years. Anticipation bathed him in a sweeter scent than any cologne could have. He’d filed for bankruptcy on his latest business venture a month before and had practically maxed out all his resources. There weren’t any American banks he could borrow money from at the moment, and so he’d gone to an acquaintance for a personal loan.
Asshole’s a fucking loan shark, not acquaintance. It galled Vance that he had to do business with the likes of Brody Carp, but there it was. Desperate times, and all that shit.
This windfall was coming to him at the best possible moment.
Vance knew his great-aunt Amanda’s estate was worth, at the very least, five million dollars—and likely even a lot more. And if he decided to sell that fucking monstrosity of a mansion, who knows how much he could end up inheriting? He could pay Carp back fifty times over with that amount and still have plenty to spare.
Even after he cleared his line of credit and gambling debts, he’d be solid. No more looking over his shoulder everywhere he went. No more freaking out at moving shadows, afraid of some goon with a baseball bat finding him. Fucking bookies were sure as hell happy to do business when you were wagering, then turned into monsters when you needed time to pay them off.
Vance calmed his breathing and wrestled his attention back to the moment. This crunch wasn’t anything he hadn’t faced before. He’d been through tough times. This was just another one of those. It was a tight moment, that was all. No reason to get all worked up, let things get out of hand. I’ve got this.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. Steady again. He caught a nose-wrinkling scent and knew the source. If anyone else smelled it, they’d never know the stench of fear had come from him. He was calm, cool, collected. Yeah, I’ve got this.
An old man entered the room and took his seat at the head of the table.
“Good afternoon. I’m Rodney James Mathers, senior partner in the law firm of Mathers, Chambers, and Horne, and the attorney of record to the late Mrs. Amanda Pearl Featherstone. I see we’re all finally here. Let’s get started.”
He sat slightly forward, listening as the man droned on. Mathers read from the will, all the usual blah blah blah, and Vance had to struggle to keep his mind in the moment. The lawyer’s voice was both irritating and mind-numbing. Vance never before considered that a man’s voice could be both at the same time.
The first bequests were what he considered nominal sums, gifts to the household staff and a few people with whom Amanda had dealt over the years. Standard pap, and not very much money, really, though it was hard to justify why those low class servants should get any of his money.
“To my great-nephew Douglas Vance, I leave the sum of one insurance policy, in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars. The balance of my estate, both property and financial assets, all bank accounts, investments and personal possessions, anything else not named herein, I bequeath to my granddaughter, Marissa Jayne Featherstone.”
Vance heard a buzzing in his head. He froze, the words that the old codger of a lawyer had just read echoing inside his brain as if they didn’t mean anything—until, like the pop of a balloon, they did.
“Granddaughter? Granddaughter? My great-aunt, Amanda Featherstone, didn’t have a granddaughter! I’m her sole heir. What kind of bullshit move are you pulling here, old man?”
Vance narrowed his gaze and looked at the only person in the room he hadn’t recognized. Spiked-hair girl had to be in her late twenties. Her newfangled hairstyle looked messy, as if the owner of that mop of hair hadn’t bothered with a comb or brush that day.
For all he knew, she hadn’t.
“Y
ou?” He pointed his finger right at her and let her see his venom.
She looked down her nose at him then turned her attention back to her notes. When she spoke, it seemed to be to the room at large. “I’m not Marissa Jayne Featherstone, no.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Vance, there is no ‘bullshit move,’ as you term it, and there is indeed a granddaughter. Ms. Bixby, who is working on behalf of the estate, provided my client with definitive proof of that about two months ago. Of course, Mrs. Featherstone immediately rewrote her will to reflect this new information.”
“Why was I not informed of this? I should have been told! I have rights!” He’d heard the bequest he’d been left—a measly half a million dollars. He’d assumed when the lawyer mentioned an insurance policy that the bulk of the estate would also be left to him.
Damn it to hell, I have to have that five mil! He noticed the smirk on the face of Mrs. Novak, Amanda’s long-time housekeeper. One of the things he’d been looking forward to when he moved into the Featherstone mansion was firing that old biddy. She’d never treated him with the respect that was his due.
“Where is this so-called granddaughter? If she’s to inherit, she has to be here at the reading of the will!”
Vance didn’t like being looked at the way Mathers looked at him—as if he was stupid. “A person’s presence at the reading of a will in which they are a named beneficiary is not mandatory, just customary. As to where Miss Featherstone is at the moment, that is none of your concern.” The lawyer closed the file. “The reading of the last will and testament of Amanda Pearl Featherstone is concluded. You’ll all receive checks within the next couple of weeks, as soon as probate is complete. Matilda will now give each of you a copy of the document, for your records.”
The ferret-faced lawyer signaled to his assistant, a woman who looked like she sucked lemons for a living. Douglas Vance looked at the folder he was handed then shot knives at Mathers. “I think I’ll take this to my lawyer, old man. I don’t believe this bullshit. I’ll see you in court.”
“As you wish. Be sure your lawyer reads the fine print, first. Otherwise you might find yourself with nothing left to remember your aunt by, except a rather hefty legal bill.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
The red-haired bitch got to her feet. She looked at him, and dismissed him, in only a few seconds.
The lawyer also stood. “Mrs. Featherstone took precautions when she had her will re-written. If you contest it, you will lose even the half-million dollars you’ve been given.”
Doug Vance surged to his feet. A searing hatred filled him—for his great-aunt, and this lawyer, the spiky-haired bimbo who was sneering at him, and his so-called new cousin, however many times removed she may be.
Removed. Now there’s a thought. She’d be young. Yeah, there’s a thought indeed. Vance would take this to his lawyer, and then he’d hunker down and do some serious thinking. It occurred to him that, after the deaths of his cousin Mandy, Amanda’s daughter and the bad seed who’d run away more than twenty years before and drowned herself in the drug culture, and then his great-uncle Simon, he had been Amanda Featherstone’s only living heir for the last twenty years.
Douglas Vance knew what he had to do. He needed to see what he could do about becoming her only living heir again.
* * * *
“Is this a family party or something?” Jenny asked that as soon as Ari released her from her usual greeting—a big hug that always made her feel good. She’d often thought, since she’d met her, that Ari was exactly the way she’d always imagined a sister would be.
Jenny knew Ari felt the same way about her.
“No, it’s supper. You know we often have a lot of people here for supper.” Ari’s gamin grin always slayed Jenny and muted a multitude of questions.
Jenny knew Ari’s story and was amazed by the warm and loving woman her friend had become in spite of the horrible trauma she’d endured at such a young age.
Two of the things that bound them together had to do with childhood and birth. They had each been born as only children to their mothers. Ari had a stepbrother named Jeremy Bishop, but they hadn’t grown up together and had only become friends after Ari had moved to Lusty.
The second connection was tragedy. Jenny’s birth mother had been struck and killed crossing a street when Jenny had been an infant, only weeks old. The young woman had been pushing Jenny in a stroller at the time. According to her adoptive parents, it had been the hand of God that had spared her from the same fate.
Ari had been sexually abused by her stepfather, a man currently in prison, and betrayed by her own mother. She’d fled to live on the streets at the age when most girls are still playing with dolls.
“Hey, Tinker Bell, are you going to let Jenny come all the way inside the house?” Jackson’s question made them both laugh.
“Of course. We were just saying hi.”
Jenny stepped in and closed the door behind her. Then Ari slipped her arm through hers, and that was how they walked into the living room.
It certainly looked like a family gathering, but the only two people Jenny really noticed were Parker and Dale Benedict. Sitting in chairs with an empty chair between them on the right side of the love seat, the two men looked up and smiled. The small sofa held Jesse, Barry, Shar, and baby Patrick. Those two new Benedicts drew her gaze as if she was metal filings and they were magnets.
The Benedict men, every last one of them, were too sexy looking for their own good, and these two Montanans were no different. Parker’s light brown hair, fairly short, but not brutally so, looked soft enough to comb her fingers through. His face and those kissable lips—somehow just looking at them made her girl parts cheer. But it was his eyes that captivated her. His warm brown eyes beckoned, offering her a place to curl up and rest.
Dale was just as Benedict-yummy. His blond hair nearly brushed his shoulders, and his sweet almost-baby face made her fingers itch to cup it, to caress his cheeks and kiss those sweet, smiling lips. His brown eyes held a depth of humor, as if he was just waiting for the chance to share the fun, or a laugh.
Since she’d met Parker and Dale last night at the roadhouse, she hadn’t been able to get them off her mind. This morning, she’d cleaned her entire apartment, done her laundry, put on an exercise video, and called her folks.
That should have been enough to move those two just-met Benedicts off of her mental front burner, shoving them into the corner labeled “trivia.”
But, no, there they’d stayed, front and center, and right now it felt as if it had only been moments since they’d sent her those sly, how-about-it-baby smiles, and said good-night.
Belatedly she realized she hadn’t said hello to anyone, that she’d been standing and staring for what felt like forever. Oh, God, I hope I’m not drooling. She just barely resisted the urge to brush her chin with her fingers and find out.
Jenny pasted on a smile and met each person’s eyes in turn, nodding. Cord was there, of course, along with Addison and her husbands, Mike and Terry who sat on one of the sofas. Jackson settled himself down beside Cord on the other, leaving room for his wife between them, and Ari’s other in-laws were on that love seat.
Jenny heard a snicker and shot a narrow-eyed look at Shar. The woman appeared innocent, but that was probably a ruse. Being a psychologist and all, Shar could do innocent like nobody’s business.
“Grab a seat,” Ari said. “I’ll get you some tea.”
Grab a seat? There were only two seats available—one between Ari’s husbands and one between them.
Jenny felt all eyes on her, so she did the only thing she could do. Under the heading of “fake it ’til you make it,” she walked, nonchalant, across the room and sat down between Parker and Dale Benedict.
Addison, Mike, and Terry had nodded and said hello, as had Cord. It wasn’t until she’d sat between them, however, that she realized neither of the Montanans had said a word.
Parker, on her left, half
turned toward her in his chair. “Hello, Jenny. It’s nice to see you again.”
Dale, on her other side, executed the same move. “Hey, Jenny. Good to see you.”
“Hi. Nice to see you both, too.” The only thing that wasn’t nice, at the moment, was the amount of heat she could feel in her cheeks.
Ari came back into the room, doing a poor job of hiding her amusement, and handed her a glass of tea.
“Supper’s going to be another twenty minutes, so we have time for an update.”
“Update?” Jenny had a pretty good idea what they were going to be talking about. She looked over at Ari and her husbands, and she knew they read the question in her eyes.
Jackson waved his hand. “You’re family,” he said. His words had been off-hand and casual, but the look in his eyes was not.
Ari beamed, and Cord nodded, his way of confirming what his brother had said.
Jenny felt her smile bloom. She’d never been a social butterfly. She’d spent her adult life mostly keeping to herself. It had always been her nature to be focused on what needed doing and to fade into the background. Jackson’s words were the nicest thing anyone had said to her in a very long time.
“We spoke to dad on the phone this morning,” Cord said. “He told us the fallout has been equally bad for Liz as it has been for Norah. There’ve been some victim advocacy groups in the area that have been very vocal on social media about the damage those two women have done.”
“Any woman who’s ever been molested would be furious. Cry-wolf claims just diminish the value of speaking up,” Addison said. “When some women lie, the result is that other women—women who are speaking the truth—are not believed.”
Jenny understood Ari wouldn’t say anything. She’d spoken up a few days ago at the roadhouse. But she didn’t know these new Benedict cousins that well. She wouldn’t feel free to speak out. So, Jenny did it for her. “I agree. Especially with all that’s been in the headlines lately?” Jenny shook her head. “Social media has changed everything. It’s put everyone on a stage, in a way—and on notice.”
Love Under Two Montanans Page 4
