“Yes, I think so. We don’t have any photographs of any of them prior to their settling here, and founding Lusty with their wife and their friends Adam, Warren, and Amanda.”
“Let’s see what else is here,” Cord said.
They found a few more surprises—pictures of their grandfather Emerson as a very young man, including a three-generations family photo taken with Sarah, Caleb, and Joshua, who had clearly been senior citizens by that point.
“We’re going to age well,” Jackson said. He looked at Kate. “That’s good to know.”
Cord was impressed by the sheer volume of the historical photographs and artifacts. There had to be some damn good stories, he figured, between seeing the photo of a family Fourth of July picnic with guests Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, and that interesting-looking gold coin they had behind glass.
An older woman who Cord would have sworn was Mrs. Santa Claus came over to them. He was pretty certain they hadn’t met her before. She looked so much like that mythical lady he knew he’d have remembered her if they had.
“I’m so happy to finally meet you both!”
“This is Anna Jessop, our curator and the official historian of Lusty.”
“You’d be family,” Jackson said as he shook her hand.
“Oh, we’re all family here, after a fashion,” Mrs. Jessop said. Her grin was the sort that made you grin back even if you weren’t in the mood.
“We’ve a lot to learn,” Cord said, offering his hand when she reached for it.
“Any time you get to wondering about anything, you just stop in. I have a family tree in the office, and it will help to explain things to you a bit better.”
“Ever think of having a brochure printed up?” Jackson looked from Anna to Kate. “I mean, there must be some folks who’ve lived all their lives in town here, who are confused.”
“We did try,” Anna said. “But there were far too many members to fit on one brochure. Even one that’s legal sized and printed very small on both sides!”
The outside door opened, and Cord turned to see who’d come in. He recognized the man, of course. Jake Kendall was in charge of the Town Trust—Cord still wasn’t one hundred percent certain he knew what that meant—and had actually come out to Montana within days of his call to Grandma Kate, to help them figure out what they were going to do once they got to Lusty.
Their cousins, Chase and Brian Benedict, had opened up one of the ranches that hadn’t been worked for some time. Primarily interested in horse breeding, they’d also taken on a few dozen head of Texas Longhorn cattle.
Cord wasn’t familiar with the breed, and knew he had a lot to learn. But in some respects, cattle were cattle, and he had more than a passing familiarity with at least one bovine species.
Their cousins had welcomed them, and despite the fact they were a few years younger than he and Jackson, they all four were getting along just fine.
He and Jackson liked their cousins’ wife, Carrie, too.
There were a lot of ménage families living in Lusty, and that was something that Grandma Kate had never mentioned during any of her visits, either. He and his brother had known there were some, but never dreamed there would be as many as there were.
Of course, we never asked about that part of family history.
“I see Jake is here, so I’ll let y’all get down to business. You young men remember, you’re always welcome here.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Jessop,” Jackson said.
“Oh, you can call me Aunt Anna. Everyone in Lusty does…well, everyone except my boys and their beautiful new fiancé, Carol.”
She beamed—that was the only word for it—at all of them, and then headed off, probably to her office.
“There’s a meeting room here, just in the back,” Jake said. “I thought it would be more private for us to discuss business there.”
“Lead on,” Jackson said. He shot Cord a look.
Cord knew exactly what his brother was thinking. That had been fast. They’d mentioned to Jake, the same day they’d arrived, that as much as they were looking forward to helping Chase and Brian establish the bovine side of their business, they really hoped eventually to have a small ranch in the area themselves.
They knew that they could easily take a chunk of land back home in Montana. The only problem with that idea was the appearance of nepotism.
They wanted to invest their own money, and succeed on their own merits. Here, maybe for the next month or so, they might be recognized as “The Wonder Twins.” But because their team had not been a Texas team, they felt as if they would sooner, rather than later, slip to the back pages of the gossip columns.
There was one more reason, as well, that they wanted to settle down here. They really did want to find a woman to share between them, and they knew that living here, that dream might be easier to achieve.
Cord stepped into the meeting room and raised one eyebrow. The room could seat quite a few people.
“This is where we hold the meetings of the Town Trust.”
“Town Trust. Is that like a town council in Montana?”
“Yes, and no,” Jake said. Then he chuckled. “Sorry, I guess I’m just not used to talking to family members who don’t know the history.”
So he explained how the original six founders of Lusty wanted to set up a trust in perpetuity that would protect the town they were founding from outside interference. Land was the key. Because all the land was held in trust, no one would ever be able to buy into Lusty and eventually pass bylaws that would prevent the people who lived here from living here as they chose.
“Back in the day,” Kate said, “when Lusty was founded, towns had a great deal of autonomy, much more than they do now, unfortunately. They could pass laws regulating every activity within their jurisdiction. Of course in these modern times, that’s not the case,” she smiled. “But we’ve been lucky. We’ve pretty much stayed under the radar all these years.”
Cord met Jackson’s gaze. His brother lifted one eyebrow and gave him a half shrug. He turned back to Kate and Jake. “We were kind of hoping to have our own ranch here. But if no one can buy any land…”
He wondered what the two across the table from them had up their sleeves when Kate looked at Jake and then turned to them with the…well, the sneakiest little grin he’d ever seen on the woman.
“Well now, as it turns out, we can offer you a couple of options.”
* * * *
“You can almost understand what those young girls were all aflutter about last Saturday.”
Ari looked up from her lunch, not so much because Tasha’s words implied she was looking at something interesting, but because the sense of…of something that skittered down her back and her arms.
She didn’t know what to call it, and she sure as hell had no plans of telling anyone about it, but every time she’d had this sensation over the last week or so, there had been one common denominator.
Sure enough, those two hot-shot celebrities had deigned to bless Lusty Appetites with their presence.
The blond one scanned the dining room and spotted her within a couple of seconds. He sent her a wink, as if she were staring at him just like one of his groupies. She sneered back in response. Damned if the man didn’t grin, as if he thought she’d done something funny—or, God help her—cute.
The dark one just stared as if he could see right through her.
She turned her attention back to Tasha. “Actually, no I can’t. Well, except of course that they were giggling, impressionable, young girls. So, yeah, I guess when you consider the whole teen idol kind of infatuation mindset, I guess I can sort of see it, though it surprises me some they’d waste their youthful energy on a couple of dried-up has-been football players. Of course they’re probably happy as shit to be surrounded by adoring groupies everywhere they go.”
Tasha didn’t say anything, she just rested her chin on her right hand and gave her one of what Ari thought of as her gypsy looks—the sort she might get fro
m Madam Natasha at the country fair’s fortune-teller’s tent. “I’m thinking of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Can you guess which one?”
Ari scowled at her, knowing damn well which line her friend and coworker was thinking about. She wouldn’t address the implied criticism that she, Ari, was protesting too much. At least she thinks I’m a lady. But that wasn’t what she said. She said, “Have you ever noticed that there is only one letter difference between the word ‘friend’ and the word ‘fiend’?”
Tasha laughed, a light and fun kind of sound. It drew the attention of two men sitting a few tables away. Ari noticed the way both Gord Jessop and Clay Dorchester looked at Tasha.
I wonder if she knows she has a couple of admirers there. It might be good information to keep in reserve, just in case Ari needed to come up with a snappy bit of repartee.
“All right, I’ll pedal it back, just a little,” Tasha said. “But I do think you should cut the newly arrived Benedict brothers some slack.”
“And I think you’ve got matchmaking on the brain, lately,” Ari said. “Just because Carol has gotten herself engaged to those two paramedics, and Chloe is getting married this Saturday to her firemen does not mean that I am interested in the whole hearts and flowers and happy-ever-after routine.”
“If you say so.” Tasha’s cat-got-the-canary grin irked her just a little.
Ari picked up her sweet tea glass. “I do say so.” She looked down at the delicious beverage, and then set it back on the table. “Maybe there’s something in the water. I wonder if anyone’s ever had it tested.”
“I will only say one more thing on the subject of Cord and Jackson Benedict.” Tasha’s attention was caught as Gord and Clay got up from their table and headed over to pay for their lunch. The men smiled and nodded at them both, and then they stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. They chatted for just a moment on the sidewalk before Gord headed north, and Clay directed his footsteps south.
Ari couldn’t let the opportunity pass. She treated her friend to a laser-like stare, and when Tasha met her gaze, Ari raised both eyebrows in rapid succession.
“Oh, you’re funny. I’m way too old for such nonsense.” She’d waved her hand in a sign of dismissal. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes, the quarterbacks. I was just going to say one thing on the subject. They seemed really nice when I met them the other day. Not at all stuck up, like one might assume two popular sports figures might be. So maybe you ought not to paint them with colors they haven’t earned?”
Ari hadn’t meant to let Tasha’s gentle words of admonition stay with her the rest of the day. But they did. She didn’t like feeling that she was a mean or unfair woman. She never wanted to be either of those things, no matter what kind of hell she’d slogged through in her past. As she worked, her mind wandered over her life, and the months that she’d lived and worked here in Lusty. It was an odd skill, but one that Ari had discovered early on. She could think about stuff—complicated, diverse stuff—while still going through the routines of a day. She could even successfully take care of her clients and have reasonably intelligent conversations with them while her mind figured things out.
And so, as she left the spa for home later that day, Ari’s mind stumbled upon something quite startling.
Inside herself, where so much fear and anger and negativity had lived for so long, a sense of peace had sprouted up. She didn’t know when, and she really didn’t know why, and that sense was still small. But somehow, she’d come to feel safe here, in Lusty. Equally amazing to her, Lusty had become home in a way that no other place she’d lived ever had.
This epiphany stole her breath and locked her legs, so that she came to a standstill on the sidewalk on Main Street, right there in the middle of town, barely a block from the spa.
“You okay there, Miss Ari?”
Ari looked over and into the concerned gaze of Gord Jessop. He’d just stepped out of Darryl’s Duds, a shopping bag in his hand.
It didn’t seem the least bit odd to her that she would see him again just now after having seen him at lunch earlier in the day. Lusty was a small town, and really, the middle-aged man had become a familiar face to her—as had so many others who’d been born and raised in this odd little place.
Gord was known around Lusty as the man to call if something was broken down. He owned a garage outside the town proper. Recently, he’d taken on his cousin, Terence, USAF newly retired, as a partner. Terence worked part time with Gord and part time with his best friend, Carmichael Jones, who had an artist’s studio slash furniture-making shop about a mile south of Lusty.
Ari wanted to shake her head. She knew more people by sight and by name now than she had at any time in her life before. That should have filled her with alarm, but the opposite was actually the case.
Along with that fledgling sense of inner peace, she felt kind of…good.
“I’m fine, Mr. Jessop. How’re you this afternoon, sir?”
Gord took his cap off, something that he did whenever he would stop to talk to any of the town’s female residents. “Oh, I’m fine, Miss Ari. When are you going to start calling me Gord?”
Ari grinned. “Just as soon as you call me Ari, without the ‘Miss.’”
The man chuckled, and shook his head. He held up the bag in his hand. “Clay said I should get me a new shirt for Chloe’s Ceremony on Saturday. That man is a snazzy dresser, and I guess he’s right. There’re more than a few things in my closet that I’ve been meaning to toss, and haven’t.” He shrugged. “Never had reason to, before. But now, I think what I need to do is ‘update my image.’ I’ve decided that I’m going to ask Clay to help me do that—among other things.”
Clayton Dorchester was one of the town’s three new residents. Widowed just this past spring, he’d accepted the invitation of his maternal grandmother, Kate Benedict, and relocated to Lusty with his three children.
Apparently he and Gord Jessop had hit it off on one of Clay’s prior visits to town. They’d kept in touch over the years, and had become good friends. Since Clay had moved to town, they spent a fair bit of time in each other’s company. Ari thought of them as Lusty’s version of the Odd Couple, because Clay had a big city shine to him that no amount of dressing in ball cap, boots, and jeans could diminish. He’s probably a neatnik, too.
Ari nodded at Gord. “If that’s what you want to do, well then, you should go ahead and do it.”
“Yup. Life is short.” His brow creased. “That’s something Clay’s had to learn the hard way. Hell of a thing, Vicky dying so sudden, like she did. When I think of him, and those babies waking up that morning to find themselves without her—just breaks my heart.” Then he sighed. “I feel better now that he and those young’uns are here.” Gord smiled. “They call me ‘Uncle Gord.’ Isn’t that something?”
“It is something, yes.”
Gord nodded. “I see you’ve updated your image, too. Though I was kind of partial to the way you had your hair when you first came to town. That pink streak looked real pretty against the dark brown of the rest of your hair. But I like that shade of red on you, too. And that new cut. You’re as pretty as a picture, Miss Ari.”
Ari felt her face color. Not used to compliments, she always just felt stupid when anyone gave her one, although she was learning to be more accepting and, sometimes, even graceful. “Thank you.”
“You know, since you’re young, and new to town, you ought to have a good look at those two Benedict boys living out there with Brian and Chase and Carrie. They’re new to town, too, for all that they’re Benedicts. They might like to make a friend.”
Ari kept a straight face when she said. “Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I have seen them. Why, they walked right into Lusty Appetites today, just before you and Clay finished eating.”
Gord Jessop laughed. He shook his finger at her. “I do admire a good sense of humor. Well, if you’re all right, I’ll be going about my business, and letting you get about yours.”
“I’m fine. You ha
ve a good evening, Mr. Jessop.” Then, because she actually cared that she might have inadvertently hurt his feelings, she said, “Gord.”
His smile, simple and sweet, made her feel all warm and kind of soft inside.
This town has changed me and I don’t know if I like it. I used to be tough. I used to have walls and defenses and a big sign over my head that declared, “Don’t fucking mess with me.”
All true. Equally true was the fact that she used to feel really lonely and was never in much of a good mood.
Her reality was that she didn’t have any of those things any longer. Not like she used to. And while she was being all honest and Dr. Phil-ish with herself, she went ahead and admitted that the reason those two newly arrived Benedicts got her hackles up was that she was more than a little attracted to them. And to be even more perfectly honest, she really wouldn’t mind giving them a tumble, trying them on for size.
But that doesn’t mean I’m in the market for romance. She certainly wasn’t. All things considered, falling in love and settling down simply weren’t in the cards for her. Neither was staying in Lusty for the rest of her life. Sooner or later, she would have to leave.
She always had to leave.
As she walked home, she considered the recent changes within her. Sure, the agitation inside her had eased, and yes, Lusty felt like home when no place ever had before. But she also knew things could change in a New York minute.
They’d changed on her before, two years ago, back in Austin.
She’d let herself get comfortable, and then the past—in the form of her stepbrother—had appeared out of nowhere and frightened the bejeezus out of her, nearly catching up to her. She was here now, but she could also have to leave. If he ever found her again…
Ari swallowed against the unexpected ache in her throat that thought caused. She shook her head. No more depressing thoughts.
For now, at least, she would enjoy this sense of belonging.
And what about those two very fine-looking quarterbacks?
Ari was under no illusions about herself, or her worth. She was the kind of girl a man might tumble, but sure as hell not one he would keep and build a future with.
Love Under Two Quarterbacks [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 2
