Love Under Two Detectives

by Cara Covington

  Knock it off, Mary. No romance for you. Remember? Live life neat. No attachments, no gooey emotions.

  Oh, face it. You’re just pissed that they seemed to be doing a better job than you earlier, pretending that kiss had never happened.

  She ruthlessly derailed that thought train. She needed to stay in the moment, just in case someone threw her a curve ball. Her secret was out, known to at least one person at this table, and that meant anything could happen.

  Along with roasted chicken and baked ham, there was succotash, a rice casserole, and thank you, Lord, creamy mashed potatoes. She’d been certain that the topic of her recent past would have been passed around as well. But as the meal progressed, she might as well have been invisible for all the attention her cousins paid her.

  Slowly, her crazy-mindedness lifted and reality settled back inside her brain.

  I should have known better.

  She should have known better. None of her male cousins—Kendall, Benedict, or Jessop—knew of her career. Neither, as a matter of fact, did any of the female cousins—the wives of her male cousins. Her brother and his wife didn’t know. And her Aunt Samantha would never, ever, betray her to them.

  Grandma Kate and Aunt Samantha told me that I was the one who had to speak up—and the one I had to speak to was Adam. She knew they were right. Guilt began to swirl in her gut. Maybe there’d be a chance to do that after supper.

  Or maybe waiting until tomorrow would be best. Yes, that was what she’d do. Tomorrow, she’d go to the sheriff’s office and, by so doing, make her revelations a matter of police, and not family, business.

  “I have an announcement to make.” Jake Kendall looked around the table.

  With the rest of the family, Mary gave him her attention.

  “Y’all know that I’ve been in daily contact with Christopher.”

  He referred to their cousin Chris, back in New York, whose wife, Diane, had died a few months ago from cancer.

  “He’s been having a hard time and mentioned that he was thinking of leaving the area. Well, as you know, the practice here has been expanding, and since none of my birth brothers saw fit to follow in our wonderful mother’s or virile fathers’ and grandfathers’ illustrious footsteps and become lawyers, I’ve invited him to come here.”

  Christopher was a lawyer, the only one in the family back in New York to have chosen that profession.

  Jake paused, Mary guessed, to let the very sharp barb he’d just thrown with surgical precision at his brothers sink in. “We’ll be hanging a new shingle, Kendall Partners, on the building here in town. Depending on how things go, we may even re-open a satellite office in Houston. Chris has accepted, and he’ll arrive either Friday or Saturday.”

  Samantha Kendall actually clapped. “Oh, that’s wonderful news! I trust you’ve figured out where he’ll live?”

  Jake nodded. “He wanted one of the apartments.”

  Samantha said nothing, just tilted her head to the side and waited.

  “But I told him they were full up and wouldn’t have suited him in any event. There’s that smaller Victorian-style house about four doors down from the office. I sent him a picture of the outside. I also happened to mention to him that it was already furnished.”

  “Friday, you said?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Or Saturday.”

  Aunt Samantha grinned. “Get me the key to the place so I can go and take a look. Then, my dear…”

  “Yes, Mother. I’m sure there are a few of the cousins who’d be glad to pitch in.”

  “Pitch in with what?” Mary asked.

  “Oh!” Samantha Kendall looked around the table. Mary followed her gaze and understood she took a moment to focus not only on her but also on the two cops from Waco sitting kitty-corner across from her.

  “The house is actually empty. All the houses in town here, not currently occupied, are. The apartments are all furnished, but not the houses.”

  “Are there a lot of those?” Anthony asked. “Empty houses?”

  “Well,” Samantha said, “there are a few. There’s also a large warehouse just past the fitness facility and gun range to the northeast of town. The place has everything one would need to furnish a home. So, in the next couple of days, I’ll head there, pick out some nice furniture and things, so the house can be ready for Christopher when he arrives.”

  “Did you do that for me?” Mary asked.

  Samantha grinned and then nodded. “I did, indeed.”

  “Well, then, I think, if you wouldn’t mind the help, I would like to pitch in and return the favor.”

  “I’m in,” said Ginny.

  “Me, too.” Tamara rubbed her hands together. “Tracy?”

  “Oh, you bet. Mary, just wait till you get a load of the place!”

  “Oh, my dears, we are going to have such fun!” Mary had the sense that Samantha was very happy about the upcoming project. And of course, if Aunt Samantha was happy, so were all her men folk, chosen and born.

  “And anyone else who’s available to pitch in, we generally just haul what Mother tags and put it all where she tells us.” Morgan Kendall toasted his mother with his wine glass as he said that. “So any with pickup trucks are welcome to help haul.”

  “My darling.” Preston picked up his wife’s hand and kissed it. “I can’t decide if what appeals to you the most about these little projects is the opportunity to redecorate or the opportunity to boss the men around.”

  “Sweetheart, you should know me well enough by now to understand that it’s most definitely both.”

  That brought a chuckle from everyone at the table. Mary had one clear moment of pure insight, and she held it close.

  When she grew up, she wanted to be just like her Aunt Samantha.

  Chapter Three

  “You didn’t need to walk me home, you know.” Mary tried not to let on how annoyed she was with herself. The time to have said that, of course, would have been when Anthony and Toby made that offer a few minutes earlier, right in front of Aunt Samantha.

  Not now, when they were almost at her door.

  “We know,” Anthony said. “But it gives us huge points with Aunt Samantha. Did you see her smile when we offered?”

  His grin was the most playful one Mary had seen on him in the four weeks she’d known the man. She had the sense that he carried his responsibility with him as a demanding mantle, twenty-four, seven.

  As for Toby, there was something about him that set all her senses on alert. She perceived a shadow on him, or maybe in him. He was damn good at compartmentalizing. But she felt as if he was hiding something, from her and maybe even from himself.

  And damned if they weren’t both pretending those kisses had never happened!

  “The word from some of your New York cousins is that you’re a perennial student,” Toby said. “But Aunt Samantha respects you. So…I don’t think you’re a student at all. Or rather, that isn’t your main thing.”

  They reached her little house, and she nodded to it.

  “Wow, this is yours?” Anthony laughed.

  “You’re laughing.” Mary could be counted on to state the obvious from time to time. It was one of her many little personal “tics.”

  “Only because it’s cute, and not what I would picture you in. You’re a woman not to be underestimated, I think.” Anthony nodded once, as if that motion made his statement incontrovertible.

  “I can see sharp lines, a minimalist style, nothing pretentious,” Toby said. “White and chrome with the barest hint of color.”

  “You just described my former apartment in New York City.” In fact, her apartment had been so minimalist it was just a stroke of pure shit luck that that little metal figurine—the Thornbury Award that she’d received in London in April of last year for excellence in mystery writing—had been on that small end table, within her desperately grasping reach just when she’d needed it .

  Mary tilted her head to the side as she considered Anthony Corbett. “And clearly, you don
’t think I’m a perennial student, either.”

  “A sad but true fact,” Anthony said. “I long ago recognized one of the great truths of life. Family either sees us clear as crystal—or not at all. In your case, I’d say that for your male cousins, at least, it’s the latter.”

  “I’ve got a Keurig,” Mary said. “And plenty of coffee pods. Cream and sugar too, if you’re so inclined. Would you like to come in for a few minutes?”

  The two men looked at each other, and just that action on their part was like a smack on the side of the head. Until that moment, she hadn’t truly understood the situation she was in here and now.

  You’ve got about two seconds to rescind that invitation. She considered it. But then both men turned and looked at her.

  Their gazes, warm and inviting, drew her in. It felt as if, as she stood by the bottom of the three steps leading to her porch, she was actually being absorbed into…. something.

  And she realized, between one breath and the next, that it was already too late to rescind any invitations—either the spoken one she’d just given or the tacit one that had been given when this pair of too damn irresistible men had offered to walk her home and she’d accepted.

  As she’d fled the community center the night before, it had already been too late to change course, despite Toby’s spoken proviso that she could.

  Well, yes, technically she could, but in reality, she knew it would never happen.

  “Thank God it’s not instant coffee you’re offering,” Anthony said.

  “No kidding, brother.” Toby gave her a cheeky grin. “Instant would have been a deal breaker.”

  Mary blinked. “Um, we don’t have a deal.”

  “Sure, we do, cupcake.” Anthony reached out and stroked the side of her face.

  “You’re just a little behind in catching up is all.” Toby stepped closer, so close his aroma permeated all her senses. She met his gaze and felt something that had never, in her entire life, been her experience. She felt sexually aroused and yet deeply cosseted at the same time.

  She’d never believed those two feelings could coexist in the same moment—or hell, even in the same relationship. Apparently, she’d been mistaken.

  “We won’t bite, New York,” Toby said. “Let us in and give us a chance.”

  “Well, when you put it that way.” Mary had gotten up close and personal with fear over the last several months. Maybe if she hadn’t, she’d be a bit more intimidated in the moment than she was.

  But there was nothing about these two police detectives to engender fear within her. And while she had not had romance or sex in mind when she’d sought out Lusty, she couldn’t say that she was against either of those two things, either.

  That’s not what you were thinking earlier.

  I wasn’t thinking earlier, I was reacting.

  And you’re not, now?

  “Let us know when you’re finished arguing with yourself, cupcake.”

  “Is it going to be a long one, New York? Because we can, you know, go in, get started on making those coffees for us.”

  Mary scowled at Toby. “I just figured something out. You’re a smartass, Wyoming.”

  “You can’t convince either one of us that was the subject of your self-dueling,” Anthony said. “Because Wyoming, as you and most of the cops on the WPD call him, is the most obvious smartass any of us have ever met.”

  “You know what, copper? I don’t think I’ll bother trying to convince the two of you of a single thing.” And that was her bottom line. She didn’t feel she had to be her own advocate with these two men. She felt aroused, and cosseted, yes. But she also felt incredibly free to be herself. And that, more than anything, put a smile on her face as she unlocked her front door and invited Anthony Corbett and Toby Kendall into her home.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” Toby said.

  His comment prompted her to look around her own living space, to try to see it from his eyes. This was a single-story house, which suited her just fine. The layout was simple. The front door opened into the living room, which in effect took up the front third of the house. Then there was a short hall to a bathroom—well, powder room, really, as it had only a sink and toilet—and beyond that, the kitchen. The back door was actually the side door, as it opened onto a deck that ran down the right side house as you looked at it from the street and then, rather than ending, extended across the back and half way up the other side.

  One more short hall, which also had a little nook that held her washer and dryer, ended at another door. A bit larger than the living room, the bedroom took the entire back of the house. It was huge, as was the bed within it. There was a master bathroom attached, which held a large tub with Jacuzzi jets and a shower that she had no doubt was big enough for three.

  The door to her bedroom currently stood closed of course—she kept it closed out of a habit formed as a young girl with too many brothers and cousins in the house. There could be a total of eight Y-chromosome carriers at any given time in her house. She was no longer a girl battling cousins and brothers, but Mary wasn’t altogether ready for these two men to see that part of her private space quite yet.

  She brought her mind back to the living room. She had a few photographs on display. One was of her parents, taken on the night of their fortieth wedding anniversary. She had one of just her and her parents, taken many years before at her high school graduation. There was one with her parents and her two brothers, Norm and John. And the final one, taken before Will and Norm had come to Texas, showing three full families of Kendalls—the Kendalls of New York.

  Mary had only a few other items on display in the living room. One of them was, of course, her Thornbury Award. How could she not absolutely cherish an item that she credited with saving her life? Plus, it was the most prestigious award she’d ever received.

  And it was the only clue in this part of her house as to her “alter ego.”

  She blinked when she realized that, as adamant as she’d been about keeping her career a secret, all anyone ever had to do was to go over and pick up that award and read the inscription to know.

  Well, if they do, and they ask, I’ll answer honestly.

  Mary cocked her head at Toby, recalled his single sentence, as well as the conversation that had taken place earlier at the supper table, and laughed. “You mean you like what my aunt has done with the place.”

  Toby’s grin widened and was, in her estimation, totally unrepentant.

  “Nope, New York. You. Because, after all, you’re the one who lives here.”

  “A smartass and slick, too…and you don’t even know my brother and cousin all that well.”

  “There’s a story there,” Anthony said.

  “Oh, copper, there’s a story everywhere.”

  She headed to her kitchen to make the coffee. I’ll let them have those two clues and see what they can come up with.

  * * * *

  Toby let Mary’s words settle on his mind. He took a moment to look around the neat and tidy living room. He doubted she spent much time in this room, because it looked untouched. But that didn’t mean there weren’t clues for him to find to answer the burning question in his mind. Who is Mary Kendall?

  It was beyond strange that the first woman to grab his interest in…well, in forever had the same last name as he. Of course, the familial connection between them at this point really was in name only. His great-great-grandfather and her great-great-grandfather had been brothers. Five generations was too big a stretch to worry about, genetics-wise.

  Toby admired the photographs Mary had on display. Despite the jabs and teasing he’d noticed between the New York cousins in the time he’d been in Lusty, Mary clearly held family as important.

  They were the only photos on display. No best friends. No former lovers. He liked that she held family in high regard and felt a bit sad there were no others in her life worthy of photographic commemoration.

  A shelf designed to hold knickknacks was sp
arsely populated. On one end, a wizened old wizard, his hands gnarled with age, held an orb and a scepter. On the other end, a dragon. Toby didn’t recall the Wizard Art craze of years past all that well, but his mother had definitely been a fan.

  Between those two pieces stood a castle—perhaps the castle wherein the fair maid awaited rescue? If true, that would be a real anomaly.

  The image of that middle piece triggered a memory, and for a long moment he stared at it and let his mind figure it out. No, not a castle. A…hall. He’d seen that image before. His former partner had been an avid reader of mysteries, English mysteries at that. And that hall had featured prominently on some of his book covers. The author had a name that at first glance Toby had thought had to be some kind of a joke. His mind pulled that data out of storage. The book series had been Thornbury Hall Mysteries, and the author’s name was B. Reel.

  Pleased he’d remembered all that, he stepped closer and only then noticed there was an inscription on the piece. He read it in seconds.

  “Hey, Wyoming, are you co…um, going to join us?”

  Toby laughed because she’d almost said “coming.” He turned on his heel and followed her voice and the scent of coffee. She met his gaze the instant he entered the kitchen. One instant of her being off guard and he read a lot of emotions swirling within her.

  Sweet Mary thinks entirely too much. Hopefully, he and his best friend would be able to do something about that little thing, and soon.

  Anthony looked comfortable, leaning back against the counter. The gurgling sound of the coffee being spit from the machine into a cup seemed an apt bit of background music.

  “You figured it out,” Anthony said.

  “I think I have, actually.” He grinned at his partner. He’d never have believed that at his age he could have a “best friend.” He’d never before experienced that sense of simpatico with another man. But as soon as he met Anthony Corbett, he knew he’d found another brother—and one that was closer to him than any who’d been born that way.