Love Under Two Mavericks

by Cara Covington

  He picked up her panties and didn’t ask. He just helped her into them. She watched his concentration as he helped her into her tee shirt then slid her shorts up. Something about the careful and patient way he had of tending to her just got to her.

  Unable to resist, she reached out and cupped his cheek with her right hand. He jerked his head up and met her gaze. It was a moment she’d remember for the rest of her life.

  So that’s what the authors mean. She felt it then, a slam to the gut—and to the heart. One heartbeat, and she was the same old Michaela. And in the next, her world had shifted. In a flash, a breath, she understood so, so much.

  And when she took just a fragment of a moment to examine her feelings, she understood it hadn’t actually happened in this time and at this place, but rather, here and now was when she finally became aware of what had already, without her consent or her help, occurred when she wasn’t paying attention.

  Michaela Powell had fallen in love with Lewis and Randy Benedict. And a part of her she’d never heard from before echoed a sure certainty to her heart that this love would be forever. They would be forever.

  “Baby girl?”

  The urge to say it out loud was strong, but her inner caution, that creature she didn’t understand but had learned over the years to heed, sputtered its objections. So she gave him other words, words that were just as honest and true.

  “Thank you for not letting me chase you away. Thank you for helping me now.”

  “I don’t think we were ever going to be successful, any of us, avoiding this. And you’re welcome.” He stretched up and captured her mouth. His flavor sank into her, arousing her, comforting her—grounding her. She’d never known a kiss could arouse and soothe at the same time.

  He ended the kiss. “Let’s go eat, baby. We all need to keep up our strength.”

  He wore such a cocky grin that she laughed. She got to her feet, and when he held out his hand, she gave him hers.

  The scent of coffee reached her first. She loved coffee but never so much as that first cup in the morning. They left the short hall where the downstairs bedrooms and bathroom were located and entered the main living area. Michaela looked to the right, where the dining table sat, and could only stare. Randy had set the table, even having unearthed her place mats. There were no more wildflowers blooming outside, or she’d bet there’d have been a vase of them there. So instead, he’d found the small pottery knickknack on the third shelf of the china cabinet, a vase with porcelain roses.

  Seeing it at the center of the table made her smile. The scent of bacon and sausage and toast did the same thing to her tummy that the aroma of chicken soup had done the night before.

  “That must have been some serious shopping you did yesterday.” She tugged, and Lewis released her hand. She walked right over to Randy who had just brought some plates of food in from the kitchen area and set them down.

  He drew her in, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her as if it was their first kiss in days, instead of just minutes.

  His flavor became hers, and his scent, his heat permeated every inch of her body, flowing through every vein and igniting every nerve ending. So good. Time stopped, but this kiss just went on.

  “Better than bacon.”

  His one-liner when he broke their kiss pulled a bark of laughter from her. “That must be my superpower,” she quipped.

  “You do have one, sweet thing, but that’s not it.” Lewis held her chair—at the head of the table—and then sat down on her left. There was a lot of food on the table. Bacon, yes, and sausages, along with scrambled eggs that had some cheese in them, and, of course, toast. There was also something she wasn’t used to seeing on her table—a stack of pancakes. Michaela only hoped she’d be able to eat more than she had in the middle of the night.

  “This all looks so good.”

  “I hope you like it. But, Miss Texas, I didn’t use any hot sauce in anything.”

  “I’m not a huge fan of hot sauce, especially not for breakfast. A lot of folks around here like it in their eggs, but not me.”

  “That’s a relief,” Lewis said.

  They passed around the platters, and Michaela put what she thought were healthy portions on her plate. The guys, of course, took much more.

  “The food is different here,” Randy said. “We don’t mind a bit of spicy now and again.”

  “What are the main differences? Between Montana and Texas, food-wise?”

  “We eat a lot of potatoes back home,” Lewis said. “Randy’s pancakes are good, but my hash brown potatoes make a good breakfast dish, too. I shred them and put some onion in for extra flavor.”

  “I bet you didn’t think to get some potatoes at the store in Lusty,” she said to Randy.

  “You’re right, I didn’t,” he agreed. “As to other differences? We have spicy food in Billings. But Tex-Mex is only served at a few specialized restaurants. There are things here I’ve tasted for the first time I’d never heard of.”

  “I’ve noticed you seem to like Patrick’s taco soup—and his chili.”

  “He makes a mean chili,” Lewis said. “Best I’ve ever tasted—sorry, Randy.”

  Randy just chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, I like his better than mine, too, so no worries.”

  The food was good, and she did eat more than she had the night before. But she stopped even when her mouth wanted more, because she didn’t want to give herself any problems.

  There’d been codeine in those pain pills she’d taken the day before, and that could sometimes interfere with her regularity.

  Michaela might have thought there’d be food left over if she hadn’t seen the way men in general, and these two in particular, could pack away the grub. Lewis got up from the table and cleared away the dishes. Randy poured them all fresh cups of coffee.

  “How about, in a few minutes, you take us around the place and tell us what you have in mind for your renovations. Give us an idea what’s ahead for us.”

  She’d thought they’d head straight back to bed and nearly pouted. Wow, I have an inner nymphomaniac. How cool. Michaela brought her attention back to the moment. She looked up and understood that the guys must have known where her thoughts had wandered. That smug on their faces told her a tour and a chat would probably lead to more bedroom time, eventually.

  “I’d like that. I’m not doing this in any kind of hurry. My plan was to do what I could when I could and make a list and save up so I could hire professional help for what I couldn’t do.”

  “That was a good plan,” Randy said.

  “But if you’re serious about what you said yesterday at the clinic, about letting others help?” Lewis sat back and kept his gaze on her. “You’ll find you won’t have to actually hire anyone to do anything. The families are teeming with people who know how to do all sorts of things—plumbing, wiring, framing, flooring. We’re not that good at the wiring ourselves, but we’ve a good bit of experience with the rest.”

  “I never thought about that.” She shook her head. “I was so determined to stake my claim here I just kind of brushed everyone off.”

  “I bet you had a good reason for that, sweetheart.” Randy took her hand in his. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

  “Well, it was a reason, but I’m not certain how good it was.” She blew out a breath.

  “Did you know that when it came time to build the barns at Cord and Jackson’s place, the families held a good old-fashioned barn raising?” Lewis asked. “Actually, they had two of them. Jordan Alvarez-Kendall, who’s a contractor by trade, headed up the project.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “The point is, sweetheart, no one does big jobs around here alone. So the fact that so many people want to help you just means you’ve succeeded in staking that claim. As far as the families are concerned, you belong.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s hard for me to remember the way it was. I only have snippets, like still photographs in my he
ad.” Michaela stood at the first fence that divided the property. She hadn’t actually walked back to this line since she’d been home. Now that she had, she could see beyond this point that some remnants of fencing had been left to fall into disrepair over the years. Dad really did give up on this place years ago.

  “I remember Dad on that tractor, and I remember him and Daniel putting their backs into harvesting. Mom had that large vegetable garden, outside the back door.” She smiled. “Hard to forget that, as she had me working in it from the time that I was very young.” They had, in fact, passed an area that could have been that garden as they’d strolled out here. If that was the place it had been, and she was mostly sure that it was, it seemed a lot smaller than when she’d been on her hands and knees weeding it. “The view I’m looking at doesn’t quite match my memory.”

  “Can’t see how it could,” Randy said. “You’re an adult now. Your memories are those of a small child.”

  “Huh. You’re right. Though it still all looks like a lot of land to me.”

  “Well, it is,” Lewis said.

  Michaela had put on her boots, because the guys had said they’d wanted a tour of the entire place. She’d thought to begin with her plans for the house, but they argued to do the outdoor part before it got too hot. Of course, it was hot already, the mid-morning sun beating down as it only did, she felt certain, in Texas.

  “I don’t recall eating anything that Dad grew—well, except for when he’d send a cow to the butcher.” A memory came, and she pointed to an area ahead and to her left. “I remember seeing a few head of cattle over there, but I don’t have any idea how many he had. I wonder if there are any records hiding in boxes upstairs. Ranch records. I do remember we had a couple of horses, too. Mom and Daniel both loved to ride.”

  “And you?” Lewis turned and rested against the fence post. He looked at her in that way he had that told her she was his focus. “Do you love to ride?”

  “I do. Or, I did. When I went to college in Austin, I found a place just on the outskirts, a ranch that offered riding lessons to the public.” She blew out a breath. “Daniel had been going to teach me how to ride, the way Dad taught him, when he came back from his deployment. But he never came home.”

  “How old were you when he died?” Randy asked.

  “Fourteen. He’d been gone more than a year. Then, when we got the news…Daniel’s death changed everything.” Just recalling that awful day, when those two men in uniform knocked on the door, made her heart hurt a little. Her big brother had been her hero, but now, as an adult, she could see he’d been so much more. Daniel Powell had been the lynch pin for their entire family.

  The silence lasted only a moment. Lewis ran his hand down her back. “So you took lessons. I bet you thought of Daniel the entire time.”

  Lewis’s insight pleased her. “I did! It was kind of like—I don’t know, a kind of closure? I was doing something he’d meant to do with me, something I know in my heart he would have done, had he lived. He couldn’t be there, but I could. That sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Randy said.

  “It sounds sacred,” Lewis said. Then he nodded out toward the Legacy Tree. “How far does the property go beyond the tree?”

  “I think the tree is the half-way point. We could look at the details in the deed and maybe figure it out that way. There’s a stream not far from the tree, and then beyond the stream, I think there’s another fence line. Or there was.”

  “What were you thinking of, long term, with regard to ranching-slash-farming?”

  “I haven’t thought about it overmuch. I have a lot to learn, I know that. But I’m young. I just…it’s important to me that this isn’t the end, you know?”

  “There’s lots of time for you to review your options and decide.” Randy turned and nodded toward the barn. “I haven’t seen that yet. Any plans you make for ranching or farming is pretty much keyed to your facilities and the equipment you have.”

  “So I guess after the house comes the barn?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning for ranching or farming now.” Lewis tilted his head as he looked at her. “My guess, as to how your father operated, is that he owned a small herd. From what I’m learning of the area, that would be not much more than a couple dozen head. He likely planted and sold feed grasses and corn and probably sold a handful of cows each year. Depending on the quality of the beef, he could have made a living with those two crops and the cows for his source of income.”

  “So you don’t have to have a thousand acres, many hundreds-of-heads of cattle in order to make a living?”

  “Not unless your plan is to get rich,” Randy said.

  “What good does rich really do? What matters is the quality of the life you live, and that is not found in the material things you wrap around yourself.”

  “You’re a hell of a woman, Michaela Powell,” Lewis said. “A hell of a woman.”

  Michaela couldn’t recall ever feeling more complimented than she did just then.

  “Beyond that,” Randy said, “what determines the size of the herd is the amount of acreage you have. Depending on your pastures and the kind of vegetation will determine how many head per acre your land can support.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It’s not. We’ll ask around and have the answer for you within a day or two.”

  They toured the barn, which both men pronounced to appear to be sound. Both Benedicts’ eyes lit up as they took in her dad’s old tractor.

  “You’d want all the old straw out of here and to give the interior a thorough cleaning,” Lewis said. “You’ll also want to install a new fuel tank for the tractor. That involves hauling away the old one outside there.”

  Michaela tilted her head as she looked at him.

  He shrugged. “While you were sleeping yesterday, I took a quick look around on my own. I knocked on that tank outside. It sounded like it’s nearly half full. We’ll see if someone will buy it from you and cart it away. But all of those things combined wouldn’t take much time, work, or money. This is in really good shape.”

  “Was this tractor running recently?” Randy asked.

  “I have no idea. I do know where the key is,” Michaela said. “There’s a hook inside the back door, where, for all my life, the key for the tractor has hung when not in use.”

  “We can have someone look at it. It’s an older model, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless.” Lewis grinned.

  She trusted their word implicitly and gave a mental sigh of relief that not much would need to be done in here. She buried the nightmare visions she’d had of having to tear the barn down and start all over again.

  “The one thing I would suggest, for right now? Lewis and I would both feel more comfortable if you had a lock on here and locked it every night. You’re storing your tools here, and since there are no animals inside, locking it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “All right. How about we stop somewhere after seeing Doc Jessop and get what we need to do that?”

  “Good plan. Now…let’s go inside and you can tell us what you have in mind for your house.”

  Once inside, she kicked off her boots and took one moment to enjoy the slight cool coming from her bedroom window air conditioner. With her bedroom door open, a bit of coolness reached into the rest of the downstairs.

  “I live downstairs,” she said. “So I was going to see about making the bathroom bigger and maybe enlarging my bedroom, too.” She led them through the main room to the hallway.

  “The other bedroom is a larger space already,” Lewis said. Then he grinned. “Yes, I peeked.” He put his arms around her from behind. “Since you have a working bathroom upstairs that can be used during renovations, why not think about stripping down to the rafters, this side, here—the bathroom and the master bedroom—and then you could make a proper master suite that would be more than big enough.”

  “Big enough…for three?”


  “Well, now that you mention it,” Randy said.

  The idea was logical and something she should have thought about already. She’d let the specter of that room being her dad’s color her thinking.

  It would give them a master suite big enough for three or, if they weren’t together forever—if or when these men moved on—she would have a proper-sized bathroom to pamper herself with for the rest of her life.

  She looked beside her at Randy, and then she looked over her shoulder and up at Lewis. “That’s a good idea. Do you think Jordan might have some ideas how we could do that?”

  “You know what?” Lewis kissed the top of her head. “I just bet he does, and he’s got years of experience customizing houses to give them exactly what we want.”

  It wasn’t her imagination that the heat was growing between them—and she didn’t mean the temperature of the house, either. It hadn’t been all that long since Lewis had given her that wonderful climax, but she wanted more. Much, much more.

  “Then we should call him. Later.”

  “Later is perfect.”

  Michaela was searching for something clever to say, something that would get them where she wanted them all to be—back in the bedroom.

  “We’ve got about four and a half hours before it’s time to head to the clinic, with a stop for that lock and more condoms on the way back.”

  Michaela blinked. She’d forgotten about the condoms. She tilted her head to the side. “Do we need them? The condoms, I mean. We’ve all confessed we’re clean, and I really am on the pill. I wouldn’t lie about that.”

  “We know you wouldn’t, sweetheart,” Randy said. He stepped closer to her and ran his hand down her back. Just like that, she was horny.

  “You do know that some antibiotics can interfere with oral contraceptives, right? You seemed to last night, at any rate.” Lewis picked up her hand and kissed it.

  She knew her eyes had gone wide. She snapped her mouth shut, because she imagined she looked like a fish with that gaping maw in the front of her face like that.