Love Under Two Wildcatters (25 page)

Barnes’ response was another shotgun blast, this one through the wall to the left of the door.

“Damn it to hell, will you stop trying to kill my house!”

“You watch your mouth, missy, or maybe I’ll come in and kill you!”

Somehow, she thought that if he’d intended to do that, he would have done so already. He could have gotten into the house with his first shot if that had been his goal. Susan ran, crouched down, to the kitchen.

“Are you all right?” Bernice’s voice shook, not from fear, Susan knew, but from anger. “I didn’t want to yell out. I couldn’t call for help. My cell phone is in my purse, which is in the car.”

“So is mine. And the portable phone is upstairs.
Fuck
.”

“Susan! Such language!”

“Mom.” Susan rolled her eyes at being chastised for profanity under the circumstance.

“What are we going to do?” Bernice asked.

Susan reached up and opened her junk drawer. She felt around and then cursed.

“What are you looking for?”

“My Glock.”

“You keep your gun in the kitchen junk drawer?”

“Not always. I thought I might have put it there last week. But I guess I did put it away after all. Damn, damn, damn!”

“I’m gonna give you one minute to send those bastards out,” Barnes shouted. “Then I’m coming in!”

“Susan! We have to do something. I’m not willing to just hide in here and get shot like some sniveling coward!”

“Neither am I.” The only thing Susan could think of to use as a weapon was the shovel she had at the back door.

Another blast rocked the front of her house.

“Damn it, that’s it! Mom, insult him!”

Susan stood up and ran over to the back door.

“What are you going to do?”

Susan didn’t answer her. Instead, she said, “Mom, please, just do it!”

Susan opened the back door as quietly as she could and slipped out. Sure enough, her garden spade was leaning against the house, right where she’d left it. She hefted the long handled, round pointed tool and ran to the corner of the house. She peered quickly, saw Barnes wasn’t in sight, and then ran toward the front corner of the house.

“You see here, Mr. Barnes!” Bernice’s voice sounded strident from inside the house. “What kind of a Texan man are you, targeting women and children! Didn’t your daddy raise you any better than that?”

Susan grinned. She guessed her mother thought that was a high insult.

“You leave my daddy out of this! You hear me?” One more shot blasted her house. Damn it, she was going to have to do major repairs. On the other hand, the asshole should only have one round left. And so far, she hadn’t heard him pump the gun.

“Those bastards have got to be here! Damn it all to hell!”

“You watch your language, you poor excuse for a Texan man!”

Go, Mom
. Susan stifled the urge to giggle as she reached the edge of the house and peered around it.

“I am too a Texan man! You got no call to say otherwise!” Then Morton Barnes began to mumble and pace back and forth between his Cadillac and the house. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but she thought he might have been talking to the car.

Then, from inside the house, “If you were my son, why, I’d scrub your mouth out with soap!”

He’s nuttier than a fruitcake
. Unfortunately, he was a fruitcake with a shotgun that had at least one more round waiting to be fired.

“Now, you see here!” He turned back toward the house and raised his gun.

A car horn blared from the end of the driveway at the same instant that Susan rounded the corner, shovel raised high, and screamed for all she was worth as she charged toward him.

* * * *

Colt’s blood ran cold. He took in the scene in an instant—the white car and the man armed with a shotgun aimed directly at the house. He laid on the horn and nearly had a heart attack when he saw Susan tear around the corner of the house, shovel raised high over her head.

“Jesus Christ, woman!” Ryder shouted.

Morton didn’t drop the shotgun, neither did he fire it. He saw Susan and began to run away from her, around the back of his car, then toward the front of it. But he didn’t get into the vehicle. He just rounded the hood and seemed unable to decide if he was going to fire at the approaching car or the running woman.

Then he aimed the gun at Susan.

She’d followed Barnes around the rear of his car, but now, she hit the ground. Colt laid on the horn again, and Barnes swung the gun toward his Buick.

Susan rolled away from the Caddy. “Good girl.” Colt slowed his car just enough, then rear-ended the Cadillac, stomped on the brake, and jammed the gear shift into park.

The Cadillac rocked forward toward Barnes, who screamed, backpedaling out of the way. He still held the gun but didn’t raise it. Colt and Ryder had their doors open and were out of the car before it fully stopped. Ryder raced around the passenger side while Colt vaulted onto the trunk, ran up the car, over the roof, down the hood, and took a flying leap, feet first, kicking Morton Barnes in the head and shoulder.

Barnes crumpled in a heap on the ground, out cold.

The sound of a siren approached.

“I called Matt,” Caleb said. Then he and Jonathan ran toward the house. “Bernie!” both men shouted at the same time.

Colt looked down to make sure that Barnes was out for the count. Ryder kicked the shotgun out of the man’s reach.

“Thank God you got here. I was scared to death!” Susan ran up to him, and he scooped her into his arms, held her tight. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest he was amazed it didn’t come right out of him. Then he set her on her feet and held her at arm’s length.

“
You
were scared to death? God damn it, woman, the man had a shotgun and you were chasing him with a fucking shovel?
A fucking shovel
?” He shook her for good measure and didn’t even care that her mother had come out of the house, flanked by her fathers, to witness his tirade.

The siren stopped as Matthew Benedict and a man Colt didn’t know jumped out of the cruiser. Ryder stepped back from a still unconscious Barnes to come and stand beside Colt.

“I had to do something!” Susan stood toe to toe with him and shouted right back at him. God, he loved this woman. “That bastard was shooting up my house!” She pointed, and her next words came out almost as a whine. “Just look at all those holes!”

“Oh, right, smart move, woman. Much better he have a chance to put holes in you instead of your house!” Ryder yelled. “If you think the spanking we gave you for scaling that ladder to the roof was something, just you wait until we get you over our knees this time!”

“Don’t you understand? You could have been killed. Then who the hell would Ryder and I marry?” Colt shook her again for good measure.

“You want to marry me?”

Susan’s quiet question and her hopeful smile fizzled his anger, though he thought the fear would take a bit longer to go away.

Colt looked over at Ryder. “So much for setting the scene, pal,” Ryder said.

He turned his attention back to their woman. “Yeah, we want to marry you. If you’re willing to take on a couple of wildcatters.”

She tilted her head to the side, and her smile widened. “If I say yes, does that get me out of the spanking you have planned?”

“No.”

Colt grinned because he and Ryder said that at the same time.

“Good. Because, believe it or not, I want husbands who will look after me and give me hell when I do stupid things.” She looked over at her brother, who’d handcuffed Barnes and, with the other uniformed man, was hauling the groggy bastard to his feet. “And coming after him with a shovel was stupid.” Then she met Ryder’s gaze, and then Colt’s. “The answer is yes. Yes, I’ll take you both on. And consider myself lucky to be able to do so.”

Colt pulled her close, pulled her up, and laid his lips on hers. He sank into her, tasting her, claiming her. Then he eased back and passed her over to Ryder.

Colt smiled when Ryder kissed her, even as he knew that Susie got it wrong. He and Ryder were the lucky ones.

“Ahem.”

Colt blinked and turned to take in Susan’s parents and her brother, who were all smiling. The other man in uniform, Colt figured, was Lusty’s sheriff.

“That was a hell of a proposal,” the sheriff said. Then he shot Susan a level look. “That’s one cousin I won’t have to worry about anymore, I see.”

Caleb Benedict came up to them and clapped both him and Ryder on the back. “I don’t know what you two were worried about. Seems to me you know exactly how to be the husbands my daughter needs.”

Colt felt the stress he’d been carrying slide right off him. He met Ryder’s gaze and realized his best friend—his brother—felt the exact same way. They’d both been so terrified out of their wits by Susan’s reckless courage, they’d proposed without any further self-doubts.

Of course, it wouldn’t do to let their woman know that. Colt had a feeling that in the next fifty or sixty years he and Ryder were going to need every advantage they could get. Just as he knew they’d be blessed more than either of them had ever dreamed possible.

Chapter 21

Susan Benedict loved family parties, especially if they were impromptu ones.

Her best friend and sister-in-law, Kelsey, had closed her restaurant to regular business in order to accommodate the flood of Benedicts, Kendalls, and Jessops who descended there on the heels of the arrest of Morton Barnes and hearing that she’d gotten engaged.

Even Adam, who’d driven the prisoner to Waco where he’d handed him over to the Texas Rangers, was able to join the party.

He pulled a chair up across from Susan, turned it around to straddle it, and reached for a handful of taco chips.

“That was some adventure you had yourself this afternoon, cousin,” he said.

It had scared the hell out of her at the time, but already, the events seemed far away. Likely because she ended up engaged to be married to two of the manliest men she’d ever met.

“Very similar to the kind of adventure you had a few months back,” Matthew said to Kelsey.

Kelsey shrugged, and then, because Matthew was still staring at her, she leaned over and kissed him.

“In hindsight, I suppose what I did was a little brash,” Susan said.

“Only a
little
brash?” Ryder, sitting on her left, asked.

“You won’t be saying that tomorrow, darling, when you can’t sit down without a pillow.” Colt, sitting on her right, said the words softly, but everyone at the table heard them.

The men in her family all seemed to take an interest in the chips and dip and peanuts on the table, proving they were smarter than the average male.

Kelsey sent her a sly grin, and she didn’t need any help interpreting that.

Susan wasn’t worried about the impending promised punishment. She recalled what had happened the last time her men saw fit to haul her over their knees. She’d discovered a heady new turn-on that day and was certainly looking forward to experiencing the thrill of that particular brand of arousal again.

The door opened to admit the rest of Susan’s brothers. Alex and Josh each wore a worried expression until their gazes found Susan at the big round table. Susan wasn’t surprised to see them, as news in the Benedict family tended to travel very fast. Steven came in behind her youngest brothers, carrying Benny Rose, the five-year-old son of Kelsey’s newest waitress, Ginny.

Benny made a beeline for his mother, who’d just come away from the bar with a tray filled with drinks. Kelsey didn’t serve alcohol in her restaurant, so everyone was indulging in iced tea and soda.

“Mom, I got an A!” Benny proudly held a paper high. Ginny set her tray down on the round table in front of Susan.

“Let me have a look at that! My, my, Benny Rose. Very well done!”

Susan noticed that Ginny’s entire being lit up when her son was near. She knew the woman had been through hell. Now, she lived in Lusty, in Kelsey’s former apartment, and had been taking counseling to improve her self-esteem.