Love Under Two Cowboys (3 page)

To Carrie their tone sounded reverent. She marveled that just that simply, the three adults who stood there stepped forward, and seemed as one. The men each held one of Ginny’s hands. Benny stood in front of his mother, close enough to lean on her, but clearly included.

Adam brought Ginny’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “My darling Ginny, I was a man who always saw things only in black and white. I was rigid in my thinking, and although I always did my duty, in truth, there was very little joy in my life. And then I met you. You brought the color, and the joy—so much more joy than I could ever have truly hoped for, or I can ever truly deserve. I love you, my sweet Ginny, and I will until the day I die. I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving you and taking care of you. And I promise to turn to you when I need someone to lean on, too.” Then he looked down at the young boy gazing up at him. It seemed he so naturally squatted, put himself on eye level with the child. “Benjamin Joseph Rose, I love you with all my heart. I promise to be a good father to you. You’ll always be able to count on me to be there for you.”

Adam straightened and then met Jake’s gaze. “Jake, as kids we were inseparable. You’re my closest brother, my best friend, and it pleases me more than I can say that you’re my partner in caring for our wife and our son, and however many more children we add to our family. We’ve been best friends all our lives, and there’s not another man I could count on more, and not another I’d want at my side.”

Carrie was certain everyone standing as close as she was could see the emotion on their faces. Even Benny seemed to understand the solemnity of the moment, for his gaze rested on Adam. When Jake began to speak, the little guy gave him his full attention.

Jake raised Ginny’s other hand to his lips and kissed it. “Ginny, I never truly believed I would ever find you. And, finding you, I didn’t know if I could win your heart. You, and Benny, are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t have words good enough to tell you how much I love you. I’ll be a good husband to you, and a good father to Benny, and the children we have together.” Then he looked down at Benny and, as his brother had done, got down to his eye level. “I love you, Benjamin, and I’m
so
proud to call you my son. I’ll be here for you, always.”

When he stood, he looked at Adam. “You became my favorite brother the day you dumped Morgan in the mud for picking on me.”

That got a chuckle out of almost everyone and raised his mother’s eyebrow. Samantha shot Morgan what could only be called an “annoyed mother” look. Morgan, of course, grinned unrepentantly.

“I’ve traveled some, and seen what lies beyond the horizon, for until Ginny came into our lives, I was a restless soul. So I know how lucky I am to have you for my brother, and how blessed we both are to be as close as we are. Today, I pledge to you, that I’ll never let you, or our wife and children, down. You’ll be able to count on me to have your back, just as I’ve always been able to count on you to have mine.”

Both men turned their attention on Ginny. Carrie wasn’t surprised to see the young woman’s eyes glistening with tears.

“I stopped believing in good things for me. I had my baby, and he was the love of my life. I wanted more, and I sought, foolishly, without considering love, to make a family for him. Y’all know how wrong that turned out to be. And then, just when I had given up, just when I’d gotten so I figured I was in the worst place I could ever possibly be and things would never ever get better, I looked up and there you were, the two of you.

“I don’t figure there’s another woman in all of creation as lucky as me. I’m going to be the best wife to you both. I’m going to be the best mother to Benny, and to the baby sleeping right now, under my heart—and to all the rest of our babies, if we’re blessed to have more.

“I never believed in forever, or happy-ever-after, but I believe in them now. I believe in them, and I’m claiming them both—for all of us. Mostly, though, I believe in the two of you.

“Adam, I love you with all my heart. I will love you and honor you for all the days of my life.” She stretched up and kissed him, very lightly, on the lips. Then she turned to her other husband. “Jake, I love you just as deeply, and just as surely as I do your brother. I’m proud to call you both husband, and the fathers of all my children.” She kissed him, too, and laughed a little when he took a moment to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

The three adults faced Kate once more. Benny reached up to Adam, confident in his acceptance. Adam, of course, scooped him up easily and set the little guy on his hip.

Carrie had been doing pretty good hanging on to her composure until that moment. Benny was a few years younger than she had been when her parents had been killed in that tornado. She and her sister Chloe had been separated and placed into foster care, miles apart from each other.

In all her childhood years after that tragedy, she’d never once had a moment like this one, the kind that she believed Benny lived
every
day. She’d never known a moment of reaching out, needing to be held, and finding unqualified acceptance.

Carrie felt such elation that
this
child was loved so completely.

Kate Benedict spread her hands, palms up. “And now your journey begins, and your adventure awaits. May you forever remain steadfast, one in the others, and may love light your way, always.”

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause and shouts of “Congratulations!” Everything had blurred for Carrie. She felt the people around her moving, and realized she should get out of the way. She wanted to get herself under control before she greeted the celebrants. She wanted to escape to someplace private so she could pull herself together.

She stepped back and hit something solid. Two solid warm walls of hot man bracketed her. She looked up into Chase Benedict’s amazing aqua eyes to encounter a tenderness she didn’t know how to take.

“Here, sugar.” He handed her a folded white square, and she realized it was a cotton handkerchief.

Who the hell carries a cotton handkerchief in this day of the pop-up tissue pack?
Carrie almost asked that out loud. Instead, she murmured her thanks as she took the hankie and blotted her eyes. She could make nice for a moment or two, and then she’d get busy and tend the buffet.

Kelsey hadn’t asked her to be on duty to such an extent today, but at the moment it seemed like a hell of a good idea. She’d hide in her work.

I’m getting awfully damn good at hiding.

“It’s good to see you so emotional over your friend’s ceremony,” Chase said.

Brian nodded, and grinned, flashing his pearly white teeth and making his aqua eyes—identical to his brother’s—gleam with humor. “Kind of makes us wonder how you’ll be for your own, with us.”

Chase pulled his hat off and used his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow. The sun burned with that special Texas intensity, but despite being hot and sweaty and bone-tired, he felt damn good.

From where he sat on the back of Jasper, a two-year-old gelding they’d purchased a few weeks before, he could see for miles. Every inch of land that lay before him was family land—belonging to Benedicts, Kendalls, and Jessops alike.

Yes, the Parkers had come once the town had been founded, as had the Jones—there were Sanchezes and Mendezes in there, too. There’d been acceptance, and then romances and marriages. More souls arrived, drawn by the promise that was Lusty. To come to a place to live life as you chose, to love whomever the heart loved, without fear of derision—that was a special thing. Though they’d lived quietly, generation upon generation, people who’d needed Lusty generally tended to find her.

The Lusty Town Trust of today had a lot of names affixed to the official rolls, and really, they were, all of them together, family, and an eclectic group at that.

But the cowboy in Chase never lost sight of the fact that, in the beginning, it had been just six people, and each one of those six were his and Brian’s ancestors.

He knew his own family history, knew that Caleb and Joshua Benedict had worked this land that had originally come to Sarah on the death of that blackguard, Tyrone Maddox.

Those first Benedict twins had been raised to be ranchers, before the call of conscience and duty and the guns of war had drawn them away from home.

They’d joined the Union Army, an unpopular action to have taken for two Texan men, and a course of action interpreted by many who’d known them, at the time, as treasonous. Certainly, the decision had cost them their original ancestral home.

When their mother died before the end of the Civil War, their sister and her husband had taken over the land that had been Caleb and Joshua’s birthright.

They’d let it go, cutting their losses, and had instead embarked on careers as lawmen—gunslingers, some would have said. They’d roamed, not settling anywhere, until they’d met Sarah, and together had fallen in love. But ranching had called them back, and they’d been happy, according to the letters and journals left behind, to become ranchers once more when they’d settled here with their wife and founded Lusty.

“Do you recall how, when we were kids, we used to pretend that we
were
them?” Brian had joined him on his own horse, Critter, and Chase turned in his saddle slightly so he could look at his brother.

Brian appeared as hot, sweaty, and beat as Chase felt. He didn’t have to ask his twin to explain what he meant, because they
were
twins and more often than not, their thoughts followed the same path.

Chase turned his attention back to the view. “Yep, I do. There were times when I wondered if we somehow weren’t truly them, re-incarnated into this modern age.” Chase put his hat back on. “But in all our games, all our talking out loud about our dream to be here, doing this, I don’t reckon we ever imagined how much damn hard work it would be to try and
become
them.”

Brian snorted. “I know. My mind was in that exact same place just now, and then it hit me. Think about it for a minute.” Brian removed his own hat, wiped his sweat, and then put his hat back on. “Just a few short months ago, we went to work every day wearing Armani suits, carrying double espresso lattes with an extra shot of chocolate and a dash of cinnamon, worked in air-conditioned comfort, hunkered down in plush wheelie-chairs, juggling appointments with clients and business partners—folks we barely knew, and often didn’t even
like
. And all the while the sun shone down on Manhattan through an almost constant haze of smog.”

Chase nodded. Brian had painted a fairly accurate picture of how it had been for them. Chase said, “Thank God we got our sorry asses out of that hellhole.”

“Amen, brother. Amen.”

Chase turned his attention from the view at large to his more immediate concern—the fence line.

“It’s taken us a good three weeks, but that bitch is nearly done. I’ll tell you, I’m beginning to wonder about Uncle Jonathan,” he said quietly.

“Because he told us we needed to see to
all
the fences before we even considered getting cattle, or any more horses?”

Chase nodded. “Cattle, horses—breeding stock, that is—or even so much as a dog, is how I believe he put it. I think he was giving us the gears, just a little.” Chase didn’t often have to explain himself to his twin, but their twin-dar communication was neither absolute nor perfect.

“You mean, sort of along the same vein that saw Matt come out, all serious-like, to warn us about the high occurrence of cattle rustling in this part of the state?” Brian pulled his horse up equal with Chase’s.

“Yeah. I get the feeling that there are some members of our family who don’t seem to have much faith in our ability to cut it as cowboys.”

“Actually,” Brian said, “there are quite a few of them, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Well at least Steven’s on our side. That’s gotta count for something, as he runs the primary Benedict Ranch.”

“He is, but mostly because he took exception to those comments Rick made at the Docs’ party when we first told everyone what we wanted to do.”

Chase grinned. “Biggest brother
did
piss our cousin off, didn’t he? But regardless of why, that’s
one
on our side.”

“Point taken,” Brian agreed.

“And Jake and Adam, even though they’ve left and are on their honeymoon, they’re on our side. Grandma Kate, too.” Chase chuckled. “Actually, Grandma believing in us and going to bat for us with the Town Trust more than balances out all the rest of the ones who don’t.” He turned and met Brian’s gaze. “Of course the only ones that really matter are you and me. And you know what? I don’t care if Uncle Jon
does
want to make us jump through a few hoops, just to test our mettle.”

“Me, neither.” Brian slapped him on the back. “We’ll just shut up, quit our bitchin’, and get ’er done.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Chase said.

“I’ll tell you what, though. What with all this introspection that being here and doing what we’re doing has brought on for the both of us, I’m not going to make the mistake of thinking that Carrie is Sarah.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Chase took a moment to adjust the reins in his hand. “The similarities are there.” They hadn’t spent a great deal of time talking about Miss Carrie Rhodes. They’d taken one look at her, and known she was the one for them. But he’d been watching her and puzzling her, and he’d come to one conclusion. “I think someone’s gunning for her—metaphorically, at least, if not literally.”