Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (21 page)

“Yes. So shoo.”

Lucy laughed. “I guess we’d better skedaddle then.” She stored the duster she had been using and untied and removed the apron she was wearing. By the time she was ready to leave, Prentice was standing at the front door with an arm crooked for her.

He bowed slightly as she approached and Lucy smiled and put her arm in his as she bid Maia a good evening.

Once outside, Lucy took a deep breath. She felt like she had been holding it all day and finally had a chance to properly exhale.

“Rough day?” Prentice asked.

“No more so than usual.”

“Good, because there’s a little surprise back at the house for you.”

“What kind of surprise?”

“Not a good one.”

Lucy stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “Prentice, what is it?”

“That’s something I needed to broach with you, too. You need to be careful about calling me Prentice, especially in public.”

“Why? Did Ki say something?”

“He heard you the other night when we were down in the kitchen having tea.”

“Oh no.”

“I handled it.”

“How?”

“I told him Prentice was my middle name and you liked my middle name.”

“And he fell for that?”

Prentice looked at her, an amused expression on his face. “No, not really, but it was the best I could do on the fly. He threatened to go to Ethan’s parents to confirm my story.”

Knowing Ki, it probably wasn’t an idle threat. She could just see him paying the Crawfords a visit and charming the truth out of them before they realized they were being interrogated. “So what is this unpleasant surprise back at the house for me?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Of course you should have.”

“Ki’s mother is in town. She arrived at the house this afternoon.”

“His mother? All the way from New York?” She didn’t know why she sounded so shocked. She supposed it was bound to happen eventually. What mother wouldn’t want to meet the woman her son had promised “to have and to hold ’til death do us part”?

“She wasn’t too pleased by your absence, especially since she’d come such a long way to see you. In fact, she wanted to come to Healing Magick, but Ki talked her out of it.”

Surely the woman must be thinking that she wasn’t up to the task of being a proper wife to her son. After all, wouldn’t a good and proper wife be home catering to her husband’s every need and taking care of home and hearth?

Lucy could just imagine Mrs. Benjamin going around the house with a white glove, wiping down every surface searching for dust or looking at her son with a critical eye to see how satisfied a man he was.

“How did Ki talk her out of coming to Healing Magick?”

“She didn’t need too much convincing. She’d been traveling by train and coach for the last three or four days. She was bone tired and retired to one of the guest rooms at Ki’s urging.”

“Wonderful. She’ll be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by the time we get home later.”

Prentice laughed and put an arm around her as they resumed walking. “You shouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure she’ll love you.”

“Would your mother? Love me, I mean.”

“It wouldn’t matter whether my mother loved you or not. I’m my own man. I don’t make decisions based on what my mother or father would think. I don’t think Ki does either.”

His remark about Ki seemed right and for the first time since she had made Prentice’s acquaintance she wondered about his family. Where were they and why did he never talk about them? For a moment, she thought about asking him, but Prentice had never seemed the type to appreciate anyone prying into his personal affairs and life. Instead she said, “You two seemed to have become a mite chummy since this morning.” The last time she’d seen Ki and Prentice at the breakfast table, they had barely said two words to each other.

“We’ve come to an understanding about…things.”

“So he’s not jealous of you anymore?”

“I wouldn’t say that. We just know where we stand.”

“Well, I guess that’s an improvement.”

Prentice didn’t say anything more and they walked the rest of the few blocks to Winchester’s in silence.

The lull left Lucy too much opportunity to torment herself with thoughts of what sort of welcome awaited her back at the house from Ki and his mother later on.

Premature ejaculation. The two words had never been a part of Prentice’s vocabulary. They had never been a part of his world or his reality. The condition was nothing with which he’d ever had any personal experience. After his early arrival into the world as a preemie, he had had no other experiences with premature anything…until earlier in the parlor.

Leave it to Ki to break down that barrier and force Prentice to experience something that he had never before experienced in his life. The way Prentice had reacted to Ki earlier during that fencing match Prentice knew it would not be the last time that Ki taught him something about himself.

After breakfast that morning, Prentice had thought to turn the tables on Ki rather than sulk in his room until it came time for him to leave for work later as had been his habit the last few days. Instead, he had gone to the parlor having decided to give Lucy’s husband a taste of his own medicine. He hadn’t counted on that confounding golden-brown haired, blue-eyed bombshell turning the tables on
him
yet again.

Prentice knew he had gotten to Ki with his apple eating, and had thoroughly enjoyed playing the siren song to Ki’s mariner. His victory, however, had been too short lived. Once he had gotten into the thick of the battle—so caught up in taking Ki down and thoroughly enjoying the adrenaline rush of the sport—Prentice had forgotten his original purpose. He had forgotten that he was supposed to be tempting Ki and not the other way around and he had completely forgotten how very cunning and enticing Ki could be.

His first clue and warning should have been when he’d initially arrived to the parlor and seen the glistening, muscled beauty of Ki’s naked torso, the balletic perfection of his moves with the épée. The man was erotic poetry in motion, sex on a stick.

Prentice hadn’t thought that he could be so turned on from watching a man, as turned on as he had ever been watching a woman.

If he had thought watching Ki was a total turn-on, Prentice had had his world completely rocked when Ki had kissed him.

It was the first kiss he had shared with a man and during it Prentice had told himself it would not be the last—at least it wouldn’t be the last kiss he shared with this particular man.

Prentice smiled at the sudden image he had of that scene from the movie
In & Out
and how he had felt like Kevin Kline’s character when Tom Selleck’s character had kissed Kevin’s character on the side of the road out in broad daylight. Just like Kevin’s character, Prentice had been thoroughly lost, not knowing where to put his hands or legs until he’d finally just given in and let nature take its course.

God, he had never been so caught up with blind lust before, so caught up it hadn’t mattered to him that he had been clinging to and clutching a man. He hadn’t cared about the gender of the person in his arms at that moment. He had only cared that the person at the other end of his fingertips had wanted Prentice as desperately as Prentice had wanted him. He had only cared that Ki seemed to like him and wasn’t threatened by Prentice’s aloofness. Ki wasn’t intimidated by Prentice’s looks, manners, or sarcasm like everyone else in his life had seemed to be for as far back as Prentice could remember.

Ki saw him like no other man, like no other person except Lucy, saw him.

Was the intensity of their connection, the force of their chemistry the reason that Prentice had felt an inkling of his powers when Ki had kissed him?

Sex had always recharged and enhanced his powers in the past. Was the fact that Ki was male enough to resurrect them from the oblivion to which they had been consigned since he hadn’t felt anything when he’d kissed Lucy? Not that the latter necessarily meant anything.

Was the resurgence a random fluke or had his angels just decided that he had earned the right to have his powers back?

“Whiskey, barkeep!”

Prentice came out of his reverie to see the man who banged on the bar Prentice had been mindlessly polishing with a clean rag for who knew how long. “Coming right up.” Prentice turned from the bar to tend to the man’s order.

“Ain’t you Clint and Katie’s boy?”

Prentice turned back to the bar to see the man peering at him as he poured the man’s drink in a shot glass. “Yep, Ethan. That’s me.”

“Can’t imagine they approve of you working in a place like this.” The man downed his drink and slammed his glass on the bar. “Another one.”

“Sure.” Prentice poured him another shot and stood back to stare at him, wondering what morality police force the guy worked for. It wasn’t the first time since he’d started the job that someone recognized him as “Clint and Katie’s boy” and wondered what he was doing in Winchester’s.

Prentice shrugged now in answer to his customer’s comment.

“Ain’t learnt your lesson yet about listening to your parents?” the man said before downing his second shot. “Parents know what’s best for their kids.”

“I suppose so.” First rule of business, the customer was always right. Except when the customer was some obviously inebriated miner-type that didn’t know which way was up much less what was the best way a young man could honor his parents.

Prentice didn’t have Spidey senses to tingle, but his brain went on high alert all of a sudden at the miner’s affronted tone. He had sounded like he thought Ethan should be taught a lesson for disrespecting his parents.

Had shooting Ethan in the back been that lesson? Had the miner done it, or some other upstanding Elk Creek denizen who had taken personal offense and hadn’t liked the way Ethan had strayed from his home and his parents?

The miner slammed some money on the counter to pay for his drinks, pulling Prentice out of yet another brown study. “You take care of yourself now, boy.”

Prentice shook his head at the direction his thoughts had been taking and watched the man stumble toward the swinging doors.

The miner probably hadn’t meant any harm criticizing Prentice. Maybe he had a son or two at home who didn’t respect him the way he thought they should and Prentice’s disloyalty to Clint and Kate had just rubbed him the wrong way.

Prentice knew a thing or two about critical parents wanting to teach their kids a lesson.

His parents had done their fair share of teaching him lessons when he had been growing up.

He knew, too, that it took all kinds to make up the world and those kinds usually seemed to cross the threshold of Winchester’s on his and Lucy’s watch.

The randomness and potential for violence at Winchester’s were all the more reasons that Prentice wanted to leave the saloon and try his hand at healing people with Thayne. He’d decided it was time for a change and hoped that Thayne would be open to his idea. Prentice knew it was a risk to spend any prolonged time around the gifted town doctor and Wiccan, but he also knew he had done enough of hurting to last a lifetime. He had to face the piper sooner or later. He had to make things right. His only concern now was leaving Lucy behind.

To think, she’d had to put up with all the crap without any real backup before he had started working here. Not that the woman couldn’t take care of herself. From personal experience, Prentice knew Lucy was a master at deflecting unwanted attention.

He glanced up now to see her crossing the floor from the kitchen and placing several orders of her famous buttered cornbread on one of the tables where the men were drinking and not playing cards.

Prentice noticed that one of the gentlemen at the table was getting a little frisky and loud with Lucy, then he recognized the man and realized he was no gentleman.

Cody Paxton.

God help Prentice for ever trusting that cowboy to watch his back. He had had some dirty work that needed doing in his previous life and Cody had been more than willing to help him get it done. Prentice wasn’t proud of everything he’d done back then, but he couldn’t do anything about it now except move forward and try to do and be better.

Prentice caught Eartha’s attention with a hand-signal to let her know he wanted to take a break from behind the bar.

She nodded her agreement, seeming to have noticed the commotion at the table, also.

Prentice came from behind the bar and made his way across the floor to the table where Cody was giving Lucy a hard time. He only caught the tail end of the exchange, but what he heard pissed him off. No woman should have to endure that kind of attack to her character, or have to listen to the kind of crap that Cody was spewing just because she chose to marry Ki instead of Cody. As far as Prentice was concerned, Lucy had dodged a bullet when she had accepted Ki’s proposal.

“There a problem over here, gentlemen?” Prentice asked.

“So you thinking you’re better than the rest of us because you’re living at the highfalutin house with miss better-than-thou and her fancy pants husband now, Crawford?”