Their Lusty Little Valentine [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  Their Lusty Little Valentine

  Samantha Kincaid knows what she wants in life. Since she was a teenage, she has planned to be a lawyer, a judge, and one day, maybe, the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court. Knowing that no one will credit her accomplishments locally because her father wields significant influence, she decides to head to Austin, Texas, to accomplish her goals. All is going well until she takes a wrong turn and ends up stranded in a town called Lusty when her car dies.

  Preston, Taylor, and Charles Kendall recognize Samantha as the woman that was meant to be theirs when they come to her aid.

  She always knew she had to choose between having a career and a family. It was never a difficult choice because she had never met a man who appealed to her enough to marry. Now she’s met three. The only real question is, can the men convince Samantha that she can indeed have it all, with them?

  Genre: Historical, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 73,517 words

  THEIR LUSTY LITTLE VALENTINE

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  Cara Covington

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  THEIR LUSTY LITTLE VALENTINE

  Copyright © 2014 by Cara Covington

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-335-0

  First E-book Publication: February 2014

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Their Lusty Little Valentine by Cara Covington from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Cara Covington’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Covington’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated, like so many others, to my husband, David. We got married in the same year as Samantha and her men.

  He’s supported me from the beginning, urging me to follow my dream when I thought I would just crawl into a corner and waste away.

  Anniversary number 42 is coming up, and I don’t know where the time went. Truly, that Friday night in July of that year seems like it just happened yesterday.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m grateful to the members of my street team, The Lusty Ladies, for their continued support and enthusiasm for all things Lusty. Ladies, you lift me up and give me a smile when I need one most, and your willingness to answer my questions helps keep me in touch with what matters the most to you.

  I’m grateful to Stormy for her willingness to read my manuscripts and help to make them better. She sees what I miss, and if my books shine, it is because of her.

  I’m grateful especially to the hardworking, professional people at Siren-BookStrand. Ladies and gents, your dedication to your craft is truly an inspiration.

  An especial thank you goes to Diana. You said yes, and gave me a new life.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  THEIR LUSTY LITTLE VALENTINE

  The Lusty, Texas Collection

  CARA COVINGTON

  Copyright © 2014

  Prologue

  January, 2014

  All around her, the soothing sounds of women settled in like a warm blanket on a cool day. Satisfaction filled her, because among these wonderful, young, and vibrant women, three were her daughters—technically they were her daughters-in-law, but Samantha Kendall never quibbled over technicalities.

  She never really had, come to that.

  It had been a busy and fun-filled day, shopping, lunching, and just being with these women. They’d had such a good time during their annual Christmas excursion last month, they’d decided to do it again. Samantha knew that shopping was the stated purpose for their trip, but what really brought them together was the simple need of women to be with women.

  She took a moment to look at each and every happy, smiling face in the room. Her daughters, Ginny, Tamara, and Tracy were standing over by the large window, chatting. Her niece Susan Benedict Evans-Magee had come along, as well. She said she was still making up for lost time, because her pregnancy the year before had given her a few rough weeks and her husbands had asked her to stay home from the annual Christmas excursion then. Kelsey Benedict had stayed home this time, as had Susan’s mother, who was Kelsey’s mother-in-law, Bernice. Both wom
en were bonding over the running of Kelsey’s restaurant, Lusty Appetites.

  Samantha had to grin at the way her friend had thrown herself into being a part-time waitress and full-time granny.

  She’s taking a page out of Kate’s book. Stay busy, stay young. That venerable lady had also opted out of coming this time. She’d only recently returned home after having been gone from Lusty for more than a month, getting one of her presumptive granddaughters, Veronica, settled in Divine. Also missing from this excursion was Michelle Parker Grant. She and her husband Joe were still in seventh heaven, having welcomed their firstborn, Creighton Douglas Grant, into the world at the end of September. Michelle was about to start her first semester of college a happy, happy woman.

  Yes, some of the women she loved were missing, but many were here.

  Chloe and Carrie, orphaned sisters who’d come to Lusty, fallen in love and married, and become a Jessop and a Benedict, respectively, were here. Julia, her niece and Tracy’s best friend, and their new best friend, Jillian Jessop, were also in attendance. Penelope Benedict sat chatting with two of the newer citizens of Lusty, Emily Anne Bancroft—soon to be Emily Anne Richardson—and Carol Ashwood, fiancée to Warren and Edward Jessop, Lusty’s paramedics.

  The group had taken over two of the four penthouse suites on the top floor of the Kendall Plaza Hotel in Dallas. Not an unusual circumstance since the hotel belonged to the Lusty Town Trust. Two penthouses were perpetually reserved for family, and near family. That was another technicality Samantha chose to ignore. These women, be they Kendalls, Benedicts, Jessops or nearly so, or so simply by association…they were all her family.

  Quite amazing, when she thought about where she’d come from—the only child of a very proper Connecticut family.

  “Now that is an interesting smile,” Tamara said.

  Samantha hadn’t noticed the girls had left the window and begun to gather close.

  “Is it?”

  “Mmhmm.” Tamara stretched out on the sofa that sat kitty-corner to the chair Samantha was in. “What are you thinking about, Mom?”

  Mom. Samantha loved all her daughters, but Tamara held a very special place in her heart, because her arrival in Lusty and the way Samantha’s two oldest sons had pursued her harkened back to her own arrival some forty-three years before. What an amazing turn her life had taken when three men named Kendall had decided, on first sight, that she was theirs.

  There were differences, of course. Samantha had come from a very solid and “upstanding” family, whereas Tamara had chosen her uncle as next of kin over neglectful and careless parents when she’d been but a teen.

  Just as Samantha had been delighted to finally have a daughter, Tamara had been equally happy to finally have a real mom.

  Now she looked at her daughter and smiled. “I was just thinking how a woman’s life can change so dramatically from what she plans so meticulously to do by the simple means of what she thinks at the time is one wrong turn. One wrong turn, one wrong decision, one twist of fate. We think we know where we’re headed in life, and what we want. And then we end up someplace else entirely, someplace we never knew existed, and that someplace else is so much…more. And it’s where we’re meant to be.”

  “Like you did,” Ginny said. Then she shook her head. “Boy howdy, listen to me. Like I did, as well.”

  “That’s me, too,” Tamara said. “I crashed a damn plane.”

  “You didn’t crash it,” Susan said. “You executed a near-perfect emergency landing.”

  “Y’all have to know I ended up in Lusty by pure happenstance, too,” Emily Anne said.

  “So did we.” Carrie Benedict sat next to her sister, Chloe Jessop, who nodded in agreement.

  Chloe was another “daughter” whom Samantha loved with all her heart. What mother wouldn’t want to practically adopt a woman who saved the life of her beloved son?

  “I think even those of us born in Lusty had one path in mind, and ended up taking another one.” Julia Benedict Wakefield-James came into the room and snagged a pillow off one of the sofas, and got down on the floor.

  “Mom, why don’t you tell us about your wrong turn?” Tracy Alvarez-Kendall tossed a second pillow down onto the carpet next to her best friend, Julia, and then got herself comfortable.

  The fireplace in the large living room burned softly, throwing a gentle warmth into the lavishly furnished room. Samantha loved the contrast of the fireplace burning and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that lined one wall, showcasing the city of Dallas below.

  Night had fallen and neon flared to life. Vibrant and pulsing, the large city represented everything Samantha once had thought she wanted at the center of her life—and everything she could now only tolerate in small doses.

  She felt the smile that kissed her lips. “I’m a child of the sixties, in some ways—the nineteen sixties, that is. Those were the days of flower children, Woodstock, and free love. Dr. Timothy Leary was preaching ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out.’ Richard Nixon was in the White House and all across the nation, there were protests about the Vietnam War. ‘Hell no, we won’t go’ was another popular catchphrase of the times, and all around me, my fellow students were torn between following Dr. Leary’s advice, or burning their bras—or their draft cards. But none of that really touched me. I wanted to learn. I wanted to grow. Oh my, I was so ambitious, almost blindly so. From the time I was a small girl, and understood that my daddy was a district court judge, and what that meant, I had only one dream, only one goal. I was going to be the first woman nominated to be an associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”

  “That was quite an ambition,” Penelope Benedict said. “One I’d bet you could have achieved if you’d really wanted it.”

  “You know, I never once believed it to be unattainable. However, I wanted to pursue my law career somewhere my dad had no reach. I wanted to earn my own way, you see. My mother had been born and raised in Austin. I’d never been to Texas, never explored that side of my heritage. Her parents had died when she was about nineteen, and she had no more family there, only friends and a history. My father’s people were quite prominent in Connecticut. If I had gone to law school anywhere along the Eastern Seaboard, I would never know if he had a hand in my success, or not. I figured Texas was nearly as far away from him and his influence as I could get—not because we didn’t love each other and get along, of course, but because we did. So my mother called her best friend, who was married to a senior partner of a very prestigious law firm in the Texas state capital. I had a job waiting for me as a law clerk, and I had just enough savings set aside to get me into my first year of law school. There was a trust fund I could have tapped, but I was only going to use that as a last resort. The rest I wanted to earn. I was very determined to do it all myself.

  “So in August of 1971, I set out from our home just outside of New Haven, in my beloved 1965 red Ford Mustang. The car was small so I could only take a few personal things with me. I really was starting over, and determined to do it all on my own. My dad offered to help me at every turn, even offered to get me a ‘trip planner’ from the auto club. But I was smart, I told him. I could read a map, I told him, and I could certainly plan my own route.

  “And I have to tell you, I did very well—I was even more than a week ahead of schedule! And then, two completely unexpected things happened. I took a wrong turn just outside of Waco, and about an hour or so later, my beloved Mustang began to die…”

  Chapter 1

  August, 1971

  Samantha Kincaid had the music playing so loud on her eight-track tape player that she didn’t notice the noise at first. She was too busy moving to the beat of America as they sang about “A Horse With No Name.” Pelting out the chorus in her not very tuneful but extremely enthusiastic voice, she felt happy and completely absorbed in the music. Well that, and taking in the scenery.

  Samantha had made a wrong turn somewhere outside of Waco, Texas, but she didn’t think it would prove to be much
of a problem in the end. Yes, she’d gotten a little turned around, but now she was headed southwest. She figured if she kept driving in that direction, she’d eventually come upon signs pointing her toward Austin. The city was, after all, the state capitol.

  Some of the most interesting things happen when you take an unexpected turn. That was something she’d discovered on several occasions while traveling from her home in New Haven to New York City. She’d taken many such drives over the years, and her near obsession for finding a new, shorter route had resulted in her discovering many hidden and unexpected treasures along the way.

  She came to a stop sign, and looked left and then right, her only two options. Straight ahead lay open pastureland, contained within wire fencing. Even though that was the direction she needed to go, she couldn’t. So she turned right and then, not more than a half a mile later, took the next left. Around her, field upon open field sprawled in every direction, the land lying fallow under the hot August sun. Grass and bushes and trees—not like the trees she was used to seeing in Connecticut and New York State, but trees nonetheless—looked in need of a good long drink of rain. It was hotter here in Texas than it had been back home, but just as humid, she thought. No ocean scented the air, and Samantha guessed she would probably miss that.

  The land began to roll slightly, and the road reflected that, turning into a route comprised of little hillocks and dips as she traveled on. The worn gravel path seemed devoid of the fresh loose stone that could so easily damage her precious car. Samantha reduced her speed anyway, just in case. It was a lovely Sunday, approaching the noon hour, and she would reach Austin sometime today, more than a week ahead of schedule.