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

  Before the funeral, he hadn’t seen or spoken to the little pricks in years. He poured himself another glass of Judith’s very fine whiskey, and tried to recall how old they were—they’d been born just before Pearl Harbor.

  Hell, they’re nearly thirty! Robbins shook his head. They didn’t even work like real men. They were all of them pencil pushers—office gofers, that’s all they were.

  When he’d finally moved in last week, he’d expected to have to take a lot of shit to the dump. But they’d cleared out all of Judith’s things. The bedroom closet was empty, as were all her drawers. The pictures—none had been of him—that had been scattered around the place were gone, as was that fancy-schmancy silver tea set she’d been so damn proud of.

  This apartment was better than the cold water, one-bedroom, dive walk-up he’d been living in for the last eleven years—since his bitch of a wife had kicked him out of here.

  He supposed he shouldn’t be too hard on her memory. The dirt hadn’t even completely settled over her grave, yet. And if he were to be perfectly honest, he did owe her.

  He’d married her when she was six months along, back in the fall of ’41—everyone had said war was coming and there was no fucking way he wanted to get drafted. So when he’d met Judith and learned she was pregnant and unmarried, he’d pretended to be a gentleman, and he married her.

  It was a real bonus for him when she’d popped out not one but three little bastards. There’d been no question, then, about his “draft status.” And when war was declared barely a month later, he’d padded his edge by working at one of the hospitals. He acted all humble, going for the training and position of nurses’ aide, telling anyone who would listen that since he couldn’t go to the front, he’d serve his country in this way.

  So he owed her for that. He’d given his name to her whelps, and she’d given him a better draft status—one that had never been reached.

  Robbins was very good at pretending—he’d made his living that way, acting in off-Broadway gigs and, more recently, appearing to be the wounded, victimized sap—for whoever he and Pete, his drinking buddy and lawyer—could target to sue.

  It was amazing how often the rich and powerful gave in and settled lawsuits out of court for a couple of grand, just to avoid the time and cost of going through litigation.

  He had thought that he wouldn’t have to worry about doing that anymore. He’d heard that Judith had been pretty fortunate in her finances the last few years. She’d never divorced him, never even made noises that she wanted to. He’d been looking forward to inheriting a huge chunk of change.

  Instead what had he gotten? Fucking insulted, that’s what he’d gotten.

  Judith had paid the rent for this place a full year and a half ahead—she’d done that when she’d gone into the hospital in July, according to what the lawyer said at the reading of her will. That meant he was going to live free for the next year, at least. And that was all he was going to get from her. That, and ten lousy grand.

  He’d had plans for the cash he’d had every right to expect. But apparently, all of Judith’s wealth had been tied up in some sort of trust.

  Damn it. Pete had told him of several opportunities just waiting for a man with the cash in hand to invest.

  At first he’d been stymied, but thanks to some wheedling, he’d found another way to achieve his ends.

  Very soon, the man who was going to have cash in hand to invest was going to be him. Never let it be said that Mort Robbins stayed down for long. He’d come up with the perfect plan and the wheels were already in motion.

  Robbins wandered the apartment, checking out the views from the various windows. He made his way into the kitchen, wondering if those bastards had left anything for him to eat. He wasn’t much of a cook, but he could open some cans and heat stuff. Expecting only crumbs, he was pleasantly surprised. There was food in the cupboard, and even the fridge had been stocked. Milk, eggs, a couple of steaks, all fresh, sat on the top shelf. A six-pack of Miller was chilling there, too.

  Couldn’t have been those little bastards doing that on their own—Judith must have told them to do this for him. His three stepsons as often as not ignored him, but they could never do enough for Judith.

  The thought formed that they’d probably used some of what should have been his money to stock the place.

  That put a sneer on his face. “They’re probably laughing their asses off. But they won’t be laughing soon.” He’d formed a two-step plan to not only cash in but to get some of his own back.

  He’d gotten that little secretary of Ronnie Dorn’s to spill the beans the day after the reading of the will—he always could talk a woman out of her panties and out of information, often at the same time. It seemed that dearly departed Judith had prepared a letter to be sent, special delivery, all the way to Texas, immediately when she died. And when little Cerise had told him the name of the person—or rather, people—the letter was sent to, Mort had put two and two together.

  He’d gotten Pete on the case, and the man had never been so excited as when he discovered just who the Kendalls of Central Texas were.

  He’d recognized the name, of course. Each one of those little bastards carried it as a middle name. Mort had assumed it had been a name handed down in Judith’s family. He’d been wrong.

  Now he was finally going to cash in. He and Pete figured that they’d finally landed a big one—or a couple of big ones. Likely, they would want to pay him off just to keep quiet about babies born on the wrong side of the sheets a few decades back.

  And once that money was his, he was going to take out an ad in the New York Times, announcing to the world that his stepsons were actually the bastard blow-bys of a rich lawyer in Texas.

  Let’s see how the little bastards deal with that.

  Yes, Mort was finally going to enjoy a really big payday, and shoving it to those sniveling little bastards was the cherry on top of his personal goody cake.

  He lifted his glass and admired the amber liquid, and then tossed it back. Ah, yes, life was good.

  * * * *

  Sunday dinners at home had always been quiet, dignified affairs. On the rare occasion that her grandmother had been in attendance, the emphasis had been on the word “dignified.” Her Grandmother Kincaid didn’t particularly approve of Doreen Johnson when her son, Kevin, had married her. After all, Kincaids could trace their roots back to the very beginning of this country, whereas Samantha’s mother had no idea beyond her parents what her lineage could be.

  So whenever her grandmother had come to dinner, there’d been stress aplenty. Over the last year, Grandmother Kincaid had become increasingly more frail. Samantha thought it telling that her grandmother’s own daughter, her Aunt Glynnis, had no time to take care of the woman who’d borne her. It was Samantha’s mother who visited the retirement home twice a week, and it had been Samantha’s mother who ensured the elderly woman got out at least once a month to visit friends, go shopping, or come to her only son’s house for Sunday dinner.

  This Sunday supper was nothing like those ones had been back in Connecticut. She’d been a little concerned at first, especially when the guests had arrived earlier, and two more women joined them in the kitchen, one of the women as old as Chelsea.

  Madeline Kennedy Benedict appeared to be as spry as her sister-in-law, Chelsea. The family sat the two matriarchs at either end of the long table, but by the time they were sitting down to eat, Samantha knew that wasn’t a ploy to keep the women apart. The women were great friends.

  Chelsea had a husband on either side of her, and Charles Benedict—called Grandpa Charlie to differentiate himself from Charlie Kendall—was on his wife Madeline’s right.

  Samantha wasn’t quite sure how she came to be sitting between Charles and Taylor and directly across from Preston. They’d arrived back from having her car towed just a half hour before dinner. She’d been expecting that they would only bring her two suitcases with them, so that she could have a change of clothes wh
ile she was there. Instead, they had completely unloaded her car.

  They’d just finished passing all the food around. Samantha now understood why there’d been so much of it because, to a one, the men all seemed to have very healthy appetites.

  “What did Howard have to say about Samantha’s car?” Jeremy Kendall looked over his bifocals and pinned Preston with as sharp a look as she’d ever seen from any man.

  “He said that he couldn’t be a hundred percent certain until he got into it tomorrow, but he was pretty sure the engine will have to be replaced, sir.” Then Preston met her gaze. “Sorry.”

  Some of her father’s friends had been skeptical of her traveling across country on her own. She thought likely her own father had felt the same way, but had stayed silent on the matter. When she’d met the older men of the Kendall and Benedict clans, she’d mentally braced herself, expecting to have them make some comment or other about a young woman venturing so far from home on her own.

  She was delightfully surprised when not a word of that sort was said.

  “That could take several days—depending on how quickly Howard is able to put his hands on another engine.” Dalton Jessop turned his attention to her. “We’ll not let you be late for your interview in Austin, Samantha. If it looks like your car is going to take more time than you have, you can use one of our vehicles, and then come back the following weekend and make the exchange.”

  Samantha was floored by such generosity. “That’s very kind of you, sir. But I don’t want to—”

  “You’re not imposing!”

  Everyone at the table said that, en masse. Samantha laughed, and raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right! I concede the point. I’m not imposing.” Then she looked at each person there, finishing with the younger Misters Kendall. “You’ve all been incredibly kind to me. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Chelsea Jessop-Kendall said. “The way I see it, since you were on a journey of discovery in the first place, you should just consider the next few days as a small detour on that trip.”

  “I was reminding myself earlier, when I realized that I’d made a wrong turn, that one can often find unexpected treasures when one veers from the planned route. I certainly did just that, today.”

  Samantha found it interesting that Preston, Taylor, and Charles blushed. She hadn’t specifically been referring to them, and she guessed they knew it.

  “Your mother, being from Austin, must have told you about Texan hospitality,” Madeline said. “Although I am certain she never prepared you for families like ours.”

  “She did tell me about Texan hospitality, and Texan gentlemen.” She spared a look at Preston. It was telling that the brash young man who’d boldly called her kitten and taken her hand had been supplanted by this shy, reserved person.

  Of course she understood that it was the presence of two women he considered his grandmothers that had changed his behavior.

  She had no illusions that it had only been his outward demeanor that had changed. He was wearing what her mother had called “company manners.”

  Miranda and Kate both chuckled.

  “Oh, well done,” Kate said. She sent a beaming smile to her nephews. “Boys, I think you’ve met your match.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Preston said. “We think we have, too.”

  As if sensing that she was feeling embarrassed by all the attention, Miranda winked at her and then looked at Madeline. “I haven’t seen Peter or William for a few days. I trust they’re well?”

  “I suppose that depends on your definition of the word, ‘well.’”

  “Now, Mother, remember what Maria always says,” Patrick Benedict said. He looked over at Samantha, including her in the conversation, “Our daughter always says that her uncles—our younger brothers—just march to the beat of a different drummer.”

  “It’s not just a different drummer. I think it’s an entirely different kind of band altogether.” Madeline then also looked at Samantha. “My two youngest sons have a house on a good-sized piece of property outside of town, which they’ve made into a bit of a farm. Neither of them have ever shown any particular interest in finding a mate—of either gender—at all! They’ve become quite reclusive, to the point that they rarely visit anyone anymore.”

  “But are they happy?” Grandpa Charlie covered his wife’s hand with his as he asked her that.

  Madeline sighed, and Samantha knew this was an ongoing conversation between the pair. “Yes, darling. They seem quite happy and content.”

  “Mother always said the whole idea of a town called Lusty was to have a place where everyone could live and love as they chose.” Chelsea shrugged. “I guess just because we define happy as married and with a children, doesn’t mean everyone does.”

  “I know. I do know.” She looked at her husband. “I just worry that when we’re gone, they’ll be all alone.”

  “Oh, that will never happen,” Kate said.

  “Absolutely it won’t,” Miranda said. “They’re family, and if Lusty is anything, it’s where family always comes first.”

  Samantha had seen a fair bit of life before she’d decided to come to Texas, for all that she was still quite young. Living close to New York City gave one a big helping of humanity served up every way under the sun.

  Yet hearing the way Kate Benedict and Miranda Kendall summed up their very small hometown, Samantha understood one thing right then and there, and it was a personal epiphany.

  Having a home where family came first—even if that family was a pair of aging, slightly dotty bachelors—was a level of sophistication that New York, in all its hustle and bustle, movers and shakers, and Wall Street wizards, simply couldn’t match.

  Chapter 5

  “The school is fairly new,” Taylor said.

  Preston, Taylor, and Charles were taking her on a tour of the town. The heat had abated somewhat from the day before, and so they’d parked on Main Street and were walking. They’d already shown her the pharmacy—complete with a soda counter—the general store, the post office, and the sheriff’s office where their grandfather Jeremy still put in time and had privileges, even though he was officially retired. Their cousin, Caleb Benedict, was sheriff part time for now, but was joining the Texas Rangers soon.

  They’d driven past the two-story home that served as Lusty’s doctor’s office. The Doctors Jessop, two brothers named Adam and James, had recently set up shop together there.

  They stopped on the sidewalk in front of the school and Samantha admired the building that looked like it housed several classrooms. Situated on a piece of land that had plenty of room for expansion, she thought that like everything else she’d seen on her tour, this demonstrated that the people of Lusty knew what their priorities were, and had an eye to the future. Next to the building there was a park, complete with some picnic tables, a few benches, a really long slide, and a swing set.

  Taylor continued. “Grandmother told us the Town Trust had been thinking of building a school before the Second World War. Then our fathers, who’d been in the Navy and stationed for some time in Virginia, met our mother, who was a teacher in a private girls’ school.”

  “In those days,” Preston said, “if a teacher got married, she had to resign her post.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand the reasoning behind that.

  Samantha smiled. She’d studied history. “That rule pretty much applied to teachers and nurses—both considered at the time to be practically the only two ‘acceptable’ careers for women.”

  “Aunt Kate was a Major in the Army Nurse Corps during the war and faced the same dilemma—except that congress passed a measure allowing married nurses to stay in the service.” Charles said. “That law was passed in October of 1942, so she and our uncles didn’t have to choose, or wait.”

  Samantha grinned. “I think Congress passed the law because the corps was losing too many nurses to wedded bliss. The passage wasn’t a move made to ensure the equality of women,
so much as it was to guarantee that all those bed pans would get emptied.”

  The men laughed.

  “The sad thing is,” Charlie said, “there’s likely more than some truth in that.”

  “I know. There’s still a sense of that same mindset today. That’s why I wanted to come to Texas to pursue my education and my career. People would assume my daddy greased the wheels if I’d stayed home and gone to school there.” She sighed. “That’s an automatic assumption for a female with an influential father. It’s not quite so blatant for a male.” She shrugged and lifted her hands. She couldn’t see the sense in ranting about the unfairness of it all. Life was unfair—end of story. To the brothers Kendall she said, “It is what it is.”

  “You don’t need anyone to make things easy for you,” Preston said. “You’re smart enough and capable enough to do well on your own.”

  “Thank you.” She tilted her head and looked at him. “I appreciate that you have that opinion even though I got myself lost and ended up with a dead car in your town.”

  “Oh, that was just fate at work, bringing you here to us,” Preston said.

  “Damn right,” Taylor said.

  “That’s exactly what it was, no question.” Charles nodded.

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of men who believe in fate. You strike me as the kind who fashion your own destiny.” In fact, they struck her as being more than capable of and willing to wrestle fate to the ground to win whatever outcome they desired from any given situation.

  “Grandmother said she told you some of our family history,” Charlie said.

  “She did.” Samantha blushed. “I found the tale quite extraordinary, actually.”

  “Well, when you think of it, what else is there to explain that whole story but fate?” Preston spread his hands. “A man our great-grandfather, Adam Kendall, knew, was in need of two hired guns to escort his bride from Chicago to here. So he thought of his friends, the Benedicts. The bride’s cousin, Amanda Dupree, needed to leave Richmond, Virginia, and decided to visit a cousin she’d never met who’d recently settled in Texas. That’s all fate.”