Forever Promised (2 page)

When Andrew Carpenter showed up on their doorstep with the dubious claim that her worthless brother actually saved his life, Benny was willing to look beyond
that
obvious falsehood and see that Andrew was a fine young man. (Deacon bought it, and only Benny’s deep and abiding love for him kept him from losing serious esteem points in her eyes.) Drew was more than fine, in fact. Drew was stalwart—he stayed at The Pulpit
even when all Deacon had to pay him was room and board. He didn’t fuss if he was suddenly babysitting instead of horse breaking, and he never, not once, asked her who Parry Angel’s father was. When he
did
learn who the guy was, he clocked him in the jaw, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that when his slow white smile broadened his dark face, the way he looked at Benny let her know that smile was just for her.

It made her stomach flutter and her palms sweat. It made her feel like she had a wasp waist and a size-D rack instead of her plain, thin body with the flat chest; and long, flowing, perfectly styled blonde hair instead of flyaway mouse-brown hair that needed to be cut to her shoulders or it would get all splitty.

From the time she was sixteen, when Drew started working at The Pulpit, to the time she turned eighteen, right about the time of her misguided attempt to leave Levee Oaks to go to school, Drew’s smile seemed to grow deeper and more electric, and more and more
just for her.

Benny started to love it that way.

When she returned from school, frightened (terrified!) because Deacon’s health was piss-poor and
everybody
in the family was afraid for him, Drew had been the guy to greet her. She’d kissed him in front of everybody, in spite of the fact that as far as
she
remembered, she hadn’t kissed
anybody
that way, and if her body didn’t remember the entire pregnancy and birth thing she endured with Parry Angel, she’d flat-out swear she was still a virgin.

It didn’t matter.

She was scared for Deacon and missing her daughter, but Drew was
there
, and he was solid and kind and stalwart and funny in a sly way that sort of snuck up on you when you weren’t paying attention—she liked that!—and Benny decided that if a man as young as Deacon, who wasn’t even thirty, could get so sick so fast, she didn’t have any room for dithering about or dillydallying.

Besides. She’d been dying to kiss Drew for two years.

He kissed… beautifully. He opened his mouth and let her tongue in, and he was warm and dark and safe. His big hands were easy on her skinny little hips and he pulled her in against his wide chest and she knew she was home. When the family—Deacon’s entire little assembled family—stood on the porch and applauded, she flipped them all off not because she was mad, but because she wanted them to know this moment was for her and it was for Drew, and as much as everyone had seen it coming and wanted it, she’d
made
it come, and she wanted it more.

Of course, then she went inside and saw Deacon, white-faced, his jaw clenched in pain, so immersed in the misery of congestive heart failure he was barely there for his family.

At that point, Jon, Deacon’s best friend since diapers or close enough, took Deacon into his and Crick’s room and called an ambulance. Jon was a lawyer, and he might look like a surfer or a Hollywood pool boy, but the truth was Jon was smarter and more ruthless than probably anyone else at
The Pulpit, and Benny was one of the few people who didn’t forget that.

Jon was made to do things like that. He could tell someone to fuck off, they were being stupid, and not sound mean about it. Benny said those things, but she always sounded mean. Jon just had all that authority around him. It’s why his little wife adored him, even though she was a bossy little shit, which is why Amy and Benny got along so very well.

That quality was why, Benny thought on this achingly hot August day about two and a half years after Deacon’s heart attack, Jon made such a splendid officiator for the weddings they kept having out at Promise Rock.

Today’s victims stood suffering in the heat. Why Jeff and Collin thought August was a good time for a wedding was beyond Benny. But they’d had it early enough in the day to stifle the sadistic heat, and the fashion de rigueur was cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts for the men and sundresses for the women. Benny thought that must have been Collin’s idea, and she didn’t mind. Any excuse to buy a new sundress was an opportunity she’d take advantage of, even if she was sweating through the side of it already. But it didn’t matter that the wedding was unseasonable, or that it would be so hot by two o’clock that the cake would be melting off its fashionably rustic wooden pedestal. Jeff must have still been lost in the romance of the whole thing, because he was crying such a steady stream of quiet tears that Benny had needed to go up to his elbow a couple of times to switch out his Kleenex.

Jeff was dressed impeccably—natty ecru linen suit, double-breasted, nipped in at the waist, with trousers tight enough to bounce a quarter off his ass. Of course, underneath the jacket he was wearing a pastel T-shirt,
Miami Vice
style, but that just made it better. His angular, bony features with a slightly aquiline nose had been pretty and, well, gayer than a roaring twenties revue. He managed to look like a dandy out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald book as he’d greeted his guests at what amounted to a private swimming hole in the middle of nowhere.

Collin, his intended, looked nothing like him. Collin’s hair was long and blond, blow-dried straight and tied in a queue; his jaw was square, and his nose turned up on the end. Collin had been the one who insisted on putting “dress comfortably” in the wedding invitations, and he was wearing khakis, a short-sleeved button-up shirt, pink suspenders, and a matching bow tie. He was (and people gave Jeff shit about this all the time just to make him turn red and duck his head) nearly ten years younger than his soon-to-be husband. It was funny, though—Benny had taken one look at the two of them when she’d gotten back from college and told Drew, “Oh yeah, but you can bet that kid calls all the shots!”

Drew had laughed then, but watching the two of them over the last two and a half years had proved her right. Not that she lived on I-told-you-so or anything, but once Deacon moved her out of her parents’ place and helped her get her shit together, she got pretty used to being the one who knew best.

She was also damned proud of serving her family quietly and competently. Those things had become her trademarks in the beginning, when Crick was still in Iraq and it was just her and Deacon, trying to keep Deacon’s business afloat. She’d been afraid then and had worked like her place in Deacon’s home depended on her usefulness, and although she’d outgrown the fear, mostly, she hadn’t outgrown that love of being needed.

So she was surprised when, the third time she dodged behind his elbow to take one Kleenex in a plastic bag and replace it with another, Jeff stopped responding to the vows Jon was reciting, wrapped a playful arm around her head, and grinned.

“Benny, my love, are you angling for the same service when it’s your turn?”

Benny grinned at him and reached up (way up—he was tall; she was not!) and tousled his absolutely perfectly cemented hair. “Damned straight, Jeffy. Right after you and Collin bear me up the aisle in my own sedan chair.”

That elicited a laugh from the crowd, and Jeff bent down and dropped a teary kiss in her hair. “It’s a deal, oh short one. You take good care of us.”

She smiled at him, a little watery herself. She’d practically sobbed through Crick and Deacon’s wedding three years ago, hadn’t been much better through Shane and Mikhail’s, and had
barely
held it together through Lucas and Kimmy’s. The only reason she’d been able to tough it out through this one was because Jeff was doing all the crying for her, but now that she had to talk and look the happiness straight in the eye, she might not make it.

“Well”—she sniffled—“you guys always take good care of us right back.” Her voice broke unapologetically on the last word, and Jeffy crushed her to his chest for a good, solid hug.

After a moment, Jon said, “Now, Benny, until it’s your turn, you really don’t get to spend all that time up here, you know that, right?”

General laughter echoed from the small crowd of friends and family under the oak trees. They stood by the granite outcropping that marked the swimming hole, and for a moment in the shade, her Uncle Jeffy hugged her and she was happy. Then she felt a hand on her elbow as she stepped out of the circle.

Looking up, she saw Deacon, his small, square-jawed face with those pretty green eyes and brown-blond hair, and he engulfed her in his arms. He smelled so good. She picked his fabric softener and bought his bodywash, but there was more to his smell than that. Deacon had worn a suit, to keep Jon company because Jon
never
wore suits, and she could smell sweat underneath and the ever-present, honest smell of horse, and there was Deacon. For six years that smell had meant comfort and home, and as she lost her nut for happiness in his arms, a part of her was crying because she knew that very soon, that would have to change.

Jon finished speaking and Jeff and Collin exchanged what appeared to be a
very
chaste kiss. Benny knew most of the people there in the shade of the oak trees, even Collin’s family, although there were a few friends from Jeff’s work that she hadn’t met yet, and they all applauded happily. Deacon relaxed his arms around her shoulders, and suddenly Benny’s pride and joy ignored her mother and said, “Deacon, I was
so
good, I didn’t talk at
all
!” at the same time Benny’s beloved said, “Deacon, I’ll trade ya!”

Benny was pushed gently into Drew’s hug so Deacon could heft Parry Angel into his arms. Her riotously curly brown hair was strung up with ribbons, and even though she was nearing six, she could still squeal like a toddler when he swung her plump little body high in the air.

Benny turned to Drew with a sniffly smile only to see something alien shadowing his eyes.

He reached out with a thumb to wipe a leftover tear, and she felt her eyebrows knit. “What?” she asked.

He grimaced, and it wasn’t his comforting bright smile. “Benny, you know I love the guy like a brother, right?” he asked soberly, and she nodded. The rest of the company had moved into the receiving line, and she worried about not being there. Drew backed them up into the shade next to the boulder itself.

“Yeah, so do I,” she told him, trying to lighten the moment.

Drew just shook his head. He had wonderful eyes—dark, dark brown, intelligent, soulful. When he blinked, dark lashes, obscenely long, swept over his cheekbones, and when he opened his eyes again, they were both hopeful and fearful at once.

“He’s a tough act to follow,” Drew said softly. “Have you told him yet?”

Benny gnawed on her lower lip. “That I’m ready to move out of the house on his property and into the other house on his property?” she asked factiously, hoping the facts would obscure what a big step this was.

“If you’re ready to move you and Parry into my home. Benny, I love it here, and I’m happy to live here, go to school when you’re done, raise a family working in Deacon’s business. But I need you in my own home. Is that so much to ask? I want to….” He grimaced again and looked around at where they were. It was a swimming hole, plain and simple, but it was also the family church. The shade from the oak trees kept the August sun from pounding too hotly on the two of them, and the water from the irrigation stream burbled as it rounded the bend. It was a pretty place, carved by necessity in what could be a harsh world, and when they weren’t having weddings or summer parties or greeting new babies or making love (at least with her and Drew it had happened here the first time), it was the summer swimming hole and family thinking spot.

Important things happened here, and apparently Drew had decided that it was time for one more.

“Benny, don’t you want to get married?” he asked rawly, and Benny blinked and smiled huge, delighted because she thought this conversation was going to get a lot more serious than this.

“To you? Because, well,
duh
!” she laughed. “What do you think, Drew? Two and a half years we’ve been seeing each other?” Her voice dropped, and she splayed her small hand across his chest, hard with weighty muscle underneath his pink dress shirt. “Do you think I… I mean, my whole family knows about us. Do you think that would happen if I didn’t want us to be permanent?”

Drew covered her hand with his larger one, and she resisted the temptation to examine it, as she often did, to contrast the coffee color of the skin on the back with the tender pinkness of the palm and the pads of his fingers. These things fascinated her, and she never made any secret about the fact his skin color delighted her as much as the rest of him. She was unafraid of their difference in race, and unafraid of the skin under his prosthetic leg, and unafraid of the complete contrast in culture between his upbringing in the South and hers in Northern California. About the only thing she
did
fear about her relationship with Drew was that somehow it would take her away from her family.

“I want us to be permanent,” he said softly. “But you know that means that you’re going to need to move you and Parry out of that house. And someday—not now, but someday, after we’re both through school, and when we’ve had another baby or two—we may have to move away from here. From The Pulpit. From Levee Oaks. From Deacon. And I need to know you’re up for that.”

Benny swallowed hard and tried not to tear up—she still had that leftover hot feeling behind her eyes from the wedding, she told herself stoutly. It was only natural.

“You mean choose you,” she said, knowing that this was where it was leading.

“Over Deacon,” Drew affirmed. He glanced furtively up, and Benny looked to where Deacon was holding Parry Angel, and now she had to wipe her face with her hand again.

“Of course I choose you,” she whispered painfully, because it wasn’t that cut and dried and they both knew it. They
both
owed Deacon so much. Leaving him alone seemed a horrible way of paying him back. “I’ll tell him we’re moving out tomorrow.”