Love Under Two Jessops (12 page)

“The ‘Y’ chromosome flaw,” Chloe said. “It’s okay. You can’t help that. It’s a birth defect. I forgive you both for it.”

In her peripheral vision she could see the men exchange looks, and grin. Then Grant ran his hand down her back. In the next instant he scooped her onto his lap, situating her so that she faced Andrew, sitting beside them. He scooped her legs onto his lap.

These men were so gentle with her, so sensitive to her moods and her needs despite the crack she’d just made, that she sometimes forgot just how physically strong they were.

“You gonna tell us why you felt the need to come riding out here all alone, baby girl?”

“I just had to think on things for a bit.”

“I guess we should have told you that we’d hired that investigator,” Andrew said. “We probably would have, eventually. We just thought that, if the man didn’t have any success, and you didn’t know about it…”

“You were trying to protect my feelings, spare me the disappointment of failure.”

“We can’t know what you went through, Chloe,” Grant said. “We’ve never lost anyone who really mattered—well, except our grandparents, but that’s kind of a part of living. We’ve been lucky, because we’ve always been up to our asses in family.”

Chloe laughed. “That
is
lucky,” she said.

“We couldn’t
not
do something, love.” Grant stroked her back in a way that comforted rather than aroused. “Even knowing that the best we can hope for is that we find that son of a bitch, look him in the eye, and tell him that we know what he did.”

“That’s not true. I was thinking, I can always bitch slap him.”

“We’d help you do that if you wanted to,” Andrew said.

“Does Carrie know?” She looked up at Grant and then over at Andrew. He shrugged and met her gaze.

“I doubt it.”

“Someone ought to tell her. Because if they don’t, I have a feeling Jake will.”

“Yeah. I’ll give Chase a call, nudge him along in that direction,” Grant said. He sighed. “Are we all right?”

Chloe didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “I’ll be honest with you, because I want always to have the truth between us. I was pissed at first. On a basic, emotional level, a totally illogical level, I was mad as hell.”

“That’s because you’re still used to having to do it all yourself. I’ll bet that even in those years when you couldn’t find your baby sister, you felt as if you were still responsible for her.”

That
was
how she’d felt, and until today, she didn’t think she’d fully embraced that. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“I remember watching Robbie all the years we were growing up.” Grant’s touch continued to be soothing. “He wasn’t
overly
bossy, but he was always so watchful—both him and Rick. They’ve always had an attitude about them, as if they always
had
to be on guard. As the oldest they seemed to believe that they had to watch over the rest of us. No one ever made them feel that way. I think it’s just something that comes from being the firstborn.” He stopped and used a finger to turn her chin up, meeting her gaze. “I saw the same mantle on you, the first time we met. Do you remember?”

She did remember. She recalled that moment they knocked on the door to the apartment she was staying in—Carrie’s apartment. They’d known what she’d planned to do and were determined to protect her, even from herself.

“I guess you both understand me pretty well, huh?” Chloe leaned her head against Grant’s chest. She rubbed against him, and felt a new kind of harmony fill her.

“We do, Chloe-doe. And now it’s time for you to understand something pretty basic about us.”

“You’re not alone anymore, baby girl. You have us, and we’re going to take care of you, and we’re going to
stand
for you. It’s what men do. It’s what
your
men do. And you’re just going to have to find a way to deal with that.”

* * * *

Grant realized that maybe that had come out a bit too dictatorial-sounding. Becca was always haranguing him about his behavior tending to slide toward the Neanderthal end of the evolutionary scale.

On his lap, Chloe sighed and seemed to melt into him even more. “You’re very bossy. Did you know that?”

Grant chuckled, and then hugged her. “Yes, I am. I could pretend, I guess, that that was a slip, but I am who I am.”

“I may not always let you get away with it—being bossy, that is.”

Grant thought about that for a moment. “I suppose that’s only fair. As long as you accept that if you push my buttons hard enough, I might just turn you over my knee and paddle your ass.”

“I’ve heard that can be a very…interesting experience.” Chloe rubbed her cheek against his shirt again. She reached a hand out to Andrew.

“Have you, now?” Grant liked that she’d done that, that she needed to be connected to his brother as much as to him. His brother took her hand and knit their fingers. For the first time since they’d gotten that call from Steven telling them to get their asses out to the ranch ASAP, he felt himself relax. They were really going to be all right.

“Mmm. So maybe threatening to spank me isn’t going to work as a deterrent.”

Andrew met his gaze and they both smiled.

“Wasn’t meant to be a deterrent, baby girl.” He kissed the top of her head. “You about ready to head back now, sweetheart? It’ll be dark, soon.”

“Yeah.” Andrew stroked Chloe’s legs gently. “Cousin Steven will pace the floor like a worried papa if we don’t get these horses back to him soon.”

Chloe sighed. Grant had the sense that being out here in this little piece of rural Texas, and by this stream, had soothed her heart, just a little.

He knew she was a city girl, born and bred, but he and Andrew were both hoping she could get used to small-town, country living.

Chloe sat up. Then she turned and gave him a sweet, and far too brief, kiss. “Yeah, I’m ready to go. If y’all are interested, I could make dinner for us tonight.”

Andrew got to his feet and lifted Chloe up. She got his message and kissed him, too.

“How about if we help you make dinner?” Grant asked. “Think you’d like that?”

Andrew had set her on her feet. She was such a tiny little thing, she barely came up to mid chest on them.

Grant grinned because she got a little miffed anytime either he or his brother picked her up, but they really couldn’t resist.
She’s just so damned cute
.

He also knew that she seemed to think she needed to lose weight. He wasn’t really sure how to handle that. He—and Andrew for that matter—thought she was perfect, just the way she was.

They’d never really cottoned to skinny women who had hip bones sticking out. Chloe’s curves turned him on so damn much, swear to God he didn’t know sometimes how he managed
not
to come in his pants when she was near.

He met her gaze, and the heat he felt must have shown. Chloe’s eyes brightened, and she licked her lips. Then she reached up, her touch delicate, and caressed his cheek. “Yes, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

If he wasn’t convinced the words would send her running away, he’d tell her right now how he really felt about her. A quick glance at his brother told him Andrew felt the same way.

They’d have to put their heads together, he and Andrew, and see if they couldn’t come up with some way to speed up this whole courting process.

He knew they had her body. But they wouldn’t be content until they had her heart and mind and soul, too.

It took him a little while to find just exactly the right spot.

There were, these days, great swaths of land that belonged to either rich bastard individuals, or rich bastard corporations. The day of the family ranch, of the small-stake homestead was nearly done. But there were a few, and he had to be careful to avoid such a spread.

The last thing he wanted to do was inflict loss or pain on an innocent, hardworking man or woman.

He just needed to find a place that belonged to some soulless entity. Preferably, a piece of land that had belonged to a hardworking family and been stolen from them by the Goddamned banks and capitalists. That really wasn’t so hard to do, at all.

Acre upon acre of ranching or farming land stretched out in all directions, land where houses were so few and far between anymore, that one could almost believe
families
had become extinct.

For the most part, he thought, such a belief wasn’t so far from the truth. As far as he could see, ordinary families didn’t seem to matter the way they once did. Everything in this new century was about the almighty dollar. The only people who mattered were those whose sole purpose it was to amass great green gobs of cash.

In their minds, ordinary Americans were just dirt under their feet.

He recalled a day when neighbor helped neighbor simply because it was the
right
thing to do. There was a time when a man could count on the people around him, in his community, in his county, hell, in his
state
, to either lend him a hand or at least cut him some slack when the hard times hit.

Folks used to be eager to help, because everyone had hard times now and again. A man would reach out and lift his neighbor up, help his neighbor out, because he never knew when he, himself, would need that lift up or that help. The Golden Rule used to
mean
something special.

Now it just meant that the ones who had the most gold ruled, and to hell with everyone else. If you didn’t have mega cash in the bank, then you were nothing—just a body, just someone to do the menial work, but not someone who mattered—not someone who
counted
.

If a man stumbled, if he had a few bad years, if,
damn it all to hell
, beyond his control the bottom fell out of everything, well, then he was on his own. A man became a statistic, worthless, and no one gave one good Goddamn about him.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

What was the point in following the rules, in being honest and hardworking and faithful, when those qualities didn’t even fucking matter anymore?

What was the point in having gone to church every Sunday, and paying his dues, when in the end not even the pastor or his fellow worshippers stepped in to help him out?

He looked around him, at the trees and the grasses that had become the unwilling victims of this latest drought. The fat cats who owned this land, they didn’t care if a crop failed, or not. They used the general misfortune of everyone else to their own advantage. They could “write it off,” this weather devastation, or hell, use it as a means to bilk the insurance companies, grab even more cash for themselves.

They didn’t deserve to have this land. They didn’t respect it, and they sure as hell didn’t value it. They’d amassed money from market speculation, and then used that money to buy up land from the banks that had foreclosed on hardworking men, men whose land had been in their families for generations.

They were all bastards, every last damned one of them. They didn’t deserve to have the chance to profit from their corrupt practices.

They for damn sure didn’t deserve to win at the expense of others. Someone needed to call them to account.

As near as he could tell, the banks were in cahoots with the millionaires and billionaires, out to screw the ordinary working man. They’d adopted a “scorched earth” policy when it came to how they treated folks, giving no quarter whatsoever.

It was time someone turned that policy right back on them. Let them see how they liked it.

He looked around, and realized he was far enough away from the road, and in just the right spot. This was as good a place as any to start.

He shrugged out of the backpack he’d carried, and squatted down as he opened it and withdrew the plastic drink carton. He set it down, then slung the pack over his shoulders once more. The grass underfoot was brown and dry, but not quite so sparse here that his plan wouldn’t work. There were some bushes nearby, too, mostly scrub, and as dry as dry could be. They’d be good, but the grass itself was key.

Grass looked like individual blades above ground. But below the surface, the roots were all connected. They were matted together, intertwined, inseparable. They were all one.

He opened the carton and poured the contents out, a little at a time as he walked back and forth, a kind of a zigzag pattern. The scent of the gasoline and kerosene and oil brought memories from his youth, of times when he’d had to siphon gas out of his dad’s tractor to put into the truck he was driving those days, to head into town. He’d caught hell for it, of course, and that old beater of his had suffered for it, on account of the fuel for the tractor being different. Hadn’t seemed such a hard price to pay to get to see his Mary.

He shook his head, pushing aside the memory. Those days were gone, forever. The boy he’d been, the man he’d become, they were no more.

This recession, the banks, they’d killed that man.