Love Under Two Wildcatters (23 page)

They’d come out onto the veranda because Jonathan had said that was the only place Bernice allowed him to smoke his pipe.

Ryder rested against one of the pillars, folded his arms in front of his chest, and watched his woman’s father. Correction,
one
of her fathers. The other one had grabbed hold of Colt, intent on showing him some of the historical artifacts the family kept in the library.

Ryder figured it was a case of divide and…what? Certainly not conquer. He might be off the mark, but he had the sense that Susan’s family had not only accepted him and Colt in her life but approved of them.

Hell of a thing.

“I won’t fully relax until Susan’s back where I can see her. No offense to the security of your town, Mr. Benedict.”

“Just Jonathan,” the older man said. He sat back, and Ryder thought he wore quite the look of satisfaction as he drew on his pipe.

“Jonathan, then,” Ryder conceded. And when Jonathan pointed to the chair next to him, Ryder figured he might as well sit.
Let the inquisition begin
.

“Bernice and Susan won’t be gone that long. They just went to run a few errands, and besides, the entire town is on alert. Any strangers spotted will be reported to Matt and Adam.”

Ryder exhaled heavily. He knew they couldn’t keep their woman in their sight twenty-four seven. Hopefully, this worry would ease up once they caught Barnes—if, indeed, it was Barnes at the root of their troubles.

“Understand you fellas built yourselves quite a company starting from nothing.”

“We’ve done all right for ourselves. We plan to do a whole lot better, too.” Ryder stretched out in the chair, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. He folded his arms across his chest again, not as a sign of agitation, but because it was a comfortable way to sit. “But the truth is, we’re just a couple of wildcatters at heart.”

Jon made a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough, depending. “Hell, this family, this town, was begun by a couple of gunslingers who went and fell for a married woman.” He took a moment to pull his pipe out of his mouth. “Being a couple of wildcatters who started out as two kids sleeping on the street and ended up savvy businessmen, hell, that’s several steps up from that.”

“Gunslingers?” Ryder had to admit he was curious about the Benedict clan. He’d heard a few stories down through the years. He hadn’t heard about the gunslingers.

“The town trust established a museum a couple decades ago, smack-dab in the middle of Lusty. You should go over and have a look some day. But yeah, twin brothers Joshua and Caleb Benedict were hired to escort Sarah Carmichael Maddox from Chicago to here—where she was to join her bridegroom. Only, it turned out, her bridegroom had other plans for her than wedded bliss.”

“So it started with them? Ménage marriages?”

“With them and their closest friends. Adam Kendall and Warren Jessop considered themselves a couple, and then they met Sarah’s cousin Amanda. The two families—the Benedicts and the Jessop-Kendalls—decided to make themselves a town where people could live however they chose and be among friends.” Jonathan sat back.

“And they called it Lusty,” Ryder concluded. “Interesting name.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Yep. And their descendants have been doing their best to live up to that name ever since.”

“Apparently.” Ryder sat for a few moments, wondering what Jonathan wanted, why exactly he’d corralled him to come out here. But the older man stayed silent, and Ryder felt the weight of that silence. It dug at him with tiny talons that seemed to pierce unerringly at his conscience.

“I’m in love with your daughter.” Ryder wondered if that wasn’t the point of being out here with his woman’s father. “Colt and I are both in love with her.”

“I know. What I’m interested in is how you feel about the fact that Colt’s in love with her, too.”

Ryder met Jonathan’s gaze. “I first met Colt when I was eleven years old and I was being set on by two bullies.” Ryder had never told this story to another person—not the whole of it, at any rate.

“These weren’t schoolyard bullies. I’d spent precious little time in a school yard. These were teens. Hardened street thugs. The kind of street thug I was on the road to becoming, myself. At eleven, I was already running wild. Didn’t pay to spend any time at home because my mother was usually hopped up on drugs and not alone. A couple of her men had thought I made a pretty good punching bag. One other thought I could serve a much more personal purpose. I got away from him, and that was the beginning of the end between Mom and me. “

Just thinking back to those early, nasty days made a terrible sweat break out on him. Ryder closed his eyes a moment, inhaled, and held close the reality of all that had come after that.

“Anyway, these thugs had me down on the ground and were pounding the shit out of me. Next thing I know, the one that was on top of me falls off me, unconscious. And there stood Colt. Christ, he was smaller than me, but meaner than a wild dog. He’d picked up a piece of pipe out of the alley and had whaled on the one kid. The other got scared and took off.” Ryder blinked and focused on Jonathan. Susan’s father just sat quiet, listening. “Colt and I have been together ever since, covering each other’s backs. So how do I feel that this man who’s closer to me than a brother loves the same woman I do? I feel right, and damned grateful.”

Jonathan nodded, and Ryder had the sudden sense that he’d given the right answer. Then Jonathan took his pipe out of his mouth and knocked the tobacco out of it into a fancy looking pot beside his chair. “It’s up to the men in the family to ensure their woman never feels torn, never has to worry about one being jealous of the other. Sometimes that’s not easy, but it’s always worth it.” He pocketed his pipe. “Course, there’s a huge advantage to sharing the job of man of the house. You’re never alone when the tough times hit, and believe me, there will always be tough times. You have someone right there to share the burden of providing for and raising the family. You have another man that can understand you and your heart the way only another man can. And you have someone to help you keep a smile on your woman’s face.”

“If we have any doubts at all, Colt and I, it’s about what kind of husbands and fathers we’ll make. We didn’t grow up with any kind of example of family.”

“Having the example doesn’t guarantee anything. Let me tell you, Caleb and I had the same concerns. You’ll find out, it’s both easier, and harder than anything you’ve ever done before.”

“You can trace your heritage back generations. You need to know that neither of us can do that. Hell, we don’t either of us know who our fathers were.”

“I’d have thought with what you and Colt have built together on your own you’d have figured it out.” Jonathan got to his feet.

Ryder also rose. The older man came up to him. His eyes crinkled, and his mouth tilted up in a smile.

“It’s not the blood you were born with, or the heritage. It’s not where you come from, son, and not the circumstances you’re born into. It’s what’s inside you, and what you do with it that counts.”

Chapter 19

“It’s never been like this for me,” Susan said. Then she shrugged. “I guess I never really was in love before. But you knew that, didn’t you, Mom?”

Her mother stopped beside her car and gave her a gentle smile. “That you weren’t in love with those two you brought around last year? Yes, I knew. Mostly, I knew they weren’t in love with you. It’s all in the eyes.”

“The eyes?” Susan opened the trunk of the car and set the two of the gallons of paint she’d just bought inside it. Her mother hefted the other two then stood back while Susan closed the trunk. Her house was soon going to be wearing smoke gray paint with burgundy trim.

“When a man’s in love with you, all the way in love, you can see it in his eyes,” Bernice Benedict said. “Those two men of yours look at you and it’s as if you were the center of their world.”

Susan liked that image a lot. “That’s good, because they’re certainly the center of mine. And it scares the hell out of me that someone wants to hurt them.”

“I’m sure it does,” Bernice said. “When you’re in love, you become vulnerable in a very special way. Anything that threatens the men you love, threatens you.”

Susan felt particularly blessed to have a mother she considered a friend. There’d never been anything she couldn’t talk to her about.

“Did you have anything else you wanted to get while we’re in town?” she asked her mother. They’d stopped at the pharmacy and the post office before coming to the hardware store to pick up Susan’s paint.

It seemed like weeks, not days ago that she and Colt and Ryder had come into town and gone to Lusty Appetites, planning to get the paint after lunch. Fortunately, the man who ran the hardware store was a cousin and had kept the paint aside for her.

“Why don’t we take the paint out to your house? I haven’t seen it since you finished the kitchen. Besides, we don’t get to spend as much time together as we used to.”

Susan instinctively looked in the direction of the big house. She didn’t like having her men out of sight, especially under the circumstances. She knew that wasn’t logical, because there wasn’t anything she could do to keep them safe beyond what they themselves were capable of doing.
No, not logical, but there it was
.

Aside from making a person vulnerable, love could also make a person crazy.

“Sweetheart, let your fathers have this chance to get to know your men. They’re all perfectly safe, and I swear your fathers won’t bite.”

Susan grinned. “Yes, I know. I’m being silly. All right, then, let’s head on over to my place.”

The main street of Lusty, Texas, was a state road, and Susan’s ranch—which was actually a corner of the original Benedict ranch—lay only a few minutes to the north.

“Winter weddings are always nice,” Bernice said.

Susan split her attention between her driving and her mother. “I actually haven’t given it much thought. A wedding, that is.”

“You don’t want to marry them? That doesn’t sound like you.”

Susan thought her mother was likely recalling all the times she had played “wedding” with her dolls. “Oh, I want to marry them.”

“Oh, dear. You mean they don’t want to marry you? Of course, they’re not from around here. Maybe the notion of a lifetime commitment between the three of you is difficult for them to fathom.”

“Mom!” Susan laughed. “That’s not it, either. Really, we’ve not even discussed marriage. In fact, we really haven’t talked about the future at all.”

“Well, why not, for heaven’s sake? A blind person could see you’re in love with each other! You may think that kind of love is easy to find, and I can see how you would, considering all the examples you have of it in the family. But really, darling, it’s not.”

Susan put her turn signal on and then turned onto her road. Once she had the car straightened out, she shot a glance at her mother.

Every once in a while, she felt awed when she looked at Bernice White Benedict. Her mother was still beautiful in her mid-sixties, with very little gray hair and almost no wrinkles. She’d never known her mother to be unhappy, or worried, for more than a few moments in time.

Most of the women in her family could best be characterized as contented. She thought the reality of loving, and being loved by, more than one man was likely responsible for that.

“Well,” Susan returned her attention back to their conversation, “if I had to pinpoint one reason we’ve all been silent on this particular subject, I would have to say that reason lies with Colt and Ryder’s inability to see their true worth.” She looked over at her mother and then put her gaze back on the road. “They keep reminding me that they’re just a couple of wildcatters.” She grinned. “As if that was a bad thing.” Her grin sobered. “The thing is, they weren’t raised in a loving family like I was. I think they’re maybe a bit scared that they won’t know how to
be
in a family, with all that entails.”

“You mean children.”

“Yes.” Susan felt her insides melt when she thought of having children with her men.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Her mother patted her knee. “If I know you, you’ll bring them around. A spring wedding would be nice, too.”

Susan laughed. One thing she could always count on in life was her mother’s optimism.

She turned the car onto her lane. She always felt such a huge sense of satisfaction when her house came into view. True, it had only been her home for a few months, but this place, more than any she’d ever called her own, felt like home.