“I can’t keep working for you.” Penelope looked near tears. “You don’t understand.”
“You’d be surprised what we understand,” Kate said. “Men, even much-beloved grandsons, can be a real challenge sometimes.”
Penelope opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked from Kate, to Bernice, then back down at her tea. Adding cream to it, she stirred the beverage for several moments. “Challenge is too tame a word for those two,” she said. “Try flaming, all-out pains in the ass!”
“My youngest sons
are
more of a pain in the ass than most. I’m not proud of that fact,” Bernice said, “but I am aware of it. Ask Susan about them, and I’m sure you’ll get an earful, too.”
“Susan?” Penelope looked completely confused.
The front door opened. “Mom, Grandma? Am I in time for tea?”
Kate waited until her granddaughter came into the room. “Your timing, as always, darling, is perfect.”
Penelope looked up at Susan, then back at Kate. She narrowed her eyes. “Why do I have the feeling I’ve been set up?”
“Not set up,” Kate lied with a straight face. “Just anticipated.
Stella called and alerted us you might be headed this way.”
“We’re probably not the ones you need right now,” Bernice said.
“Because we’re older. But Susan and Kelsey are both very good listeners. You’ll stay here tonight, of course. While you younger ones go have a good chin wag, I’ll make up the guest room.”
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“Go on,” Kate said. She laid her hand over Penelope’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’re one of ours, sweetheart, and we take care of our own. It’s the Benedict way.”
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Chapter 18
Alex tried to keep worry from morphing into stark terror.
They couldn’t find Penelope.
“Mitchell says she took her car, so we know she’s driving. But she didn’t come here. And she hasn’t returned to the office.” He ran a hand through his hair—one of his brother’s affectations—then looked at Josh. “Damn it, Josh, where could she be?”
Josh paced back and forth in the living room of the penthouse in front of the picture window that afforded a magnificent view of Houston.
“Okay, we need to have someone contact the hospitals. We can’t report her as missing, not yet. She’s only been gone four hours and thirty-seven minutes.”
Colt came into the room. He handed a cup of coffee to Alex.
He didn’t want the brew but had taken the cup automatically when Colt had handed it to him. The thought of putting anything in his stomach at the moment made him want to puke.
“You need to relax, man. Susan just called me. Penelope is in Lusty, safe and sound.”
“Lusty? What the hell is she doing there?” Josh asked
“She went to give Grandma Kate her resignation,” Colt said.
Ryder, who lounged on the sofa with his feet up on the ottoman, gave a low whistle. “You boys
really
pissed her off.”
“We didn’t mean to!” Alex sat down in one of the armchairs.
Relief that his woman had been located, that she was safe, took all the starch out of his knees.
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“We’ll have that engraved on your tombstones,” Colt said. “It’s on the same level as ‘I didn’t know the gun was loaded.’”
Alex tilted his head and looked at his almost brother-in-law. “That was an odd thing to say.”
Colt nodded, sat down, then looked over at Ryder. Alex couldn’t read the look the two men exchanged, but something about Ryder’s smirk put his brain on high alert.
“Now that your woman’s been located, you two need to sit down and listen up.”
Josh turned and met Alex’s gaze. Without saying anything, he came and sat down on the arm of the chair Alex was in.
“All right,” Josh said. “We’re listening.”
“Even though we’ve a month until our wedding, Ryder, Susie and I decided to begin working on starting our family,” Colt said.
“Colt and I wanted the question of fatherhood to be completely in the hands of fate. To us, it really doesn’t matter which one of us supplies the sperm,” Ryder said.
“That’s what the dads say,” Alex said. “You don’t have to worry.
Josh and I have it all figured out, that—”
“You need to be quiet and listen,” Colt said. “Because we felt that way, Susan came up with an idea. We’re not completely sure if it will work, but it might work, so we decided to give it a try.”
“Susan took the box of condoms that we keep in the bedside table at the ranch and used a needle to poke a couple of holes in several of them,” Ryder said.
“She did that the day before the last Town Trust meeting,” Colt said.
“The day before you met your Penelope,” Ryder added.
“I’m not sure what the odds are of that working,” Josh said. “I know that some studies conducted on the integrity of prophylactics state that…” His voice trailed off.
Alex felt everything inside him go perfectly still. He looked up at Josh, whose expression had gone completely blank.
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“Holy hell, Josh,” Alex said softly. He didn’t need to cite scientific studies. He knew what Ryder and Colt had just said.
Further, he had no doubt whatsoever what it meant for them.
“Oh, man,” Josh said.
“You’re usually faster than I am,” Alex said.
“Yeah. It must be the moment, brother mine. I never before had to process the information that, in all likelihood, in just about eight months, we’re going to be fathers.”
“Well process this, genius. You need to go to Penelope and grovel. Big time,” Colt said.
“On hands and knees,” Ryder said.
Alex took in the not-quite-restrained smiles of his almost brothers-in-law. “I think you’re enjoying this,” he said.
“Maybe a little. Face it, you were pretty high-handed, hinting that our continued business association would depend on our coaxing Susan off of her ranch and into our beds,” Ryder said.
“While at the same time trying to prove to your sister that she didn’t know her own mind, or even have the right to make her own choices,” Colt added.
“We just wanted to help,” Josh said.
“Uh-huh.”
Colt and Ryder said that together, and to Alex’s ears, neither man sounded convinced.
Josh surged to his feet. “We’re geeks, damn it! We both pulled a solid 4.33 grade point average and graduated at the top of our class.
We can figure out the best way to finesse a business deal and can analyze any corporate situation we find ourselves in.”
“We just don’t understand women. Period. Whether they’re the ones we’re related to,” Alex said, “or the one we love.”
“Do you love Penelope Primrose?” Ryder asked.
“Completely,” Josh said.
“With all our hearts,” Alex agreed.
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“Then keep that in the front of your thinking, and let’s figure out how you’re going to win her back,” Colt said.
Alex met Josh’s gaze, then nodded. They were both more than ready to listen.
* * * *
“Those stupid idiots,” Susan said. “They’re my brothers, and I love them, but I never realized they were
quite
that stupid.”
Penelope didn’t really want to agree with Susan. She sat with the young woman, and Kelsey Benedict, at a corner table in
Lusty
Appetites
. The restaurant buzzed around them, as it was the start of the dinner hour. Yet Kelsey stayed with them, doing her part to provide moral support on top of the triple chocolate cake and chocolate fudge ice cream she’d already provided.
Finally, Penelope couldn’t take it anymore. At first she’d been totally confused by the way both Grandma Kate and Bernice Benedict had “handled” her—and no doubt about it, she had been handled. But then her anger, and hurt, began to slowly ebb away. Her mind, that always-working brain of hers, began to think back and reorganize the data it had already processed.
The date on the top page of the file she’d read on Josh’s desk was September first. More than a full month before she’d even met the brothers Benedict.
“They’re not stupid,” Penelope said. “Their minds just work on a different level.”
“I’d expect you to defend them. After all, you’re in love with them. I’m their sister, so I don’t have to be quite so generous.”
She hadn’t said a word about being in love with Josh and Alex Benedict. Since meeting them, she’d tried to downplay the reality and depth of her emotions. She’d let herself acknowledge that she loved them, but then would try and convince herself that the feelings she
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had for them weren’t the real thing. That they’d evolved as a result of the stupendous sex.
Penelope sighed. She guessed it was time she fully and finally faced the truth. She did love them, and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with them.
Their sister might think they weren’t great husband material, but the truth was, they were the perfect husbands for her.
“So, how goes the baby campaign?” Kelsey asked.
Penelope was brought back to the conversation by the personal question. It took her a moment to understand it had been asked of Susan, and not her.
“Well,” she leaned forward and shot Penelope a grin to let her know she was included in the private tête-à-tête, “I came up with the perfect plan.” She looked at Penelope. “Colt and Ryder came to the decision that they didn’t want to know which one of them fathered our first child.”
“Why ever not?”
“Long story short, neither of them thinks himself good enough to be a father, but together, they’ve said, they’d make a good one. They had very rough childhoods.”
“Men are strange,” Penelope said. “They’ve surely evolved beyond childhood traumas.” Penelope blinked, because the stray thought, that she was one to talk, flashed through her mind.
Kelsey nodded vigorously. “Yes! And they think we’re the complicated ones!” She tilted her head toward Susan. “So what did you come up with? You realize that in a case of multiple partners, usually it’s the first sperm to enter the womb on the day that fertilization occurs that impregnates.”
“That’s why this plan is so perfect,” Susan said. “I took the box of condoms and poked holes in more than half of them, then mixed them all up in the box. The men use them, never knowing if theirs is one of the ones that will let those little swimmers go to the party.”
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“You poked holes in your condoms?” Penelope asked. Her heart thudded once. “Um, that’s clever. When did you do that? Just recently?”
Susan waved her hand. “The ones in our bedside table in Houston I just got to the other day. But the ones here at the ranch were done first. When I first thought of the idea.”
“You only thought of the idea after we had breakfast last month and I told you
we
were trying to get pregnant,” Kelsey said, laughing.
“You are so competitive.”
“Not competitive. I just like company. What could be better than being pregnant at the same time as my best friend?”
Penelope sat back and placed her hand on her stomach.
Oh. My.
God
. She cast her thoughts back over the last month. She usually was regular as clockwork and…
Five days late. Her period was five days late. Could she be pregnant? Her memory scanned articles she’d read in the last year on pregnancy and gestation. Were her breasts overly sensitive? True, that one time she’d nearly come when Josh had nipped and then suckled deeply. Had she noticed a bit of a bloated look in the mirror? Was she moody, emotional lately?
She nearly blushed. She supposed some might accuse her of being very emotional if they’d seen her dump pasta and fruit punch all over her baby’s fathers.
Her baby’s fathers
.
“Penelope? Are you all right? You look kind of green,” Susan said.
“I don’t think all that chocolate is sitting well on my stomach.” To her own ears, her voice sounded weak.
“She’s getting greener by the moment,” Kelsey said. “I think she’s going to boot.”
Both women jumped to their feet. “Come on. There’s a bathroom in back that’s private.”
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Penelope let Kelsey and Susan lead her to the washroom. She really didn’t think she was going to be ill.
Until her stomach gave one giant roll. She made it to the toilet just in time.
* * * *
A few hours later Penelope found herself tucked into a queen-sized bed in the Benedict family home, wearing a borrowed nightgown, and with a cup of chamomile tea cooling on the side table.
The nausea that had gripped her so suddenly at the restaurant had passed the moment she’d rid herself of the chocolate overload. Her head had been reeling since. Not only could she not let go of the possibility that she was indeed pregnant, but she’d been treated to more fussing over than she’d ever experienced in her whole life.
She’d been restricted to broth and toast for dinner, which was just as well, because after that chocolate gorging—an act that had seemed like a good idea at the time—she didn’t think she wanted to put one more thing in her stomach.
Could I really be pregnant
?
Penelope found it comforting to lay her hand on her middle. She’d always wanted children, someday. They’d fallen under the category of
“dream.” One she could admit to herself now she never thought she’d be able to achieve. Having children meant finding someone to love her, and that she had firmly believed she’d never do.
How could she expect anyone to love her when her own mother hadn’t?
A knock at the door pulled her from her musings.
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal Grandma Kate, done up in robe and slippers, her silver hair unbound and falling to her shoulders. She held something in her hand that looked like an old book.
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“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Kate sat on the bed beside her and felt her forehead.
“Better, thank you. I think the combination of chocolate and emotional distress did me in.”