Love Under Two Kendalls (25 page)

Read Love Under Two Kendalls Online

Authors: Cara Covington

Tags: #General Fiction

“I don’t imagine that circulating his picture got us anywhere, either.” Jake sat, sprawled out with his legs in front of him and his arms resting lightly on the arms of the chair.

“No. Nobody sees anything anymore.
Son of a bitch
.”

“Steven’s going to meet Benny after school,” Matt said from his desk. “It’s horseback lesson day. You have to figure Walters is going to be back from the coast by now. Do you think he knows she’s here?”

“We’ve got no way of knowing. Why go all the way to Jersey? Why not check Lusty out first? Maybe he isn’t back yet, but I’m not taking any chances.” The phone rang, and Adam sent a glance to Matt that had his cousin picking up the call.

“I’m wondering if we need to revisit some of the outlying lodgings.” Jake sat forward. “Visit all the motels and inns along the interstate and the state highway. We can show the pictures of both Walters and Jerry Stone. Maybe—”

“Adam,” Matt interrupted, and his tone set Adam’s instincts on alert. “Aunt Samantha’s on the phone. She says it’s urgent.”

Adam reached out to his desk phone and jerked the receiver to his ear. “Mother?”

“Darling, I just had a rather interesting conversation with a man who thinks I’m stupid.”

Adam exhaled. His stomach had apparently tensed up for nothing. “Mother, I can’t imagine anyone really thinking that you’re stupid—at least not anyone who knows you.”

“Well thank you for that, darling. And since this Mister Stone doesn’t know me, it was easy for me to act suitably intimidated, and eager to pay him the outrageous sum of three hundred thousand dollars in order for him to tell you where Deke Walters is.”


Stone
. Jerry Stone called you?”

“Yes, and can you believe the idiot didn’t even give me a phony name?”

Adam met Jake’s sharpened gaze. His brother had gotten to his feet, clearly ready to move instantly.

Adam tried to sound calm for his mother’s benefit, but he doubted she bought the act. “Tell me the rest of what he said, please.”

“He’s at the Green Gables, that new motel beside the IHOP. Room 109. And he’s waiting for
you
to bring him the money I promised him. Because you’re a good son, and will do anything I ask you to do, don’t you know?”

Memories of the showdown at the Lusty Clinic weeks before, and his own mother’s lament that she’d been out of town and unable to participate had Adam saying, “You’ll leave this with me, now, won’t you, Mother? You’ll stay away from the place?”

“Well of course, darling. I’m just going to go and have some lunch and let you take care of everything.”

Adam hung up the phone and looked at his brother, and then over at Matt. “Gentlemen, do you want to go for a little ride?”

“Jerry Stone called Mother?”

Adam could see the fury on his brother’s face. He nodded. He filled them in on the conversation, and then said, “Apparently he thought she’d be an easy mark.”

“The man’s fucking lucky
we’re
going to be the ones in his face, and not her.” Jake turned and headed toward the door.

“So I was thinking. Matt…”

“I’ll call in the state boys and have them meet us there. I wonder if Stone understands that since the charges against Walters have been upgraded, the ones against him have been, too.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s even thought this through at all, which is lucky for us.” Adam headed out the door, then turned to Matt, who was right behind him. “But I’m certainly going to enjoy pointing a few harsh realities out to the bastard.” And he made a promise to himself that he would see to it that poor waif living in terror at Jerry’s place got the help she needed—even if she didn’t know she needed it.

“That makes two of us,” Jake said. “Should we let Ginny know what’s happening?”

“Nah.” Adam reached the driver’s door of his cruiser. “She’ll be at work for a few hours, yet. With a little luck, we’ll have both Stone
and
Walters behind bars before the end of her shift.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Jake said.

His brother beside him, his cousin in the cruiser behind him, Adam headed out of Lusty, more than a little ready to have a showdown with Jerry Stone.

* * * *

It really felt good to be back at work. Ginny had never been the sort of woman who could spend any real amount of time doing nothing. Likely, that was because of the way she’d been raised.

What memories she had of her mother were of a woman who spent her days stretched out on the sofa, either drinking booze or doing drugs or doing the other. At the time she didn’t know what it meant when strange men came to their apartment and went into her mother’s bedroom with her. She did now, and she wondered, as she carried a tray of dishes into the kitchen, if maybe her grandmother might not be forgiven for her hard attitude toward her eldest daughter.

Kelsey fairly exploded into the kitchen from the small hall that led from her office, used only for the necessary business of running
Lusty Appetites
.

“We can all relax. After a very sincere heart-to-heart and primo negotiating on the part of yours truly, it appears that Mr. Danforth at the Poultry Market
is
going to be able to deliver our chickens, after all.” She looked up at the clock, an evil kind of grin on her face. “In just over one hour from now, or the deep discounts begin.”

“Kelsey, no one can hold a candle to you when it comes to getting suppliers to see the sweet light of reason.” Tracy looked over her shoulder and sent a wink Ginny’s way. “I swear, you can make a grown man cringe.”

“Likely has, too,” Ginny said. “As I do believe I’ve seen that look a time or two on her husbands’ faces.”

Kelsey laughed. “What can I say? It’s a God-given talent. I say if you’ve got it, use it.”

“It must be exactly that,” Tracy said. “I copied your example and tried it out on my men. I thought they were both going to pee themselves, they laughed so hard.”

Another woman might have been upset at her own failure to put fear in the hearts of her men, but Tracy had such a good sense of humor. Not to mention the fact that her men were both a couple of big, strapping strong men, while Tracy was what one could call “diminutive.”

Ginny smiled over at her friend as she loaded a couple of salads onto her tray. Then she went over to the soup pot and ladled two bowls of the savory beef vegetable. “I wouldn’t go worrying about your apparent failure, any, Tracy. You’ve got both Jordan and Peter so smitten, they near to eat out of your hand as it is.”

Tracy laughed. “You mean, kind of like the way you have Adam and Jake at the moment?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Ginny felt her face color, but could see no help for it. Her relationship with those two Kendalls was still fairly new. “I do believe Adam has no qualms about yelling at me when he’s a mind to. If you recall our little, um, intervention at the clinic a few weeks back, he did just that. I’m amazed the entire town didn’t hear him. I do believe my ears are still ringing.”

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Tracy went back to forming pastries on her tray. “Scary, yes, but fun.”

“You two had all the excitement while all I got to do was distract Steven…” Kelsey stopped and showed a healthy blush of her own. “Come to think of it, that was a lot of fun, and pretty exciting, too.”

Ginny chuckled, even as she picked up her tray and headed back out into the dining room. She delivered the soup and salads to Warren and Ed Jessop, who sat at one of the smaller tables in the back and were having a bit of a heated discussion about tourniquets, of all things. The door opened, and when she looked up, she shook her head.

“My, we got busy all of a sudden.”

Since she’d gone into the kitchen, several new customers had come into
Lusty Appetites
. Bernice Benedict—Kelsey’s mother-in-law—and her daughter Susan sat at a table beside one that held Samantha Kendall and Tamara Jones, soon-to-be Kendall. Anna Jessop, Warren and Ed’s mom who was also the curator of the museum, sat with Tracy’s mother and Anna’s cousin, Heather Jessop. Ginny smiled when she realized the family connections were becoming a lot clearer to her than they had been just weeks before.

Now Grandma Kate had just walked in, and she gave Ginny a big smile. “It looks like a party in here, doesn’t it?”

“Yes ma’am, I was just thinking that very thing. I was wondering what was happening that y’all arrived for lunch just now.”

“Maybe it’s kismet,” Kate Benedict said. The door opened again, and Julia Benedict and her mother Abigail came in, and Ginny could only shake her head. Something was up, no doubt about it.

“Ah, there you are.” Kate beamed a smile to her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. “We’ll just sit us down right here,” she said as she picked a table by the window. “Now don’t you fuss, Ginny. We can see you’re the only waitress on today. Just take your time, sweetheart.”

Ginny knew there was no arguing with the women of Lusty, Texas. She thought they were either there to celebrate her return to work or—more likely—there to keep an eye on her until her shift ended and either Jake or Adam came by to fetch her.

She swallowed back the tears that caught in her throat. If she ever doubted that these amazing women accepted her completely, she doubted no more. Their caring and generosity truly humbled her.

From the first moment that Kelsey, Matt, and Adam had brought her back to Lusty, she’d never been treated with anything but kindness and warmth and welcome.

She’d never felt so blessed in all her life.

It didn’t take her long to make the rounds and take drink orders. She handed out menus, and then set to getting everyone’s thirsts seen to, first.

She had to go into the kitchen to make the pot of Darjeeling tea that Kate Benedict seemed to enjoy, lately, at this time of day.

Of course, once she began to brew the tea, Kelsey and Tracy knew Kate was in the house. But they were both surprised when she told them who all else had arrived, too.

“Maybe we’ll get a ladies club going here,” Kelsey said.

“I bet that if you mentioned the idea, it’d take hold, straight off,” Ginny said.

“These scones can sit a bit. Let me give you a hand, Ginny.” Tracy whipped off her apron and grabbed an extra order pad.

“If everyone’s eating, you better come back with those orders and help me, too, Miss Sous-chef,” Kelsey called out.

Ginny didn’t think it odd that Kelsey then picked up a pad and followed them out to the dining room.

Since she carried the tray of tea for Kate, Ginny headed there. The sound of feminine chatter had a soothing quality to it. She glanced over at the paramedics, but they didn’t seem to notice the increased crowd—or even that their own mother was there.

She supposed that those who grew up here were used to seeing family at every turn. For someone who’d grown up mostly alone, that idea seemed not only remarkable, but wonderful.

Outside the windows, the sun shone down with a particular brightness. Ginny took just a moment to appreciate the day, and found herself wondering whose old yellow Toyota sat parked in front of the pharmacy across the street.

“Are you ready to order?” She pulled her pad and pen out of her pocket, and froze as a movement, only half seen, chilled her to her bones.

The car wasn’t empty. It seemed as if someone had hunkered down to sleep, which was very odd…

She knew the shape of that head, that furtive hunch, that darting look. Fear seared her, and for one brief moment she wanted to run away and hide.

And then fear evaporated under an explosion of white-hot rage.

Jake had called him a bully and a coward, and in that instant she knew his words for gospel. There that coward, that bully sat, hiding, lying in wait, for her, or for anyone he deemed smaller and weaker, because he didn’t have the balls to face anyone his own gender or size.

Suddenly aware of the silence around her, she turned and looked at the varying degrees of curiosity and pride on the faces around her. She didn’t understand, at first.

“He likely doesn’t have the balls to man up,” Kate agreed.

Oh my God! Did I really say all that out loud?

In the next instant Kate confirmed that she had. “Your mind wandered, sweetheart, and you were talking out loud. But please, continue.” And she gave her a huge grin. “You’re sounding very fierce.”

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